Boris Karloff Movies

Boris Karloff

Want to know the best Boris Karloff movies?  How about the worst Boris Karloff movies?  Curious about Boris Karloff box office grosses or which Boris Karloff movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Boris Karloff movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Boris Karloff (1887-1969) was an British actor, who is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema.  Karloff appeared in movies from 1919 to 1971.  His two most famous roles were playing Frankenstein and The Mummy. His IMDb page shows an incredible 205 acting credits. This page will rank 65 Boris Karloff movies from Best to Worst in seven different sortable columns of information. Television appearances (43 credits), all of his silent movies (58 credits), shorts and many other movies that we could not find box office grosses on were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part of the page:  This is actually one of our oldest requests.  Steve Lensman and Lyle requested this page many many moons ago.  Well finally we decided to tackle Karloff’s massive career. Added bonus?  We have tweaked our tables slightly.  First of all when looking at the yearly box office ranks….realize this is now the rank of the movies in our database for the year the movie was made.  It used to be Variety’s yearly rank. Secondly we have included the overall UMR rank for Karloff’s movies compared to our entire database.

Boris Karloff in 1931’s Frankenstein

Boris Karloff Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Boris Karloff Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Boris Karloff movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Boris Karloff movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Boris Karloff movies by yearly domestic box office rank (based on movies in our database for the year the movie was made)
  • SortBoris Karloff movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Boris Karloff movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Boris Karloff movie won.
  • Sort Boris Karloff movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Sort Boris Karloff movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score rank (based on all the movies in our entire database).

Boris Karloff in 1968’s Targets..one of our favorite Karloff movies

Ten Possibly Interesting Facts About Boris Karloff

1. William Henry Pratt was born in Surrey, England in 1887.

2. Lots of different versions of how William Henry Pratt became Boris Karloff. (1) Some theorised that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character in the novel The Drums of Jeopardy called “Boris Karlov”.  (2) Some thought he got the name from Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel H. R. H. The Rider which features a “Prince Boris of Karlova”.  (3) Karloff always claimed he chose the first name “Boris” because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that “Karloff” was a family name.  Well 1 & 2 were things published after Karloff had taken the name and 3 was denied by his daughter who says Karloff is nowhere in their family history.  Which leaves (4) The most likely truth is it is from a character in a 1904 book by Harold MacGrath called “The Man on the Box”, which was made into a play in 1905 and later, films starting in 1914.

3. Once Boris Karloff arrived in Hollywood, he made dozens of silent films, but work was sporadic, and he often had to take up manual labour such as digging ditches or delivering construction plaster to earn a living.

4. Boris Karloff appeared with Bela Lugosi in eight films: 1934’s Gift of Gab, 1934’s The Black Cat 1935’s The Raven, 1936’s The Invisible Ray, 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, 1940’s You’ll Find Out, 1940’s Black Friday and 1945’s The Body Snatcher.

5. Boris Karloff was one of the 12 original founders of the Screen Actors Guild and held SAG card number 9.  Boris Karloff made an amazing 16 movies in 1932.  Not a single Boris Karloff movie ever won an Oscar®.

6. Boris Karloff and Frankenstein trivia: (1) His make-up took four hours each day for Jack P. Pierce to apply and his cumbersome costume weighed 48 pounds in the uncomfortable heat of summer.  (2) The monster’s shoes weighed between 11 and 13 pounds.  (3) Karloff was already 44 when he became an “overnight” Hollywood sensation.  (4) Karloff was considered as such an anonymous actor by Universal that he was not invited to the December 6th premiere.

7. Boris Karloff was married six times…..he had one daughter.

8. Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee were neighbors for years….bet the neighbor kids had fun with that.

