Dir - John Francis Dillon
Overall: MEH
Released three months after Frankenstein began making him a household name, Behind the Mask was a run-of-the-mill, Pre-Code crime film where Boris Karloff had a minor role. Joined once again by Edward Van Sloan who gets a much meatier part as a crooked doctor running a complex drug-smuggling operation, Karloff plays a low-life with only a handful of scenes. His fate is even left open-ended as the bulk of the film revolves around Jack Holt uncovering the unwholesome doings-a-transpiring as a federal spy. John Francis Dillon's direction is pretty flat and the film is mostly forgettable. That said, the script by Joe Swerling has some gruesome details to it, at least on paper. Anyone who gets too close to Van Sloan's diabolical operation finds themselves murdered under an operating table and then their coffin is filled with drugs which are dug back up at a later date. Unnecessarily convoluted yes, but this does provide the movie with a solid, somewhat disturbing ending, be it one that still ends up as triumphant for the good guys.
(1936)
Dir - Lambert Killyer
Overall: GOOD
Somewhat rushed into production by Universal after a proposed Bluebeard project between Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi fell through, the resulting The Invisible Ray perhaps surprisingly is a rather solid mad scientist romp. Initial director Stuart Walker was replaced by Lambert Killyer near the last minute, as the former had been unhappy with John Colton's script. Lugosi received second billing as the much more rational, brilliant scientist Dr. Felix Benet while Karloff got the juicier, increasingly insane Dr. Janos Ruhk role. Thankfully, both horror icons get a handful of scenes together and each actor treats the borderline silly material respectfully. It has the usual, pseudo-science premise where radiation causes Karloff to glow, kill anyone he touches, and lose his mind to jealous, revenge-seeking villainy in the process. This provides for some nifty, be it dated visuals and other ridiculousness like a dead man's eyes holding the image of the last thing he saw, (meaning Karloff coming in for the kill), and a the ray of the title being able to both cure blindness and blow up a bolder. Fun stuff though.
(1936)
Dir - Robert Stevenson
Overall: GOOD
The first in Boris Karloff's completely unrelated "Man Who..." series of films and one that utilizes an effective pun as a title, The Man Who Changed His Mind was one of two British productions that he made in 1936. Though he of course became immortalized as the Frankenstein monster, it was really in playing brilliant/doomed scientists that Karloff made his bread and butter throughout his long career. Here, he is yet another one whose wild experiments are laughed off by his colleagues, making him bitter and mad in the process. Karloff's Dr. Lawrence does not hold much of the audience's sympathy for long, though this is hardly a problem as he turns in a villainous performance with his usual unwavering class. Plus he rather redeems himself in the end anyway. British bombshell Anna Lee, (who would later inspire a song from Dream Theater of all people), also shows up as virtually the only woman with any dialog. The story is the usual, implausible scientific gobbledy gook nonsense, but at only sixty-six minutes in length, director Robert Stevenson trims any would-be fat out of the proceedings, making this a fun, harmlessly macabre bit of silliness.
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