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Overview
No, this isn’t one of our public domain side dish – though it kinda looks like it. This is another movie by the esteemed Todd Browning from Freaks. Which one is better? Guess it depends. Are they both good? Guess it depends.
There are some great effects going on in this one. They really did some great work with film overlays and using large sets to make the actors look smaller. In fact – spoiler alert – that same technique was used in the upcoming Unwelcome.
At least this time there isn’t a disturbing duck.
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Transcript
All right. I’m all set.
Stephen: we’re all set. Okay. So exciting episode, delving back into another of our favorite directors this time.
Going back to what another Todd Browning movie.
Rhys: I think when you said exciting, you misspoke and you meant depressing,
Stephen: before we go the devil’s doll, what how can you be so exciting when it’s based on that title? So before we start that though, I got something interesting and fun as I was getting ready to watch this movie, Todd Browning. Colin had a show, a comic show, and he said, Hey, I got something for you.[00:03:00]
And he pulls up. This,
Rhys: That is amazing.
Stephen: it is a small press. They adapted the Freaks movie to comic book format. So yeah, he picked it up for me as a gift. It’s number two of two, so I don’t have number one. I’m sure it’s not easy to. Yeah. It’s oh, okay, you gave me something. That’s the real gift. The gift is the hunt now to find it.
And like I, I mentioned about the book I was reading Mother that had a movie with it. I said, oh, does anybody know anybody seen this? And somebody replied said yeah, it’s right here on Amazon. I’m like no. Find it in the wild. Let’s find the VHS copy of this tape somewhere. That’s
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Alright, so do Todd Browning. Let’s.
Rhys: 1936
Stephen: Few years after Freaks
Rhys: That’s true. Before we go too much further, I wanna give a shout out to my brother Michael, who’s out [00:04:00] there driving truck. He listens to us periodically, keeps him awake while he is driving around
Stephen: sleep. The rest of your family
Rhys: yeah, no that’s just me and my kids. But Hey Michael. Stay safe on the roads.
Stephen: Do a for.
Rhys: There you go.
Stephen: We, the lasagna honk.
Rhys: Yeah, this is Todd Browning. He did Freaks, which we reviewed back in Season three, four, something like that. Season four I think, was Jobs. It runs an hour and 18 minutes. It was nominated for two awards. Which surprised me, one in 2017 and or 2007, which isn’t surprising, but it actually won one called the photo play Best Picture of the month for September, and that was in 1936.
Stephen: Interesting. I could see that. It, this definitely felt like I, I’ve done some movies now, I’m a little bit more professional and it has some really good effects to go with it. And he got Lionel Barrymore. That, [00:05:00] that was a big win right there.
Rhys: Yeah. The film, interestingly enough, not unlike them, which is a Wes Craven production of which that’s just his name on there. This shows up as a Browning production. So it’s a Todd Browning production, but he directed it. But he doesn’t anywhere list himself as the director. And in fact, after Freaks, he did not list himself as a director for any of the remaining films.
Stephen: Because he was afraid to do it or because
Rhys: I don’t know. This was, this is all MGM who did freaks as well. So if they weren’t gonna green light projects for him, you’d think he’d be okay with that. But I think it was just the negative stigma around movies that he directed that caused him to not, this is his second to last film.
Stephen: Okay. Interesting. Wow. He had a short career run.
Rhys: He actually didn’t. His career runs really long, but it starts [00:06:00] way back in the silent era.
Stephen: Oh, okay.
Rhys: This film was based on a story called Burn, witch Burn. And unlike the one that Freaks was based on, which was a short in a magazine, this is like a novel written by.
Stephen: And you can find it.
Rhys: It’s like a thousand dollars.
Stephen: Yeah, you can find it
Rhys: Yeah, I was looking it up and I’m like, holy cow. It’s about 70 pages. It is a full length novel
Stephen: nice. Yeah,
And you gotta be careful ’cause I think there’s another movie out there called Burn, witch Burn. It’s not based on this. And so you know how things get complicated over a hundred years of movies and books.
Rhys: There’s also a Devil Doll from like 1950 or 60, which is not really this film. It’s something else entirely just with the same name. So
Stephen: It’s not related. Not even the same story, so yeah.
