The Man Who Could Cheat Death

Horror fans will be thrilled that this enjoyable but long-neglected film is finally available on DVD and blu-ray. Anticipation deserves an appropriate reward and Eureka have packaged this very nicely, complete with a collector's booklet which not only provides some attractive stills but which will help viewers get more out of the film. The same can be said of the interviews on the disc, though they shouldn't be watched until afterwards as they go into a lot of detail.

Each off these interviews looks at a different aspect of the film. Jonathan Rigby looks at its themes and heritage, the interesting ways that it knits together different ideas some of which have pre-cinema literary roots. Kim Newman, by contrast, reels off the kind of fluent and frequently tangential cross referencing that one can imagine Quentin Tarantino having made a career of had he not become a director. Pretty much no-one will watch this without learning something, though there are curious gaps - Newman muses, for instance, on whom Hammer might have cast had they ever filmed Dorian Gray, yet neglects to mention that Shane Briant, who appeared in Hammer's Straight On Till Morning and Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell, played Gray in a TV movie in 1972. Other information is spooled out so rapidly that you might want to take notes.

There are subtitles here for the deaf and hard of hearing, but nothing in other languages; however, viewers with weak English will find the plot easy enough to follow.