 |
| Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster director Thomas Hamilton on his upcoming series Horror Icons on interviewing Roger Corman: “He not only worked with Vincent Price, he worked with Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney.” Photo: Thomas Hamilton |
Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Conrad Veidt, Maria Ouspenskaya, George Zukor, Paul Wegener, Emil Jannings, Brigitte Helm, Gale Sondergaard, Gloria Holden, Claude Rains, Fay Wray, Duane Jones, Max Schreck, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lon Chaney Sr., Lon Chaney Jr, FW Murnau’s Faust and Nosferatu, Arthur Lubin’s Phantom of the Opera, Rowland V. Lee’s Son of Frankenstein, George Waggner’s The Wolf Man, James Whale’s The Invisible Man, Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen’s The Golem, Hanns Heinz Ewers and Stellan Rye’s The Student Of Prague, and George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead all were touched upon in my discussion with Thomas Hamilton on his upcoming 12-part documentary series Horror Icons.
 |
| Thomas Hamilton with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Vincent Price will be a one-hour episode and will also be a film, called Vincent Price And The Art Of Living …” |
The Immortal Bela Lugosi; Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee; Brava Barbara on Barbara Steele; Caligari’s Nightmare; Lethal Ladies; The A to Z of Horror Characters, and Reluctant Horror Icons are in the works. There will also be episodes of Horror Icons devoted to Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Sr. and Lon Chaney Jr.. Here are links to two terrific trailers on Tom’s Horror Icons series, which includes the Chaney Dynasty. He has also set up a Kickstarter campaign where you can watch an introduction from him.
Film at Lincoln Center’s Unspeakable: The Films Of Tod Browning from March 17 through March 28 included eight silent films starring Lon Chaney Sr., The Wicked Darling, Dollar Down, The Exquisite Thief The Unholy Three, The Blackbird, The Unknown, West Of Zanzibar, and Where East Is East.
Thomas Hamilton’s entertaining feature documentary, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster, co-written and produced with Ron MacCloskey, has insightful on-camera interviews with Guillermo Del Toro, John Landis, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Stefanie Powers, Ron Perlman, Christopher Frayling, Kevin Brownlow, Boris’s daughter Sara Karloff, and a wonderful reading by the great Christopher Plummer of a Swinburne poem.
From London, Thomas Hamilton joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Horror Icons.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Hi! Wow, that is quite a background you have there!
Thomas Hamilton: Hi Anne-Katrin! Yes, it’s themed!
 |
| Thomas Hamilton: “If I want to ask Greg Mank about Conrad Veidt, about the Weimar era, he’s going to have interesting opinions.” Photo: Thomas Hamilton |
AKT: Every how many seconds does lightning strike you?
TH: Once about every 20 seconds or so. It’s a nice little look with the sky moving in the background. I have other versions where different stars come up like Vincent Price or Basil Rathbone.
AKT: Oh, the lightning just hit you a little! Let’s talk about your Horror Icons project coming up! The trailer looks intriguing, also international. You include one of the images that scared me so much ever since I first saw it, from Murnau’s Faust and then switch to more comedic moments with Vincent Price. You managed to pack a lot into a minute and a half. What’s the project?
TH: It started out as a documentary about Vincent Price, which was going to be the follow-up to Boris Karloff. And suddenly I realised, hang on, if I’m interviewing Roger Corman, he not only worked with Vincent Price, he worked with Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney. And I started thinking maybe I should be a bit more conscious who people have worked with and really cover as much ground as I possibly can.
Also many of the writers, they really know the field of horror. If I want to ask Greg Mank about Conrad Veidt, about the Weimar era, he’s going to have interesting opinions. Rather than just shooting one film, I started with the idea of shooting five.
 |
| Emil Jannings with Gösta Ekman in FW Murnau’s Faust |
Then I thought, why just shoot five, why not ten or 15? Because ultimately, once you’ve got these people in the room, as long as you have your questions lined up, and as long as you get them to do things like change their shirt … You know, alter the background a little, because what you don’t want is if the films are run together for people to go “look, it’s the same setup!”
AKT: Ruffle their hair a little!
TH: Maybe have one of them have a mustache in one?
AKT: It’s funny, you could come with a little suitcase holding a selection of mustaches for them to choose from.
TH: I thought whilst you could get the funding to do a Vincent Price or a Boris Karloff with difficulty, trying to do something about Conrad Veidt or Basil Rathbone becomes a lot harder. Heaven help you if you want to do something on Maria Ouspenskaya or George Zukor, all these wonderful figures who made those films. It’s only us fans who know who they are.
