More accurately The Man They Could Indeed Hang But He Wouldn’t Stay Dead, but that would’ve been a noticeably less snappy title. This is part of a series of films Karloff made at Columbia from 1939-42 which has been called his “mad doctor series”… in this particular instance, he’s Dr Savaard, who’s experimenting with a mechanical heart device with which he proposes to save the dying from death. However, technically the experiment requires someone to die first, and when the police interrupt him during it, Savaard is tried for murder and ultimately executed for it. But his technology works, all right, and Savaard isn’t taking his death lying down. Once again the main attraction here is Karloff, who’s clearly enjoying the lead role; Savaard’s original intention is evidently benevolent, but his experience of dying has left him somewhat embittered, shall we say. As the second half of the film begins, though, something about the transition to the revenge part of the tale feels off somehow, as if some scenes should’ve been filmed but weren’t, making some things a bit abrupt and unprepared for. Still, apart from that, the whole thing is actually pulled off fairly well and with some style; I don’t know much about director Nick Grinde (who also directed the next two films in the series) other than what Wikipedia says about him specialising in B films, but he pulls off some well-chosen camera angles, gets pretty fair performances from the rest of the cast, and makes the whole thing fun to watch. And Everson did say of this series that he thought it did the opposite of what series like this usually do and actually got better as it went along, so I suppose we shall soon see if I agree with him or not…
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