When RKO told Val Lewton that Boris Karloff would be starring in his next film, Lewton was outraged. Lewton’s style was, to some extent, a reaction against the Universal horror movies that had made Karloff a star. What Lewton did not know was that Karloff himself was tired of the formula that gave him increasingly little to do.

"It was strange, the first meeting," Robert Wise recalled. "Boris came to the studio for a meeting with Val, Mark, and me. I had never seen him except on the screen, and this was before [I had seen him in a] color film. When he first walked in the door, I was startled by his coloring, the strange bluish cast - but when he turned those eyes on us and that velvet voice said, 'Good afternoon, gentlemen,' we were his, and never thought about anything else." (Mark A. Vieira)

Karloff and Lewton were grateful, each to the other, for the rest of their lives - Lewton’s short, Karloff’s long*.

The Karloff/Lewton collaboration: The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise) - 1945, Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson) - 1945, Bedlam (Mark Robson) - 1946.