The Man with Nine Lives

Other than watching Mr. Karloff and his wonderful courtroom rant, the rest of this movie just didn't do much for me. Once again the great one is executed and brought back to life. He is able to continue his research and ends up in the basement of a house in a laboratory where a man whose work he envied worked. He decides that instead of continuing to do good, he will get back at those who interrupted his work, mocked him, and sentenced him. After they get to the house, however, everything gets patently silly. He discovers the truth only to have some lunkhead throw his formula into the fire. Instead of flashing the piece of paper around to show the other, he could have kept it in his pocket. Anyway, it rambles on and on and gets nowhere. My favorite thing is this frozen cave where people can be kept. It reminds me of a small refrigerator that I have to defrost about three times a year. I just hate that.

This little known gem from 1940 is impressive for a few reasons: first, it stands head and shoulders above most of the B movies of the era, largely due to a good script and a great performance from Boris Karloff. Also, while made in the midst of the Universal horror period, it demonstrates some of the best elements of that genre, however it also pre-figures the oncoming decade of sci-fi flicks of the 50s, but with a more intelligent, and mysterious, plot than most of the B sci-fi films that followed. It also incorporates some noir elements such as shadowy images, gun play, etc. The Man with Nine Lives is also known under the alternative title Behind the Door (which is actually more accurate).

THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES is the kind of programmer made on the quick from Columbia studios, not too bad as far as the sets are concerned and with some halfway decent dialog--but nothing disguises the fact that it's not exactly BORIS KARLOFF at his finest. He's a doctor tinkering with the concept of freezing bodies and reviving them later, inadvertently getting frozen in his own freezer and thawed out by a doctor (ROGER PRYOR) and his pretty assistant (JO ANN SAYERS). Most impressive thing about the film is the ice storage areas where the frozen look of the experimental igloos are pretty "cool". But the plot is a simple one of a man willing to be an outlaw in order to prove his scientific theories about reviving the frozen dead. WILLIAM TROWBRIDGE, a dependable B-film actor (who did many an A-film at Warner Bros. and other studios) is the only other recognizable name in the cast--except for a bit appearance by BRUCE BENNETT as a trooper, who is uncredited. Karloff's final experiment does have some value and he passes this on to Pryor and Sawyers so the world can benefit from his knowledge. Summing up: Serves as an okay vehicle for Karloff but fails to have the horror appeal of his best string of films at Universal.

Roger Pryor is a doctor who has success 'curing' patients by lowering their body temperatures. He is urged to publish his results, but wants to know more about the work of a doctor who pioneered the science, then vanished ten years before. Pryor and his nurse/girlfriend Jo Ann Sayers set out to find the last known address of the doctor, Boris Karloff (who else?) to see if he left any notes behind. Not only do they find his notes, they find him..frozen in a room 91 steps (they counted) below his laboratory. They thaw him out, and he tells what happened a decade before..how 3 officials tried to stop him from using the technique on a wealthy citizen, and they all got trapped in the 'deep freeze'. Oddly, none of them seem particularly surprised or upset (?) about their years on ice, but things get ugly fast; one man becomes very greedy concerning profits from the promising technique, and Karloff wants to continue experimenting on everyone else. It's a fun watch, but you can guess early on that Karloff is going to go completely off the deep end (only naive' Pryor and Sayers are very slow to catch on).