9. Boris Karloff’s last words to his wife as he was dying of pneumonia were “Walter Pidgeon.”.

10. Check out Boris Karloff’s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

And finally…..we have adjusted Worldwide Box Office Grosses on 14 Boris Karloff Movies

  1. Bedlam (1946) $24.20 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  2. Five Star Final (1932) $162.80 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  3. Isle of the Dead (1945) $26.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  4. Scarface (1932) $106.70 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  5. Smart Money (1931) $70.80 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  6. Tap Roots (1948) $178.70 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  7. The Body Snatcher (1945) $37.80 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  8. The Haunted Strangler (1958) $26.40 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  9. The Invisible Menace (1938) $40.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  10. The Mad Genius (1931) $80.00 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  11. The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) $68.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  12. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) $335.40 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  13. West of Shanghai (1937) $44.70 million in adjusted worldwide gross
  14. Young Donovan’s Kid (1931) $75.20 million in adjusted worldwide gross

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46 thoughts on “Boris Karloff Movies”

    1. Whoops! That 21st ranking is UMR ranking in 1947 not the box office rank. I guess I told WoC (Wife of Cogerson) the wrong thing when she was sitting up this new aspect of our database. Going to have to go back and manually put all the rankings in….as not thinking WoC will be able to do anymore programming today on our database.

      As for the difference between the Cooper page and the 1947 page….one is from our database and one is from Variety’s Top Grossers. My database puts Unconquered in 3rd place while Variety (January 7th, 1948) puts Unconquered in 5th place. I think it could be argued either way which is the ranking.

      The Variety vs my database conflict on Unconquered was the reason we were thinking about just listing the rankings that we have in our database….we are off to a horrible start….with this massive error…..thanks for catching it so quick.

      Reply

  2. Good stuff. For decades Karloff was Hollywoods king of horror, in real life he was a true gentleman, an Englishman who loved cricket and was well-liked by other actors, except perhaps Bela Lugosi. He hated the term ‘horror’ to describe his movies, preferring ‘macabre’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘terror’.

    I’ve seen 42 of the 60 films you’ve listed. Favorites include Universal’s Frankenstein series, The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935) & (1963), The Invisible Ray, The Mummy (1932), Mask of Fu Manchu, The Old Dark House and Scarface (1932).

    Btw not sure if you did it for a laugh or it was a misprint but you’ve got ‘The Old Dark Horse’ sitting up there on your chart. 🙂

    Good to see Bride of Frankenstein topping the critics and UMR chart, along with the original Frankenstein the best of the Universal series of horror films and among the greatest movies ever made, not just in the horror genre.

    Fascinating to see how Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein’s box office would look like when adjusted, $200m domestic is impressive for horror movies, even today! Explains why Universal studios made so many of them back then.

    The new UMR overall ranking chart is a bit confusing, tapping the sort box doesn’t bring up Karloff’s best films in either direction.

    Enjoyed the trivia, eight films with Bela! No Oscar wins but there were a few Oscar noms.

    Looking at my movie collection – I count 53 Karloff films here. 42 of them on your chart
    These are the 11 I have that are not listed on the page –

    Ape ,The
    Black Room ,The
    Black Sabbath
    Curse of the Crimson Altar
    Man They Couldn’t Hang ,The
    Man Who Changed His Mind ,The
    Mr. Wong Detective
    Mystery of Mr. Wong ,The
    Night World
    Sorcerers ,The
    Strange Door ,The

    An excellent stats-filled tribute to a horror movie legend Bruce. Vote Up!

    Reply

    1. HI MR LENSMAN

      The Duke had a good laugh when he read your post about Karloff and he said to me “Pappy that’s that posters geek who criticises other people’s diction. Now as you know I don’t have much time for those Method boys but if Mr Posters as he’s called wants to be a language perfectionist in speech or written prose he shouldn’t be using stuff that is a definition in terms. I mean a ‘true gentleman and an Englishman’ is a contradiction in terms. Look at how those blighters used to regard us as their colonial slaves.”

