The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) is one of the greatest scientists in the world. He has created a technique to restore a dead body to life which will progress the art of surgery by a thousand year (or maybe a few decades). With the aid of his protégé Lang (Byron Foulger), he finishes the first part of experiment, to kill a man without harming the tissue, but is interrupted by his hysterical nurse and the dimwitted police, stopping him from reviving the body. He’s arrested, convicted, and hanged for murder. Lang is given his body after the execution, and he revives the doctor, who plans to avenge himself. Six of the jurors are found hung. The remaining people who caused his death, the foolish nurse, DA, medical examiner, police lieutenant, and four jurors are sent telegrams to meet at Savaards old house, where he plans to dispatch them all. But reporter ‘Scoop” Foley (Robert Wilcox) and his daughter Janet (Lorna Gray) may screw up his plans.

How stupid can a person be? And she’s a nurse. OK, so she freaks because her boyfriend has volunteered for a dangerous experiment. Fine. She could throw a fit (she throws a small one, but she could amplify it seven times over) to stop the boyfriend. Or she could sabotage the experiment before hand. But what no one with even the slightest brain would do is stop a medical procedure half way through. It’s mind boggling, and frustrating. And that’s this movie. It’s frustrating, mainly because it has the potential to be a very good B-movie.

Karloff is in great form. He was a fine actor, but particularly good a playing a kind and gentle man (apparently fitting to his personality) and a powerful, avenging force edging on insanity. Here he combines the two into a far more authentic character than these sorts of simple films deserve. He’s the heart and soul of the film. Savaard’s aims are either good and noble, or understandable, depending on where we are in the film. The rest of the cast do their job, but this his Karloff’s film. It was the first of a string of low-budget pictures he’d make for Columbia. It’s also a mad scientist film that doesn’t take the anti-science position. There’s no comment about it being wrong to know what man wasn’t meant to know. Savaard is clearly in the right. The problem comes from lesser minds stopping him.

What I can’t figure is how the studio got so mixed up one how an audience would enjoy this movie. This is a B-movie, and a mad scientist one at that, so it isn’t designed as a deep character study, but as a fun diversion. And with the wonderful character developed by Karloff, and the stupidity and cruelty of almost everyone else in the film, the joy clearly comes from him doing away with the fools. But the last half is written as if we are supposed to be rooting for the idiots, and enjoying their attempts to survive and thwart Savaard. Sure the Production Code wasn’t going to let him get away with murder, but we could, and should, have been given a chance to revel in them. Was there anyone who watched this and thought, “Come on nurse, you must escape as you are my hero” instead of “Oh please die!”

So we have a nicely made film, with some great moments, caped with story twists that sap the catharsis it should have supplied.