Playing right now on TCM is The Death Kiss (1932), a low-budget mystery about murder at a movie studio. I saw it on the late show for the first time about 1973. The only reason for watching it is to see three stars of Universals Dracula from the year before: Vancouver-born David Manners, Edward Van Sloan (who played Van Helsing) and, yes, Dracula himself, the great Bela Lugosi. This film is notable for being a very poor career move for newly-minted star Bela. He gets lousy third billing and very few lines. His career would soon be almost totally eclipsed by the rising stardom of Boris Karloff, a source of great bitterness for him. (Karloff, always the gentleman, never repaid this antipathy, and sometimes referred to his occasional co-star as Poor Bela). This same year, Lugosi starred in a cheap indie, White Zombie, and was paid a flat $800 for it. While that film is memorable, it was also the continuation of a downward trend that the unfortunate actor could never really reverse. https://youtube/watch?v=Wxn3qZGlg6o
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 05:38:55 +0000