You won't be disappointed!

Overrated

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Amiable Mark Stevens and scientific partner, the enigmatic Marianne Koch combine to tackle malignant diseases through cryogenics, but their experiments on apes are just a prelude to their ultimate test on a live human being which Stevens himself undertakes shortly following a murder in which he's implicated in absentia. Koch attempts to resuscitate Stevens to answer the allegations under the watchful eye of a Detective (Lukschy) and an independent observer (Lohde), concerned she may sabotage the experiment to protect Stevens from punishment. Capable German-US-British cast deliver realistic dialogue and create a genuine tension that is based less upon the primary plot (cryogenics) and more on Delphi Lawrence's character as Steven's almost perpetually inebriated wife, jealous of his working relationship with Koch, seeking solace in the scotch bottle and that of her old flame and work mate Joachim Hansen. Lawrence's performance dares to be bold and obnoxious, and while sometimes intense, doesn't become melodramatic. I thought her performance injected a maturity that was a welcome diversion to what could have become a simple science experiment gone awry picture.While the momentum is not always fluent, the pace sometimes stilted, and the suspense often telegraphed too early, the acting compensates to some degree, Stevens and Koch enjoying a on-screen rapport that serves the narrative well. My only significant criticism is the overly-simplistic conclusion - the elements are present for a firecracker ending, but it's resolved too quickly and conveniently to do the rest of the movie justice. Should have been better, but in my opinion still superior to the average 3 rating it currently attracts.

Sometimes a BAD film isn't really all bad. I was given this film on DVD through DigiView Productions as a present. I was hopeful. My hope was misplaced because this film is LONNNnnG, boring, and basically unwatchable. The plot is so pedestrian and boring. The theme is too. BY now watching this film, many trivial things get on your negative nerves. It's black and white and it's European. BOO. No stars, no EFX, no sex, nothing redeeming....nada, zitch. Here is the plot: A scientist experimenting with suspended animation winds up frozen solid in a lab freezer. Was he using himself as a test subject or merely creating an alibi for when his wife is murdered? Stay away from this film. You will never get back the time you wasted sitting through it till it's end. I was disappointed.

I must have seen a lot more bad movies than the other reviewers who have reviewed this movie on the IMDb, because while it's definitely a long defunct sci fi flick, it wasn't THAT bad. In the world of bad movies, Frozen Alive is nowhere near the bottom of the barrel, but it's still pretty unendurable. The story is flat as a pancake and is never interesting, but the main problem is that it is so clearly two different kinds of movies squeezed into one, and the result just doesn't work.A scientist is working on a system of deep-freezing monkeys, and then decides to use himself as a human test subject. Unfortunately, just before his own deep freeze, his wife dies a violent death and he becomes the prime suspect. The police investigators, of course, come knocking just as he is entering deep freeze, which is not exactly a quick catnap that he can be shaken awake from.One half of the story deals with the scientist, a mid-50s or so man with salt and pepper hair and intense facial features, and his enormously alcoholic wife, a blonde bimbo who looks no less than 30 years his junior. It's too bad that they have no chemistry on screen whatsoever, otherwise this portion of the story would have been slightly less pathetic. The scene where he is holding her in his arms and telling her he wants them to try for a baby is highly disturbing.The other half of the story deals with the deep freeze experimentation. This is the part that would make this a sci fi movie, although there is nothing really sci fi about it. If he had frozen himself and woken up in another time, then you have sci fi. Instead, he just freezes himself and then wakes back up. Who cares? As a result, it comes off as nothing more than a goofy crime drama soap opera about a guy trying to design a perfect cryogenetic freezer. And it's a shame, because there's a chance that there could have been two separate, and much better, movies made with this story...

I saw this one on a 4-film DVD set under the title "Frozen Alive." CAUTION: SPOLIERS This is a slow-moving melodrama masquerading as a horror film. A scientist's wife is cheating on him while he is conducting experiments, placing animals in suspended animation. The scientist decides to experiment on himself (his assistant pouts: "No! There's too much risk!")but he persists. While undergoing suspension, the annoying wife dies from a gunshot with the scientist the key suspect. The scientist isn't the only one in suspension as the audience becomes enraptured in disbelief. This amazing West German/England production is cheap and kinda seedy, and pretty dull. I ultimately shrugged at the end. Films like this are "programmers," films made merely to fill the needs of film promoters and distributers, likely used to fit into a double or triple-bill horror film package. While I've seen worse films (sometimes I think perhaps too many), this one is not at the bottom. Still, "Frozen Alive" is a film that should have appeared on "Mystery Science Theater 3000," a missed opportunity. I'm still not sure exactly what kind of film this is supposed to be.