The Original
An Evening with Boris Karloff
and his Friends CD

Once upon a time there was a brilliant new magazine on the news stands called Famous Monsters Of Filmland. It featured stories about the grand masters of monsterdom, and in the back of the magazine a mail order house (part of the publishing company responsible for "FM" as it became known) sold masks, records, hobby kits and other goodies related to the greats of that genre. One of the albums sold was An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends, produced by the man who also made the monster masks - Verne Langdon, and the man who among other things created Hollywood's world-famous Magic Castle - Milt Larsen. The script for the album was penned by none other than the man whose vast collection of photos appeared in the magazine, Forrest J Ackerman. These three incredibly talented individuals created then leased to Decca their project, featuring the greatest horror soundtracks of all from Universal Studios classic horror films, and hosted by the greatest, most famous monster of them all, Boris "Frankenstein's Monster" Karloff himself. But that is not what you're being offered here, not so far as the later Decca version is concerned. "THE ORIGINAL" An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends" is indeed this, the never-before-heard ORIGINAL, the prototype, the "demo" of the album as it were, B.D. (before Decca). In this ORIGINAL version you will hear Boris Karloff's original timing and pauses, and breathiness later removed by sound editors, and you will hear an appropriately-eerie score for the entire album never before heard, composed and performed on a massive 4-manual, 34-ranks-of-pipes theatre organ (once briefly owned by Universal studios) by the man who thought up the idea in the first place, Verne Langdon. This great classic PRE-classic ORIGINAL album comes directly from the publishing vaults of Electric Lemon Record Company, and is precisely reproduced for all the world to hear, "again, for the very first time," from the original 15ips master, pre-Decca. Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Bride Of Frankenstein, and even the groom himself ... they're all baaaaaaack! Hail, hail, the gang's all here, and you've never heard them sounding this good, ever. Boris Karloff reminisces, and his monster memories from Universal's finest fright films stir our own memories of walks home in the dark oh so many years ago after seeing these classics up there on the silver screen. Once upon a time almost never comes again, but with THE ORIGINAL "An Evening With Boris Karloff And His Friends", any closer would be almost too terrifying! This one belongs to you, the monster lover - be sure to include it in your collection of filmland's most famous monsters.

Review by Henry Penn