brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Best movie ever!

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

"The Man They Could Not Hang" is certainly a very watchable film. On the surface, it appears to be another mad-scientist-defies-nature story, but it has deeper roots.Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) has designed an artificial heart and has tested it on various animals. A young man volunteers to be the first human recipient, so Savaard and his assistant terminate the man's life only to be interrupted mid-procedure, before they can restore the man's life.What follows is a courtroom drama, then an Agatha Christie-like murder in a box, with a twist. At each phase of the film, Dr. Savaard delivers a speech about science vs. ignorance, each with its own perspective. Each speech is well written and takes the story beyond the typical mad doctor genre.This film does not fall into the horror genre. Perhaps the mere presence of Karloff prompted that labelling. But Savaard may be the most rational character in the film. It is a sci-fi crime story. And it is well worth watching and very entertaining.

Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) and his assistant are performing an experiment on reviving recently deceased people through use of an artificial heart. Unfortunately, the assistant's girlfriend is scared and runs to the police. They arrive before Savaard can complete the experiment and the assistant dies. Savaard is convicted and executed for murder. However, another assistant uses the artificial heart to bring him back to life. But the good doctor is batspit crazy and out for blood. So he starts killing off those he holds responsible for his death one by one. The first of several movies Karloff made for Columbia where he played a mad scientist type out for revenge. It's formulaic but it works. Karloff carries the movie as always.

Man They Could Not Hang, The (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Boris Karloff plays a crazed scientist who is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. He tries his new machine on a dead college student but before he can bring the kid back to life the police show up and he is eventually sentenced to death. The scientist swears vengeance on the jury, judge and prosecutor if he can live through the hanging. This was the first of four "mad scientist" films that Karloff made for Columbia and it's certainly the weakest. The film starts off pretty well but it slowly grows tiresome and ends with a very poor finale, which is a cheat, silly and just comes off bad. Karloff is actually pretty good in the first half of the film as we see him really playing crazy like he wasn't offered too many times. Quite often he was the nice mad scientist but here is actually gets to come off pretty crazy and messed up in the head. This might take sympathy away from him for later in the film but I liked his character early on. The second half of the film turns into your typical revenge thriller and doesn't add anything new or original to the mix. The supporting cast is also rather disappointing even though Lorna Gray comes off fairly well. None of these Columbia films with Karloff are overly special but the good news here is that this one runs just over an hour, which makes for some mild entertainment but if you want to see classic Karloff then you'll have to look elsewhere.

Boris Karloff plays a scientist who discovers a way to prolong people's lives. To try it out, he has to kill someone. When his plan is discovered, they arrest him, convict him and execute him. But, as the title identifies, it doesn't end there. To be certain, he invites the jurors to his house and explains how one person will perish every fifteen minutes. Then, it starts happening."The Man They Could Not Hang" is outlandish, definitely, but it's kind of a neat movie. The ending was sort of a cop-out, but most of the movie was pretty fun. Karloff's eerie stare is enough to carry a movie all by itself.