Karloff Cannot Die

A Karloff Mad Scientist movie is always welcome on my screen. I've been stuck at home with a current potential problem (mass on the tail of my pancreas could be something or nothing), so for me knowing Karloff is on (Turner Classics doing their Summer of the Stars right now) is especially worthwhile. I can't bring myself to watch his Frankenstein movies (just too soon to October), but "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939) is just right. These movies really are like manna from heaven. I can't get enough of them. Anyone who complains that "Karloff made the same movie four times" can go watch something else, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I will agree there was one film after the other churned out as part of studios' B-Movie divisions, made cheap with certain typecast actors hired to lure movie-goers. Everyone has their vice, and I just don't think Karloff mad scientist movies (often he's a widower, with a daughter, who starts out wanting to help mankind and is punished when something goes awry, although he also had his share of criminals wanting a second chance but receiving punishing fates) is too unhealthy.

This movie has Karloff as a brilliant scientist and doctor who is on the cusp of inventing a mechanical heart capable of maintaining life even after the healthy heart dies. But when the fiance of his healthy male volunteer goes to the police while he's "technically" killing him (poison that doesn't kill the tissues) so he can restore the subject with his mechanical heart, law enforcement interferes with the reviving process resulting in the guinea pig's demise. Then comes a court trial, jury debate, verdict, sentencing, and waiting for the hangman's noose. Karloff vows to get even with those who sentenced him to death and halted his experimental breakthrough.

Karloff has an assistant who not only repairs his broken neck but also brings him back to life by following the notes and teaching which operate the mechanical heart procedure. Once recuperated, Karloff knocks off the jurors who were dead set to execute him, sparing the three who argued tirelessly in his defense. The others (the judge, prosecutor, police, police surgeon, fiance, and head juror vocally responsible for swaying all jurors to vote against Karloff) are tricked by invitation to the castle of Karloff, with his devious wicked plan to bump them off one by one through traps set up (like how he kills the judge with electrified metal doors to the living room, and a phone tricked with a spike that stabs the head juror in the ear).

I think Karloff, with that special delivery and slight lisp, really makes some of the dialogue hum, like when he condemns those responsible for his sentencing in the court room or how he speaks about the medical field's potential on the stand to the jury of his peers what his disrupted work could have meant. He has a marvel of a monologue with his daughter character of the film, on how man has corrupted what science created, how the good meant from inventions or advances in medicine man used for evil or harm. I can't help but grin at Karloff in how he tells those who wronged him (in his mind) they are doomed...he certainly doesn't cop out for the easy paycheck. He proves he can make dialogue purr and is more than just a hulking monster...give him something to chew on and watch him work. So yeah, I think these little B-movies that Bogart wanted nothing to do with have their place...especially in my library.