Dr. Tim Mason (Roger Pryor) is at the forefront of frozen therapy, but his demonstration promised more than it could deliver, so he and his nurse/fiancĂ©e Judith Blair (Jo Ann Sayers) head to the long abandoned, secluded home of the inventor of frozen therapy, Dr. Leon Kravaal (Boris Karloff). There, in a hidden underground camber they find Kravaal, frozen. They thaw him and he returns to life, telling the story of how a greedy heir to Kravaalâs experimental patient and foolish authorities interrupted his experiments and they all ended up frozen. Now that Kravallâs awake, he sets out to warm up the others, who, upon regaining consciousness, immediately threaten Kravaal and destroy his research. Kravaal is greatly upset by this setback and decides to experiment on them.
The intro text, that discusses research in âfrozen therapy,â shows that Hollywood was still uncomfortable with horror and science fiction (this is only a year after horror films had returned). The filmmakers wanted to set it firmly in the real world, while also pretending that it had socially relevant information to pass along. It doesnât, which should be clear when you know the story was suggested by the work of failed scientist and all around weirdo Robert Cornish, whoâd already been the source of one of the worst movies ever made, Life Returns. Unlike Cornish, Kravaal has principles.
The first scene doesnât help in setting the tone as one doctor goes into âas you know Bobâ expository dialog as another pours hot coffee into a patient as a cutting edge procedure. Yes, hot coffee. Not that the criminal justice system looks much better than the medical one, so itâs best to ignore any connection to our world.
And if we do, we get a mild little thriller which is only of interest due to the presence of Karloff, and while far from his best performance, heâs engaging and presents a sympathetic semi-villain. With his sincerity, when Kravaal kills someone, it feels like the right thing to have done. Hell, Iâd have been good with sacrificing Tim and Judith to help out Kravaal, which probably shouldnât be the way I feel, showing the movie is a bit lopsided.
The other actors arenât bad, and Sayers is very attractive as a nurse who has only two modes: obedient and terrified, but not being bad is not equivalent to being good. When Karloff is off screen, which is for the first third of the picture, Pryor and Sayers have to do the heavy lifting and they canât manage it, not that theyâre given any help.
While Columbia was one of the Little 3, studios, when they went low budget, the result is equivalent to Poverty Row and this is low budget. It looks cheap, with simple camera setups, limited sets that are always shot from the same side, and dialog no one spent a lot of time with. Iâm guessing reshoots were rare. No one put in the effort to come up with a new idea. Rather this is a repurposing of Columbiaâs previous Karloff mad scientist flick, The Man They Could Not Hang (Columbia seemed to love inaccurate titles as there was no hanging in that one and no nine lives in this one).
Even if I could stomach the rest of the film, the tacked on embarrassing propaganda postscript is too much to take. I canât say to entirely skip The Man with Nine Lives, since Karloff is good, but know that youâre only watching it for Karloff.