Classic Horror Behind the Scenes: A Chat with the Man Behind BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER
Rondo-winning filmmaker Thomas Hamilton discusses some exciting upcoming plans: a twelve-part series called HORROR ICONS.
[Above. Rondo Classic Horror Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Hamilton is planning on making a 12-part series called HORROR ICONS.]
By Bill Fleck, author of the Rondo-nominated book CHANEY’S BABY, available here.
UPDATE, April 26, 2023: Tom Hamilton has decided to make the Chaneys the subject of the first episode, and to fund the series one film at a time. Check out the exciting preview—and maybe contribute?—here.
Filmmaker Thomas Hamilton scored a Rondo Classic Horror Award last year for his excellent documentary, BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER. And he’s been nominated again this year for adding extended bonus features to the film. But perhaps his most exciting announcement has to do with his proposed new series, which will feature the Chaneys, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and even Barbara Steele.
The name? HORROR ICONS, of course.
Tom and I had a chance to chat about the project—and the related Indiegogo campaign—from our opposite sides of the pond via Zoom the other day…a day which fittingly featured old-school, Universal Studios-like lightning outside his London home.
BILL FLECK: Well, Tom, you’re a documentary filmmaker, and we’re kind of turning the tables on you here today!
THOMAS HAMILTON: The funny thing is, Bill, if we had started this interview an hour ago, you would have seen my lightning. We had an actual lightning storm outside, with hail. It was battering off the window—you probably wouldn’t have been able to hear me!
BF: Lightning of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN intensity?
TH: Not far off! Daylight lightning, but yeah!
BF: Ha! Well, let’s start by getting some of your background. Were you born in London?
TH: No, I’m from East Kilbride in Scotland, but I’m actually half-Spanish, though I don’t speak the language.
BF: What brought you to London?
TH: My parents worked in the construction industry, building motorways and bypasses across the country. And so, we would move around every couple of years to different parts of the country. That happened three times between the ages of ten and fifteen, ending up in London from the end of 1980. Not being in one place for more than a couple of years at a time made me very self-reliant in terms of the things I would do to amuse myself. Often, I would use tape recorders and create little scenarios where I would play multiple parts, and all these characters would find themselves in a strange situation—for example, discovering my bedroom had been launched into outer space and aliens would turn up.
BF: Yeah, I hate when that happens.
TH: Right? Later, when I first saw THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, I created an audio version of that wherein I depicted various gruesome murders in sound, and then played the hapless investigators who would try to track down the culprit. I was also getting into drama at this point and—thanks to a very encouraging drama teacher named Mrs. Barley—I was allowed to stage the first play I’d written, which was basically a horror tale called, “The Trial and Execution of Boxer Rebel.” I played a serial killer who’s awaiting sentence. I attack the judge, and eventually get shot before they can actually hang me because I’m so berserk. I wrote it as a serious, stark play, and how it came out was this weird, black comedy with all these Scottish kids with their wee voices saying these lines. And there was a scene where my sister, after I was shot, runs over to me. She grabs me and cries, “Boxer! Boxer! Tell me you’re not dead!” And she starts slamming my head against the stage. So, it was like “Boxer!”…BAM! “Boxer!!”…BAM! And the whole audience absolutely erupted in laughter. That was huge fun, and I kept writing plays, which gradually moved into weirder and weirder territory, and were considered way too risky to stage.
BF: Yeah?
TH: Oh, yeah. There was a supposedly autobiographical farce, with a touch of Fawlty Towers, where I would’ve played my own dad, here depicted as a raging alcoholic with a penchant for Shakespeare—which couldn’t have been further from my real dad—but I’d just seen THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, and thought Rathbone and Price were hilarious, so I combined the two. Then I came up with something called “De Sade,” a 19th-Century melodrama in which I would have played a ruthless Basil Rathbone-like landowner who enslaves any of his tenants who can’t pay their bills.