From the vantage point of today (6/21/2014) as I write this, it seems incredible that a film made in 1940 treated the subject of cryogenics as if it were as common as, well, the common cold. The opening scroll mentioned that medical science agreed that disease can be arrested and life can be prolonged by freezing human beings. I'm aware that the concept is still being researched with significant results, as in lowering body temperature to treat victims of drowning, but you'd think a whole lot more progress might have been made by now. Well I'm surprised it took me so long to run across this little Karloff gem. It turned up this morning of all places on Antenna TV, generally better known for it's airing of old TV programs from the Sixties. Actually it was in the Sixties when my dad gave me the run down on actors like Karloff, Chaney and Lugosi and I've been a fan ever since. The film includes elements of horror and sci-fi with a little bit of murder mystery to boot, featuring Karloff once again as a mad, but seemingly normal scientist working for the betterment of humanity. It's only when his work is threatened that he resorts to killing an antagonist. Actually, the scene where he shoots Bob Adams (Stanley Brown), in the back no less for destroying his formula, seemed to me to be a bit over the top. Granted, I'd be PO'd too, but gee, I don't think I'd kill anybody over it. Probably the best part of this flick was the set design of Dr. Leon Kravaal's (Karloff) impressive lab, one of the better ones this side of Frankenstein. And not just one, he had multiple labs in different parts of his house. Which made me wonder, how long would it have taken the good doctor to set up his working lab through a secret tunnel and another hundred feet under ground? That's some kind of dedication. There were other things I had to think about as well as the story got under way. Why would Dr. Mason (Roger Pryor) and his nurse/fiancée Judy Blair (Jo Ann Sayers) embark on their mission to find Dr. Kravaal's missing research wearing business suits. That seemed just a little too formal for me, particularly when they started crawling around through Kravaal's tunnels and labs. Not that this was unusual for films of the era, but I don't understand what would motivate anyone to be attired that way. But you know what really blew me away? When the doc and his assistant rented the boat from old Pete Daggett (Ernie Adams), do you know what the fee was - twenty five cents per hour plus a dollar deposit!!! Holy smokes, and I thought the whole concept of freezing human bodies was scary!

It's an unusually intelligent storyline for a horror flick. In short, what are the ethical limits to scientific experimentation, even in finding a cure for cancer. Using what is now called "cryogenics", Dr. Kravaal (Karloff) crowds those limits while experimenting with a cancer cure on a remote island. Unfortunately, the promising experiments require live subjects who may not be so lucky. Dr. Mason (Pryor), one of the men trapped on the island with Kravaal, is torn by Kravaal's challenge to conventional ethics. So he's the one we sympathize with as we struggle with the same dilemma-- just how much can be sacrificed in finding a cure. By no means does Karloff ham up his role. Instead he's perfect as a dedicated and distinguished medical scientist, more obsessed than evil. Except for actor Brown's overdone Adams, the rest of the cast also manages conflicted roles. Credit Columbia for the riveting sets-- for example, the cabin about to be eaten by dead plants, the many dingy underground scenes that really do look subterranean, the laboratory that really looks worked in. All in all, it's an unusually well mounted flick for its subject matter. If there's a problem, it's with the absence of a clear bad guy to heighten a sense of horror amid the dark surroundings. I don't get a sense of menace common to the genre. Instead, the 74-minutes is more like a "think piece", which all in all, may be more worthwhile than a good scare.

I have a feeling that many of us have entertained the whimsical notion, as we dragged ourselves to work in the morning, that it might be nice to have hot coffee fed intravenously into our systems. Well, in the misleadingly titled Boris Karloff vehicle "The Man With Nine Lives" (1940), we get to see that such a procedure might be as pleasant as imagined. In this picture, experimental patients of one Dr. Mason, who's looking to cure cancer victims via cryogenics, are brought out of deep freeze in just that manner! Dr. Mason and his nurse fiancée soon discover the body of cryogenics pioneer Dr. Leon Kravaal, 100 feet underground in a Canadian ice cave, where he'd been laying frozen--a corpsicle--for a full decade. Dr. Kravaal (played by Karloff, of course, in still another of his overly ardent scientist roles) is remarkably brought back to life, and begins his scientific pursuits anew. Anyway, this film is a fairly restrained affair, impeccably acted by its small cast, economically written, nicely photographed, and captured here on a pristine-looking DVD. The goateed Kravaal, likable at first, grows increasingly deranged as the film progresses, but still manages to hold the audience's sympathies; a brilliant scientist using unethical methods to achieve great ends. Despite the far-fetched central conceit of the possibility of freezing a man indefinitely and bringing him back to life, the movie is fairly believable; a testament to its intelligent script and fine players. But wait...did I say "far-fetched"? I have a feeling that Walt Disney, Ted Williams and thousands of frozen sperm cells the world over might disagree with that sentiment!

