The Boys in the Black Room

 The Black Room / The Man They Couldn't Hang (1935) is another of those great Karloff double-bills. Maybe not the best of them but pretty great. 

The Black Room takes place in ye olde times. A baby is born to the Count, which is cause for great jubilation. But wait! It's twins, cause for great lamentation. For as Sir Exposition tells us, the first Count was killed by his younger twin, in the Black Room. And the family motto is, "As it begins, so shall it end".

Also, the younger has a paralyzed arm. 

So the twins grow up to both be Boris Karloff. The elder becomes Count. He is a slimy, sloppy, lustful, and all around creepy guy. The younger is a lovely man - he leaves for the big city (Prague) because he makes the Count nervous. But he comes back when the Count calls for him. You see, he's so unpopular that the peasants are trying to kill him daily. All he wants to do is letch on the women of the town, especially the daughter of the mayor, Marian Marsh (Trilby). When young Karloff meets her he can see why (because she plays the harp).

The Count's plan is simple: He will abdicate and let his brother take over - everyone loves him. He assure him that he holds no ill will - look, he's had the Black Room bricked up. He just wants to show him one thing first. Around the back, and through a secret door in the fireplace, it's - the secret entrance to the Black Room. Which contains a pit full of the bodies the Count has killed. So he stabs young Karloff and throws him down to die. Then he just has to fake a paralyzed arm, and bang - he's now the good brother.

If one Karloff is good, two must be better, right? Especially when he has a chance to play such opposites - the sunny younger twin and evil older. He even gets a Great Dane - possibly one of his own, since he kept Great Danes in real life. Maybe his best acting role ever.

The Man They Couldn't Hang isn't as great, and also resembles a few other movies, like Before I Hang or The Man with Nine Lives. Karloff as Dr. Savaard (great name) plans to halt the life processes of (kill) a volunteer, then keep him alive with an external artificial heart, and revive him. The volunteers girlfriend, however, calls the police and they prevent him from reviving him. He is arrested, tried for murder, and hanged.

But his daughter, Lorna Gray, takes the body, and his assistant uses the heart machine. They fix up his neck while he is dead, which is a big labor saver. Then they revive him. And the members of the jury that convicted him start dying. And the ones left alive are all invited to a party...

It's a bit of a mess, but still fun.