Boris Karloff is being brought back to life by a pioneering scientist as a great deal of odd equipment in the laboratory bubbles fluids or shoots bolts of electricity. Successful in the resuscitation, the scientist marvels, “It’s alive!”
But this isn’t Frankentein, and the scientist isn’t even of the mad variety, even if it he is resuscitating a corpse. In fact, it is Edmund Gwenn, best known as Santa in Miracle on 34th Street. And that line made so famous from the 1931 film is said here more in a kind quiet awe from a man who can’t believe such a thing was possible, and not a shriek of triumph from an egomaniac.
Karloff had been sent to the electric chair, framed for the murder of judge Joe King. He was an easy mark for the job, having been sent up by King before on what appears to have false, or at least trumped-up, charges. The meek Karloff is actually a pianist and is grateful for a job watching King’s house and taking notes at all hours. His acceptance of this assignment implies a naivete which beggars belief.
So, there’s Karloff painstakingly writing in his notebook how King never showed one night. At the same time, and unbeknownst to him, the judge’s corpse is being dumped in the back of his car by Ricardo Cortez and his cronies Robert Strange, Barton McLane and Paul Harvey. The judge was killed because he sent another associate of theirs (Kenneth Harlan) to prison. Some of the bad guys are worried Harlan will talk, which seems to me a good reason to have him whacked, but they instead decide to have King murdered.
Cortez is the attorney defending Karloff in court, to best ensure a conviction. As one guy in the audience of the courtroom says, “Looks to me like he’s trying to push the electric chair right under him.” Also, it seems to me the notebook Karloff had been keeping while on judge monitoring detail, which is something that helps convict him, should have been evidence he wouldn’t have committed the murder because it doesn’t make any sense he took painstaking notes that would serve no purpose except to incriminate himself.
Karloff has an interesting request for the warden on what was supposed to be his last night on the planet, and that is to have a fellow convict play on the cello a particular piece while he is walking that last mile. I like a bit where a guard starts picking on the cellist for taking so long to tune his instrument and the man insists this is necessary, that it is an honor to do so for a fellow musician. The end of the sequence is also touching, not showing us the electric chair, but to instead show us a kind of horrible awe in Karloff’s face as he is now ready to meet his maker, “He’ll believe me”.
He does seem to get some sort of assistance from the other side when Gwenn brings him back to the world of the living. At first, Karloff can only speak the occasional word. Gwenn is awfully persistent in asking questions about what the world beyond ours is like, but his patient has no recollection of his time between lives. In his first interview, Gwenn has District Attorney Henry O’Neill there for who knows what reason. At least, O’Neill asks Karloff if he has a grudge against him. Karloff says he doesn’t, so at least the D.A. won’t be an object of the undead man’s wrath.
Cortez and his lackeys won’t be so lucky. There are many ways this film deviates from expectations and that is Karloff does not do anything to directly cause anybody’s death. All he does is approach each victim, woefully asking them why they had him killed. Each man of whom he asks this question will die through a medical condition or an accident of their own doing.
None of the roles here are fully realized people with many nuances, yet the performances are still solid across the board. One minor character I especially liked is Eddie Acuff’s Betcha, so named because he is always making ridiculous bets. One should always bet against this comic relief guy.
At the risk of overselling it, I watched The Walking Dead only because it stars Karloff, but ended up finding more here to enjoy than I expected. That likely is because it was directed by Michael Curtiz. This is nowhere near the quality of Casablanca, but it shows what the director of that can do even with pictures that were probably largely for the paycheck and because he simply loved to make movies (178 feature films, eight of which after he was found to have a terminal cancer).
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Starring Boris Karloff, Richardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn
Watched on Warner Archive