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The Man with Nine Lives (film)

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The Man with Nine Lives
Film poster
Directed byNick Grinde
Screenplay byKarl Brown
Story byHarold Shumate
StarringBoris Karloff
CinematographyBenjamin H. Kline
(as Benjamin Kline)
Edited byAl Clark
Production
company
Columbia Pictures
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • April 18, 1940 (1940-04-18)
Running time
74 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Man with Nine Lives is a 1940 American horror science fiction film directed by Nick Grinde and starring Boris Karloff.[1]

Both The Man with Nine Lives and The Man They Could Not Hang were based in part on the real-life saga of Dr. Robert Cornish, a University of California professor who, in 1934, announced that he had restored life to a dog named Lazarus, which he had put to death by clinical means. The resulting publicity (including a Time magazine article and motion picture footage of the allegedly re-animated canine) led to Cornish being booted off campus.[2]

Plot

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Dr. Tim Mason (Roger Pryor), a medical researcher experimenting in "frozen therapy" visits the deserted home of Dr. Leon Kravaal (Boris Karloff), the originator of the therapy, who has been missing for ten years. After discovering a secret passage in the basement, Dr. Mason and his nurse (Jo Ann Sayers) discover Kravaal frozen in an ice chambers. The doctor and nurse successfully revive Kravaal and Kravaal explains in flashback how he and five other men came to be frozen ten years earlier. One man is found dead. However, the other four men are located and revived. Because of closed-minded prejudice against science, one of the four men destroys Kravaal's formula for "frozen therapy." In an act of rage and self preservation, Kravaal isn't able to stop the man in time from destroying it and shoots and kills him. Not having memorized the formula as of yet, Kravaal holds everyone captive in order to use them as guinea pigs, hoping to unlock the key to "frozen therapy" for a second time.

Cast

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Stephen Jacobs, Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster, Tomahawk Press 2011 p 258-259
  2. ^ "The Man with Nine Lives (1940)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  3. ^ "Minta Durfee Filmography". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on October 19, 2015. Retrieved March 13, 2020.
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