Rhys: this critics. I don’t know if critics at the time realized it, but [00:07:00] critics now realize, if you look back at this and compare it to the unholy three, which was the film that he did with the guy who starred in Freaks and Cheney. This is very similar because in both cases you have the main villain, protagonist, anti-hero, dressing up like a woman to be in disguise using things that look like they’re innocent to actually commit the crimes he is, he’s performing.
So the story was very similar between the two.
Stephen: Interesting
Rhys: Yeah, which is interesting ’cause Spurs was a short story Burn Witch By was a novel and they weren’t, I don’t know how similar they were, it’s just he like took that plot and took elements from each story and put them into that plot mode and traveled forward from there.
I guess.
Stephen: shake and see what comes out.
Rhys: That’s right. This film is also known as the Witch [00:08:00] of Timbuktu, which makes no sense at all. There’s really no witches. It’s nowhere near Timbuktu,
Stephen: Burn, which burn doesn’t really apply much to this either. That conveys a whole separate, different image of what it would be about.
Rhys: I suppose, but in the end, there is a fire.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: Someone dies in it, so there you go.
Stephen: Okay. And that’s not really the focus, but that’s fine.
Rhys: Yeah. This I think also speaks to the situation that Browning found himself in. Francis McDonald and Inas Lange, both of whom were in the 10 Commandments, they were o both slated to be on this film, and they both didn’t show. And,
Stephen: could be a lot there. Okay.
Rhys: but the composer of the main theme Brene Lau caper not listed anywhere again, was, is it, ’cause he didn’t wanna be associated with it. [00:09:00] So it’s really hard to say. It wasn’t MGM film. He stuck with MGM after he left Universal, after Dracula, all the way to the end. And this is the second to last film.
It was followed by Miracles for Sale three years later, which is a mystery kind of show. So at the time that he did his work, Browning’s work was seen either as kind of pedestrian. Because the public loved it. The critics hated it. There was not much there. The studios loved it because he would bring in lots of money at the gate, or his movies were considered controversial because it was things like freaks and, he was always on the edge of what is acceptable and what is not.
But looking back on his body of work he directed 46 pieces.
Stephen: Oh wow. Okay.
Rhys: He did a total of, 46 [00:10:00] feature films. He did a total of 62 pieces. ’cause when he started directing, he was doing like shorts, single reels is what they call
Stephen: Especially back in the silent era.
Rhys: Yep. Did 54 titles as an actor before started directing.
Stephen: Holy crap. So he did have a very long career. Yeah.
Rhys: He did. He’s been dubbed by historian Vivian Ekk as the Edgar Allen Poe of Cinema.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: And I think it’s fitting because Poe, he wasn’t really appreciated at the time he was producing, and he also would take a lot of his own personal demons and put it into the work that he was doing, like Poe.
Stephen: All.
Rhys: and he had a serious substance abuse problem. He was an alcoholic. And from early days all the way to the end. So he came and it’s not like he had a traumatic background, to find trauma, but he came from a middle class Baptist [00:11:00] family in
Stephen: There you.
Rhys: It’s his uncle was a famous baseball player Pete Browning, and he was called Pete Louisville Slugger Browning. And there was a baseball bat company that formed up in Kentucky, made bats named after him. So
Stephen: There you go. That’s a great connection.
Rhys: Todd Browning’s uncle is what named the Louisville Slugger.
Stephen: Nice.
Rhys: At age 16, he ran away and joined the circus. kind of thing that you see in movies and stories and stuff. He started out as a roustabout and then worked his way up to a spiller, which when we did Freaks, I called people Barkers and that wasn’t right. It’s a Spiller, not a Barker.
Stephen: Barker is different or a more modern term.
Rhys: No. Barker is different. Because the Speer is the one who is trying to get you to come in and see the act. And the Barker is the guy who [00:12:00] like is trying to get you to see the circus.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: So the Speer’s like individual things. And then the Barker, at least that’s what I came across. But
Stephen: The barker is the guy on the corner spinning the sign to get you to buy the phone.
Rhys: yeah, except they don’t spin signs, but. He went from there to a singer. He was a contortionist. He was known as the living hypnotic corpse. And he actually finished his circus career as a clown for the Ringling Brothers. It wasn’t just small circuses. He worked his way up to the big top.
Stephen: Wow. The show.
Rhys: This part reminds me of Prince, he dropped the D, second D in his name, so it was TOD, which is German for death, which I thought was interesting, especially because he was known as the living hypnotic corpse. That was about the time that he did [00:13:00] it, but it just, it’s morbid.
