Mar 26, 2022
The Man with Nine Lives (Behind the Door, 1940)
"Tell me, how did you come to be in the ice vault? Did you lock yourself in?"
"You wouldn't know that, would you? It's yesterday afternoon to me. But to you it's... it's ten years ago. Ten years..."
#the man with nine lives#behind the door#1940#american cinema#mad doctor cycle#horror film#boris karloff#nick grinde#harold shumate#karl brown#roger pryor#jo ann sayers#stanley brown#john dilson#byron foulger#hal taliaferro#charles trowbridge#ernie adams#landers stevens#more fun shenanigans from Karloff's sojourn to Columbia. once again he's playing a man of science driven to madness by those fools#who refuse to see the importance of his work! this time he's working on suspended animation and has just come out of deep freeze himself#(apparently hot coffee is an essential part of the reanimation process‚ it's mentioned several times). roger pryor and jo ann sayers are on#hand as the young leads (tho Pryor wasn't actually a great deal younger than Karloff) and they're more likable than many such couples in#these films. the script takes a slightly skewed morality in the final act‚ repeatedly explaining that Karloff is indeed a great man working#to the benefit of mankind (even despite the murdering..). considering it was shot in a few weeks and released a few weeks after that it#looks genuinely impressive; the ice bunker sets are very good indeed. Karloff hams it up as only he could and of course it all ends very#neatly. a brief little bit of fluff‚ but a lot of fun to be had here too. the picture quality is brilliant‚ up until the final reel (which#i suspect must have been damaged at some point in the 80 odd years since filming)