The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936)

Very Cool!!!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

As Good As It Gets

A Disappointing Continuation

Boris Karloff, three years after making The Ghoul, returned to England to make this intelligent and interesting horror/sci-fi chiller. The sci-fi is very much to the fore (probably to placate the notoriously sensitve British Film Censor), as Karloff's Dr. Laurience experiments with mind-exchange.Karloff chain-smokes throughout, which actually leads to a clever plot reveal towards the end. Ridiculed by his peers, he seeks revenge in spectacular fashion. In a way the movie is a precursor to Karloff's mad doctor parts of the late thirties and early forties. Anna Lee also features, and was to later star with Karloff in Val Lewton's Bedlam (1946).A stylish piece, suprisingly glamorous-looking for a British studio from this era, and well worth a watch.

Live forever! Thanks to the experiments of scientist Boris Karloff, the minds of living creatures can be changed. It worked on chimpanzees, and Karloff longs to make it work on humans. But somewhere along the line, his methods leads to his madness, and he uses it for revenge...and for obsession. Pretty assistant Anna Lee has a great deal of respect for him (at first), until he goes off on a room full of scientists, indicating that he is mad. We get that through the clever use of special effects, and this leads to twists and turns that makes this film extremely powerful.Karloff's character is pretty much the same as he has been in many films, most obviously "The Man They Could Not Hang" and "Before I Hang". The difference between the three films, as far as this one is concern, is the quality of the script and the ways that it makes you think about eternal youth. The moral questions that came into my head we're certainly very strong, and it is one that will make me highly recommend this to classic film fans who may never heard of it. As for Lee, it was one of two films in which she co-starred with Karloff, the other being the Val Lewton cult classic, "Bedlam". A fantastic supporting cast and some truly magnificent dramatic and suspenseful moments makes me praise this all the more.

"There's always something queer about a genius," argues brainy and beautiful young doctor Anna Lee; she is leaving the medical establishment—and ditching her handsome boyfriend—to join exiled former colleague Boris Karloff, whose brilliant past work has been recently overshadowed by his pursuit of ideas and research just a little too weird. Brilliant and eccentric, yes; but is he mad? "I shall show you strange things about the mind of man," Karloff says. In his complex and visually impressive laboratory, he claims to have developed a process to take the "thought content" out of one brain and put it into another—basically, to switch brains. He tries it on two chimps…but would it work on humans? Lee and Karloff are both very good, especially in the wonderfully intense scenes in which they spar over the limits, the purpose, the morality of science. Each character derives strength, meets powerful resistance from the other; each actor seems to draw energy from the other's presence as well. The supporting cast includes John Loder as the boyfriend who would prefer that Lee stay in the city and marry him; he follows her out to the sticks and eventually manages to get mixed up in the plot. Not exactly the standard dashing rescuer—in fact, quite the opposite. A very exciting climax tops off this suspenseful and well-written thriller. A gorgeous and fully furnished mad scientist's laboratory, too!

This was a low-budget horror film with very modest pretensions. No one involved believed they were making "high art" and with a small budget and running at only 62 minutes, this is a definite B-picture. And in light of these factors, it's an amazingly effective and enjoyable film.Boris Karloff plays a mad scientist--this is certainly no great stretch. His research involves trying to switch the mind of one person with another--sort of like the plot that was often used in cartoons or cheesy comedies in the 60s. How exactly this was going to be a GOOD thing certainly wasn't a primary concern for th doctor, though later in the film, greed and an over-active libido push this strange doctor to make this switch with unwilling victims.So despite a pretty corny plot, why did I like this film? Well, the pacing was excellent but more importantly the film had wonderful dialog and was at times very 'tongue in cheek'. In particular, when Karloff's evil and physically twisted assistant changes bodies with the rich philanthropic newspaper owner, I found myself laughing repeatedly because the writers for the film deliberately injected some levity into the horror plot. You just have to see it to understand and appreciate this.