The.
Stephen: Yeah, definitely. All of this information makes him a totally different character rather than just, oh, that’s a guy that did freaks that caused such a stir in problems. There was, may again, he did. Edgy stuff. Maybe it was all on purpose. It was all part of the, leading up to us having kiss, that’s.
Rhys: Yeah. He married a woman named Amy Lewis Stevenson. She’s actually, at the time, she was the aunt of an actual famous movie star who didn’t do anything we know, and I don’t think he lasted that long, but he actually left her, abandoned her, is how they write about it. He abandoned her to become a vaudevillian.
Stephen: I, choice between being a vaudevillian and being married, I can understand maybe running to that, that’s the little boy running away from home, joining the circus there, right?[00:14:00]
Rhys: Yeah, continuing, just keeping to be that little boy. He started acting in 1909. That came to an end in 1915, and it was due in large part because as I mentioned, he had a problem with alcohol. He was driving home drunk one night with two of his friends and hit a train.
Stephen: You? Yeah.
Rhys: it.
Stephen: I.
Rhys: Yes, at a trains crossing injured fellow actor George Sigman.
And there was another actor named Elmer Booth who died in the car accident.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: But Todd ended up with like several internal injuries and he lost his front teeth.
Stephen: Wow. And this had only been very few years that most people had access to a car. Yeah.
Rhys: That’s an insane insane time to actually get in the car accident, but.
Stephen: With a.
Rhys: With a train. Yes. Much more popular mode of [00:15:00] transportation. He, while he was recovering, he started working on writing stuff and then he came out directing from there. And he took that kind of, that kind of pain in the angst from the experience.
And he put it into his work. And you can see it in the early productions that he did as a director.
Stephen: Which is a time honored tale of creatives that anguish over their work and stuff.
Rhys: It’s true. Another little piece of trivia when you’re talking about Todd Browning is that David Bowie put his name in one of his songs and it’s a famous song like almost everyone knows. He just goes by and you don’t even realize it. He is in the first verse of Diamond Dogs.
Stephen: Really.
Rhys: Yeah. As they pulled you out from the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party with a silicon hump and your 10 inch stump dressed like a priest.
You was Todd Browning streak. He was,
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: yeah. Which I just thought all [00:16:00] those years, I’ve heard that song. I never, you can’t really follow the lyrics all that well,
But then here it is, turn it, come around and it ends up that. This is this is actually part of the review we’re doing.
He did marry again. His second wife was named Alice Wilson. She died in 1944. No real fault of his, but after his last movie came out, he became a Relu recluse stayed in his house, drank and died in 1962.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: No interviews, no talking to people. Just shut himself up.
Stephen: Do you think for entertainment at home? He like would put himself in the boxes like a cat or something.
Rhys: It’s contortion is just all right. Today. I’m going to try everything in the living room.
Stephen: Look, this pillowcase that can fit in there.
Rhys: He has significant, he has two films that are recognized as [00:17:00] significant freaks was one of them. And man, I can’t think what the second one was, but I’m gonna come across it when I do, I’ll mention it.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: Now the cast for this film. There’s really only three people that I noted. And mostly, oh, Dracula, that was it.
Stephen: That, yeah, you mentioned that earlier, right?
Rhys: So Dracula and Freaks are the two films that he did that were culturally significant. The cast for this, the vast majority of ’em nobody’s really gonna know who they are or what they were in. So I mentioned a few of them here, but
Stephen: Right,
Rhys: pause for a second. Good one.
Stephen: eh.
Rhys: The first one is Lionel Barrymore. He plays Paul Lavant in this film. He is the brother to John Barrymore, who was [00:18:00] Drew Barry Moore’s grandfather. So this is her great uncle.
He was born in Philadelphia in 1878 to two parents who were actors, Maurice and Georgiana Barrymore. Their last name was actually Blithe.
Barrymore was just a stage name that has just been adopted and stuck all this time.
Stephen: interesting. So Drew Blythe. Yeah. Very more sounds better.
Rhys: yeah. Family was Catholic. But they were actors. They had a falling out and ended up divorced, which was actually a big stigma back then being in the Catholic church and ended up divorced. He invented the boom microphone,
Stephen: Wow. Okay.
Rhys: so I thought that was cool. From 1838 on, he is one of the few actors who can claim to have had a very successful career [00:19:00] after being wheelchair bound.
