COMING SOON: KARLOFF! The Film Forum's Boris Karloff mini-festival kicks off tomorrow with an enticing double-feature: Frankenstein (1931) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). My one quibble is that Frankenstein's sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), is being shown separately on Sunday, with The Mummy (1932). Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein are enhanced when shown together. They were made for each other!

You might want to dismiss The Mask of Fu Manchu as being racist cheese, but there's no denying that Karloff's villain is a very potent pulp archetype. And Myrna Loy's own "Asianized" performance as Fu Manchu's lascivious daughter has her own potency. Keep your eyes on her eyes when she looks over the bound hero in this pre-Code thriller.

Monday is an opportunity to enjoy a triple bill: the creepy The Raven (1935) plus two from 1931: The Guilty Generation and Graft. Tuesday there's another triple bill: the bizarre The Black Cat (1934) and the campy The Old Dark House (1935) plus The Body Snatcher (1945).

The festival ends with two double-features. Wednesday offers Karloff in John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934) and Howard Hawks's The Criminal Code (1931). On Thursday, Karloff appears in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968), showing with Robert Day's The Haunted Strangler (1958).

So that's 14 out of more than 200 credits listed for Karloff at IMDB. Held over at the Film Forum is the Spanish movie Spirit of the Beehive (1973), in which Frankenstein comes to a small town.