Excellent look at the rivalry between the famous two horror stars - though as the author points out Karloff was always ahead ever since Frankenstein. In their teamings only in The Raven does Lugosi really outshine Karloff. Karloff was the better actor and in the better movies - not just horror, and he also had two genuine big stage successes in Arsenic and Old Lace and Peter Pan. However Lugosi has the bigger cult and the better story - more tragic and pathetic. A major mystery is why Universal didn't make more of Lugosi - he was one of the biggest stars they had (they didn't have many), a guaranteed money spinner, but for most of the time they saw him as a support actor at best.
Karloff was an interesting guy, though, too - the black sheep of a distinguished family, married several times, adored by everyone he worked with it seems except for Lugosi, a capacity for hard work which saw him become wealthy and probably killed him earlier. Karloff was not too pick about material and certainly made a lot of bad films just like Lugosi but he had a better agent and was smarter about money and contracts; he was also more versatile. Other horror stars like Lionel Atwill and Lon Chaney also had unhappy personal lives so maybe we shouldn't be too hard on Lugosi - although it is frustrating to read his staggering career.
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