Touches You

Great Film overall

Crappy film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

First of Columbia's "mad doctor" series for Karloff, this is a well produced and engaging melodrama. It's a nice role for Boris, who by this time was gravitating to the mad scientist role rather than the monster created by them! Here he is a little of both, and he shines in both modes.Karloff plays Dr. Henryk Savaard, experimenter with mechanical hearts (shades of 1936's The Walking Dead). Interrupted in the middle of restoring life to a willing human subject (as Lionel Atwill was in The Mad Doctor of Market Street a couple of years' later) he walks to the noose and of course is soon resusitated by his assistant, embarking on a mad scheme of revenge against those who sent him to the gallows.In truth the movie loses its way a little with the And Then There Were None style wrap up, especially during the abrupt climax where he destroys his mechnical heart after saving his daughter. But overall this is still a watchable and engaging horror pic.

The film concerns Dr. Henryk Savaard, a man who has found a method of bringing the dead back to life by means of a mechanical heart. When he tries the method on a human subject, a medical student who volunteered, the police interfere and he is sentenced to death as they would not allow him the chance to revive his patient. Savaard however donates his body to science, more specifically, his assistant Lang who he trusted to do the try the experiment on himself. Lang revives Savaard and Savaard then turns to revenge, revenge on the people who put him to death in the first place.Karloff is masterful here, in what I think could be, or at least one of, his finest performances. He portrays Savaard as a man who loves his craft, a man who wants to help people and see's his method of eternal life as a gift that could make mankind better and stronger than it ever was. However , Karloff also portrays a different Savaard, a man who now see's mankind as undeserving of his gift and intends to take his secret of eternal life to his grave.The films first portion is much like Courtroom-Drama and includes one of Karloff's most well delivered monologues. First of helping people and trying to make the Jury understand why he did what he did, and then threatening and promising revenge on all the people who put him to death. The second portion is a revenge-thriller where Savaard traps all the remaining people he hasn't killed already in his house. Karloff's performance here is amazing, he says he is above the law, he says they are all going to die, in what order and what time exactly. The film is really tense after that and you start to wonder how could he possibly kill off these people in an exact order and at a specific time, well he does do it and it does get quite creative but sadly, only 2 people are killed before things get complicated. Thats my only real complaint with the film, I would have liked to have seen 1 or 2 more creative deaths before the final.Overall, The Man They Could Not Hang was a fantastic film for Karloff, who portrayed one of his most interesting characters and gave a performance to be remembered.

It isn't such a bad movie. It's just how many times does Boris Karloff get the same script. He is hanged or electrocuted or done in in some way and someone manages to bring him back. Of course, he's not the man he used to be. In this one, his work is compromised, costing a young assistant his life, due to a panic stricken girl. When his partner brings him back, he decides to kill the jury, the judge, the prosecuting attorney. It's a sort of "And Then There Were None" thing but doesn't work as well as the Rene Clair film. The device invented looks silly but is a precursor to an artificial heart. The science is bad but the idea is ahead of its time. There is a great courtroom speech that is hard to deny, but they hang him anyway. Still, I love this guy and am impressed by his acting. It's too bad he got himself typecast so badly. He did have some very nice dramatic roles, but most of it was this kind of thing. See it anyway.

The Man They Couldn't Hang: 6 out of 10: The title is a bit of a misnomer after all they do hang him (and break his neck in the process) he just doesn't stay dead. I figure a man they couldn't hang would be morbidly obese or have a thick neck or something.The movie has Karloff as a mad scientist experimenting with his artificial heart gizmo (That is a dead ringer for a modern dialysis machine) and when the experiment goes wrong he is sentenced to death. (Karloff's characters really need better lawyers he is always getting a capital sentence for what is basically accidental manslaughter) The doctor now mad seeks revenge on the jury that convicted him by inviting them to his house and trying to kill them off one by one. The movie really gets good at this point but it ends much too soon. Another half an hour in the house with various traps would have done wonders.Foreshadowing both modern medical technology and House on Haunted Hill, The Man They Couldn't Hang is a good movie with a disappointingly truncated ending.