NOTES: Nominated for a prestigious Hollywood award for its color sets, but lost to Wilson. Locke's play opened on Broadway at Weber's on 12 April 1909 and ran a very satisfactory 240 performances. A four-character play, it starred Leona Watson, Effingham A. Pinto, Albert Bruning and William Lewers, produced and directed by Joseph Weber. Universal made a film version in 1929, with Renaud Hoffman directing Jean Hersholt, Kathryn Crawford, Henry Armetta, LeRoy Mason and John Reinhardt.COMMENT: As the trailer makes exceedingly plain, The Climax is an unashamed attempt by Universal to cash in on its 1943 success with Phantom of the Opera. Not only is the setting basically the same (indeed the same opera set was used), but the trailer tells us this new movie is "in the tradition of Phantom of the Opera" and it stars "Susanna Foster, the lovely songbird from Phantom of the Opera" opposite "Boris Karloff, the highly acclaimed star of Arsenic and Old Lace." It's a movie "of spectacle and color" (as indeed it is) with "a monster of psychological horror" (not exactly plain English, but you get what they mean). Some classic clips of subtle Doctor Karloff menacing the heroine follow: "I've come to help you, my dear." Oh, boy! Nobody can pack as much menace into a simple sentence like that than bad old Boris! Definitely the screen's number one heavy.OTHER VIEWS: Lavish sets, hundreds of extras and expensive Technicolor photography lift a potentially dull hypnotism-come-theater piece into first-class entertainment. Not to mention the sterling efforts of the players. Karloff, making a return to the screen after a highly acclaimed two-year stint on Broadway in Arsenic and Old Lace, has another of his marvelously chilling "Don't be frightened, my dear" characterizations, and there is an equally fine support cast led by Jane Farrar and June Vincent. As for our songbird lead, she certainly looks pretty enough and is most attractively costumed in period dress, but her voice (at least in the print under review at our Hollywood Classics screening) is rather too stridently recorded. - JHR writing as George Addison.

The Climax (1944) ** (out of 4)Boris Karloff returned to Universal Studios playing Dr. Frederich Hohner, a man most people believe is haunted by the disappearance of a female opera singer ten years earlier. What they don't realize is that he actually murdered her. In present times he hears the beautiful Angela Klatt (Susanna Foster) sing and her voice reminds him of the one he killed so he plans to control the new singer.THE CLIMAX was Karloff's return to the studio that made him a legend and the company went all out in regards to what the film has to offer. They gave him director George Waggner who had just scored a major success with THE WOLF MAN. They allowed the film to be shot in Technicolor. They even went all out with a higher budget and a classier looking picture. Everything is here except for a story, energy or any passion. I'm always shocked that Universal threw everything at this picture yet they basically delivered a rehash of SVENGALI and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.On a technical level this film is very impressive as the visuals really jump off the screen. The Technicolor is extremely beautiful and especially the dresses and costumes in the picture. Just wait until you see the fire at the end as it looks incredible. The music itself is quite good if you really judge it and I'd argue that the cast is very good as well. This includes Karloff who has no problem playing the passion that this role requires. Foster, Turhan Bey and Gale Sondergaard are all good as well.So, what's the problem with THE CLIMAX? It's the story, which is downright boring and the movie ends up moving so slow that it feels twice as long. I really don't know why Universal did this to Karloff and offered such a boring screenplay and especially when they had just done PHANTOM OF THE OPERA the previous year.

I hadn't heard of this film before, but thought it might be interesting because it starred Boris Karloff.It wasn't. 3/10 is pretty generous.Karloff plays some sort of doctor who doesn't like women who sing like his dead wife - I wouldn't either - and kills them.There's about 10 seconds of moderate suspense - one brief scene - and about 30 minutes of god-awful warbling passed off as singing. We fast-forwarded over this "music" to avoid further pain. Perhaps B.K. should have tried this since it's easier than killing people who screech, er, sing, too loudly. There are some people who go to parties where the singing occurs, Boris watches from the sidelines. Oh yeah, hypnosis, too, but it didn't work. There might have been something near the end, but I fell asleep and missed it.

Even though the legendary Boris Karloff gave image to hundreds of cinematic monsters, psychopaths and mad scientists, he never played the titular character in Gaston Leroux' acclaimed masterwork "The Phantom of the Opera". Other contemporary horror stars did, like Lon Chaney and Claude Rains. Perhaps this production was Universal's attempt to involve Karloff in a horrific opera film-production anyway, re-using the expensive sets of the Phantom-film that was released one year earlier. The story is set in a prominent Vienna opera building where Boris stars as the resident physician, Dr. Hohner, and successfully hides a dark secret from his friends and co workers. After a short intro and a truly well choreographed flashback, we learn who Dr. Hohner murdered his fiancée and upcoming star-singer Marcellina because he feared her magically developing voice would come between their relationship. Now, ten years later, the new promising singer Angela – with a voice almost identical to Marcellina's – arrives at the theater and once again awakens Hohner's maniacal lusts. He hypnotizes her into never singing again, but Angela's young and devoted lover Franz carries on battling to make Angela share her wondrous voice with the world. "The Climax" is a beautiful movie to look at, with the terrific use of color and a nearly endless amount of great decors, but it surely could have used a slightly better screenplay. It's a rather predictable film with very few action scenes and only a bit of old-fashioned, legitimate tension during the last 15 minutes. There are many marvelous yet overlong opera sequences, even a lot more than in the actual "Phantom of the Opera", but they naturally slow down the film's pace and eventually even affect (negatively) the acting performances of Boris Karloff and Gale Sondergaard. It's an enjoyable mystery/thriller to a certain extent, but if you want to see Karloff at his most malicious, check out Val Lewton's "The Body Snatcher" or "Bedlam".