The Man They Could Not Hang is a 1939 American horror film directed by Nick Grinde and starring Boris Karloff.
Dr. Henryk Savaard is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. Bob Roberts, a young medical student, volunteers himself to be temporarily killed in order to test an artificial heart developed by Savaard. This experiment goes awry when his nurse Betty sends for the police. The experiment is interrupted leaving the young man dead and Savaard in jail. He is sentenced to hang, but unleashes a bitter diatribe against his executioners promising to avenge his death. After the hanging, his assistant Lang claims the corpse and uses Savaard's technique to bring the doctor back to life. Reanimated, Savaard turns decidedly nasty and sets about murdering the jury that convicted him, along with Betty, Judge Bowman, District Attorney Drake, Police Lieutenant Shane, and police surgeon Dr. Stoddard.
The tropes they could not hang:
- Ear Ache: Kearney, the jury foreman, is murdered when the telephone receiver fires a poison dart into his ear.
- Exploding Calendar: Used to show the passage of months as Savaard heals, gains strength and begins his string of murders.
- Gotta Kill Them All: After being brought back from the dead, Dr. Savaard sets out to murder the jury who convicted him, the detective who arrested him, the district attorney who prosecuted him, the judge who sentenced him to death, and the nurse who betrayed him.
- High-Voltage Death: Judge Bowman dies when he grasps the electrified grille Savaard has used to seal off the dining room.
- Intrepid Reporter: 'Scoop' Foley. He is johnny-on-the-spot when Dr. Savaard is arrested for murder, arriving at his house even before the police arrive; is the first to work out that someone is murdering the jurors from Savaard's trial; and even forces his way into the Nasty Party where Savaard is planning to eliminate the remaining people he feels wronged him.
- The Man They Couldn't Hang: After his hanging, Savaard's assistant Lang hooks up the corpse to the heart pump and resurrects his boss. Though he sustained a broken neck from the hanging, Lang was able to surgically repair it, an effort that Lang notes would have been unfeasible had Savaard been alive.
- Nasty Party: Dr. Savaard invites the surviving members of the jury who convicted him, along with the others he blames for his execution, to his mansion. The place cards for their dinner places list the order in which they will die, and the exact time it will occur.
- Never Suicide: Over the month following Savaard's execution, six of the jurors from his trial are found hanged in apparent suicides, a commonality noticed by reporter 'Scoop' Foley.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Both this film and The Man with Nine Lives 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.
- Spinning Newspaper: Used to show Savaard's progress from the trial to the gallows.
