THE DEVIL-DOLL Lionel Barrymore cross-dressing horror

The Satan-Doll is a 1936 sci-fi horror movie about an escaped convict who makes use of miniaturised people to wreak vengeance on those that framed him. Often known as The Satan Doll.

The film was directed by Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) and starred a cross-dressing Lionel Barrymore (Mark of the Vampire) and Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan) as his daughter, Lorraine Levond. The film was tailored from the 1932 novel Burn Witch Burn! written by Abraham Merritt.

17 years after being wrongly convicted of robbing his personal financial institution, Paul Lavond (Barrymore), escapes from incarceration on the Satan’s Island penal facility, together with fellow prisoner, Marcel (Henry B. Walthall, London After Midnight, The Start of a Nation) a scientist who’s making an attempt to create a method to cut back individuals to one-sixth of their authentic measurement. Eluding the chasing guards and hounds, they finally attain sanctuary on the riverside residence of the scientist’s widow, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano, an actress from the unique Théâtre du Grand-Guignol). Marcel’s goals are completely simply, aiming to protect the Earth’s pure assets however when he dies on account of the pair’s exhausting escape, Lavond gratefully picks up the baton and sees a possibility to hunt revenge towards those that made his life a distress.

Lavond is astounded when he sees the work Marcel has left behind, a St Bernard canine diminished to the dimensions of a paperback e-book however which can, by the facility of his thought alone, carry out any process he needs (correction – any process a canine would often be anticipated to carry out). An extra take a look at, on Malita’s half-wit maid, Lachna (Grace Ford) reveals promise however confirms that with out an exterior pressure to manage her, she is finally ineffective. Roping in Malita to help, they relocate to Paris and he disguises himself as a innocent little outdated woman, Madame Mandelip, with a expertise for making surprisingly real looking dolls. Utilizing the diminutive Lachna as his easily-missed weapon, he beneficial properties revenge on the three former enterprise associates who had framed him and vindicates himself.

Trickier are his makes an attempt at reconciliation along with his daughter, Lorraine (O’Sullivan) who, clearly not recognising her estranged father, recollects how she was left to fend for herself after her mom died while he was in jail. Regardless of Lavond’s light enquiries, she makes it clear that nothing will change her thoughts. In the meantime, Malita hasn’t completed what she’s began and desires to proceed to make use of the method for private acquire, even when it means killing Lavond.

Having handled this risk, Lavond’s plight, is that though he has cleared his identify, he is aware of he’s finally a assassin, in addition to the perpetrator of some legally-dubious shrinkings and finds he’s unable to shed his disguise and reintegrate himself again into society. With the help of his daughter’s suitor, Tonto (sure, Tonto, performed by Frank Lawton from The Invisible Ray) he settles for one final try and clear his identify with Lorraine.

Although he had an enviable profession behind him as a director, by the point it got here to filming Satan Doll, Tod Browning was a modified man from the auteur who had, alongside Lon Chaney Sr (to not point out Bela Lugosi), terrified and astounded audiences for the final twenty years. His battles with censors, critics and audiences alike filming Freaks had left him distant and frail, Satan Doll being his penultimate movie earlier than he sought life away from the digital camera till he died in 1962. Though there are sinister echoes of a few of Browning’s earlier work, significantly dramas equivalent to The Depraved Darling (1919) and the much-compared The Unholy Three (1925), it’s really the actors and particular results work which elevate the movie to one of many must-sees of the Thirties, a movie which deserves far point out consideration than it receives.

It’s value noting that the prisoners have escaped from Satan’s Island, a location talked about as additionally being the ‘dwelling quarters’ of Erik within the 1925 movie, The Phantom of the Opera (although not the e-book) earlier than he took residence in Paris, the doomed love and disguise following a theme of types. Ade Merritt’s supply novel is analogous in narrative however far darker, crueller and pulpy in tone, the cross-dressing Lavond being very a lot an invention of Browning and Barrymore. Had he nonetheless been alive (and been prepared to look within the talkies he was all the time doubtful of), Chaney would little question have taken the function seized eagerly by Barrymore. It’s, by all requirements, a ‘broad’ efficiency, scenes of idle outdated woman chit-chat lasting ten minutes at a time when two could be nearer to smart. Nonetheless, Barrymore is fairly convincing as an outdated dame, not precisely the grasp of disguise of Chaney’s Mrs O’Grady of The Unholy Three however a sterling effort.

Additionally excelling themselves are Ottiano who, sporting Elsa Lanchester’s gray streak from Bride of Frankenstein performs the bizarre a part of a feminine mad scientist with evident, if barely pantomime, menace. The massive shock is O’Sullivan who performs the normal MGM fawning, swooning tragic-but-wins-in-the-end feminine lead with a believability that was uncommon to search out on the time. Clearly the movie is an opportunity for MGM to compete with Common who have been flying excessive with horror on the time to say the least, although the studio couldn’t carry itself to reign within the schmaltz for lengthy, although an ending which hints at suicide sailed near the sails of the Hays Code.

The particular results have been little question a frightening prospect, Common wowing audiences with the likes of 1933’s The Invisible Man and, extra pertinently, Dr Pretorius’ experiments in shrinking people in Bride of Frankenstein. Though a number of the matte work isn’t precisely seamless, it’s nonetheless a pleasure to look at and this post-production work is supplemented by some large units to assist create the phantasm of tiny people (a trick additionally used efficiently in Laurel and Hardy’s Brats of 1930). A few of the set-pieces are significantly high-quality, a tiny puppet releasing themselves from a sleeping grown-up’s grasp, when there have been absolutely extra easily-filmed choices and a tiny however very actual decoration on a large Christmas Tree (enjoyable suggestion – when you’re ever requested what your favorite Christmas movie is, recommend this one to confuse individuals).

The lack of the movie to interrupt out from melodrama to full-blown horror is unlucky, it will absolutely rank as a traditional had the director been on high type and prepared to be as difficult as he had been all through his profession. The movie comes full with a Franz Waxman rating (Bride of Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1941).
Daz Lawrence, MOVIES and MANIA

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