Celui qui avait tué... la mort

Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) is a scientist working on experiments to restore life to the dead. When he is unjustly hanged for murder, he is brought back to life by his trusted assistant. Re-animated he turns decidedly nasty and sets about murdering the jury that convicted him.

Similarly themed as Before I hang and part of the series of "mad Doctor' series he made, Boris Karloff is excellent as always, and it's quite well-paced, gripping and cleverly an Agatha Christie-style element is infused in towards the end, drawing the plot away from the usual mad Doctor formula. Here, the doctor traps the ones who sent him to the gallows and intends to bump them off one by one via electric shocks.

Karloff plays Dr. Saavard, a scientist involved in creating an artificial heart and hopefully the means to extend life and perhaps realize immortality. A young man offers his services to him, and accidentally dies. Karloff is brought to trial, convicted and hung. He comes back(as we new he would from the name of the title) and seeks revenge on all those responsible for his "death." The story is fairly conventional and routine, but there are some splendid moments in the house of Karloff menacing his "guests" and letting each one know how long he or she has to live. The only real complaint I have deals with the ending which just cuts the tension that had been built up. The ending is rather make-shift and really spoiled the mood earlier created.

This film was by all means a head of its times with heart transplants and mechanical parts in the year 1939. This films success was encouraged by a Dr. Robert Cornish who was a biochemist hired by Columbia pictures who present the idea of a mechanical heart. Columbia signed Karloff for several more films in the same theme, staring the actor onto his second "crazed scientist" cycle. It is unbelievable that for more than twenty-five years later, human lives were successfully prolonged by surgical heart transplants. Karloff looks less menacing that he has been in the past. Karloff as usual, turns in his usual good performance.

A Boris Karloff vehicle from 1939. Karloff is a scientist on the cusp of creating a device to bring the dead to life (ironic coming from Frankenstein's monster!) & he already has a willing guinea pig, his assistant's boyfriend, volunteering for the task. On the cusp of completing his experiment, the distressed girlfriend has sent a phalanx of police to halt him in his tracks but the foul deed is done; the boyfriend is dead & the process was never applied. Imploring his assistant to hide the device when he hears the cops at his door, Karloff is arrested, tried (even though he gives an impassioned speech on his potential discovery) & hanged for his trouble. When he's revived by his aide, Karloff constructs an elaborate plan to kill off all the people (the district attorney, the jurors at his trial, even his assistant) in a rigged dining room in a large mansion. When Karloff's daughter, played by Lorna Gray, shows up, his game is thrown, will he succeed in his determination to murder the rest of his guests? Only Karloff's oily ham of a performance saves a rather muddled Agatha Christie-esque yarn which even w/its abridged running time still feels a little too wild for its own good.

This 1939, public domain cheapie B-Film turned out to be much better then expected. The plot in a nut shell is this: Boris Karloff kills a medical student in order to test a procedure that will bring him back to life, only his nurse, played by Ann Doran goes to the police. Karloff is arrested, tried and hanged, but not before threatening the judge, members of the jury, his nurse and others who helped to get him sentenced to death. Once dead, a scientist who worked with Karloff brings him back to life, and he sets out killing those who sentenced him to death.

If anyone has seen The House on Haunted Hill and its later remake, this film was probably used for certain inspiration for this film. You have a group of people, all associated with the case, who are all brought to a deserted house, locked inside, and are slowly killed off one by one. The film is short, just a little over an hour in length, but is top notch entertainment, and is very enjoyable, and well acted.