Karloff is 'The Man Who Changed His Mind'

The Man Who Changed His Mind (aka "Body Switch", "Doctor Maniac", and "The Man Who Lived Again") (1936)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, John Loder, Donald Calthorp, and Frank Cellier
Director: Robert Stevenson
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Dr. Laurence (Karloff) devises a method to switch the intangible elements that makes up a being's mind from one body to another, but snaps when he is mocked by the scientific establishment and a rich newspaper publisher (Cellier) pulls his patronage for the doctor's research. He decides to use his method for his own gain, up to and including switching bodies with the son of his former patron (Loder) so he can marry the beautiful and intelligent Dr. Clare Wyatt (Lee).

"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is perhaps one of the most intense horror films from the 1930s that I've come across. From the first time Boris Karloff's chain-smoking mad scientist crosses paths with Anna Lee's brilliant and independent-minded surgeon, you know things are going to end badly for more than one of the film's characters. But even with that knowledge, you're not going to guess how badly and for whom until the story is all but done unfolding. Even after nearly 75 years, this is a horror film that countless modern-day filmmakers need to study and emulate' their films would be far better for it.

The film is driven by a tight, expertly paced script that presents just the right mixture of horror and humor to make both aspects as effective as possible, especially given that most of the humor is of a pitch-black variety. The cast is also excellent and everyone is perfect for their parts and talented enough to bring depth to even the thinnest of characters. Dr. Laurence's assistant Clayton could easily have been just an obnoxious and unpleasant jerk, but Donald Calthorp brings enough humanity to the role that the viewer had a little empathy for him. The same is true even of John Loder's character who belongs to that most loathsome of 1930s comic relief characters--the wise-cracking, corner-cutting reporter; the superior script and dialogue makes even that character type bearable, and the viewer will actually fear for him when he becomes a target of Laurence instead of cheering the villain onward to success just to shut him up.

But the film's coolest--and most chillingly unexpected-- scenes is the one where Dr. Wyatt takes on the mantle of "mad scientist". The lighting, editing, and superior acting talent of Anna Lee all add up to the character going to a dark place that few heroic characters go even in the nihilistic modern horror movies.

There is a hard coldness on her face and in her eyes that would have made even the mad Dr. Laurence shiver in fear, as she works switches and buttons on the mind-switching contraption. It's a performance that puts to shame even the one that I until now considered Lee's best--her turn as another strong-willed woman in Bedlam (review here, at the Boris Karloff Collection). It truly is one of the greatest moments in horror films, and I don't understand why more critics who fancy themselves experts in Great Cinema don't include it on their lists of "Top Fifty Horror Moments." Heck, it might even belong in the Top Ten!

"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is one of the many under-appreciated films from the early days of the horror genre. It is superior to a number of the more famous movies--including the ones from Universal that everyone has seen--and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to give it a try.

Scum and villainy flourish at the Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn (1939)
Starring: Maureen O'Hara, Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks, and Robert Newton
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When young Mary (O'Hara) comes to live with her relatives on the Cornwall coast, she soon discovers that not only is her uncle Joss (Banks) something of a dirty old man, but he's also the head of a gang of murderous cutthroats who are causing ships to run aground during storms, looting the wrecks, and murdering surviving crewmembers. After Mary saves one of the gang (Newton) from being hanged by the rest, the pair flee to the safety of the local Magistrate, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Laughton). Unfortuantely, Pengallan is a madman who is secretly behind the cutthroats!


"Jamaica Inn" is an excellent thriller set during the late 1700s. It features a great cast, with Maureen O'Hara as the feisty Mary and Leslie Banks as the menacing Joss Merlyn deserving particularly high praise.

The film is tense and moody throughout, and there are some excellent plot and character twists as the film unfolds, but there are couple of elements that keep it from being a truly great movie.

First, there's the bland hero, Trehearn. He's a nice enough fellow, but between the characters of Mary, Joss, and Sir Humphrey, he pretty much fades into nothing.

