"And what interesting careers they had, too." said Steve Brown. "Times were very different in the '30s and '40s, and their brand of gothic, supernatural horror was in its infancy. It took World War II to bring audiences back to them. The real horrors of war were assuaged by the unreal and safer horrors of the screen."
"I always thought it ironic that Lon Chaney Jr couldn't follow his father's superb skills with makeup by using his own, only because the union forbade it. To think, he couldn't apply and wear his own makeup creations; a union makeup artist had to do it. I wonder what creations he would have come up with?"
"Don't forget that Vincent Price and Peter Lorre are on the second disc," said Glenor. "I loved Price in all of Roger Corman's horror films he appeared in."
"That voice of his was so distinctive," added Mike Mercury. "Hey, how about his role as Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon? Priceless, huh?"
"Oooh, I loved his voice," said Glenor.
"He gave me the creeps. I couldn't sleep for a week after seeing The Beast with Five Fingers," said Jimmy.
"Lugosi is my favorite," said Zoc. "His Dracula is a performance that defines the consummate evil of the creature for all time. Dressed in his upper-class finery, walking the streets of London like a demonic god, always quenching his insatiable thirst for blood, wrecking the lives around him — a performance that resonates today in the vile actions of corporations, and the snobbish rich, isolated from the middle-class tedium of actually sustaining the mechanics of the country."
Everyone was looking at Zoc in bewilderment.
"His accent was unbeatable," summed up Zoc.
Everyone agreed, and the conversation continued.
"What else is on the two-disc set aside from the engrossing biographies?" asked Jimmy.
"Trailers, news featurettes, interviews, especially two interesting ones with Lugosi. One played for laughs, but definitely shows how much he really didn't like mixing with the Hollywood set, and the other's an interview given years later, when he was released from rehab. He looks really frail in that one. The quality is poor, given its age and media, but it's still a pretty shocking scene. Funny, but he smoked a cigar in both of them — like he didn't skip a beat in all those years between the two," replied Zoc.
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