BF: You know, I can actually picture that…
TH (laughs): And finally, “When Heaven meets Hell,” which I almost titled “Confessions of a Heroin Addict”! For once, I didn’t play the villain, though I still had a dramatic death scene as the victim of a plot by my unscrupulous business partner to destroy me by getting me hooked on drugs. That one included a bad-trip sequence, which was supposed to have spirits dancing around malevolently, and would have been set to “Uranus, The Magician” from [Gustav Holst’s] “The Planets” suite. Mrs. Barley apparently saw something of value in it, and while she couldn’t persuade our head teacher to let me stage it, I was allowed to record it as a radio play, which was then played over the speakers in the assembly hall. When we came to record the bad-trip sequence, we actually had an audience of other kids watching as I crashed around one of the classrooms, giving my impression of what I thought was a bad trip. I still have a fragment of that recording. Happy days!
[Above: Director Thomas Hamilton interviews Roger Corman, Christopher Plummer, and Guillermo del Toro for BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER. The film won the Rondo Classic Horror Award (Best Film, Nonfiction) in 2022.]
BF: You were an only child?
TH: Yeah, I was—although, because I was adopted, I found out later that out I was one of five. So, I wasn’t really an only child, though I was raised as one. And then I found out I had a brother and three sisters.
BF: The magic of DNA!
TH: Yeah, I found my true mother, and I reached out to her. She was very nice, and it was interesting, because we met in London, and—this was kind of an eye-opener for me, because we were walking around and talking—and she said, “You know, you’re the black sheep of the family, you’re the one that got away. I’ve never allowed my other children the kind of freedom you seem to have enjoyed.” Which really worked out for me, because I was kind of this creative personality, just doing my own thing. I was never told what I could and couldn’t do, whereas she and her other children were quite religious, quite strictly raised, and it was very different for them. But the funny thing is, I took her name because I liked Hamilton as a surname. So, I took a little bit back, you know.
BF: Very cool! So, for me, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN was the gateway to the Universal Monsters. What got you into the classic horror films?
TH: I think one of the very first that I saw was WHITE ZOMBIE. I remember we were on holiday, and we were staying in a caravan in Wales. We had this little portable TV, and my parents had gone to bed because they generally didn't stay up very late in those days. They had these double bills on BBC 2, where you’d have an old film, and then a slightly newer one. On this occasion, it was WHITE ZOMBIE. I can't remember the newer film, but what I remembered about WHITE ZOMBIE was Bela Lugosi doing his whole thing [folds his hands in the way Lugosi as Murder Legendre did to telepathically summon his zombies]. That was so great. I loved that!
BF: Was it Bela who thought that gesture up?
TH: I’m sure that was his own idea, yeah. That's very “Lugosi,” you know. What I liked about WHITE ZOMBIE was, although it felt incredibly old, it had a sort of power about it. It got past the fact that it was as creaky as hell, and it somehow worked.
[Above. Hamilton’s first encounter with classic horror was WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), starring Bela Lugosi. Hamilton is convinced that Lugosi came up with the iconic hand gesture, used in the film to telepathically summon his minions.]
BF: When it first came out, it looked old! But there’s something compelling about it.
TH: It feels like a silent film that they just happened to have dubbed some sound onto. It’s that magical combination when you have a really low budget, but just enough talent to put it over. And a couple of committed performances as well. I mean, Lugosi really commits.
BF: Bela never phoned it in.
TH: No, he never did. And that’s why, even as late as the mid-1950s when he’s doing the Edward D. Wood films, he’s their saving grace, because he’s delivering an absolutely first-rate performance all the time. So, he raises them up a good deal.
BF: So, you started with WHITE ZOMBIE and it went from there…
TH: I very rapidly got into the classics. FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLF MAN. I quickly began to distinguish between the 1930s Horrors and the 1940s Horrors, in that the ones from the 30s were just more lush. They featured a lot more production, and were generally better stories, because they’re a bit more involved. And there was a bit more quirkiness going on…whereas in the 40s, I felt they were a little bit more predictable, but no less fun for that. And then, of course, because they did double-bills, they would show a Hammer film afterwards. At that time, I was really not so much into the Hammers. It was too new for me. I really enjoyed dipping into these old-school filming techniques, and the sort of eerie music that they featured. There was just something that I found to be very engaging about them. Plus, of course, all those actors, whether it was Bela, Boris, Lon Chaney Jr., you know! Lionel Atwill, of course.
BF: Another guy who never phoned it in.
TH: No, never. Another one that I got into was DOCTOR X. I remember I used to see it on TV, but in black and white.