AKT: It’s interesting that especially for the horror genre there is a lot of overlap. You’ll hardly meet anyone only interested in, let’s say, things connected to Dracula.
 |
| Thomas Hamilton on Claude Rains seen here with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious: “It’s interesting that the film that established him is The Invisible Man” |
TH: Yes, and I’m glad you picked up on the image from Faust. That episode is called Caligari’s Nightmare. It’s quite an ambitious piece because some of the episodes I’m expanding into feature films on their own. Vincent Price will be a one-hour episode and will also be a film, called Vincent Price And The Art Of Living, which will explore his love of art alongside his career.
AKT: He also had monkeys, didn’t he?
TH: Yes, he did!
AKT: Monkeys and art!
TH: Monkeys, art, he was a chef! He was a total renaissance man! With the Chaneys one I want to do a longer form film to explain this whole tortured dynamic between the father and the son.
AKT: Have you been to the Lon Chaney Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum?
TH: I have not and I will have to! I must! There’s a lot of groundwork to be done with these films. The Caligari’s Nightmare one, that is going to be essentially a history of the whole expressionist movement in cinema, from pre-World War I, when you had Paul Wegener doing The Student of Prague through The Golem, through Caligari, through Faust.
AKT: Nosferatu!
 |
| Film at Lincoln Center’s Unspeakable: The Films Of Tod Browning included eight silent films starring Lon Chaney Sr. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
TH: Nosferatu, yeah Max Schreck, through all the great films with Conrad Veidt, The Student of Prague to what happens when it comes screeching to a halt in the early Thirties, not just because of sound, but because of the rise of National Socialism. Then I’m going to track what happened with each of those players. You’ve got Conrad Veidt, Paul Wegener, Emil Jannings, Brigitte Helm - it’s very interesting to see their trajectories.
AKT: Yes, how someone may end up in Casablanca, while others completely disappear. The reality became more horrible than horror movies could ever imagine.
TH: That will be kind of the seesaw. The beginning will be all these wonderful fantasies of horror that were created and as it goes into the Thirties you get the reality and what do the actual people, these charismatic actors and actresses do? That’s going to be an epic, probably a year or two down the line. In short, Anne-Katrin, it’s really a dream project for me.
AKT: Seven names, I think, are mentioned in your trailer, then it says many more and you show Claude Rains and then Fay Wray. Do they get episodes?
TH: They will definitely be mentioned. There’s also themes, such as Reluctant Horror Icons, which is self-explanatory, and Lethal Ladies.
AKT: Who are those Lethal Ladies?
 |
| Thomas Hamilton on Reluctant Horror Icons: “Another reluctant one is Duane Jones who is in Night Of The Living Dead and plays the protagonist Ben.” |
TH: Well, Gale Sondergaard, Gloria Holden, who played Dracula’s Daughter, Brigitte Helm, of course. It will be a three-part segment on its own, as I want to take a look at each generation up until now.
AKT: And the reluctant ones?
TH: Colin Clive, he hated horror films, and was most unhappy that his career had become sidelined. Claude Rains, you mentioned Claude Rains, he was definitely reluctant. He didn’t want to wear much makeup as the Phantom of the Opera.
AKT: I just showed my students a clip from Notorious, as we were discussing Bluebeard tales. There is Claude Rains, the perfect Bluebeard who can make you shiver without a mask. His poisoning of Ingrid Bergman’s character is horror in itself.
TH: I think Claude Rains is a wonderful actor and it’s interesting that the film that established him is The Invisible Man in which he is not even seen. But he did not want to become associated with the horror genre. They offered him the part of Wolf von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein along with the part of Lon Chaney’s father in The Wolf Man. His agent wrote them a letter just saying “and of course he won’t be doing the Frankenstein film.” It wasn’t even considered.
 |
| Gale Holden as Dracula's Daugfhter |
Another reluctant one is Duane Jones who is in Night Of The Living Dead and plays the protagonist Ben. He’s the one guy that survives the whole film only to be shot down by snipers in the end. They see a Black man and presume he is a zombie, so they shoot him. He was a serious actor and this was his first major part. He was actually a film teacher in the end. There’s a funny story where he is with his students at UCLA and they are in this diner and on TV is Night Of The Living Dead and they all start going “Sir, that’s you!”
AKT: It all sounds fascinating and you’ve been hit by lightning about a hundred times during our conversation!
TH: Thanks so much, I really enjoyed this! It’s been nice meeting you again!
Coming up - Thomas Hamilton on Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave A Damn and The Mystery Of Flight 777.
Read what Thomas Hamilton had to say on Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster.
