TheDevilDoll

The Devil-Doll (1936)

The movie opens with a pair of men escaping from prison. One of the men is a scientist that was put in jail for unethical work, while the other, Paul Lavond, was a prominent banker who was framed by his partners. Lavond manages to reunite his frail friend with his wife and is immediately introduced to their work. They are able to shrink living creatures down to a miniature size, but with a terrible side effect. The creature’s minds don’t survive the process and they become little more than shells that can be controlled by others. When the man dies Lavond decides to bring his work and the man’s wife with him to Paris so they can exact revenge on the men that wronged him. With her help and a clever disguise as an elderly woman Lavond goes about getting even with his enemies, as well as making sure his family name is restored and his daughter gets the money that should have been hers all along.

This is a great old movie that I’m shocked I hadn’t seen until recently. Initially it seemed to me that the story was going to be silly with dolls running around oversized sets trying to kill people, but that isn’t the case. In fact the movie focuses on how Lavond manipulates everyone around him so that they walk willingly into his trap. The greedy one walks right into his hands, the fat and lazy one is paralyzed by his own fear, and the weakest finally cracks and confesses to the police. All this is going on while Lavond is trying to improve his family’s lot in life, including that of his daughter. The movie balances the vengeance of Lavond with his kindness in such a way that in spite of what he is doing to his enemies he is a sympathetic figure. The ending of the movie is very cool and doesn’t give you the happy finale that you would expect from a Hollywood film. Overall the cast is excellent. But I wanted to especially mention the lead actor who carries the movie, Lionel Barrymore. I think that this might be my favorite performance in horror movie ever! He does an incredible job playing not only Lavond, but also Lavond as the elderly doll-maker Mandelip. If you had missed the first fifteen minutes of the movie and didn’t know any better you would think that this was actually an old woman. Even more impressive is how naturally he switches between himself playing Lavond that is playing Mandelip and himself playing Lavond. Just think about much effort that had to take.

Considering that this movie is from 1936 the special effects used to create the appearance of the doll-sized characters is incredible. Some of the scenes use enlarged sets to give the impression of tiny doll sized characters, but there appears to be some sort of visual tricks to add the doll sized actors to scenes with full sized ones. I would imagine some screen work was used to do it. No matter how they did it I was impressed with the work.

I highly recommend checking out The Devil-Doll. I know that I’ll be watching it again soon.

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer