Zeus

The Man With Nine Lives (1940)

• Director
  • Nick Grinde
• Writers
  • Karl Brown
  • Harold Shumate
• Stars
  • Boris Karloff
  • Roger Pryor
  • Jo Ann Sayers

  Man with Nine Lives (released in England as Behind the Door) is the second of Columbia's unofficial "Mad Doctor" series starring Boris Karloff. This time, Boris is obsessed with the notion that he can come up with a cure for cancer. To do this, it is necessary for Karloff to freeze his patients, then use a revolutionary new serum on the bodies while they're in a state of suspended animation. Alas, Karloff is accidentally locked up with his deep-frozen subjects. When thawed out years later, he and the patients are alive and healthy. But when Karloff learns that his formula has been destroyed, he lapses into lunacy and uses his storage-locker comrades as unwilling guinea pigs in an effort to recreate the serum. Man with Nine Lives can be considered a real (ouch!) chiller.