Rainey Dawn
The film is slow, ice cream melts faster that this film goes. I like some slower films but this one is too slow. I also like movies that put people on, or rather, in ice - frozen. The Man with Nine Lives (1940) with Boris Karloff is an example of a film I think is good concerning someone being frozen (or in a form of cryogenics).It's just like the plot reads: A man is working in a form of cryogenics, a state of suspended animation and decides he needs to test it. Just before he is frozen, his wife is killed and he is suspected of murdering her. - The film holds true to this description.It's nothing special, just a simple low grade B film that needed some spicing up and a little more speeding up to make it more interesting to me.2/10
henri sauvage
There's a Monty Python sketch called "The Adventures of Ralph Mellish", in which the mind-numbingly ordinary routine of a file clerk's morning commute is paired with feverishly dramatic narration and an ominous score. But the joke is that despite all the build-ups, nothing exciting happens to Mr. Mellish: By the side of the road, there's no dismembered trunk of a man in his late 50s ... no head in a bag ... nothing ... ("not a sausage", as our wacky friends across the water put it).It was a hilarious premise for a short comedy skit, but for this excruciatingly dreary 75-minute-long West German import (one hesitates to call it a "drama") it blows economy-size chunks.Dr. Frank Overton and colleague Dr. Helen Wieland have just been awarded a prize for their successful experiments in suspended animation via cryogenic freezing, using chimps as subjects. They believe the process is ready to be tested on humans, but the higher-ups are reluctant.Dr. Overton's wife Joan feels neglected because her husband's been working those long hours at the lab. The fact that he's spending them with hottie Dr. Helen (and that she can see Helen has a major crush on oblivious Dr. Frank) doesn't help, either.So Joan has taken to drowning her sorrows in drink, while stepping out with her old flame, journalist Tony Stein. "Aha!" you say: "Jealous lover murders her in a fit of passion, then tries to pin it on the scientist." No such luck. Joan finds an old Colt .45 pistol while drunkenly rummaging through a desk in Tony's flat. Tony tells her to leave it alone: it's an unregistered firearm. He could get in big trouble as well as embarrass his uncle (who's some kind of high muckity-muck in the department) if the police found out about it. When Tony -- who's just been given a tight deadline for an article -- finally gets fed up with her and kicks her out so he can get to work, Joan sneaks the pistol out in her handbag.She then staggers over to the lab for a shrieking showdown with Helen (although she doesn't quite work herself up to pulling the gun on her rival). Frank manages to calm Joan down, and takes her home. When Helen -- in what's either a stunningly clueless or a nastily passive-aggressive move -- calls up Frank to reassure him that Joan's embarrassing scene is all forgotten now, Joan finds out who's on the phone and flies into another jealous, hysterical rage. She threatens to kill herself with Tony's pistol.Over the phone, Helen hears Frank order his wife to give him the gun, then she hears a shot, and a scream. After a moment, Frank returns to the phone, tells Helen everything's OK now, and hangs up.So did Joan really kill herself, or did Frank shoot her by accident (or accidentally on purpose) while trying to take the gun away? Will we wait til Act Three to find out what actually happened? Not in this film, buster! We quickly learn that Joan's OK: Frank took the gun away from her, while she was still in shock over having just missed accidentally shooting herself. (She thought it wasn't loaded.) Frank removes the ammo clip, sees it's empty, replaces it and tells Joan the gun's "safe" now. Oddly, Dr. Frank is familiar enough with semi-automatic pistols to know how to eject the clip, but he neglects to check if there's a bullet left in the chamber (there is) or even ensure that the safety's on (it isn't). After a tearful reconciliation with Joan, Frank decides to return to the lab and take the experiment to its final stage, by freezing himself for the weekend. He promises Joan that after he's revived, they'll go off on a second honeymoon.Meanwhile, Tony's missed his pistol and comes looking for it, shortly after Frank leaves. Joan tells him their affair is over; she's going away with Frank. Then she finally manages to fatally shoot herself, once again by accident. (Ok, I'll admit that's tragic irony, in a sort of Darwin Award-ish way. Or maybe this was intended as slapstick humor, from the country which gave the world Dachau and Buchenwald.)Tony panics and bugs out without notifying the police. Meanwhile, back at the lab, unsuspecting Frank has himself quick-frozen. (FOR SCIENCE!!!)The next day, after the maid discovers Joan's body, the police show up at the lab with some very pressing questions. Especially after Helen reluctantly informs them of that incriminating little phone conversation with Frank.So, is our hero going to escape once he's defrosted, and prove his innocence while eluding the police, a la "The Fugitive"? Look, this film is only 75 minutes long, and the majority of these have already been chewed up by this irrepressibly drab and awful plot. While Frank's being revived, Tony's guilty conscience prompts him to call up the police and tell them the truth. So Frank's suspected of murder for considerably less than ten minutes of screen time, and cleared of it even before he's been thawed out.Hitchcock could have learned a thing or two from this director.There's a tiny morsel of something suspense-like embedded in the final moments of this dog, as Frank apparently got freezer burn (or something) and it takes a bit of a struggle to revive him. Unfortunately, by this point the viewer's interest is definitely DOA.There. In just a few minutes (unless you're a very slow reader) I've saved you from a fate far worse: squandering an irreplaceable hour and fifteen minutes of your life on this anti-thriller.
Hitchcoc
As someone already said, this is a silly melodrama. It's more about a triangle with two scientists and the drunken wife of one of them. The fact that they are performing experiments in suspended animation using low temperatures is really not an issue. It is secondary to the efforts of the man to continue to live with this unstable women. At least her character is pretty believable. She is pathetic and unpredictable. The man is more than patient. The subplot has to do with the determination to perform these experiments on human subjects, which is met with resistance by the head of the lab. Even that is poorly portrayed and uninteresting.
classicsoncall
"Frozen Alive" plays it straight throughout it's eighty minute running time, and that might be it's biggest downside. With no pseudo scientific jargon to camp it up and little in the way of action, the film offers an early look at the field of cryogenics with a slight detour into a murder mystery.Dr. Frank Overton (Mark Stevens) and his assistant Dr. Helen Wieland (Marianne Koch) are about to make a significant breakthrough in their research after chimpanzees frozen to eighty below zero are revived unharmed after three months. The next step is to find a human volunteer to undergo the same deep freeze treatment and prove that medical science can benefit from the process. However Overton's wife Joan (Delphi Lawrence) is extremely jealous of her husband's lab time with Helen, and seeks comfort from former flame Tony (Joachim Hansen) and refuge in a bottle. Giving new meaning to the term soused, Joan shoots herself in Tony's apartment and makes her husband a widower. He doesn't know it yet, because he's advanced the cause of science by becoming a guinea pig for his own experiment.Everything just described occurs in a rather monotone and understated fashion, and without even the help of a musical score to emphasize the high points, the film fails to deliver. The detectives who arrive at the lab wishing to interrogate Overton as a suspect in his wife's death seem virtually uninterested in the fact that he's a human popsicle. Keeping her own feelings for Overton in check, Dr. Wieland almost pulls the plug on him by botching the revival, while colleagues just stand around performing her instructions. At least the rhythm of Overton's heartbeat keep things suspenseful until it's learned that Mrs. O's gunshot wound was self inflicted.This film offered the hope of much more in the way of mystery and thrills but comes up short in both departments. As far as a recommendation, I would advise to keep this one on ice until you've exhausted the rest of your movie library.