      Reply

    2. Hey Steve
      1. Glad you liked your requested page….I am thinking you made this request/suggestion about 5 years ago….glad I could get it done so quickly for you…lol.
      2. I have seen 14 to your 44 (I have added two more Karloff movies since your comment).
      3. I have added The Black Room and The Man They Couldn’t Hang to the page….trying to find The Man Who Changed His Mind.
      4. The rest of the movies you own that did not make the page….sadly I struck out….seems the Monogram movies should have made some money…since it was made in this heyday.
      5. Gotta admit….I am sure my mistake is looking me right in the face….but I can not figure out the mistake with regards to The Old Dark Horse….I will keep looking to figure that out.
      6. Glad you like the Top UMR movies.
      7. I will have to drop the “st” “nd” & “rd” from the last column so it will sort.
      8. As for the other column…..it is completely screwed up…..will be changing that back to the old way…when time permits.
      Thanks for the feedback….sorry it took so long to do. I did notice that I now have at least Bela movies in the database.

      Reply

      1. Bruce, you didn’t add ‘lol’ to your no.5 comment so I’m assuming you didn’t know the movie was actually titled ‘The Old Dark House’, a fairly famous gothic horror directed by James Whale in 1932. Have to admit ‘The Old Dark Horse’ did give my a good chuckle this morning. Maybe you should leave it on there and see if anyone else spots it.

        Reply

          1. Hey Felix….you were right…it was wrong there too….but it has been fixed. Thanks for the catch.

        2. Hey Boris Lensman…..ok….I finally see the light….Horse House Hose it is all the same thing…right? Lol. I have fixed the error on (1) My database….so it should never happen again…with that movie it least (2) Fixed the title on the Boris page. (3) Fixed the title on the Melvyn Douglas page and (4) Added the title to the Charles Laughton page. So that old dark horse has been to pasture at the old dark house. Thanks for the catch.

          Reply

    1. Hey Parker…glad you liked the page….thanks for allowing me to join the Boris Karloff Facebook Fan Page.

      Reply

  4. So….for those wondering. Our database has over 36,000 movies in it. Not all the movies in the database have been completely researched. From 1980 to today (the birth of Box Office Mojo) there are almost 20,000 movies. Of our yearly pages…we generally only have about 33% of the movies listed at Mojo researched in our database. From 1904 to 1979 we have over 16,000 movies….but once again….we do not have all the information needed for a UMR score. So why I am sharing this information?

    Well…..there is a brand new column of information on this Boris page. Turns out we have 12,045 movies completely UMR researched. Thought that might explain this new column a little more. The big question is…..is this column interesting or should it be a one done experiment….is it….”It’s Alive! It’s Alive! or is this an idea that does not hold much water?

    Reply

    1. I think it is safe to assume that “It’s Dead! It’s Dead!” when it comes to these two new columns of information…going to have to go back to the drawing board.

      Reply

  5. “In private life, arch-villain, Boris Karloff, was known as gentle, even-tempered indivual, yet he excelled in horror roles, adding dimension to the most macabre parts”.

    Reply

    1. Taking the time to list Joel’s 4 Star Boris Karloff Performances

      The Criminal Code (1931)
      Five Star Final (1931)
      The Mad Genius (1931)
      Frankenstein (1931)
      Behind The Mask (1932)
      Scarface (1932)
      The Old Dark Horse (1932)
      The Mask of Fu Mancho (1932)
      The Mummy (1932)
      The Ghoul (1933)
      The Lost Patrol (1934)
      The House of Rothschild (1934)
      The Black Cat (1934)
      The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
      The Invisible Ray (1936)
      The Man Who Lived Again (1936)
      Juggernaut (1936)
      The Invisible Menance (1938)
      Son of Frankenstein (1939)
      Tower of London (1939)
      The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)
      House of Frankenstein (1944)
      The Body Snatcher (1945)
      Isle of the Dead (1945)
      Bedlam (1946)
      The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
      Lured (1947)
      Corridors of Blood (1962)
      Targets (1968)

      Reply

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