The Man with Nine Lives [HD]

Another Karloff Rarity Makes it to DVD
**May Contain Mild Spoilers**

This issue of THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940) is another in what looks like it might be a DVD series of the horror films Karloff made for Columbia. For fans of the actor, it's more than welcome. Karloff gets to play a couple of nicely chilling scenes, which he does very well, and his Dr. Kravaal is the saving grace in what would otherwise be just another B programmer. He's the only real standout in the cast, but the general level of acting is above average. As Dr. Kravaal's foils, Roger Pryor and Jo Ann Sayers are convincing and sympathetic. The often-seen character actor Byron Foulger has some nicely intense moments as one of Kravaal's victims, and there is Bruce Bennett as policeman in the film's climax. It's a fine example of a good B picture: concise and never dull. Director Grinde creates a sense of doom and foreboding as Pryor and Sayers begin their journey in search of Dr. Kravaal's documents, which leads to a variation on the haunted...

Wow, what a good Karloff film!
I recently purchased the "Icons of Horror - Boris Karloff Collection" featuring his Columbia films of the 30s and 40s. That set contained four films. Two of his Columbia horror titles were missing, "The Devil Commands" and "The Man with Nine Lives," because Sony had previously released them separately. I decided to buy the separate DVD releases. I am really glad I did as this film, "The Man with Nine Lives," was a great surprise.

After seeing Karloff recently in a lot of mad scientist roles that all seemed to be similar, I wasn't too sure about watching him in yet another mad scientist flick. Would he be on death row again? Would he be a widower and have the obligatory 18-25 year-old daughter? Would he be seeking vengeance against those who scorned him? Wow, imagine my surprise to see him in a very different mad scientist role.

"The Man with Nine Lives" has Karloff as a misunderstood genius who has perfected a way of using cryogenics (a term that is never...

Karloff on Ice
Cryogenics...what the heck is that, you ask? The online dictionary defines it as "The production of low temperatures or the study of low-temperature phenomena." Hardball fans got a crash course, in terms of its use on humans, back in 2002 when Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ted Williams had his head separated from his body (post mortem, of course), the two parts now frozen in cold storage somewhere in Arizona, I believe...here lies Ted, there lies his head...but back to my point, it seems the legendary Boris Karloff, as a movie character, had been a pioneer of the process back in 1940 (actually the process, in one form or another, had been around since the turn of the century, although I'm unsure when they actually began freezing humans or their parts) in the film The Man with Nine Lives (1940). Directed by Nick Grinde (The Man They Could Not Hang, Before I Hang), the film stars Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, Bride of Frankenstein), Roger Pryor (Bullets for...

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