Lifting The Veil On THE VEIL

 

 

 

 

Boris Karloff appeared in more than 70 films, bit parts mostly, before he gained fame playing the monster in the the 1931 classic Frankenstein.  A year later, he would play Im-ho-tep, in the Mummy, and  Dr. Fu Manchu, and his career took off. 

 

 

 

Soon Karloff, whose given name was the far more pedestrian William Henry Pratt, became synonymous with creepy horror movies of the 1930's and 1940's.

 

Karloff also appeared in a fair number of non-horror pictures as well, including The Lost Patrol (1934),  British Intelligence (1940), and a series of Mr. Wong detective movies.

 

Karloff even appeared on broadway, in Arsenic and Old Lace, where he played a homicidal character who underwent plastic surgery and was enraged to be constantly mistaken for  . . . you guessed it . . Boris Karloff.

 

 

For everything thing, I suppose, there is a season.

 

 

And by the late 1940's and early 1950's the horror stars of earlier years, including Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Jr were all in far less demand.   The quality of roles offered to them plummeted, and often they  were reduced to parodying their own careers and the horror genre.

 

 

Karloff, however, managed to retain some dignity by moving into the new field of television, and hosted and occasionally starred in several anthology series.    

 

 

Two, you've probably heard of, or perhaps even remember.   Thriller, which ran from 1960-1962, and  Colonel March of Scotland Yard,  which ran intermittently from 1952-1956.  

 

 

Colonel March, a creation of John Dickson Carr, solved `locked room' and `impossible' crimes.

 

 

Karloff also hosted 13 episodes of a BBC science fiction anthology series called Out Of This World, in 1962.  Reportedly only one episode survives today.

 

 

But, in 1958, at a time when The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond were big hits in the US, Karloff also hosted, and appeared in,  The Veil,  an anthology series of ghostly tales and stories of psychic phenomenon. 

 

 

While 10 episodes were produced, incredibly they were never aired. 

 

Studio problems led to the cancellation of this project, and with just 10 episodes in the can, no one felt it could be syndicated.   These `lost' episodes languished, largely unseen, for the next 30 years, although they have now been released on DVD.

 

BUT . . .you can also watch them online, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

 

 

So without further ado, I present.   The Veil.

 

 

The Veil : Vision of Crime - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 1: Vision of Crime FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 While on a boat trip to Paris, a man has a vision in which he sees his brother murdered. He returns to England to discover that his brother has been killed and that a man he knows isn't the murderer is the prime suspect. Who is the murderer and how will the man ferret the killer out without mentioning his vision and seeming like a nut-case? Find out by going "Behind The Veil"...

 

 

The Veil : Girl on the Road - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 2: Girl on the Road FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A young man helps a beautiful, young woman who is stranded by the side of the road...her cars gas tank empty. He drives her to town to get gas and have a drink. When a bartender calls someone named "Morgan Debs" (Karloff), the girl panics and leaves, but promises the young man she will meet with him later and tell him who "Morgan Debs" is...

 

The Veil : Food on the Table - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 3: Food on the Table FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A sea captain (Karloff) returns from a sea voyage to a wife he does not love. He saves her life after she is bitten by a snake (don't ask) and almost immediately regrets having done so, as he learns that a woman who is smitten with him has been recently widowed and has inherited a large sum of money. He plots his wife's murder, but will he succeed in his plans even if he is successful in ridding himself of...

 

 

The Veil : The Doctors - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 4: The Doctors FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 "Dr. Angelo Marcabienti" (Tony Travis), returns home to the small Italian village he grew up in his. His father (Karloff), also a doctor, is old and tired and "Angelo" wants him to retire and move to the city to live with him, but the townspeople won't let him. When the elder doctor is called to the home of a patient, "Angelo" attends to another patient, but the family won't allow him to operate until the "real"...
 

 

The Veil : The Crystal Ball - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 5: The Crystal Ball FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A flighty French girl leaves her lover, a young writer, to marry his boss. As a parting gift, she gives him an ornamental crystal ball. This is a distraction, since the crystal shows him scenes of her carrying on with other men behind her new husband's back. Series Produced by : Hal Roach Jr. .... executive producer Frank P...

 

 

The Veil : Genesis - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 6: Genesis FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 The two sons of a dying farmer quarrel over the old man's will. A message from beyond the grave points the elder son to the story of Esau and Jacob in the book of Genesis. Series Produced by : Hal Roach Jr. .... executive producer Frank P. Bibas .... producer Sidney Morse .... associate producer Series Original Music by Leo Klatzkin

 

The Veil : Destination Nightmare - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 7: Destination Nightmare FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A young man, badgered by his father to work in his aviation company, sees a vision of a man while on a routine air-flight. The vision tells him to go to a certain location and he does...in a trance. He is stopped by his copilot before their plane crashes. Later on he sees something that makes him think he knows who the vision was...

 

The Veil : Summer Heat - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 8: Summer Heat FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A man witnesses a robbery and murder in the apartment across the street from his own. When the police are called, it is discovered that the apartment is empty. Has he seen what he thinks he has seen? Are we dealing with the past, the present or the future? Only those willing to go "Behind The Veil" will know for sure...

The Veil : The Return of Madame Vernoy - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 9: The Return of Madame Vernoy FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 In August of 1927, Madame Sita Vernoy dies in a small town in India, leaving a grieving husband and a newborn son. One year and ten days later, Santha Naidu is born in Delhi: a girl-child who slowly begins to remember her previous life as Madame Vernoy. When she grows to maturity, these memories are instrumental in changing the life of her widowed husband and the son who is one year older than he...

 

 

The Veil : Jack the Ripper - Hal Roach, Jr.
"The Veil" (1958) Season 1, Episode 10: Jack the Ripper FROM IMDB Original Air Date: 1958 A clairvoyant, in dreams and visions, sees a series of grisly murders in London's Whitechapel district. But his knowledge of the details of the crimes makes him a suspect in the eyes of the police. Series Produced by : Hal Roach Jr. .... executive producer Frank P. Bibas .... producer Sidney Morse .... associate producer Series Original Music by Leo Klatzkin