Editor's note: This review is part of Frankensteinia's Boris Karloff Blogathon.

If there is a subgenre of science fiction that I’m always game for, it’s that of the mad scientist. Watching unkempt geniuses perform outlandish, depraved, and gruesome experiments is like watching mankind plunge into the murkiest depths of knowledge in order to bring us closer to the divine. The best mad scientist films provide outcasts who want to further mankind's understanding of the world but who often end up losing themselves in their achievements, creating situations that they find themselves incapable of handling. On the other hand, there are lesser mad scientist movies that feature bad men simply abusing science to their own benefit. Such films are rarely interesting or dynamic. This latter type of mad scientist film, unfortunately, describes The Man Who Changed His Mind (a.k.a. The Man Who Lived Again). Its mad scientist is not in over his head; he's just a bad guy.

The Man Who Changed His Mind follows a strong-headed woman, Dr. Clare Wyatt, as she goes to work for a disreputable scientist against the advice of her peers. The scientist, Dr. Laurience, has figured out a way to extract what he calls the brain’s “thought content,” those aspects of our conscious and subconscious that comprise the individual psyche, and store it like electricity. This means that Laurience can also introduce said thought content into other subjects’ brains, effectually transferring individuals from one body to another. When Baron Haslewood, the man supporting the operation, decides to cut him off, Laurience uses this technology to swap the mind of Haslewood with that of a live-in, disabled test subject, who proceeds to grant Laurience additional funds from within the other’s body. As you will probably guess, the situation degenerates from there, and it is up to Clare, the only other individual who understands the thought-content-switching process, to set everything right.

The movie takes the staple theme of man reaching a dangerous technological height, and it shows the tragic results, but it does nothing intriguing with the concept. In more iconic films that address this theme -- such as Frankenstein (1931) and Forbidden Planet -- we also witness the guilt of these mad scientists and their struggles to deal with the aftereffects of the technology. In those films well-intentioned men throw themselves into situations they cannot control, and they become damned for their actions. In this movie, we see a mere abuse of technology. Needless to say, it is less interesting to watch the misdeeds of bad men than it is to watch the fall of men who meant to do good. There’s nothing wrong with this approach; it just makes the movie simplistic on a moral level.

Furthermore, the chief moral of The Man Who Changed His Mind is forced. When Laurience suggests the possibility of switching human thought content between subjects, Clare responds that the human mind is “sacred” and that to do such a thing would be immoral. In the end, when Laurience, who forced another character to trade minds with him, is placed back into his own body, he says to Clare, “Please forgive me. You were right. The human mind is sacred. Promise me. Destroy all this. This power is too dangerous.” However, “The human mind is sacred” and “This power is too dangerous” contain different meanings. The former implies that it is immoral to meddle with the mind at all, while the latter implies (more accurately) that the immorality lies not the act of exchanging thought content but rather in the potential wrongdoing that comes with such a capability. Though the film ultimately proves the latter of these to be the real problem, its overt emphasis on the former weakens the message and is given no basis in truth or example.

Impressively progressive for a film of this time, however, is its feminism. Not only does Clare, who is essentially the main character, have a job as a scientist, she also is constantly portrayed as a strong, assertive woman. This is evident from the beginning of the film, when she quits her job to work with Laurience, and it remains evident throughout, as she consistently rejects her overbearing boyfriend’s insistence to protect her and his pleas to let him marry her. Also, it is Clare who saves Dick’s life and exposes the misdeeds of Laurience. Some may take her decision to marry Dick at the end of the film to be a weakening of her feminism, but there is actually nothing un-feminist about it; she is simply making a decision to commit to the man she loves, on her own terms and by her own will.

Boris Karloff plays the role of Dr. Laurience adequately, but given what the actor is capable of, “adequate” is a bit of a letdown. He is not commanding here, as he can so well be, but rather responsive, playing mostly off the other actors. At the same time, he is evil, but his evil is always secretive. In short, Karloff carries no authority in this film. He works within the limits established by those around him, able to cross boundaries only when his superiors are not nearby. This is more a result of the script rather than a shortcoming of Karloff’s performance, so there is no blame to be placed, but for Karloff fans, this is a minor letdown.

The Man Who Changed His Mind's problem is its basic misunderstanding of the mad scientist subgenre. There are no crises of conscious or attainments of truth to be found, only wrongdoing. Its moral, in the same fashion, is too simplistic to be provoke thought. It is a plus that Karloff plays a main character, but he has little to work with on such a flat foundation. This is not a particularly bad movie; it's just one without a point.