BF [laughs]: Yes, yes!
TH: Because, of course, they didn’t find the color print until sometime later. But I knew it was in color, and I was just dying to see it in color. And one time, we were in Toronto, and I saw in this video store that they had DOCTOR X in color! So, I rented it only so I could copy it before I flew back to England so that I could see it and…well, it didn't come out.
BF: Yeah, my brother and I tried hooking a couple of video machines together and making copies, because the prices of legit tapes were so high back then. It worked at first, but then video companies got smart and added blockers. I don’t recommend piracy these days.
TH: And in any case, the quality of even those expensive legitimate tapes was…well, it was okay for the time. We were glad just to be able to see the films. But you know, if you look at some of them now, they’re quite ropey. It’s amazing now when you can see these absolutely beautiful prints. They recently did the restoration of DOCTOR X, and it’s breath-taking. The color really pops with that sort of comic strip look that it has.
BF: I’ll have to catch that.
TH: Kino did it last year, and it’s really cool. It’s something else. I mean, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM—everyone’s seen that one. It is very good, but DOCTOR X just, somehow, has the edge, because of all the laboratory stuff, and, of course, “synthetic flesh.”
[In his younger years, Hamilton was obsessed with seeing DOCTOR X (1932) in color. Recently, Kino has released an excellent restoration of the film. Top to bottom: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Preston Foster.]
BF: How’d you get into filmmaking?
TH: I always wanted to make films, really, from a very young age. There was always a sort of leaning towards horror and fantasy in there as well, as you probably gathered from the subject matter of my plays. Initially, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I actually wrote to the Mickey Mouse magazine when I was twelve years old, saying my ambition was to become a key animator for Disney. Unfortunately, my drawings weren’t very good, so that wasn’t really something that was going to happen. But from age eight to about fifteen, I did a lot of animation, including a version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. I enjoyed making those a lot, and that kind of got me into filmmaking, because I would think in terms of the shots—“I think I’ll have a close-up here, I’ll have a wide shot there.” So, I was already starting to think like a filmmaker, and when I was twelve, my folks got me a cine camera for Christmas, and I shot loads of stuff. But in terms of actually making films, I only dabbled with it in my twenties and thirties. It was only when I hit forty, and had been working as a civil servant for fifteen years, that I thought, “Hang on, life is passing me by. I’ve had all these dreams, and I keep saying I’m going to do it.” And I thought, “If I don't break out of this cycle, it’s never going to happen.” And there was a moment when they offered a severance deal because they were moving the office away from London, and I jumped at it. So, I got I got the payoff and my colleagues asked, “What are you gonna do? Do you actually think you’re going to make films?” And I said yes, and they said, “Well, how are you going to get into that?” And I said, “I just know I will.”
BF: What was your first break?
TH: What happened was, the following Autumn, my wife and I went to the Toronto Film Festival. I was trying to get this documentary together, which would have been about early sound musicals. And one night, we ran into Leslie Howard’s granddaughter in an art gallery. She told me that her mother had all these home movies. So, we went there two days later. It was just meant to be a fun visit. But her mother was so fascinating, and all these stories that she told about her father…I thought, “We’ve got to preserve these stories and preserve these home movies.” And it started from there. Fortunately, I had a friend in London who wanted to produce a documentary that would be based on historical and original archive material, and he funded me to begin it. And then it just kept going. It took nine years to finish, which is quite a long time.
BF: Yeah, it is.
TH: But I always knew I would finish it, because I’d always thought to myself, “If I ever find a project that I really believe in and can get my teeth into, I won’t let it go until it’s done.” And that was what happened with Leslie Howard—that was something I was able to complete. So, I started it in 2006 and completed it—with all the rights cleared—in early 2015. And then we got it on Turner Classic Movies on June 2, 2018. So, about twelve years after we started. And the day after it showed on Turner Classic Movies, [writer and producer] Ron MacCloskey emailed me and said, “I really enjoyed your film. Would you be interested in doing one on Boris Karloff?” And I was like, “Yes, that’s for me, I’ll do that.” I didn’t have to think about it.
