ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

mark.waltz This is one of the silliest of Karloff's mad doctor programmers, and one that is loaded with a ton of opportunity for ridicule. How about the Ice Mad Man Cometh, or For Your Ice Only, and if you're in the mood for the obscure, I Only Have an Ice Room for You. This is an insipid unintentional comedy where after being thawed out of his own ice castle, Karloff takes desperate measures to assure that his next experiment will succeed.It begins when scientist Roger Pryor and nurse Jo Ann Sayers decide to visit ice recovery expert to get Hus help on their own experimentation and find him locked in his own chamber. Telling them of how he was accused of killing a patient during an experiment, he later froze the men who interfered. Defrosting them like chicken, he finds that they are still not ready to allow his experiment to go forward. This leads to more mayhem as Karloff remains calm but gets loonier and loonier.While this ain't quite Arsenic and Old Ice, it's actually quite funny in the way it takes itself way too seriously. A lame script and cheesy sets puts this on par with the schlock horror films that PRC and Monogram were putting out. At least with those, you knew what you were getting into. Watching this makes me wonder if the alleged freezing of Walt Disney was influenced by this.

moonspinner55 A doctor spearheading the development of killing cancerous cells in the human body by freezing them without damaging tissue and vital organs seeks out the radical, hermit-like scientist he originally took his cue from. They eventually find each other...but first the scientist must be thawed out and revitalized after unintentionally locking himself and a group of medical and legal naysayers in his ice chamber for ten years! Rather stiff co-feature from Columbia does pass muster visually despite a low-budget--and it certainly benefits from Boris Karloff's impassioned portrayal of a determined man willing to kill to prove his scientific theories correct. There's a female nurse (and fiancée to the doctor!) on hand to make coffee and soup and scream on cue. Other ideas are bogged down by talk of formulas and equations, though the central concept is a good one. While it fails to translate into the tense thriller it was obviously supposed to be, Karloff's performance rises above the handling and makes the picture worth seeing. ** from ****

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Boris Karloff playing a somewhat sympathetic mad doctor, Dr. Leon Kravaal, in this movie still has to pay the ultimate price for his transgressions. Even though in the end his experiments will save the lives of countless terminally ill patients from such horrible and incurable diseases like cancer and muscular scoliosis just to name a few.Having discovered a cure for almost, if not all, every terminal diseases by freezing the person afflicted and then having the cold destroy the infected cells was something that medical science, as well as his colleagues, refused to recognize. They all made Dr. Karvaal into nothing but a fool and charlatan who was just out for the money and publicity. Having disappeared from sight some ten years ago with only his writings, in a little black book, being found at his home on a place called Crater Island. This has Dr. Tim Mason, Roger Pryor, so impressed by what he sees in Dr. Kravaal's book that he continues his experiments with astounding success. But still Dr. Mason needs to have the missing doctor to help him in getting his frozen patients to be successfully defrosted. That in order to make his, and Dr. Kravaal's experiments, a complete success that would be recognized and accepted by the entire medical community.Traveling out to Crater Island with his nurse and fiancée Judy Blair, Jo Ann Sayers, Dr. Mason finds inside the old Kravaal home in a freezer Dr. Kravaal himself frozen stiff after being locked in the freezer for some ten years. Amazingly as Dr. Kravell defrosts he comes back to life! After getting his bearing to being dead, or frozen, for ten years Dr. Kravaal recounts what exactly happened to him. Even more fantastic what happened to the four persons Dr. Bassett, Byron Fougler, Bob Adams, Stanly Brown, D.A John Hawthorne, John Dilson, & Sheriff Stanton, Wally Wales, who were frozen stiff along with him! The four are in the next room, an adjacent, freezer, still alive like himself and waiting to be thawed out.As usual geniuses like Dr. Kravaal are always misunderstood and treated like insane madmen in movies like this. That causes the good doctor to go wacko and end up killing those, Dr. Bassett Roger Adams D.A Hawthorne & Sheriff Stanton, whom his experiments actually not only saved but proved his point. In freezing the death out of people who are on the brink of death which they all were some ten years ago. Young Roger Adams was the most greedy and ridicules of all those whom Dr. Kravaal offed or did in. Roger grabs his formula, that he wrote on a piece of paper, that would keep people alive while frozen and threw it into the fireplace! It then where an enraged Dr. Kravall shot and killed him. Why did Roger do such an insane thing? Because he was now officially dead after being missing for over seven years and not entitle to his uncle Joseph, who's corpse in in the film was played by Lee Willard, millions that he left for him. The ironic part about all this is that Joseph was a patient of Dr. Kravaal who died because of people like Roger who wouldn't let him treat Joseph because they said that he, Dr. Kravall was nuts.It's sad to see that Dr. Kravaal getting shot to death by either the state troopers or Canadian Mounties, it's hard to tell which, at the end of the movie. But he never the less did save Judy, whom Dr. Kravall put into suspended animation, from certain death by freezing her and then bringing her back to life just before him himself expired by having re-discovered the secret formula just before the movie ended when he was killed. In the end Dr. Kravaal in discovering a cure for tens of thousands of person who without it would face certain and agonizing death had been more vindicate for whatever bad that he did in the movie.

MartinHafer It's not exactly a major shock that Boris Karloff plays a mad scientist in this film, though it is very unusual the way he plays this role. Instead of the evil twisted genius set on making monsters or ruling the world, Karloff's goals are incredibly noble. And, when he later kills, you really understand with and could possibly condone why he did this. The moral implications of the film are astounding! As for the rest of the film, the writing for this sort of B-movie is very good, the acting fine and production values work out well (proving you don't need a huge budget to make a good film). About the only negatives at all are the ending (I would have just ended the film a minute or two earlier without the unnecessary final scene) and a mistake in the film about how deep the lab was under the earth. In the beginning, they count 191 steps to the bottom of the shaft to the lab, but later, it's just a homemade ladder about 12 feet long. Regardless, it didn't harm the film in any serious way and the film is a very good 'mad scientist' flick that actually is good entertainment and well thought-out.