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Who Framed Boris Karloff?
It is 1938 and there is murder afoot on the set of Son of Frankenstein Boris Karloff has been framed for murder! He joins forces with Basil Rathbone, in full Sherlockian mode, and a gleeful Bela Lugosi. It s a case of the legends of horror meet the three stooges as our daring heroes search for a missing movie mogul and end up crossing swords with the Hollywood Mob.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 2, 2017
Three titans of terror team up to solve a real-life mystery in Dwight Kemper’s vivid imagining of the making of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. While Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi are busy filming their latest motion picture, a grisly murder occurs on the set and Karloff is implicated as the killer. With Rathbone and Lugosi at his side, Karloff is determined to clear himself and discover the identity of the real murderer, propelling the trio on a case in which they uncover the secrets of movie moguls, mobsters, and Hollywood scandals.
In the fine tradition of ED WOOD and SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, Kemper mixes fact with fiction to create an “untold” tale with three of the Kings of Horror as the protagonists. Of course, they never actually solved a murder in real-life, but it’s amusing to visualize them in that setting, evocative of comedy teams like the Marx Brothers or even Abbott and Costello. In some respects, the book is also a spoof of Rathbone, Karloff, and Lugosi themselves, taking their off-screen personalities to all sorts of extremes. The greatest fun is reading how they all interact with one another. Rathbone, exuding his self-assured excitable Sherlock Holmes persona, and Lugosi, ever the proud Hungarian thespian, often come to blows. Karloff, cool and reserved and gentlemanly, acts as the anchor that holds the group together, and appropriately so.
Kemper has definitely done his homework, exhaustively researching not only his leads but all the key players, drawing upon accounts from those who personally knew the people involved and events reported in various film history books. Even the locations are described in vivid detail, which is impressive when considering the fact that, by the mid-2010s, many of them are long gone. Also worthy of mentioning is the Fact vs. Fiction section at the end, which is indicative of the level of effort the author put into the story.
A creative whodunit with some of our favorite Horror stars at the center, WHO FRAMED BORIS KARLOFF? is a wonderfully affectionate interpretation of the behind-the-scenes mayhem of a Classic Universal Horror Film. It would make a great movie.
In the fine tradition of ED WOOD and SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, Kemper mixes fact with fiction to create an “untold” tale with three of the Kings of Horror as the protagonists. Of course, they never actually solved a murder in real-life, but it’s amusing to visualize them in that setting, evocative of comedy teams like the Marx Brothers or even Abbott and Costello. In some respects, the book is also a spoof of Rathbone, Karloff, and Lugosi themselves, taking their off-screen personalities to all sorts of extremes. The greatest fun is reading how they all interact with one another. Rathbone, exuding his self-assured excitable Sherlock Holmes persona, and Lugosi, ever the proud Hungarian thespian, often come to blows. Karloff, cool and reserved and gentlemanly, acts as the anchor that holds the group together, and appropriately so.
Kemper has definitely done his homework, exhaustively researching not only his leads but all the key players, drawing upon accounts from those who personally knew the people involved and events reported in various film history books. Even the locations are described in vivid detail, which is impressive when considering the fact that, by the mid-2010s, many of them are long gone. Also worthy of mentioning is the Fact vs. Fiction section at the end, which is indicative of the level of effort the author put into the story.
A creative whodunit with some of our favorite Horror stars at the center, WHO FRAMED BORIS KARLOFF? is a wonderfully affectionate interpretation of the behind-the-scenes mayhem of a Classic Universal Horror Film. It would make a great movie.
January 9, 2012
It's late 1938 and Boris Karloff finds himself in the frame when he stumbles across the body of an overbearing studio exec on the set of Son of Frankenstein. The belligerent 'fixer' Eddie (The Bulldog) Mannix is called in to cover it up, but Boris, being the fine English gent that he is, enlists his co-stars Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi to uncover the real killer. Our terrifying trio find themselves drawn ever deeper into a story of mixed identities, mob connections and Hollywood studio politics, with more suspects than you can shake a stick at! The plot twists and turns in a truly engaging manner and evokes the period perfectly, but the real joy of the book lies in the fun-filled fantasy of the interaction between the 3 Bs: Boris, Basil and Bela! Kemper, obviously a huge fan of all three, paints a wonderful, if entirely fabricated, relationship between the three leads. The dialogue sparkles and brings the disparate personalities and characteristics of the three actors to vivid life on the printed page. Rathbone takes on the mantle of Sherlock Holmes, as incisive on the page as he is on the screen. You'll laugh out loud over Bela Lugosi's casual quips as he steals every scene he's in, complaining at every turn about always playing second fiddle to Karloff! And Boris is the glue, the sanity, the balance that keeps them all pulling together. While the relationship depicted between the three actors is pretty much entirely fantasy, it is the sort of endearing 'what if' scenario that you can't help but love.
The book itself is a durable trade paperback with colorful cover art by Frank Dietz, and also includes a very brief intro by Sara Karloff.
For Universal monster fans, for fans of any of the actors featured or even just lovers of a good vintage La La Land mystery, do yourself a favor and order Dwight Kemper's WHO FRAMED BORIS KARLOFF?
The book itself is a durable trade paperback with colorful cover art by Frank Dietz, and also includes a very brief intro by Sara Karloff.
For Universal monster fans, for fans of any of the actors featured or even just lovers of a good vintage La La Land mystery, do yourself a favor and order Dwight Kemper's WHO FRAMED BORIS KARLOFF?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews