While we’re on the subject of old cinematic mad science that deserves attention, I should bring up The Man Who Changed His Mind, a 1936 feature that starred Boris Karloff, who had recently given a type-creating performance as Frankenstein’s monster and who now gets to be the mad scientist, “Dr. Laurience.”
Providing appeal here is Anna Lee playing Dr. Clare Wyatt, who goes to assist Laurience, believing him to be (mostly correctly) a misunderstood genius.
Laurience, it turns out, has been working with a mind-transfer technology, which he demonstrates to the skeptical Dr. Wyatt through animal testing (unusual prudence for cinematic mad science!) in a well-done mad scientist laboratory scene.
Things spin out of control, as they have a way of doing in the movies. An ambitious press baron (literally — he is Lord Haselwood) undertakes to finance Laurience’s work, but when Laurience attempts to present his results to the assembled scientific community, he is laughed off the stage. The furious Lord Haselwood pulls Laurience’s funding, which causes Laurience to throw caution to the winds by testing his mind transfer device on…Haselwood and Laurience’s own crippled assistant Clayton… with success. It will get worse for the good characters from there on out, because Laurience is falling in love with Dr. Wyatt…who is in turn attached to Lord Haselwood’s journalist son…
I’m slightly surprised that this movie doesn’t have a higher profile than it appears to have. Karloff gives a strong performance, though perhaps I’m biased toward sympathy with his character (I’ve had my own moments when I realized that professional failure loomed at the same time as I realized that the One You Love Does Not Love You, resulting in a form of inner anguish I wouldn’t wish on the worst person alive). And Anna Lee is not just eye candy here. She plays a character who’s a competent and strong-willed scientist in her own right (the opening scene depicts her performing surgery), and obviously there’s appeal there. (Plus a plot twist that I’ll run under the fold to avoid spoilers…)
Definitely a film to watch, if you want to know the mad science cinematic canon. It’s available at the Internet Archive and also embedded below:
Personally appealing bit of trivia: The movie was directed by Robert Stevenson, who would have a long, long career that ended with…The Shaggy D.A., which as I recall is the story of a man who finds his mind in the body of a dog. So I guess history rhymes here…
Additional personally appealing bit of trivia: Anna Lee would have an even longer career and continue acting into her nineties, which I think is awesome.
Bonus plot element below this fold…
It’s the heroine who saves her male love interest in this movie, and not the other way around. Pretty sophisticated stuff for 1936…