Best movie of this year hands down!

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

THE DEVIL COMMANDS boasts one of Karloff's best performances ever: he's extremely sympathetic as a doctor driven by Love to reestablish contact with his dead wife. The use of a graph to visualize the brainwaves (so as to differentiate between the brainwaves of various subjects) was a bit of a Master Stroke, if you ask me: it's simple in the extreme and makes clear exactly what's happening when "contact" is made. It's interesting (story-wise AND character-wise) that Karloff's LOVE for his dead wife is used against him- by the duplicitous "Medium"-, which results in his deviation from The Right Path to a career in crime. Not a lot of Fright Films can make such a boast- and not very many actors could pull it off the way Karloff does here. One genuinely feels for his character.

Anne Blair (Amanda Duff) narrates to the viewer the story what happened to her mother Helen (Shirley Warde) and her father Dr. Julian Blair (Boris Karloff). Dr. Blair has been working on an experiment to electronically read the thoughts of people and when his wife Helen dies in a car crash he uses his experiments in attempt to communicate with his dead wife. Dr. Blair meets medium Mrs. Blanche Walters (Anne Revere) and the two become obsessed with the idea of communicating with Dr. Blair's beloved Helen. Mrs. Walters will let no one stand in Dr. Blair's way -- no one, including Blair's daughter Anne who is trying to communicate with her father. In the end, the film will leave you pondering life and death.The movie is a pretty good engrossing story and I do recommend it for those that are interested in communication with the dead, science fiction, and horror. Karloff fans should really enjoy this gem.7.5/10

Boris Karloff's at it again, unlocking the secrets of the human brain and doing so in a surprisingly short run time of just over an hour. His character is Dr. Julian Blair, driven to near fanatical obsession to make contact with his dead wife via his brain wave recording invention. Convincing a phony psychic (Anne Revere as Mrs. Walters) to become his lab assistant, Dr. Blair is encouraged by her admonition that "If you can do what you're trying to do, you'll rule the world"! It must have been that ten thousand volts of electricity coursing through her body that warmed her up to the Doc.However it didn't appear to me that Blair was interested in ruling the world as much as simply getting in touch with the Mrs. Unable to function in the home they once shared, Blair sets out for Barshan Harbor, where he eventually comes under suspicion for a number of bodies that turn up missing. Those bodies wind up in an odd looking assortment of containment suits set up in séance position for Blair to continue his quest. Blair's own daughter (Amanda Duff) as it turns out, proves to be the most effective medium for getting in touch with Mrs. Blair in the great beyond.Karloff gives it his all as the mad genius here before meeting his end in a Frankenstein inspired mob scene ending. Perhaps not as convincing as it could have been, at least the good doctor went out with proof of life after death. Until the next time.

I got to review this fine motion picture off 'Creepy Classics' and it was enjoyable. "When the DEVIL commands....Karloff obeys!" is the catch phrase to this film. 1940 film is a semi-forgotten great from Columbia Pictures. A riveting mad doctor movie with Boris trying to communicate and bring back the should of his beloved dead wife. He finds a way to do that with mystical women medium and several corpses. He thinks he can talk to his dead wife. When a vortex to the other side is established. He hears his wife and reads her brain waves to confirm the connection while his daughter looks on in terror. He puts the dead corpses seance members in electronic robot suits and it becomes a electronic-age seance not to be missed.