By Hank Reineke
Following the “monstrous” success of Universal’s Frankenstein, Boris Karloff no longer
had to cast about Hollywood looking for employment. Between 1932 and 1942, the actor would appear
in more than forty feature films for nearly every major and minor Hollywood
studio: Universal, of course: but also Fox, United Artists, Paramount, MGM, RKO
Radio, Warner Bros., Monogram and Columbia. Prior to Frankenstein, Karloff
had appeared in several gangster/prison pictures for Columbia Pictures as a menacing
presence. It was a gift that brought
attention.
Though it was Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) that would make Karloff a box-office star in
his own right, the actor would go on to make two other films for Columbia in
the 1930s (The Black Room and The Man They Could Not Hang). Though Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn didn’t
care much for horror pictures, Karloff’s on-screen villainy was a hot
commercial property ripe for exploitation. So Columbia cast him – in a dual role as bothers Anton and Gregor De
Berghman’s – in Roy William Neill’s big-budget historical melodrama The Black Room Mystery (the title later
shortened to The Black Room). It’s interesting that the two-page spread
Columbia took out in the trades didn’t play up the film’s “horror” angle. Only that the film would star “Boris Karloff: The Man They Love to Hate in
a powerful mystery romance.”
Columbia’s The Man
They Could Not Hang (1939) followed, the first of a five-picture deal
Karloff would strike with the studio. Between 1939 and 1942 the actor embarked
on a series of Columbia films that fans describe as the actor’s “mad scientist”
pictures. All five of these melodramas/horror-sci-fi
pics, as well as The Black Room, are
included on Mill Creek’s new Blu- ray package Thrillers from the Vault. Two additional horror/sci-fi efforts from Columbia (Return of the Vampire and Five)
round out this generous – if curious - set. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
In many respects the first four of Karloff’s mad
scientist films closely resemble one another in construction. They’re formula films. In each Karloff portrays
a scientist/doctor working on a formula or experiment that will benefit all mankind. But in each instance the science goes wrong -
which causes Karloff to do the same. In
fairness, his murderous turn-of-heart is usually due to the interventions of
disbelievers. The premise of all these “mad
scientist” films can be summarized in a line Karloff delivers in The Man They Could Not Hang. Having vanquished nearly all of those he
holds responsible for his murder conviction, he snarls bitterly, “Every gift that science has given them
has been twisted into a thing of hate and greed!”
In Nick Grinde’s The
Man They Could Not Hang (1939), Karloff plays Dr. Henryk Savaard, a noble
scientist who plans to test his newfangled mechanical heart pump on a young and
trusting medical associate (Stanley Brown). To conduct this experiment, the young man must be first put into a state
of clinical death prior to reification. But due to the alarm of his hysterical nurse – the fiancé of the test
subject, to boot – the authorities are alerted. Upon their hurried arrival at Savaard’s laboratory, they do not allow
the pleading scientists the chance to revive the corpse of the test subject.
Savaard is tried for murder and executed on the
gallows. But the scientist’s devoted
assistant Lang (Byron Foulger) collects his body from the prison morgue, applies
the mechanical heart procedure on Savaard’s corpse, and resurrects Savaard. But Dr. Savaard is no longer a benevolent
scientist. The actions set off by the
“treacherous” nurse has left him mercilessly unhinged. He’s now interested only on exacting revenge
on the twelve jurors and prosecution team who found him guilty of murder.
In Grinde’s The Man
with Nine Lives (1940), Karloff plays Dr. Leon Kravaal, a scientist whose
cancer research leads him to believe that freezing those afflicted –
temporarily in a secretive, subterranean glacial chamber - helps retard or cure
the disease. But the authorities –
pressed by a gaggle of wary villagers - wrongly suspect Kravaal is up to no
good. They travel out to his secretive
island with the intent of hauling Kravaal to prison.
With the life of his frozen patient in jeopardy due to this
unwelcome incursion, Kravaal releases a gas, rendering everyone – including
himself – unconscious in the frozen chamber. The film flashes forward a decade on when a trio of scientists decide to
investigate Kravaal’s mysterious disappearance. Upon finding both the doctor and his interlopers perfectly preserved in
ice, all are thawed out. But Kravaal,
now crazed with revenge, uses his new lease on life to continue his experiments
on his imprisoned and unwilling subjects.
Grinde’s back again for Before I Hang (1940). In
this one Karloff plays Dr. John Garth, an elderly, mild-mannered scientist in
search of a serum that will retard the aging process. He’s not successful in his first effort, compelling
him to perform a “mercy killing” on a patient whose life was nothing but a
“sleepless, tortured nightmare.” For
this act he’s convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. While awaiting execution, the warden (unreasonably)
allows Garth to continue with his experiments under the supervision of a prison
doctor Dr. Howard (Edward Van Sloane). Reworking
the formula, Garth has the bad idea of mixing the blood of recently executed
fellow inmate – who happened to be a three-time convicted murderer – into the
serum.
Garth chooses to be the willing guinea pig himself – he’s
about to be executed anyway, so has nothing to lose – and injects the serum
into his own bloodstream. This time the
age reversal works – but with a caveat. Though
Garth begins to transform into his younger self, his veins now carry the
“contaminated” blood of a murderer. Unable to fend off evil impulses, Garth strangles Dr. Howard. But prison authorities mistakenly pin
Howard’s murder on another inmate and Garth – injured in a frantic melee with
that inmate - is ultimately pardoned. But the tainted blood he carries compels him to seek out fresh victims outside
of prison walls.
