Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster
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- Thomas Hamilton
- Ron MacCloskey
| Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster | |
|---|---|
_poster.jpg) Promotional release poster | |
| Directed by | Thomas Hamilton |
| Written by |
|
| Narrated by | Paul Ryan |
| Cinematography | Bruce Heinsius |
| Edited by | Anuree De Silva Folasade Oyeleye |
| Music by | Laura Forrest Hay |
Production company | Voltage Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster is a 2021 American-British documentary film about the life and career of English actor Boris Karloff, who was known for his roles in horror films. The documentary was directed and written by Thomas Hamilton and co-produced with Ron MacCloskey.[1]
The film features interviews with such subjects as Guillermo del Toro, John Landis, Joe Dante, Christopher Plummer, Peter Bogdanovich, Ron Perlman, Leonard Maltin, Christopher Frayling, Sara Karloff, Roger Corman, Dick Miller (in his last filmed interview), biographer Stephen Jacobs with artwork specially created by artist Joe Liotta, and a music score by Laura Forrest Hay.
The project began life in the late 1990s as a passion project for co-producer and co-writer Ron MacCloskey, who travelled internationally to research Karloff over a period of 20 years. During this time several attempts were made to mount the project, but funding and the right collaborator proved elusive.
In June 2018, MacCloskey contacted filmmaker Thomas Hamilton, whose 2016 documentary Leslie Howard: The Man who Gave a Damn had its US TV premiere on Turner Classic Movies on 4 June 2018.
Hamilton was intrigued by the concept of a documentary on the man whose career essentially covered the history of horror prior to 1970 and agreed to co-produce and direct through his company Voltage Films Ltd.
Desiring to produce the definitive documentary on Karloff, Hamilton and MacCloskey decided the best format would be a four hour documentary, in two parts. Although the final film would run 98 minutes, it was as a result of this initial brief that an unusually large number of interviews were filmed.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign in September 2018, Hamilton and MacCloskey filmed 55 interviews and location footage in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Alaska and London over a period of 16 months. Filming concluded in January 2020, by which time over 100 hours of material was in the can.
A five-minute trailer for the documentary was uploaded to YouTube in September 2020.[2]
In March 2021, Hamilton produced a 20 minute teaser of the opening of the film, which was shared with interested producers only. In May 2021, on the strength of this teaser (which closely resembled the opening section of the film), distributor Abramorama and Shout! Studio came on board with a pre-sale and theatrical distribution deal to allow completion and release of the documentary in US theatres.