[Above. A chance meeting with Leslie Howard’s granddaughter led to Hamilton’s first break in films—a documentary entitled LESLIE HOWARD: THE MAN WHO GAVE A DAMN. Howard is pictured above with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis in 1936’s THE PETRIFIED FOREST.]
BF: I was going to ask why you chose Karloff as the subject. The film is called BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER, and it won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award—Best Film, Nonfiction—last year, and deservedly so. What did you uncover about Karloff that might not have been generally known previously?
TH: I think his story is quite well known, certainly among his fans. The challenge is not just to mention events in an interview, but to actually try and bring them to life on screen.
BF: A lot of that has to do with what you can find, right?
TH: Yeah. If you can find home movie footage that is associated with the time period, or you find some particularly good audio or photographic archive, it can enable you to bring the moments to life for an audience. Because that’s the thing—you don’t just want to tell people stuff. You want to take them there, so they have a more visceral experience of the moment. One of the best things for me was the interview that [film historian] Kevin Brownlow recorded with Karloff in the mid-1960s, where they talked at length about his silent film career. Nowhere else can you hear Boris Karloff talk about these films at such length, and with an interviewer who was equally well informed and often prompted memories which might not have surfaced otherwise. Thanks to Kevin’s generosity, we were able to use that, and it was great being able to match up the clips from the old films with what Boris was saying about them, and the techniques of silent acting. For instance, telling us you never tried to work in any acting touches while a character was talking because the editor would just cut away to the title card and things like that, which you wouldn’t know unless you heard it from someone that actually acted in those films.
BF: Good point. I wouldn’t have guessed that.
TH: Yes. And with Boris, we kind of flew over some of the early parts of his life, simply because we didn’t have decent visual material to cover it. And the last thing I wanted to do was to just have a talking head, talking head, talking head. I mean, I get bored by that. And if I’m boring myself, I think that’s a fairly good guide.
BF: Well, Karloff was pretty quiet about that time in his life anyway. He didn’t really like to talk about it.
TH: True. Still, I think what we were able to shed more light on things like his union activity, which was very important to him, much more so than you might realize. It was interesting to talk to people like [actor] Ron Perlman, because he was saying, “I really owe a debt of gratitude to people like Boris Karloff and James Cagney. Those guys stuck their necks out to get Actors Equity off the ground.” Because actors were so badly exploited. Bela Lugosi as well, actually. He was one of the earlier members. So, there was that, and I also wanted to look at some of the more obscure films, things like THE BLACK ROOM, which I think is really, really great—he does two or three parts.
BF: Yeah, I think it was [writer, horror film historian] Greg Mank who pointed it out, right? He plays the evil twin brother, he plays the nice twin brother, and then he plays the evil twin playing the nice twin!
TH: Yes, I thought that was excellent—really good acting, and it’s one of his key performances. Critics tend to overlook people like Boris Karloff. They say, “Oh yes, he was very good as the monster, but that’s just his thing”—as though it’s not acting. They take it for granted, and then you see something like THE BLACK ROOM, and it’s very nuanced. It’s subtle. You believe the characters. That’s the other thing—you believe him in all three guises. And that’s great acting, you know.
[In BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER, Hamilton was most pleased to shed light on Karloff’s union activities and some of his less well-known performances. Top to bottom: Karloff at a SAG meeting with Jane Wyman and Gene Kelly in 1946; Karloff in a dual—or triple?—role in THE BLACK ROOM (1936), directed by Roy William Neill.]
BF: And of course, that’s Roy William Neill directing it.
TH: Roy William Neill, a fantastic director who went on to do those great
Sherlock Holmes films. That’s another thing that comes up when you start looking at these films. There are a few directors who were really important. The obvious one, of course, is James Whale, and then you’ve got Tod Browning. But you also have people like Roy William Neill and Rowland V. Lee, who were really expert craftsmen—and they didn’t necessarily work constantly in horror. But everything they did in that field was well above normal.
BF: That can be said about Karloff, too.
