The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 7, 2021

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as a part of Karloff at Columbia.

Boris Karloff has one of the more amazing filmographies in the annals of show business history, with the IMDb listing over 200 (!) acting credits for the venerable performer. One of the kind of interesting if at times kind of weirdly unstated aspects of that success is the fact that Karloff managed his career in at least some of the 1930s and 1940s without the traditional “seven year contract” that was regularly doled by the major Hollywood studios in the Golden Age of filmmaking. In fact, many online biographies of Karloff don’t even mention any contracts, though the fact that a 1931 contract Karloff signed with Universal fetched over eleven thousand dollars in an auction is certainly more than enough evidence that (of course) some kind of contract was signed for various appearances. That said, Karloff at Columbia provides clear separate evidence that Karloff, unlike many other major stars of that same general period, was never officially tied down to one particular studio (many film fans almost automatically associate Karloff with Universal during this period), at least for any extended period of time. The fact that Karloff was also a guiding light behind the then nascent Screen Actors Guild may give credence to the hunch that Karloff was eerily prescient in being able to see that a studio’s contractual “hold” over a performer was something to be avoided, not chased, in an awareness that arguably came years before such heavyweights (and, notably, women) as Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis started actual legal proceedings to chip away at the “seven year indentured servitude” that studios often required of their stars. Eureka Entertainment has now assembled six of Karloff's Columbia features made between 1935 and 1942 (the same period when Karloff was also appearing in films bearing the studio imprimaturs of everyone from Universal to Monogram to RKO) in an appealing set that may not include any outright masterpieces, but which show quite clearly just how versatile an actor Karloff was.

As the enjoyable commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman gets into, The Man They Could Not Hang was just the first of several Columbia features starring Karloff that have subsequently become known as The Mad Doctor Cycle or Series. Luckily, Eureka includes the others in this group in this very release, with The Man with Nine Lives , Before I Hang, The Devil Commands and (the somewhat satiric) The Boogie Man Will Get You all displaying some of the same plot motifs and even touches of characterization by Karloff. Here he's a kindly modern Dr. Frankenstein named Henryk Savaard who is sentenced to death when his "back from the dead" experiments are interrupted and a volunteer "victim" doesn't "return". Of course Savaard is himself resurrected and begins taking revenge on those who have wronged him. Kind of interestingly part of this film's conceit is a "newfangled" invention by Savaard that is rather like the artificial heart that was pioneered at my alma mater the University of Utah.

The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Man They Could Not Hang is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Overall this is at least a marginal step down from the relatively secure transfer The Black Room received, with a more noticeably worn element than with regard to the first film in the set, something that's obvious from the get go with the recurrent white flecks that show up during the credits sequence (and well beyond). But the oddest thing I encountered was a really peculiar stuttering issue which afflicted the first few minutes on two different occasions when I started watching the film. The first time it abated after a little while, but what I discovered the second time is that simply hitting the rewind button and then moving forward again alleviated it. It's a very strange anomaly and one I'm not sure I've ever encountered before. Moving beyond that issue, this has a somewhat more "dupey" look generally, with a more mottled, rough looking grain field and a slight but noticeable downturn in detail levels. Brightness and contrast tend to fluctuate at times (compare screenshot 7 with some other screenshots of interior scenes for an example).

The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Man They Could Not Hang features an LPCM 2.0 Mono track that has a bit of background hiss and crackle at the opening, but which otherwise offers a decent enough accounting of dialogue, effects and score. There's a slightly boxy sound to the music in particular, but the rest of the track sounds reasonably full bodied. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman


• Stills Gallery: Production Stills (HD)


• Stills Gallery: Artwork and Ephemera (HD)

The Man They Could Not Hang Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously, while it's the first of Columbia's so-called Mad Doctor Series with Karloff, in some ways it can feel like the most derivative. Still, this film is the one that undeniably introduced a whole host of plot elements which Columbia would continue to recycle in various ways in the subsequent Mad Doctor films. Video has some hurdles but audio is relatively fine, and the commentary is very enjoyable, for those who are considering a purchase.