Yuku free message boards

Peter Underwood’s 1972 book The Life of Boris Karloff contains some very bizarre errors.  It seems to me that a writer would have to go out of his way to get these facts so utterly and completely wrong.  For example, on pp. 80-81 we read this wonky synopsis of The Ghoul:

“…Karloff came to Britain to appear in The Ghoul (Gaumont-British), regarded by many film students as one of Karloff’s best films.  Directed by T Hayes Hunter and with a strong cast including Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Dorothy Hyson, Karloff played a dual-role of the half-mad recluse, Professor Edward Morlant, and a master criminal known as ‘the Ghoul’, an expert at disguise who impersonates the Professor after murdering him.  This exciting and fast-moving film had all the ingredients one could wish for in a creepy, thrilling, murder-mystery:  strange footsteps and attempted murder in the swirling fog of London; a huge, somber house in Yorkshire miles from anywhere; secret tunnels; screams in the night; a tremendous conflagration at the end with the hero and heroine seemingly imprisoned without hope of escape in a concealed priesthole; brutal murder and an indescribable air of suspense.  Karloff himself gave a masterly performance and was ably supported by a fine cast.  The result was a truly memorable film.  I have a copy of the book of the film—now something of a collector’s item.

“In the years that followed Frankenstein, Karloff was to appear in many (some people thought too many) films of a similar character and while some of the films were no more than mediocre, others were very good indeed.  Among the films in the latter category that gave the discerning filmgoer the opportunity of seeing Karloff act as well as shock, The Ghoul is generally regarded as outstanding by film-critics and the filmgoing public alike.  It was fitting that his first trip to Britain in twenty-four years resulted in such a successful film.”

Huh?

In Don Glut’s 1973 book The Frankenstein Legend, we learn that Son of Frankenstein was shot entirely in color, but (for some inexplicable reason) released in black and white.  Since Underwood’s book pre-dates Glut’s book by a year, I can’t quite call this the “Ur-error,” but it’s close!

In Doug Moench’s 1973 article titled “A Vampire By Any Other Name:  A Look at Lugosi’s Non-Dracula Roles” (published in Vampire Tales #2), we learn that Plan Nine from Outer Space contains “some excerpted (stolen) spliced scenes of Lugosi from the original Dracula” and that the film features “Carol Borland […] in a vapid role which might have served as the progenitor for Carolyn Jones’ Morticia on The Addams Family” (!).

On p. 48 of his 1974 book, Horror Movies:  Tales of Terror in the Cinema, author Alan G. Frank identifies a very clear photograph of Louise Allbritton (from Son of Dracula) as “Evelyn Ankers,” despite the fact that the two actresses look nothing like each other.  

I could go on and on, of course, but it makes me wonder how many other such errors have slipped past me (and other readers), unnoticed.  And I wonder if such sloppiness is as ubiquitous today as it was four decades ago….