The Man with Nine Lives is a 1940 American horror science fiction film directed by Nick Grinde and starring Boris Karloff.
Missing for ten years, Dr Leon Kravaal has been found. Frozen solid in a block of ice, Kravaal was conducting forbidden experiments in human cryogenics when he became trapped within his own freezer. Thawed out by Tim Morgan and Judy Blair, Kravaal vows to continue his research, using his enemies as guinea pigs.
Tropes:
- Cobweb Jungle: When Tim and Judy enter Dr. Kravaal's abandoned laboratory, they find it covered in cobwebs.
- Cure for Cancer: Dr. Mason's freezing therapy is being touted as potential cure for cancer. When the hospital forces a temporary halt to his experiments, he goes in search of the lost notes of Dr. Kravaal—the doctor who pioneered the therapy—in hopes of finding the missing component to guarantee success.
- Deadly Gas: Kravaal mixes a beaker of deadly gas that he uses to try and hold the officials hostage. One of them knocks the flask from his hand, resulting in them all inhaling it. They stumble into the freezing chamber, and become Locked in a Freezer. By a staggering coincidence, the gas they inhaled turns out to be the solution needed to turn them into Human Popsicles.
- Human Popsicle: Dr. Leon Kravaal develops a potential cure for cancer, which involves freezing the patient. But an experiment goes awry when authorities believe Kravaal has killed a patient. Kravaal freezes the officials, but accidentally freezes himself along with them. When thawed out years later, he and the others are alive and healthy.
- Improbable Antidote: Kravaal mixes a beaker of Deadly Gas that he uses to try and hold the officials hostage. One of them knocks the flask from his hand, resulting in them all inhaling it. They stumble into the freezing chamber, and become Locked in a Freezer. By a staggering coincidence, the gas they inhaled turns out to be the solution needed to turn them into Human Popsicles.
- Life's Work Ruined: After being revived from being a Human Popsicle, Dr. Kravaal discovers that the gas he and the others had inhaled before being frozen allowed them to survive, and is the key to making the freezing therapy he has devoted to his life to developing actually work. One of the others, angry at having his life stolen away from him, grabs the paper containing the formula for the gas, rips it up and tosses it into the fire. In anger, Kravaal shoots him and then resolves to use the other survivors as guinea pigs until he rediscovers the formula.
- Locked in a Freezer: Dr. Kravaal attempts to dispose of the officials interfering with his work by locking them in the freezing chamber. However, he accidentally gets locked in himself, resulting in all of them becoming Human Popsicles.
- Luck-Based Search Technique: Tim and Judy discovers Dr. Kravaal's hidden laboratory when the rotten floor in the main house collapses under Judy's feet; dropping her into the cellar.
- Mad Doctor: Dr. Leon Kravaal is single-mindedly devoted to perfecting his freezing therapy, which he believes will be a Cure for Cancer. His dedication ultimately transforms into obsession, and he starts using his enemies as human guinea pigs for his experiments.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Both this film 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.
- Shoot Out the Lock: After Dr. Kravaal locks Tim and the police who have arrived to rescue him in the lab storeroom, one of the police shoots out the lock. Another officer then shoots out the axe handle Kravaal has used to bar the door to the freezing chamber where he has holed up with Judy.
- Slipping a Mickey: Dr. Kravaal drugs the soup Judy serves the thawed Human Popsicles to knock them out so he can use them as guinea pigs for his experiments.
- Spinning Paper: Opens with a series of papers proclaiming Dr. Mason's freezing therapy as a potential Cure for Cancer.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Dr. Kravaal drugs the soup Judy serves the thawed Human Popsicles to knock them out so he can use them as guinea pigs for his experiments.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Kravaal's intention of finding a cure for cancer is certainly noble, but when he imprisons his enemies and starts uses them as guinea pigs for his experiments, he definitely crosses some kind of line.
