Villains; Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Eric von Stroheim.

I have a great movie box set called 100 Film Noir Mystery Classics. Some of the films are so faded you can barely make out the actors in dark scenes but I love old films like these before they are digitally remastered.
I have never seen any of the films in this box set before and am slowly making my way through them all.
The films all have the usual formula of good and bad guys and a female somewhere in the story. In Hollywood today it is not unusual for the bad guy to be a British actor and it was much the same in old Hollywood as European actors seemed to be the preferred choice for villainy roles.

 
Boris Karloff was born in London in 1887. He co-starred in the film Dick Tracy meets Gruesome (1947) in which he plays a criminal who uses a nerve gas to freeze people which enables him and his associates to rob a bank. Of course there are no special effects but it is amusing to me how the director got the bank's cat to stay still, I can only assume they used a stuffed one from the props department and then arranged hanging wires as the cat is caught in mid leap!
 

Boris Karloff played Mr Wong in the detective series, in my box set Mr Wong is also played in one or two films by Bela Lugosi. Born in Hungary in 1882 Mr Lugosi is the one and only Dracula and also the actor on which the lovely Count in Sesame Street is based; Ha, Ha, Ha.

 

 
Peter Lorre was Austrian and usually cast as some shady character up to no good, in Mr Moto's Last Warning (1939) he is a spy in disguise. Lorre had large set apart eyes which made his a favourite face for cartoonists.

 
    
Eric von Strohelm was a man of many talents; an auteur as well as an actor. He like Lorre was of Austrian parentage.  His twisted smile and shaven bullet head made Von Strohelm look every part a menace to society. His most famous acting role was the butler Max from Sunset Boulevard (1950) and he featured in the excellent 15 part documentary on the television channel 'More 4' called The Story of Film; An Odyssey. He is regarding as one of the silent eras greatest directors and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award (Oscar) for Sunset Boulevard.