TH: Yes, absolutely. But what I love about Rowland V. Lee is that he seems to have encouraged actors to take unusual risks, to go places they didn’t normally go. You see it particularly with Basil Rathbone. The first time Rathbone worked with Rowland V. Lee was LOVE FROM A STRANGER, which is one of my favorite Basil Rathbone parts. And it’s interesting because it’s British as well—it’s not a Hollywood film, it’s a British production taken from an Agatha Christie novel, and it starts off kind of stagy. But Basil goes absolutely berserk by the end of the film, and it’s just amazing to see. It should be laughable…and it is so intense, that you start kind of chuckling. But he’s very scary as well. He wears this demented smirk throughout the latter sequences, and then there’s the climax with Ann Harding, in which she’s trying to buy time by making him think she’s also a serial killer, and somehow convinces him that she’s poisoned him It’s just great. It’s pure theater, but he never performed at that level with any other director. And he does it again in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, where you see his character go to that that edge of hysteria. Now, it might just be Basil saying, “I’m not taking this seriously—I’m gonna ham it up!” Or is it an actor saying, “How far can I go? How far can I take this characterization?” Because I think it leaps off the screen when he does that stuff.
BF: I think he later referred to SON as being a “penny dreadful.” But not everybody’s gonna love everything they’ve ever done. I think the scenes between Rathbone and Atwill really crackle.
TH: The dart game and all that, of course.
[Above. In HORROR ICONS, Hamilton hopes to highlight how directors like Rowland V. Lee allowed actors like Basil Rathbone to go for broke; here, Rathbone is pictured in Lee’s LOVE FROM A STRANGER (1937).]
BF: Rowland V. Lee expanded Lugosi’s part in that as well.
TH: You know, he was the best friend I think Lugosi ever had in Hollywood as far as directors were concerned. I wish he had directed more movies with Lugosi, because it was clear that he respected him and wanted to see what he could do. “What can we give him to do?” And it’s a beautiful performance. Everyone loves Ygor. Everyone loves that performance. Even if you didn’t like Bela Lugosi, you’d still like that performance because he’s so different.
BF: So, your film won the Rondo award last year. Congratulations. What was that like? I got nominated [Best Book Nonfiction, for CHANEY’S BABY], and I was over the moon. And I’m nominated again this year [Best Website], and I’m over the moon again. But a win? I mean, that’s got to be—
TH: I couldn't believe it! I couldn’t believe it when we were nominated. I was just thrilled.
BF: Were you ever nominated before.?
TH: Well, it’s the first time I’ve done anything that might even have been considered. I was like, “Oh, what? We got nominated!?”
BF: Right? “Wow! I’m in this company?”
TH: Yes! “I’m in with these names?” It was really quite something, yeah. By the way, Bill, I love your book [CHANEY’S BABY]. I really do. I think it’s really well written, and it really informed my thinking about that documentary, and has made me quite passionate about doing it.
BF: I thank you.
TH: No, honestly. Because I think, I was a little bit thinking, I have to do Chaney for this new project, but thinking that Chaney, Sr., was the one that I really, really admired. But your book made me really reassess Chaney, Jr. and look at his performances, and look at what he was capable of, and, you know, he’s a wonderful actor.
BF: He was capable of great things. I felt like my nomination was a tribute to him. But to win?
TH: I did not expect to win. I thought, “Oh great; we’ve been nominated.” So, when we got the news, that was just a huge, huge buzz, and of course, we got nominated again this year.
BF: What’s the category?
TH: We got nominated this year for the Blu-ray DVD on BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER. One of the reasons that we did the DVD was that we had many hours of material that we couldn’t fit in the documentary. We filmed something like fifty hours of interviews with close to sixty people, and we were desperate to bring at least some of that material to the public. So, I decided, “Okay, we’ll make a whole extra film which we’ll have on the DVD.” That was called THE REST OF THE STORY. It actually runs half-an-hour longer than THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER, and deliberately avoids the topics of the main feature. We went down some other kind of byways, like some of Karloff’s science fiction work, more about his union activity, even about the witch hunts in the fifties. Ron had filmed this great interview with Lee Grant, which had to be used.
BF: So, let’s get to the main event. Tell me about your new project.
