"The Devil Doll"

Tonight I watched yet another one of the weirdest Horror Movies I have ever seen : "The Devil Doll" (1936), directed by the legendary Tod Browning of "Dracula" fame. As the film opens, two escaped prisoners from Devil's Island have eluded pursuing lawmen and are landing their small boat upriver on the outskirts of a jungle (I had to Google "Devil's Island" and it was a real prison in French Guyana). From their brief conversation, we are able to discern that one prisoner, Marcel (played by an actor named Henry Walthall) wants to continue his life's work that was interrupted by his incarceration, while the other prisoner (the great Lionel Barrymore), has a more malign goal. He seeks revenge on the three men who framed him for a murder he did not commit. He had been a banking executive, but has spent the past 17 years in prison. He wants to find his former business partners and pay them back.

So these two escapees park their boat and make their way to Marcel's house, where his Bride Of Frankenstein lookalike wife has been carrying on his "work" while he was away. She is a Mad Scientist who keeps a half dozen dogs on her property. Her newly returned husband Marcel is an even Madder Scientist (he's got long grey hair in 1936, and he's gaunt), and he is eager to know if the couple's experiments have borne any fruit while he was in prison.

His crazy wife is happy to show him that her solo experiments have been quite successful, thank you and God Bless.

You see, she has been shrinking dogs while her husband Marcel was away in prison. She has a 1930s Lab-bor-a-tory with lots of bubbling glass tubes and beakers, and she has perfected the miniaturizing techniques Marcel was working on before he went to prison.....

Poor Marcel is nuts. In his mind, he means well, and he believes that - if only we could shrink the creatures of this Earth, that they would need less food, and so, if all animals and humans were made small, the great crisis of hunger would be ended.

So while he has been in prison the last 17 years, sharing a cell with framed banker Lionel Barrymore, his dedicated wife has been practicing on the family brood of dogs, shrinking them down to size, and she's been doing a damned good job of it. The said pooches could now fit in the palm of your hand and are very obidient and very docile, because during the shrinking process they have lost their doggy memories and no longer have a sense of self.

Listen folks, all of what I have described happens in the first 15-20 minutes. You've still got an hour to go. I will tell you just a little bit more.

Well, good old Lionel Barrymore, he can't believe what he is seeing. He may be an innocent man wrongly framed, who now wants to indeed get his revenge, but he draws the line at being a part of a Dog Shrinking Operation, because he thinks it is pretty doggone twisted.

But then, crazy Marcel and his Bride Of Frankenstein wife take things a step further.

They give their half-witted young maid a mickey, and.......they shrink her too.

And - being the scientists that they are - they demonstrate how the tiny maid, with her new blank slate of a mind, can now be used as a puppet.

All of a sudden, Lionel Barrymore is on board with the project.

He sees that the technology to shrink humans can have great advantages for his revenge plan.

And my goodness people........that is really all I can tell you about "The Devil Doll".

That's only the first 30 minutes.

What would you say if I told you that Barrymore and the Bride Of Frankenstein then took the technology to Paris, and good old Lionel spent the remainder of the film in drag, dressed as an elderly woman, to avoid Paris police?

Think Mrs. Doubtfire, only not as Robin Williams-y.

Listen - I am absolutely not gonna tell you any more about "The Devil Doll", but I am going to insist that you see it, just as I insisted you see "Mad Love" a couple of weeks ago.

Both of these films came from my dvd set entitled "Legends Of Hollywood Horror".

I thought I knew all the horror films, but I see that I didn't. And I am blowing my mind on how truly weird these little known movies are. And they aren't thrown together B or C grade flicks, either. We are talking top notch productions with solid budgets. The special effects in "Devil Doll" are way ahead of their time, and that is just one aspect.

Most of the movie involves Lionel Barrymore seeking revenge in Mrs. Doubtfire mode, but without being campy.

I have been talking about How Weird Hollywood Was, back in the 1930s.

"Devil Doll" is a prime example, and you absolutely have to see it.

Tons of story? Fuggettabbouddit. The first 10 minutes has more story than most complete movies.

They used to be open to getting really weird in Early Hollywood because a lot of the directors and actors were free thinking creative people......artists.....and weirdness didn't faze them.

In fact, they thrived on it.

That's what acting and directing and storytelling and filmmaking are all about. Getting creative.

Not being formulaic and churning out Marvel Comics Franchise Movie #10. (and I know I'm a curmudgeon about that stuff, sorry).  :)

This is why I urge you to watch certain things. Not because you have to like them, or even be interested in them (though you might do both), but because movies like the ones I occasionally suggest offer a glimpse into a creative process that does not currently exist, but when it did exist, you can see how inspired it was. That's why I tell you to watch movies like "The Devil Doll".  ////

Elizabeth, I liked the clip you posted on FB Stories. That is a beautiful duck pond (or lake), and you got a great mirror effect on the clouds in the sky and on the lake. That pond looks like one of the Peaceful Places that I was talking about in my blog from a couple of nights ago. I am glad you have it to enjoy. :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)