Nick Grinde once again directs Boris Karloff, this time as Dr. Kravaal, a pioneer in cryogenic research who was interrupted in his cancer research when a relative of the wealthy man he was operating on brings in the authorities, who force Kravaal to take them to his island home to prove his work viable. Unfortunately, their interference leads to the patient's death, and all five men end up frozen for 10 years, until Dr. Mason(played by Roger Pryor) and Nurse Blair(played by Joanne Sayers) visit his home and revive him, but Kravaal picks up right where he left off, endangering all their lives... Good thriller with another fine performance from Karloff; good sets and atmosphere aid imaginative plot.

"Scandal Sheet" director Nick Grinde's "The Man with Nine Lives" qualifies as a good Boris Karloff mad scientist movie about the application of cryogenics as a cure for cancer. No, this is neither a scary movie nor is Boris buried beneath layers of make-up, though he does affect spectacles and a beard. Grinde and scenarists Karl Brown—who wrote "The Man They Could Not Hang" and "Counterfeit Lady" Harold Shumate explore the thin line between scientific genius and criminal insanity in this provocative thriller. The depth of sophistication in the writing and Karloff's extraordinary performance—he waxes from a kind gentle soul to a demented madman—sets "The Man with Nine Lives" apart from most horror movies. Later, in 1940, Karloff played a similar role as a scientist with greater sympathy in director William Nigh's "The Ape" where he resorts to horrible means to perfect a serum so that a wheel-chair bound beauty can stand up and walk again. Moreover, "The Man with Nine Lives" deals with something much more believable, the use of cryogenics to eliminate human ailments. Indeed, this low-budget opus considers the difference between scientific success and its real-life application. Just because an individual is right doesn't mean that they are morally justified to perform their deeds. For example, the protagonist, Dr. Tim Mason (Roger Pryor of "Belle of the Nineties"), impresses to the press how the use of cryogenics can help mankind before his procedure has been checked by others and the head of the hospital reprimands him for behaving in a presumptuous manner and advises him to take a sabbatical until his experiments can be checked. Mason and his fiancée Nurse Judith Blair (Jo Anne Sayers of "Young Dr. Kildare") use the leave of absence to track down the scientist, Dr. Leon Kravaal (Boris Karloff) whose research inspired Mason. Kravaal has been missing since 1930 and Mason resolves to find him. Kravaal lived on an island and a man who rents out boats warns them that several gentlemen visited Kravaal, but they never returned. Mason and Judith land on the island and find a destitute, empty house. The house, however, conceals many hiding places and they discover a dilapidated laboratory and Judith shrieks when they stumble upon a skeleton. Later, our heroes uncover a locked down and open it to find it filled with ice and the body of Dr. Kravaal. They revive him and Mason explains his interest in cryogenics. Dr. Kravaal explains how he came to be frozen. The circumstances involved a dying wealthy man who sought treatment for his ailment, but the man's hysterical son believes that Kravaal is taking advantage of a terminal case to make money and the authorities force Kravaal to take him to his island so that they can see what he has done. A medical authority who accompanies them has nothing but contempt for Kravaal's treatment of freezing a man to cure him. Kravaal gets the drop on them and smashes a chemical potion that knocks them out. Their interference brings about the death of the dying rich man and Kravaal stashes them in one of his frozen chambers. Unfortunately, the same chemicals that he resorted to so that he could take them hostage works on him and he collapses and is frozen until Mason and Judith thaw him out. They thaw out the incredulous authorities and the adventure really begins! This is a really thoughtful science fiction movie.

Man With Nine Lives, The (1940) *** (out of 4) Boris Karloff plays a scientist trying to cure cancer by using frozen animation. Here's a somewhat forgotten gem that works well due in large part to an interesting story, good supporting performances and Karloff at the top of his game. While this is more science fiction than anything else the actual medical work going on remains interesting in the film, which certainly isn't true for other films like this. Karloff is very strong in his role turning in perhaps his strongest performance from any of his Columbia films. A real gem that doesn't run to long and keeps you entertained the whole way.