Tag: Boris Karloff

Typically ancillary early black roles pepper this horror classic. Black slaves bury Egyptian mummy dude Im-Ho-Tep (the distinctly non-Egyptian Boris Karloff) alive, then are speared to death so that they can’t reveal where he’s buried. Noble Johnson is “The Nubian,” the mummy’s obedient servant whose skull cap makes him...

Like Freaks, both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein have no overt racial messages, but one could conceivably read into them a deeper racial connotation (and indeed, some film scholars have done so). Certainly, the lynch mob scenes, particularly in Bride, are intense even to this day, and the scenes...