Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Tod Browning's second-to-last film is campy as hell, and ya gotta love Lionel Barrymore in drag exacting revenge on enemies of his using miniaturized people he can control (but of course). The effects were great for the time period, and they're still entertaining today, including the use of giant props and inserting cut-out footage of people (and animals) into other scenes. Browning had a great eye for weirdness and the macabre, and creates real suspense with the idea that a person a few inches tall could track someone down in their apartment. Those scenes in the middle of the film are fantastic. Barrymore is strong, and Maureen O'Sullivan is just fine too; she plays the daughter who hates him for having been sent to prison and bringing shame on the family. The idea is excellent, but both the beginning and ending of the film include moments that strain credibility. I don't mind it in the science fiction that creates the technology or even the creator keeling over at just the right moment, but the melodrama at the end is all artificial and relies on a character motivation that is absurd. I have to believe that Browning was impacted by the Hays Code, which wouldn't have allowed an alternate. (I'm being vague here to avoid spoilers). I considered a slightly higher rating because of that, as it seems unfair to Browning, but have to judge it for the end product. Regardless, the film is entertaining and unique, and I would enjoy watching it again some rainy night.

Escaped from prison, an ex-con learns from his partner that he can seek revenge on those who wronged him with a special voodoo spell to turn them into miniature dolls, and armed with the knowledge to do so, sets out to accomplish his goal.This one has a few really good parts to it. The most telling is the great special effects work, as this has a large amount of scenes where the dolls are interacting with their surroundings, and the scenes where the dolls are running around in shots as the life-size humans are interacting with them look great overall. The early scenes where they're running around on the counter-tops are fun, but the real joy comes when they start playing around at the end where they turn into killers and stalk the unsuspecting victims. These are all wonderfully fun scenes, as they come into very active parts of the film and really manage to work so great because of the ingenious way of accomplishing this task. The ability of getting them on the same screen with the life-size characters as well as their centric scenes are convincingly done and really manage to impress in every well as there's no hitch in anything of these scenes. This one also features some great action scenes here with the dolls carrying out the revenge here where the one dolls does through the house and stealing the jewelry from the wife before engaging in the actual revenge of the miniature doll scurrying along the bedding to carry out in the attack on the banker which is quite a fine scene here. The attack on the last banker is quite fun as well with the stalking in the grand, elaborate mansion decorated in Christmas regalia as the protective guards wander around until the fateful moment where it finally pulls the whole revelation together in a fine sequence. It even has a really great ending that comes with a fine resolution to matters and a really fun fight that really manages to provide some excitement and really make the movie entertaining. This one only has one mild flaw, and that is the large section of time taken up to get through the middle segment. This is mostly through the romance angle of the daughter being interrupted by her hatred for him which doesn't need to be there. They could've done the daughter subplot without having the romance thrown in by merely keeping the two separate, focusing solely on each other and not really offering much of a chance to spill over as the constant inferences in every scene means it's tiring and clichéd. As well, this manages to further another minor flaw as it really makes a short movie feel really long with an overabundance of such scenes when it really doesn't need to be. This lone gripe is the movie's flaw.Today's Rating/PG: Mild Violence.

An escaped Devil's Island convict (Lionel Barrymore) uses miniaturized humans to wreak vengeance on those that framed him.This story started out from a 1934 novel by Abraham Merritt called "Burn, Witch, Burn" and a 14-page article Merritt wrote with a Dr. Lowell. The connection is loose, with the overlap being the doll shop. The script, originally called "Witch Doctor of Timbuctoo" and written by Guy Endore ("Mad Love", every werewolf film), removes any mention of Satanism. Of course, exactly what Endore contributed is unclear without reading the script revisions, because over the course of a year his work was re-written by Garrett Fort (who had written both "Frankenstein" and "Dracula"), Robert Chapin, silent star Eric von Stroheim and Richard Schayer ("Frankenstein", "The Mummy").With direction from Tod Browning ("Dracula", "Freaks"), how can you go wrong with this? Though, again, Browning's full contribution is unclear, because retakes were done not by him, but by Leon Gordon, Sam Zimbalist and William Anthony McGuire. None of these men were credited, and it seems they must have worked on it while also doing MGM's "The Great Ziegfeld".Maureen O'Sullivan (Tarzan's Jane) is here, as are Rafaela Ottiano ("Grand Hotel") and Frank Lawton, who had just finished playing the title role in MGM's "David Copperfield". Throw in Lionel Barrymore in women's clothing, and you have quite the story...Interestingly, the biggest star in the film was probably Henry B. Walthall, who played the convict Marcel. His name may not ring many bells today, but in his time he was quite the star under the tutelage of D. W. Griffith and appears on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.While a bit slow at times, and inevitably compared to "Bride of Frankenstein", this is overall a good film with fine direction and a solid story. The original novel seems hard to come by, but the film is available in a box set of horror classics (though, strangely, is the only one of six not to have an audio commentary).

For me, there are 3 reasons to watch this film: 1. To realize that even the grandest studio of all -- MGM -- could make a really dumb movie. 2. To realize that even that grand old actor -- Lionel Barrymore -- made some real stinkers. 3. To watch a film just for the sake of enduring just dumb it could be.Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, let me give you some details.Barrymore is one of two old men who escapes from Devil's Island. The escape lasts all of about 5 minutes, and is consequential to the film only because it gives a basis for the revenge that Barrymore will take on his ex-banker friends in Paris who framed him. Barrymore is paired up with a mad scientist who has learned to shrink people to 1/6 their normal size. The scientist's wife is played so over the top that she makes Elsa Lanchester's roles in horror films look as if she was on sedatives. The scientist dies of a heart attack (we viewers of the film should be so lucky!), and Barrymore and the scientist's wife go to Paris to exact revenge on the bank partners and continue the scientific research.If it all wasn't campy enough, once Barrymore gets to Paris, he disguises himself in drag as an old woman. After that, there are some good moments and the ending is rather touching. And throughout, there is the satisfaction of watching just how good Barrymore was...even in a dumb movie.