From 1931-1946 Boris Karloff was the undisputed “King of Horror” in American movies. However outside of the Universal horrors, his Val Lewton pictures and the Columbia “Mad Doctor” series, Karloff made 3 movies in England between 1933 and 1936. Two of these films are remarkable while the third, JUGGERNAUT, is best forgotten. The first one, THE GHOUL, has taken its rightful place as a bonafide Karloff classic while THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND (aka THE MAN WHO LIVED AGAIN) has languished in obscurity until now.
THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND was a British horror film from the 1930s, and 1930s Brit horror wasn’t nearly as well thought of as its American counterpart and the few films that were made weren’t well cared for, which meant that a decent print of THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND was very hard to come by. I don’t know where Shanachie got their source material for this DVD but the picture and sound quality are way better than any other version and gives us the opportunity to see the movie close to the way it must have looked back in 1936.
This is an important movie in Karloff’s career as it is the second time he played a mad scientist and it would be the template for the later films he made at Columbia in the 1940s. In MAN he plays Dr Laurience, an unorthodox scientist working on the idea of personality transference through a unique apparatus he constructed. He is aided in his work by Anna Lee who would later work with Karloff on Val Lewton’s BEDLAM and would spend her twilight years on GENERAL HOSPITAL. Of course things gets out of hand and it is up to Lee to step in and save the day.
The film was directed by Robert Stevenson, a direct descendant of author Robert Louis Stevenson. He began his career in England before coming to America and directing the 1944 JANE EYRE with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. He wound up directing for Walt Disney (OLD YELLER, THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR). That partnership culminated in MARY POPPINS in 1964. Leading man John Loder also came to America where he eventually married Hedy Lamarr and made several B movies including THE BRIGHTON STRANGLER.
At a little over an hour the movie is perfectly paced, the story engaging (it borrows it’s main idea from Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS), and the look of it highly polished from the cinematography down to the “apparatus” Karloff uses to switch minds into different bodies. If you’re a fan of BK especially the movies he made in the 1930s then you really need to see this little known film. Just make sure you see the Shanachie edition which is only available on DVD but at a good price. Avoid the current version being streamed as it is of poor quality.
The Capsule Critic 