Things go no better for Karloff’s Dr. Julian Blair in Edward
Dmytryk’s The Devil Commands
(1941). Despondent over his wife’s death
in an automobile accident, Blair is convinced brainwaves of the deceased live
on following a body’s expiry - and such waves can be recorded electrically on a
graph. Though most of his colleagues scoff
at his theory, Blair is determined to continue his work in a remote cliff side cottage
near the sea. To this end he has built an
elaborate – and decidedly eerie – laboratory: one brimming with electrical
gimmickry, wires and steel-plated robotic helmets. Such experimentation might have been sanctioned
had Blair not robbed local graves in search of test subjects. Needless to say things, as ever, do not turn
out well for anyone involved.
The sixth and final Karloff Columbia effort in this set
is Lew Lander’s The Boogie Man Will Get
You (1942). This is a more lighthearted affair, a black comedy that’s,
regrettably, only occasionally comedic. The film, a co-feature with Peter Lorre, is mostly a poor cousin to a
more recent and successful enterprise. The Boogie Man Will Get You is mostly an
ill-conceived knock-off of Karloff’s popularity as the murderous Jonathon
Brewster in the Broadway stage production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
There is a key difference. While the Broadway play and Lander’s film attempt
to mix laughs with menace, the former does so to perfection, the latter… not so
much. As this is a WWII era-film,
Karloff’s Professor Billings and Lorre’s Dr. Lorencz work to create a race of super-humans
to assist the Allied war effort. It’s
best to be a fan of mug boxer-turned-character-actor “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom
if one truly expects to mine sixty-six minutes of reasonable entertainment.
The seventh and eighth films of this Thrillers from the Vault set are the only two not featuring Karloff. Lander’s The
Return of the Vampire (1942) features Bela Lugosi’s caped return as Count
Dracula… well, more or less. In the film
his character is actually referred to as Armand Tesla, but Lugosi plays his
part mostly as he had the more fabled Count of Tod Browning’s Universal classic
of 1931. While there’s no Dwight Frye to
attend to his sinister beckoning’s, this film’s “Renfield” styled servant is
Andreas Orby (Matt Willis), a talking werewolf.
As with The Boogie
Man Will Get You, this film too situates a favorite horror actor in a modern
WWII setting. The vampire Tesla is resurrected
in the film’s earliest scenes as his graveyard internment is disturbed by a
German air-raid bombing over London. This is, most welcomingly, the first time The Return of the Vampire has been issued in the U.S. on Blu-ray. The title was previously issued by
Columbia/Tri-Star on a DVD release of 2002.
The set’s eighth and final film Five (1951) is the odd man out here, a thoughtful if dystopian film,
courtesy of writer-director-producer Arch Oboler of Lights Out radio fame. A
nuclear bomb blast has wiped out all of the world’s population, save for five
souls who wander and ponder moralities, politics and the future’s gloomy future
prospects. It might have been best to
include Five on Mill Creek’s sister
set to this Thriller release, Sci-Fi from the Vault.
In truth, my first reaction when scanning this set’s
packaging was wonderment why a 1950’s film such as Five was included in this set of 1940s horror-mystery programmers? There are several 1940’s pictures from the Columbia
vault that would have better fit this Thriller
set thematically and chronologically: Will
Jason’s Soul of the Monster (1944)
and Henry Levin’s Cry of the Werewolf
(1944), for starters. The former title
was issued as a Columbia Classics made-on-demand DVD in 2011. To my knowledge, the only official release of
the latter was on a Goodtime VHS tape – issued way back in 1989 – it’s well
past due for a digital re-freshening.
So what’s the verdict? The films look great for their age, with minor speckling and scratches
here and there, but nothing too distracting. It’s a mixed bag if we’re to contrast this Mill Creek U.S. issue with Eureka’s
UK handsome Blu-ray set Karloff at Columbia. If you’re a US fan without a multi-region Blu
ray player than the Mill Creek set should more than satisfy. There are more than a handful of worthy extras
on the Mill Creek set. The primary bonus
is the forty-minute long doc Madness and
Mayhem: Columbia Horror in the ‘30s and ‘40s which features historian C.
Courtney Joyner discussing the studio’s involvement in the horror trade.
Five of the eight films on the Mill Creek feature audio
commentaries: Dr. Steve Haberman (The
Black Room), C. Courtney Joyner and Heath Holland (The Man They Could Not Hang), Tom Weaver (The Devil Commands and Five),
the Monster Party Podcast group (The
Boogie Man Will Get You) and Larry Blamire (Five.) And, of course, the
Mill Creek set gives you the added bonus of two extra features. On the downside, the four Mill Creek discs share
space on two spindles – on my copy the discs frequently dislodge. This will surely not make fussier collectors
happy.
If you are a particularly devoted fan with region-free
Blu-ray capabilities, Eureka’s Karloff at
Columbia (a limited edition of 3000 copies) might still be considered for
your collection as the six films featured on that set comes with fresh
commentaries separate of those found on this Mill Creek set. The Eureka release also contains an
informative booklet featuring the musings of author Stephen Jacobs (Boris Karloff: More than a Monster),
film critic Jon Towlson and film scholar and University lecturer Craig Ian
Mann. Eureka also includes audio of
four Inner Sanctum radio broadcast
programs (1945-1952), all featuring Karloff. So, as Karloff the sinister might say, it’s upon you to “choose your
poison.”
Click here to order from Amazon