The Devil Commands
| The Devil Commands | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Edward Dmytryk |
| Produced by | Wallace MacDonald |
| Written by |
Robert Hardy Andrews Milton Gunzburg William Sloane |
| Starring |
Boris Karloff Richard Fiske |
| Music by | Morris W. Stoloff |
| Cinematography | Allen G. Siegler |
| Edited by | Al Clark |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures Corporation |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 65 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Devil Commands is a 1941 American horror film directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Boris Karloff.[1] The working title of the film was The Devil Said No.[2] In it, a man obsessed with contacting his dead wife falls in with a sinister phony medium. The Devil Commands is one of the many films from the thirties and forties in which Karloff was cast as a mad scientist with a good heart. It was one of the last in line of the low-budget horror movies that were produced before Universal Studios' The Wolf Man. The story was adapted from the novel The Edge of Running Water by William Sloane.[3]
Plot
Dr. Julian Blair is engaged in unconventional research on human brain waves when his wife Helen (Shirley Warde) is tragically killed in a freak auto accident. The grief-stricken scientist becomes obsessed with redirecting his work into making contact with the dead and is not deterred by dire warnings from his daughter Anne (Amanda Duff), his research assistant Richard (Richard Fiske), or his colleagues that he is delving into forbidden areas of knowledge. He moves his laboratory to an isolated New England mansion where he continues to try to reach out to his dead wife. He is aided by his mentally-challenged servant Karl (Ralph Penney) and abetted by the obsessive Mrs. Walters (Anne Revere), a phony medium, who seems to exert a sinister influence over him. When their overly curious housekeeper discovers the truth about their experiments, her death brings the local sheriff in to investigate.
Cast
- Boris Karloff as Dr. Julian Blair
- Richard Fiske as Dr. Richard Sayles
- Amanda Duff as Anne Blair
- Anne Revere as Mrs. Walters
- Ralph Penney as Karl
- Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Marcy
- Walter Baldwin as Seth Marcy
- Kenneth MacDonald as Sheriff Ed Willis
- Shirley Warde as Helen Blair
See also
Notes
- ↑ "The Devil Commands". NY Times. Retrieved 2011-05-01.
- ↑ Young, 2000, p. 154
- ↑ Stephen Jacobs, Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster, Tomohawk Press 2011 p 265
References
- Young, R. G. (2000). The encyclopedia of fantastic film: Ali Baba to Zombies. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 1-55783-269-2.
External links
- The Devil Commands at the Internet Movie Database
- The Devil Commands at AllMovie
- The Devil Commands at the TCM Movie Database