The Man with Nine Lives [Behind the Door] ***½ (1940, Boris Karloff, Byron Foulger, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers) – Classic Movie Review 5640

Director Nick Grinde’s chilling 1940 horror sci-fi thriller finds dear old Boris Karloff playing with the chemistry set again as yet another in his long line of mad doctors. But that’s good, right?

This time he is playing Dr Leon Kravaal, a scientist who at least starts off sane, combating cancer through refrigerating folk, as a pioneer in cryogenics as his island laboratory. But then he accidentally puts himself on ice for several years- a decade – and goes mad after a medical researcher visits his deserted home finds him frozen but still alive, and defrosts him and other people he’s frozen.

It is extravagant and amusing chiller entertainment, with Karloff on fine form. With the screenplay by Karl Brown, who adapts the story by Harold Shimate, it has a compelling plot, and the film even has decent effects (for its time of course). It also stars Byron Foulger as Dr Bassett, Roger Pryor as Dr Tim Mason, and Jo Ann Sayers as Judith Blair.

It was called Behind the Door in GB.

The Columbia Pictures film runs 73 minutes, is shot in black and white by Benjamin H Kline, is produced by Irving Briskin and Wallace MacDonald, is scored by Gerard Carbonara and Morris Stoloff, and designed by Lionel Banks.

Also in the cast are Hal Taliaferro as Sheriff Stanton, John Dilson, Wally Wales, Stanley Brown, Ernie Adams, Charles Trowbridge, Bruce Bennett, Ivan Miller, Minta Durfee, Eddie Dew, William Marion, Charles E Miller, Landers Stevens and Lee Willard.

It is arguably the best of Karloff’s Columbia B-movies, followed in quality by The Devil Commands (1941), The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), Before I Hang (1940) The Black Room (1935) and Behind the Mask (1932).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5640

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