TH: It’s called HORROR ICONS, and it’s a 12-part series of films through which we’ll profile the lives and careers of some of the great memorable figures in classic horror, all the way from the silent era till the 1970s—at least in this first series. To begin with, it was only going to be a single film about Vincent Price, because that was something that had started up during Boris Karloff. But as you see from how we’ve been talking about all the different people in horror, I’m a huge fan of a lot of these actors and actresses. I really enjoy watching them on screen and reading about their lives, and I just thought, “Well, I want to make documentaries on all of them!” But if I did them one at a time the way I did with Boris Karloff, well, I’ll be here 20 years from now, leaning on a sort of walking stick. And more importantly, the people I want to interview won’t be around. So, I thought, “Why not do it all at once?” I mean, if I’m talking to Roger Corman about Vincent Price, well, he directed Peter Lorre as well. He directed Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., and even Barbara Steele for that matter. So, I thought, “Okay, if you connect all this up, there’s nothing to stop you from covering all your subjects without necessarily having to interview ten times as many people.” So, filming that could be done quite efficiently and without too much expense. Of course, it’s when you get into post-production that the costs really mount up. So, what we want to do is shoot all the interviews over the next two or three months, and then my editor—a very talented guy by the name of Anthony Magnoni—will create rough edits of at least one episode, possibly two. And I’m thinking that the two episodes will be the Vincent Price one and then the Chaneys, because I think those are two dynamically different projects, and really interesting. People are going to want to see them.
BF: I think you’re right. I’d love to see what you’d do with Price. And Peter Lorre, for that matter. Those two characters in that BLACK CAT segment—
TH: Yeah, yeah, in TALES OF TERROR!
[Above. HORROR ICONS will feature segments on both Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. Top to bottom: Price and Lorre in COLLECTOR’S ITEM, a 1957 TV pilot that was not picked up; the two friends appeared together in TALES OF TERROR (1962).]
BF: We’re talking about making up lines right on the set. Lorre was the king of doing that. That line in THE BLACK CAT segment there where he says, “I planned this whole thing with the consummate skill of a Borgia.” I mean, that had to be Peter.
TH: I really, really want to make a film about him, and this gives me the chance because Lorre is just…he’s a fascinating figure because he just had so much more talent than Hollywood could handle in a way, but he forged a really successful career. But you can see that, as he was going along, he was starting to take it less and less seriously. It was just kind of like, you know, “Why am I doing this? Why am I prostituting myself?” But he never gave less than great work.
BF: Another one again who never phoned it in—from the intensity of M to that great almost-cameo in CASABLANCA, but you can’t forget him.
TH: No.
BF: And then, of course, you can get into THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK, THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, and then all those things with Vincent Price where they just got me rolling.
TH: You can see with Vincent Price that they really liked each other, they really enjoyed working together. Do you know they did—I’m sure you do know this—that they actually had a TV series piloted in the late 1950s?
BF: No, I did not know.
TH: Price and Lorre are antique experts, but it kind of becomes like a sort of detective thriller, because there’s usually someone who has been killed for an antique.
BF: Is there a place to see it?
TH: You can find it on YouTube. It’s called COLLECTOR’S ITEM. They only made one episode, but still it’s great to see that Lorre and Price were working together even before the Corman movies.
BF: That lecture I saw in 1979 with Vincent Price, “The Villains still Pursue Me,” he told all kinds of stories about Peter Lorre and all kinds of stories about Boris Karloff. He liked them enormously. He respected Bela Lugosi, but I don’t think there was a friendship there. I can’t recall off the top of my head if they ever worked together.
TH: The closest they came was ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.
BF: Yeah, so they wouldn’t have met on that one. [1] But back to HORROR ICONS…
TH: Well, based on those first one or two episodes, we’ll try to find the completion money to finish off the whole series. It might sound like it’s very ambitious and very “pie in the sky,” but it’s not. It’s just a matter of getting all the material together and proving that the concept works, and I think audiences would enjoy it. And also, Bill, the thing we can do if we’re making a series rather than one-offs is you can cover people that you’d never be able to cover in an individual documentary. HORROR ICONS can cover people like Conrad Veidt, who I think horror fans would love to see something about. But if you try to take that and pitch it to a network, they’d go, “Who?” Another example is Basil Rathbone. He will have his own episode: THE SINGULAR CASE OF BASIL RATHBONE.
BF: That’s good!
TH: Thanks! I have to admit, I saw an old item on a Bright Lights blog with a similar title—they didn’t use the word “singular,” they used “strange.” I tried to reach out to the writer, Eddie Selover, to see if he’d like to be interviewed, but I got no response. However, it was always in my mind that the title should have a Holmesian ring.
