Cubussoli
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
ShangLuda
Admirable film.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
poe-48833
THE DEVIL DOLL calls to mind an earlier Tod Browning film, the Silent classic THE UNHOLY THREE- and the Sound remake (directed by Jack Conway); both featured Lon Chaney in drag, and Barrymore's performance here is a Carbon Copy thereof. Chaney actually FOOLED me the first time I saw the Sound version of THE UNHOLY THREE: there was no way, I figured, that THAT was a Man... Barrymore manages, amazingly, to pull off just such a remarkable feat in THE DEVIL DOLL. It's almost a shame that they felt they had to include the "living dolls" in the act: it would've been interesting to see Barrymore match wits with a detective hell bent on "uncovering" his cross-dressing secret (shades of J. Edgar Hoover!).
GL84
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.
gavin6942
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).
vincentlynch-moonoi
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.
