The Devil Commands

A likable horror/sci-fi (given a catchpenny but utterly meaningless title!) tailor-made for its star – despite its naïve approach to the supernatural (what with the goofy laboratory equipment that's a cross between medieval torture devices and an underwater suit!). The Gothic trappings included in the narrative (mystery house, seances, brutish 'zombie' manservant) don't sit too well alongside the scientific paraphernalia and jargon – and actually cheapen the film, though not quite to the level of the contemporaneous Bela Lugosi vehicles made by Poverty Row studios!

Perhaps the most perplexing element in the film is the constant narration, which doesn't really serve any purpose: this was probably inspired by Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940) but also, curiously enough, ties it with the fatalistic voice-over that would soon become a film noir staple – and we all know what director Dmytryk achieved in that most influential subgenre (in fact, he's easily the best director with whom Karloff worked during his stay at Columbia – albeit in an early and, therefore, minor effort); here already, Dmytryk's proficiency for creating mood on a miniscule budget through careful lighting is well in evidence. By the way, I can't say for certain but the cliff setting from where Karloff and Anne Revere dispose of the body of the nosy maid may be the same that was utilized four years later for the climax of a marvelous Grade-B noir, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945), also a Columbia picture (and which I finally caught up with while in Hollywood early this year)!

Karloff is committed and persuasive as always as the scientist aching to communicate with his dear departed wife – a role which eerily predates many Peter Cushing would play in the 1970s (particularly following the death of his real-life wife!); however, the star is matched by co-star Revere as the domineering and vaguely sinister medium. As busy as the climax is, it's rather hurried: what with Karloff trying to convince his daughter's fiancé – conveniently, a scientist – of the fundamental value of his work but, failing to do so, has to knock him out before he can use his own daughter as guinea pig in his great experiment!; all the while, an angry torch-carrying mob (who seem to have stepped in from the set of some concurrent Universal production!) is hatching up a plan to stall Karloff's 'dangerous' research – but, as soon as they're about to storm the place, the whole edifice collapses around them (for reasons that are not entirely clear)!!

While the least effective of the three Karloffs I've just watched for the first time, it's not a bad effort all around – and I still look forward to his two remaining (and, oddly, similarly-titled) Columbia vehicles, namely THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939) and BEFORE I HANG (1940)…though I now know not to expect anything approaching the quality of his genuine classics from the Universal heyday!

Kindly Dr. Revere (Boris Karloff) has found a way to record the brain waves of people. His loving wife is tragically killed in a car accident. Revere however gets a reading from his dead wife (he thinks) when alone in is lab. He becomes obsessed with trying to communicate with her beyond the grave. He ends up with a cruel conniving fake medium (Anne Revere) and some corpses borrowed from the nearby cemetery.

OK--the plot doesn't make a lick of sense. He does turn on the machine after his wife dies and he DOES get a message--but how can he know it's her? Why does he need to use other dead bodies to communicate with his wife? Why not dig up HER body and try it? Too many questions. The sets are threadbare (looks more like a PRC production than Columbia), talented character actress Revere gives out her worse performance, the silly narration doesn't work and it just completely derails at the end. Still Karloff is good (as always) and gives this junk a better performance than it deserves. He single handedly makes this an OK movie. It just isn't that scary. It does have a somewhat spooky scene where a maid is stuck in a room with a bunch of dead bodies but that's it. Minor but a must for Karloff fans.

Though the science involved in what Boris Karloff is trying to do is very flawed, in The Devil Commands Karloff gives a very good performance as a man obsessed with contacting his late wife. Unfortunately he falls into the clutches of a fake medium played by Anne Revere who takes advantage of him.

The first few minutes of the film show a happy well adjusted Karloff married to Shirley Warde with daughter Amanda Duff also getting ready to marry scientist Richard Fiske. After a car accident where Warde dies in his arms, Karloff goes off the deep end as he becomes obsessed with the idea that Warde is trying to communicate with him via electrical impulses. His efforts to combine science and the occult lead him to Revere and ultimately to tragedy.

The electrical devices in his laboratory have the familiar Frankenstein like look about them, no doubt Edward Dmytryk in one of his early directorial efforts was trying to capture the mood of the Frankenstein films from Universal. Though the rest of the cast is pretty bland, Karloff and Revere play well off each other and carry the film.

One exception to the blandness is that of Dorothy Adams whom I recognized immediately as Bessie the maid from Laura. Her part here is similar to that one and her acting has some real bite to it.

The Devil Commands is from Columbia's B unit and it's not invested with a lot of production values. Still it's a good horror film from the master himself.

Corny and cliche'd as The Devil Commands may look to the superficial gaze, it's a powerful expression of the inextinguishable and far from trivial human wish to believe that death is not the end and that the dead we loved are not forever lost to us. Karloff starred in a whole sub-genre of films on this theme from the middle 1930s to the early 1940s (cf The Invisible Ray, Before I Hang, The Man They Could Not Hang, etc), invariably as a misunderstood scientific genius, embittered by tragedy or injustice, whose desire to conquer death clashes fatally with the prerogatives of the Almighty.

Whether one believes in an afterlife or not, it would be a coarsely reductionist mind that could consider the subject ridiculous. What gives these films (and this one in particular) their eerily modernist slant on the matter lies in the way they reflect the public's awe of science in the first half of the twentieth century, when astonishing developments such as radio and television (and that weird form of immortality, the motion picture), made it seem believable that technology might solve the supernatural as well as the physical mysteries. It is worth remembering in this context that the contemporary electrical wizards Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, classical Mad Scientists both, attempted to build machines with which to talk to the dead.

In this morbidly obsessive cinematic byway The Devil Commands stands out as one of the most insidiously poignant and nearly blasphemous films of its kind, sailing very close to the emotional and spiritual wind in its depiction of Karloff's bizarre attempts to communicate with his dead wife. As a mad-scientist entertainment it contains some of the most magnificently deranged laboratory scenes ever filmed, surpassed in this context only by James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride Of Frankenstein. I still succumb to its mournful fascination. And if your first viewing doesn't scare you half to death, you can't be more than half alive.

I saw this movie over 35 years ago, as a child, late at night.It left a big impression on me and scared me to death. I recently saw it again and my earlier impressions were justified. Karloff tries to contact the soul of his dead wife using an apparatus comprised of metal helmets through which he directs psychic electricity. The whirling vortex of soul energy is a high point in the film. Karloff gets more and more creepily deranged as the movie goes on. Presumably the devil makes him do it. This film is really a well done minor gem. Fans of the mad scientist/laboratory genre will find much to enjoy. This film is a must for Karloff afficianados. It is unfortunately very difficult to find as it hasn't been on T.V.for years and no commercial video tapes exist. See it if you can!