BF: It’s elementary.
TH: Yeah, elementary–indeed. And I know how I want to tell that story. It’s important where you start in these stories. With my first film, on Leslie Howard–we started with the big premier of GONE WITH THE WIND in Atlanta, at which everyone was present…except Leslie Howard, who’d gone back to England to help in the war effort. With Boris Karloff, we started with the familiar—his breakthrough in FRANKENSTEIN, then forward through a few of his big early hits, until about half-an-hour in, when we wound the story back to his childhood. I think with Basil Rathbone, we go in at the top of his career, which is 1939, the greatest year in cinema.
BF: Yeah…
TH: And there he is—he’s been this character actor, he’s played all the great villains, and—suddenly—stardom is in his grasp. He’s started playing Sherlock Holmes, he’s billed above Karloff in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and TOWER OF LONDON. It’s all happening, and yet it doesn’t quite play out the way it should, because he signs what seems like a lucrative contract with MGM, the movie world’s equivalent of a Rolls-Royce. And he signs because he wants to play Lord Henry Wotton in the film they’re planning of THE PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY. But that doesn’t happen because MGM gives George Sanders the part.
BF: You’ve put together a trailer for HORROR ICONS. Is it public yet?
TH: It’s becoming public now. You can see it if you go to the Indiegogo campaign [see the preview featuring the Chaneys here]. I’m also going to create a version for YouTube.
BF: I mentioned earlier that, in the Boris Karloff project, you had done some really cool interviews. One of the best was with Greg Mank. What a debt we all owe that guy! He’s amazing.
TH: Yeah, Greg is a wonderful guy. He’s so genuine and he’s so enthusiastic, you know, happy to be part of that project and the new one as well. We’ve already interviewed Greg. He was one of the first to say, “Yeah, sure!” We did a short interview last year that we could just use for the trailer, just a few bits and pieces, because he only had about 40 minutes to spare. We had set up this interview at the Chiller Theater. I had a camera guy there. I was here in London, so I was doing it by zoom. We managed to film four interviews in succession with Cortland Hull, Greg Mank, John Russo, who co-wrote NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and Beverly Washburn.
[Above. Noted horror film historian Gregory William Mank was interviewed for BORIS KARLOFF: THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER, and will also participate in HORROR ICONS.]
BF: Can you pull the curtain back a little bit more regarding who else might be on board?
TH: Well, David J. Skal has said he’d be happy to be part of it. We’re trying to get Tim Burton, obviously, because of the Vincent Price connection. And Joe Dante—I think he will be part of it again. He’s already been very helpful. He’s been plugging the campaign on his Twitter feed.
BF: He’s a great guy.
TH: And so knowledgeable as well. Oh, and if we can get Tim Burton, maybe
we can get Mr. [Johnny] Depp as well, because he was mighty impressed by working with Vincent!
BF: That would really be something.
TH: We’ll probably also try to speak to Bela Lugosi, Jr. too. I did interview him for BORIS, just over the phone. We’d like to do a filmed interview with him if we can, because it would be nice to get him talking about his father. And Ron Chaney, of course. I’d like to get him, but we’ve yet to hear back from him. But the big one that I would like to get—and this is really putting the wish out there—is Barbara Steele.
BF: Oh yeah?
TH: I want one of the episodes to be about Barbara Steele because I think she’s one of the great latter-day stars of horror, and never got her due, really. She has loads of fans, but never had the career she should have.
BF: Is there anyone icier than Barbara Steele at the end of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM?
TH: Oh yeah–when she first appears from the shadows–it’s real goose-pimple stuff. What’s interesting, and kind of frustrating in Barbara Steele’s career—and I’m sure you’re aware—is that, often, her voice is overdubbed by someone else.
BF: I didn’t know that until you just said it. I’m getting an education today.
TH: In the Italian films it makes sense, but she was over-dubbed in THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and again in THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR.
BF: No kidding?
