THE DEVIL COMMANDS boasts one of Karloff's best performances ever: he's extremely sympathetic as a doctor driven by Love to reestablish contact with his dead wife. The use of a graph to visualize the brainwaves (so as to differentiate between the brainwaves of various subjects) was a bit of a Master Stroke, if you ask me: it's simple in the extreme and makes clear exactly what's happening when "contact" is made. It's interesting (story-wise AND character-wise) that Karloff's LOVE for his dead wife is used against him- by the duplicitous "Medium"-, which results in his deviation from The Right Path to a career in crime. Not a lot of Fright Films can make such a boast- and not very many actors could pull it off the way Karloff does here. One genuinely feels for his character.

Boris Karloff plays a scientist trying to communicate with his dead wife via her brain waves, which he believes live on after the body dies. Despite the warnings of his colleagues and concerns of his daughter, he pushes ahead with his experiments no matter the consequences. Karloff made quite a few mad scientist movies during the late '30s and early '40s. This is one of the best and most unique. The first time I saw it, as a teenager just getting into classic horror and sci-fi films, I was disappointed with the misleading title. There's no devil anywhere in this; not even a hint of one or a Satanic cult or anything. But I appreciate it more now. I love the pseudo-science of these old movies, not to mention all the nifty gadgets and equipment the scientists' laboratories were always stocked with. This one's rich with that stuff.Karloff is excellent. He gives a sympathetic performance, like he almost always did. Even while the movie is telling you he's wrong you can't help but hope he succeeds. It helps that none of the 'right' people in the movie are all that likable. The daughter's narration is unnecessary and a little annoying but I've seen this movie so often I've grown used to it. Anne Revere is very good as a phony medium Karloff enlists to help with his experiments who quickly starts calling the shots. It's a fun 'B' sci-fi/horror film with good atmosphere, nicely directed by Edward Dmytryk. Exciting electro-séance scenes are highlights. Karloff fans should love it.

What happens after a body dies? Does the brain die instantly like the rest of the body, or does it desperately reach out to expose its last thoughts? This is what scientist Boris Karloff is desperate to find out in this silly science fiction film where the brain in question is that of his beloved wife who is suddenly taken from him in a freak accident. Karloff's daughter is scared of the reclusive turn dad takes all of a sudden and is horrified by his sudden retirement from the university he works in and the sudden move he makes to a New England coastal town with local fake spiritualist Anne Revere. The community they move to are instantly suspicious of their odd behavior, and when their housekeeper doesn't come home from work one day, they storm the cliff side mansion to confront the owners.Karloff tries to hold back from being hammy in his low-key performance, but it is obvious a variation of roles he had played many times before, most recently in several other films at Columbia ("The Man They Could Not Hang", "Before I Hang"). Anne Revere is another dark villainess in the shadow of Gale Sondergaard and Judith Anderson's recent turns as somberly dressed housekeepers in films such as "The Cat and the Canary" and "Rebecca". Her performance, however, is closer to that of Rafaela Ottiano's in "The Devil Doll", with a touch of Gloria Holden's vampire in "Dracula's Daughter".The moody cliff side mansion is a memorable photographic shot, and the laboratory that Karloff and Revere live in is one that Edward D. Wood Jr. would envy. A Lon Chaney Jr. like monster, having gone from being somewhat normal to a dominated servant, comes off like Universal's later horror goon, Glenn Strange. Unlike some other genuine bad movies, "The Devil Commands" is actually pretty fun to watch, definitely worthy of a single watching by horror movie enthusiasts. But it has a been-there, done-that feeling about it, and a genuine lack of imagination in it script and execution that makes this a poor entry in the second era of sound horror films.

I must confess to a degree of disappointment after having watched "The Devil Commands" the other night, after several years of waiting to do so. The memory of its excellent source novel, William Sloane's "The Edge of Running Water" (1937), is still very much with me from several years ago, you see, and I'm afraid that the film does suffer in comparison. The book has sharply drawn characters, a well-detailed plot (a scientist attempting to communicate with his dead wife), great suspense and a very satisfying windup. The film, unfortunately, has none of these things in much abundance. Still, there ARE some good things to be said for it. Boris Karloff, as usual, is wonderful, as is Anne Revere in her role as his assistant. The effects are more than passable, and, at a mere 65 minutes, there is no unnecessary padding. Indeed, the film can be accused of being not fleshed out enough! Several things aren't explained; even Boris' fate is never clearly shown, unlike his character's amazing finish in the book. This is a story that is truly ripe for a remake, if done faithfully and by a team that respects the source material. Still, I can think of many more fruitless ways to spend an hour than by curling up with "The Devil Commands."