Second, there's the fact that Sir Humphrey's involvement with the bandits is revealed entirely too early in the film. It may add a bit of tension when Mary convinces Trehearn that they need to go to Sir James for help, but I think revealing the involvement after the pair escape would have been better for the story. (Reportedly, Hitchcock felt this way too; the story only unfolds as it does because Charles Laughton, a big star at the time, wanted his character to be more centrally involved from the outset.) There are still some interesting twists that come out later in the film about Sir Humphrey, but I think they too would have been stronger if not for Laughton's reported ego-trip.

I still think this is an excellent adventure flick, with great camera work, lighting, and sets--the Jamaica Inn set both inside and out is spectacular--and I think it's well-worth seeing if you are a fan of Hitchcock's work.

The gift is a curse for 'The Clairvoyant'

The Clairvoyant (aka "The Evil Mind") (1934)
Starring: Claude Rains, Fay Wray and Jane Baxter
Director: Maurice Elvey
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A stage magician specializing in a mind-reading act (Rains) starts having real psychic visions whenever the daughter of a newspaper publisher (Baxter) is near him. Although his newfound true psychic visions initially bring him fame and fortune, the blessings soon turn into miserable curses.


"The Clairvoyant" is a rare British horror film from the 1930s that features an interesting story and a superb cast. It even has a couple of third-act twists that I didn't see coming, and I can't say that very often what with all the movies I've watched.

Although everyone in the film is good, its stars, Claude Rains and Fay Wray, shine especially brightly.

Rains is very likeable and sympathetic as a professional entertainer who struggles with suddenly becoming a real-life psychic and then watches what he thought was a blessing turn into a curse.

As good as Rains is, Wray is even better. This is partly due to her part being well-written, but even more credit should go to the fact that she was a damn fine actress. If you've only seen her in "King Kong", you really need to see this film to see that her talents as an actress went much further than just being very attractive and able to scream better than just about anyone else. is then later torn between ambition and love for his wife.

"The Clairvoyant" is a film I wish they made more like. Despite its fantastic elements, the characters in it and their relationships seem very real, particularly that shared by Rains and Wray's characters. Theirs is a marriage that faces several challenges during the film, but the love they share for one another lets it survive and helps them overcome. It's the sort of relationship that should appear on screen more often.

'Sabotage' is a fine adaptation of Conrad novel

Sabotage (1936)
Starring: Oskar Homolka, Sylvia Sidney, John Loder, and Desmond Tester
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Verloc (Homolka) is a secret agent of a foriegn power who plans devestating acts of terrorism and sabotage In London from behind a facade as a harmless operator of a small movie theater. Verloc is devoted to his cause, but how firm will his wife (Sidney) stand?


"Sabotage" is one of Hitchcock's early films, and it is one of his best. The sequence where Verloc sends his wife's young brother, Stevie (Tester), to deliever a package that, unbeknownst to the brother, contains a time bomb, remains one of the tensest sequences ever put on film: Stevie, a mere child, takes every detour, is distracted by every interesting scene and event, and is slowed down in a hundred different ways during his trek across London... all while the bomb is ticking toward its detonation. Will the boy survive, or will Hitchcock violate what has been a standard from the earliest days of cinema... the cute young child is NEVER killed! (If you've read the Joseph Conrad novel "The Secret Agent", you know the fate of Stevie even before Verloc decides to use him as a courier, but the sequence is so fabulously put together that you will be on the edge of your seat.)

With great pacing, perfect casting (the actors seem as though they've lept from the pages of Conrad's book) and some playful crossovers between the events of the story and the movies showing at Verloc's theater, "Sabotatge" ranks among one of Hitchcock's most thrilling films.

'Young and Innocent' is classic, if overlooked, Hitchcock

Young and Innocent (aka "The Girl Was Young")
Starring: Nova Pilbeam and Derrick DeMarney
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

"Young and Innocent" is not one of Hitchcock's best-known films, and this is a shame. It is one of his most entertaining films from the 30s, featuring suspenseful situations, charming characters portrayed by excellent actors, snappy, witty dialogue, and fabulous camera work. This under-appreciated film deserves more viewers!

