Cerveaux de rechange

"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!