The Devil-Doll (1936) is a horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring a cross-dressing Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan as his daughter, Lorraine Levond. The movie was adapted from the novel Burn Witch Burn! (1936) by Abraham Merritt.
By the time The Devil-Doll was released in 1936 Tod Browning's career was all but dead due to the backlash stemming from his now cult classic Freaks. Though Browning attempted to get his career back on track it never came to be and The Devil-Doll was sadly his 2nd to last movie; after this Browning would make one more movie in 1939 titled Miracles for Sale.
The plot tells the story of Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), wrongly convicted of robbing his own Paris bank and killing a night watchman more than seventeen years ago, who escapes Devil's Island with Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) a scientist who is trying to create a formula to reduce people to one-sixth of their original size. The intended purpose of the formula is to make the Earth's limited resources—clean water, food, energy, etc.—last longer for an ever-growing population. The scientist dies after their escape. Paul Lavond joins the scientist's widow, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano), and uses the shrinking technique to obtain revenge on the three former business associates who had framed him and to vindicate himself. Lavond clears his name and secures the future happiness of his estranged daughter, Lorraine, (Maureen O'Sullivan) in the process. Malita isn't satisfied, and wants to continue to use the formula for personal gain. She tries to kill Paul when he announces that he is finshed with their partnership, having accomplished all he intended, but she ends up blowing up their lab and killing herself. To save his daughter from scandal, Paul tells Toto, Lorraine's fiancee, about what happened. He meets his daughter, pretending to be the deceased Marcel. He tells Lorraine that Paul Lavond died during their escape from prison, but that he loved her very much. Lavond then departs, planning to leave France forever.
The screenplay by Garrett Fort, Guy Endore & Erich von Stroheim was excellent; while the villains aren't all that developed, their script is very well written with plenty of laughs and surprisingly some touching dramatic moments. The Devil-Doll may not have the greatest script, but it's always well written and highly entertaining.
Director Tod Browning once again delivers a classic of the genre; while there aren't many horror moments his scenes are well paced with some really funny moments and he handles the dramatic scenes brilliantly. The Devil-Doll is truly one of a kind and too bad Tod Browning never was able to get his career back on track. His loss was a great loss for the horror genre and one can only wonder what classics he would have brought to us.
Even with Browning's direction, what makes this movie so great is the performance by Lionel Barrymore. Once he gets to France to get his revenge he takes a disguise as the people he's after have offered money for his capture, so his disguise is of that of a kind old lady. Seeing Barrymore dressed up as an old lady was hysterical and Barrymore plays up to the camp value and its quite clear he was having a lot of fun in the role. But he also delivers a very emotional performance that was simply brilliant.
Paul's daughter Lorraine played by Maureen O'Sullivan doesn't know her father was set up and she hates him and blames him for the problems that have come upon her family. There's some really great scenes with Paul dressed as an old lady trying to talk with Lorraine. That subplot plays a pretty big part, but than is dropped for a while before a very touching scene at the end between Paul and Lorraine, which has to rate as one of the all time greatest scenes in horror or any genre for that matter.
The Devil-Doll featured a lot of special F/X and honestly even today they still look rather good despite the age of the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment