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Inspired by my own previous post, I decided to see if I could prove that Karloff indeed made more good movies. So I determined to draw up a list that would prove my point. The first thing I did was to throw out all the films in which Boris and Bela appeared together. Some of their best work gets lost that way, but it comes out about even. If you can't stand that idea, add the dual appearances to each actor's list. Either way, it's a wash. I realize there's room for some disagreement, but here's my list of Karloff's twenty best films without Lugosi.

1. Frankenstein
2. The Old Dark House
3. The Mummy
4. The House of Rothschild
5. The Bride of Frankenstein
6. The Black Room
7. The Walking Dead
8. The Man They Could Not Hang
9. Before I Hang
10. The Devil Commands
11. House of Frankenstein
12. Isle of the Dead
13. Bedlam
14. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
15. The Haunted Strangler
16. Corridors of Blood
17. The Raven (1963)
18. The Comedy of Terrors
19. Black Sabbath
20. Targets

All of those are good, and some of them are great. I'd like to see a list of twenty Bela flicks of comparable quality. Seriously! I like Bela too, but once you get past DRACULA, WHITE ZOMBIE, and ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, there's not much left he did (without Boris) except degrading supporting roles, Monogram, and Ed Wood. I realize I won't change any minds, and people will try to cloud the issue by quibbling about some of my Karloff picks, but Lugosi's career was on the skids by the early 1930s, redeemed only by the blips of Ygor and A&C. If he had lived a few more years after his appearance in THE BLACK SLEEP, do you really think that directors like Corman, Bava, and Bogdanovich would have been thrilled to have him in their films? I think a lot of people like him precisely because of the way he went downhill, and I can sympathize with that, too. Poor Bela.