Thursday, April 14, 2022

Thursday Movie Picks #405: Psychics/Mediums

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. The theme this week is Psychics/Mediums, a theme that became relevant once again with the release late last year of the remake of Nightmare Alley. If you haven't seen the Tyrone Power version, I highly recommnend it; I haven't seen the remake. Anyhow, I immediately had two 1930s films in mind, and was trying to think of a third movie to use without having to resort to Nightmare Alley. In the end, I was successful:

The Mind Reader (1933). Warren William plays the carnival fake mind reader who falls in love with Constance Cummings and moves to the big city with her. She finds out that he's a fake, and wants him to do more honest work than scamming lonely old ladies. He tries, but there's a depression on and getting honest work may be difficult.

The Clairvoyant (1935). I notice I actually used this one back in 2017. Claude Rains plays the phony mindreader, with a catch. There's one particular woman he meets who has the effect on him of making him see real visions of things that actually do come true. Obviously nobody believes him, and this creates all sorts of problems when he has a vision of a mine collapse.

The 13th Chair (1937). In British India, there's been a murder, and both a police investigator (Lewis Stone) and a friend of the murder victim (Henry Daniell) want to find out who did it. So the two get together a bunch of people who might be suspects and some who might not, and bring in a medium (Dame May Whitty) to hold a seance with the real purpose of trying to find the killer.

4 comments:

Brittani Burnham said...

So many recommendations for the original Nightmare Alley. I'm going to have to bump it to the top of my list.

Birgit said...

I love Nightmare Alley with Tyrone Power and i wish it was on the top 100 list of must see films. I saw the remake and, even though it is a true remake, I consider it apples and oranges. It is also excellent and I just love the cinematography. I have not seen any of your choices but all 3 are on my to watch list. I love this theme as well as the actual psychics. Most are very adept at reading people and catching every detail but there are a few that mystify me even though they use similar tactics like talking fast. I don't watch that crap stuff on tv though.

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

Yeah, many years back the Amazing Randi (I think it was him) did an episode of Nova debunking such psychics. One was a woman in Russia who claimed she could divine somebody's past and future just by looking at a photo, so Randi brought a photo of... a smiling Ted Bundy, whose big secret would be obvious to anyone with real psychic ability. Randi knew not to divulge any information in response to the woman's questioning, and she couldn't guess the truth about Bundy.

I'm not surprised a lot of people went with one or the other version of Nightmare Alley.

Realweegiemidget Reviews said...

Nice classic take on this theme. Really enjoyed this article.