TH: With THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, I asked Roger straight out. He said, “Well, she looked great, but she was just too English!” He just didn’t feel her accent and voice fit his concept of the character, because she had that sort of Rank School of Charm background—I think the film was still just a few years since she’d been part of the Rank School of Charm. So, she had this kind of received pronunciation. Now, I’ve not seen any evidence of that in Barbara Steele’s subsequent films—where they do keep her voice—but I wasn’t going to argue with him. The other one is THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR, which American fans know as The CRIMSON CULT. And it’s frustrating because it’s that moment where she’s in a film with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, although they don’t actually share any scenes. But there’s a great photograph of the three of them together. I believe that, on this occasion, the reason for dubbing was more to do with how the film was made. I think they added some expository dialogue for her character, Lavinia, possibly to fill in some plot holes, but Barbara wasn’t around to film these. She’d gone back to Italy or wherever, and they couldn’t afford to recall her. So, they got another actress, dressed as Lavinia, saying these lines. There’s an on-screen clue to this, because throughout this one scene, Lavinia is mostly seen from behind, apparently speaking these lines. But then they would have had a continuity issue in that Barbara’s voice would change from scene to scene. So, the way to solve that was to re-voice her entire role. It wasn’t a reflection on her acting at all, but still unfortunate, and I believe deeply galling to Barbara.
BF: Do we know who did the overdubbing on PIT and CRIMSON?
TH: I’m not sure, but I would love to do a documentary about her and really have her tell the story. I think her fans would love to just to see her again.
[Above. Barbara Steele as Elizabeth Medina in THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961). Hamilton plans to dedicate an episode of HORROR ICONS to her life and career.]
BF: Oh, no question—that would be fantastic. So, you mentioned an Indiegogo campaign. How can we Monster Kids help get HORROR ICONS off the ground?
TH: If you Google “The Chaneys Indiegogo,” it should take you straight there. Obviously, I would like people to go on there and pledge towards the project if they can…put in whatever they can afford to pledge toward it. I’m not foolish enough to think that we could raise the entire budget to pay for the entire twelve episodes to be finished and cleared for release [UPDATE: Funds for each episode will now be raised separately]. What we’re trying to do with the campaign is to pay for the filming, so we get all of these people that we need to get while they’re in their prime and able to participate. And then enough to cover editing costs while we assemble the Chaneys episode by September or October this year. Then, we will have something that we can show to broadcasters, maybe organize invite-only screenings and get some feedback and buzz from the fan community. We might even organize secret screenings. Right now, it’s important that we get as many people as possible going to the Indiegogo campaign and making their presence felt. One of the good things about Indiegogo is that it’s a way of measuring how much of an audience there is for a project. Even if the Indiegogo itself doesn’t achieve its financial goal, if you are able to say, “We had 500 or 1,000 people pledging various amounts of money; that shows a lot of support from the Horror community.” I think that’s a great sales tool, because you can go to networks and say, “Look—this is how many people want this enough that they’re going to dig their hands in their pockets and put money towards it.” I think that carries an incredible amount of weight.
BF: I’ll put a link to it here [Here it is again].
TH: That would be great. And for those that do pledge, there are various levels and rewards that they can pledge for. There are “thank yous.” For example, they can get the DVD when it comes out. And there are higher-level rewards with the Associate Producer and Producer Awards, where donors will get their names prominently displayed during the opening credits, and will be able to see exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and work-in progress as well as a lot of updates.
BF: It all sounds very cool. Anything else you’d like to add?
TH: Well, one of the things we’re hoping to do with HORROR ICONS, if we can get the budget together, is to use animation. We’d have some stylized animation to recreate moments that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, so we’d be able to represent them in some form or another. I think that will be bring an interesting dimension to these films, where we can go to some surprising places and bring these stories you’ve only ever read about to life.
BF: That’ll bring you back full circle to your desire to be an animator!
TH (laughs): Oh, I’m not going to do the animation myself—you don’t want to see that animation…
See the preview and the proposal for the Chaneys in HORROR ICONS here.
NOTES
[1] Lugosi was hired by Warner Brothers to do publicity for HOUSE OF WAX (1953). It’s likely that he and Price crossed paths and maybe socialized at one or more of these events.
SOURCES
Zoom Interview with Thomas Hamilton, March 25, 2023.
The pictures herein are intended for educational purposes only. I do not own the copyrights.