What Do You Think?

This Carey Wilson short from MGM offers a story about a man who thinks he hears his mother's voice and thereby avoids a deadly accident.

In his shorts for MGM -- when he wasn't helping write BEN-HUR or MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY - Wilson told stories like those that ran in FATE magazine, stories that magnified coincidences or built them after the fact. Tales of ghosts, of extra-sensory perception, and at least four about Nostradamus. He clearly had a bent for this sort of thing. It's directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also had a bent for such things.

What Do You Think? (1937)

*** (out of 4)

First entry in the short-running series from MGM has a screenwriter getting out of bed and heading out the door to get to the studio when he hears his mothers voice calling him. He goes back inside to get a key from his dresser and then takes off when a car in front of him gets hit by a truck and kills the woman driving. The screenwriter soon realizes that it would have been him killed had he not heard his mother calling him. This series was a pretty good one and it got off to a nice start here as the story is interesting enough to carry the short 9-minute running time and we also get some nice director touches to make it worth viewing. There are a few dark moments early on that will have Tourneur fans thinking about his upcoming Val Lewton films. Even the more ghostly visions that happen to the screenwriter are well-handled and effective. The "what do you think" is the entire point of the film as it asks you if you believe what's going on or if you feel there's something else to it. This certainly isn't a masterpiece but if you've got 9-minutes to kill then it's worth viewing.