The story revolves around a destitute writer who is accused of murdering a truly bitchy movie star. Locating his missing raincoat seems to be the key to proving his innocence and finding the real killer, but between an incompetant attorney and policemen wanting a quick end to the case, he seems destined to hang. But that is until he slips from the courthouse during a moment of confusion. He is joined in his mad dash for evidence by the domestic, yet-tomboyish and strong-willed daughter of the local chief of police. Will the unlikely pair manage to clear our hero's name before he is recaptured by the police?


This film shares a number of similar elements with the better-known "The 39 Steps." However, unlike that film, in which the modern viewer is able to see the end coming about twenty minutes before it arrives, "Young and Innocent" keeps the viewer on the edge of his seat up to the very end. The climactic nightclub sequence is particularly well-done, thrilling, and one of the most Hitchcockian Hitchcock scenes of them all.

Additionally, Nova Pilbeam gives a stellar performance in this film. She was a successful child star whose career faded as she grew older, with work pretty much having dried up completely for her by the end of the 1940s.

'The Ghoul' is an obscure Karloff classic

The Ghoul (1933)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Dorothy Hyson, Anthony Bushell, Ernest Thesiger, Cedric Hardwicke, Kathleen Harrison, Harold Hugh and Ralph Richardson
Director: T. Hayes Hunter
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An eccentric Egyptologist, Professor Morlent (Karloff), insists that he is buried with the ancient artifact he spent his fortune on acquiring, in an Egyptian-style tomb on his estate so that Anubis may come and bring him to eternity in the afterlife. He vows to return from the grave and kill anyone who doesn't follow his wishes or who steals from him tomb. Naturally, his manservant (Thesiger) keeps the priceless artifact. Naturally, Morlent emerges from his tomb to punish the thief, and anyone else he happens across, on the very night his young cousins (Bushell and Hyson) are meeting in the main house with a solicitor (Hardwicke) about their inheritance.


"The Ghoul" is a rarely seen early horror talkie that features a fast-moving, finely tuned script, an appealing and talented cast, a number of truly unnerving scenes, but also manages to deliver comic relief that will still be funny to modern audiences.

While Boris Karloff receives top billing--and gives an excellent performance as a fanatic neo-worshipper of the Egyptian pantheon returned from the grave and now rushing about strangling people in best mummy fashion--the real stars of the film are actually Dorothy Hyson and Anthony Bushell. They protray a pair of distant relatives who start the film disliking each other due to an old family feude but who eventually bury the hatchet. Hyson is very attractive and a good actress and Bushell manages to transform a character who is an unsympathetic jerk at the beginning of the film into a likable hero figure by the end.

Another remarkable performance is given by the film's comic relief, which are made up of a Lucy Arnez/Carol Burnett-type character played by Kathleen Harrison, and a mysterious Egyptian played by Harold Hugh. The Egyptian is actually the films main heavy (aside from the monstrous Dr. Morlent), but he becomes drawn into the comic relief when he becomes th object of fantasy of a woman whose read too many romance novels and seen too many silent movies about the dashing beduine princes of Arabia and their white stallions, abducted maidens, and vast harems.

Often in these old movies, the comic aspects have not stood the passage of time, but that is not the case here. The genre being lampooned may have fallen out of favor, but the basic situation remains funny and the bubble-headed woman who lives vicariously through trashy romance novels remains a constant through the ages. The action is funny, the characters are funny, and the jokes are hilarious.

The only midly annoying thing about the film is the Scooby-Doo like ending where everything with an apparent supernatural cause is explained away either by some weird circumstance or by someone wearing a cleaver disguise and using elaborate tricks. However, the ending is very dramatic--with the climax reaching its thrilling heights with our young heroic couple on the verge of being burned alive and the comic relief character about to shot by the villains--and so action-packed that you will hardly notice the "oh, there was never any spooky Egyptian gods and curses going on here" line when it's delivered.

"The Ghoul" is a great film from the formative days of the horror genre. It's both an example of the "dark old house" mystery movies that gave way to it, as well as a clear evolutionary step toward what we think of as horror movies today. It's definately worth seeing by anyone who enjoys films from that time. Even better, the DVD release was made from such a prestine print that you'll be watching the film looking almost like it did when audiences sat shivering in their seats in 1933.