John Carradine was born on 5 February 1906.
Carradine is about as iconic in psychotron film as you can get. But there is a problem. He rarely starred in anything. He and Vincent Price worked a similar amount. But Price was the star of dozens of films. Carradine seemed to be everywhere. But he usually didn’t work more than a day or two on the films he appeared in.
What’s more, he aged badly. He lived to be 82 years old. But even by the 1960s, he appeared fragile and cadaverous. That made him great for some of roles. But it really limited what he could do — especially one he was notable enough to lead a film.
Carradine’s best role was not in a psychotronic film. He plays the mystic Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath. The role shows how varied his talent was. He seems to have been more interested in theater, which I totally get. And you can see his love of Shakespeare in many of his roles. But we aren’t here to discuss that!
But as a result of this, he played Dracula a few times. The character is about as theatrical as anything in horror. This includes the Universal films House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. (I discussed both of them last year.) He also plays a geriatric version of the character in Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and then especially in the horror-comedy Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula.
But John Carradine is a pretty small part of all those films, despite his character’s name being the title of three of them. However, Carradine does star in a true psychotronic film that shows him in peak form: Bluebeard. In it, he plays a puppeteer and painter who is also a homicidal maniac. The film has been copied a lot. I like to think Color Me Blood Red is a remake. That’s a stretch, but it clearly influenced Retro Puppet Master.
John Carradine taken from a frame of Bluebeard via Archive.org. It is in the public domain.