Stephen: Yeah, I remember the name Lionel Barrymore from multiple movies, oh. The Barrymore name in general from movies, that’s why I was like, eh he’s a known name. Even to some nowadays.
Rhys: In fact in the famous Looney Tunes where the guy’s sitting there and finds the frog in the box, who sings, he has a newspaper, and the headline on the newspaper mentions Lionel Barrymore.
Stephen: I’ll have to go look for that.
Rhys: He has two stars on the walk of fame. One for movies in cinema and one for radio. He did a lot of radio work and because he did a lot of radio work, FDR was asked who he thought was a better actor, Lionel Barry Moore or himself, and he said, oh, I think I am.
His claim to fame was, he played Ebenezer Scrooge every year at Christmas
Stephen: All
Rhys: he [00:20:00] only missed two, and one of them, his brother John did for him. And the second time they found a different actor to fill in for him. And one of those was like when his wife died or something like that.
Stephen: that’s understandable.
Rhys: He, he also romantically, had a wife and then didn’t, and then ended up with John Barry Moore’s ex, which caused them to have a falling out which they patched up eventually.
But yeah, it was this kind of little family drama
Stephen: George Harrison and
Rhys: Eric Clapton. Yeah. He directed 15 pieces. He started acting in and he acted in 22. He started acting in them in 1905 with an uncredited role in the white caps, and he stopped acting in 1956 with our Mr. Son, which is an educational piece doing voiceover for father time.
Stephen: [00:21:00] Interesting.
Rhys: Aside from the Devil Doll, you might also have seen him and you can’t take it with you. And he was Mr. Potter and it’s a wonderful life.
Stephen: Oh, okay. That’s where I remembered the name. I knew I’d seen it semi-recently in something.
Rhys: Yeah. He died in 1945 MO Sullivan. Was in this as well. She plays Lorraine Labon. She was born in 1911 in Ro, common Ireland.
Stephen: That’s crazy with name Michael Sullivan.
Rhys: Her father was a soldier. He sent her to London. She was originally enrolled in a school in Rocom. He sent her to London because according to him, her brogue was so thick. She was almost un. Couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Stephen: I’ll say this has been a conversation around here that it’s been said the Irish speaking language is dying and it’s had a revival since Covid. People started wanting to learn their ancient [00:22:00] Irish language during Covid, and there’s a movie coming out about a rap group from Ireland, and they helped motivate the whole thing.
Is that it? Yeah. I know it’s coming out and we, me and Colin wanna watch it.
Rhys: Tommy, I started taking Irish lessons myself, and I have for, I don’t know, maybe three, three years or so now, but. It was, for me, it was mostly because there were songs that I liked that were in Gaelic,
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: and even if you got the lyrics, you couldn’t read them because Gaelic has this really weird structure, lots of rules about how you spell things.
I was like I guess I’m gonna have to learn the damn language if I wanna be able to sing these songs. She’s been dubbed Ireland’s first film star. She is Mia Pharaoh’s mother.
Stephen: Oh, that’s cool.
Rhys: Yeah. She had seven children. Mia Pharaoh’s one of them.
Stephen: That sounds like a nursery rhyme.
Rhys: Seventh, the seventh, son of the [00:23:00] seventh. She had seven children. They’re all actors except one who died back in the early days. He was learning to fly and there was like a plane crash or.
Stephen: Obviously it didn’t go well.
Rhys: So she had seven kids, six survived. She was very politically active. She was big into supporting unicef, the United Nations, which is not something I knew you had to support back in, the 1960s and seventies. She was a big member of the Democratic National Party and she was a big contributor to Habitat for Humanity.
Stephen: Oh, that’s cool.
Rhys: So
Stephen: We just had a president die that was a big contributor of that.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s true. Very recently. She started acting in 1930 with a film called, so This is London, and she, it was an uncredited role again. She went on to perform in 103 pieces this is awesome, this science fiction film called just Imagine which was set [00:24:00] in. Two of the actresses from that film actually lived to see the 1980s m O’Hara and her co-star, which I thought was funny.
Stephen: That’s funny.
Rhys: She’s probably best known for playing Jane in all of those Tarzan movies, the 1930s and forties.
Stephen: Okay. I knew I’d seen her name too, but I didn’t look deeper when I saw this.
Rhys: Yeah. She was also in the Thin Man Anna Karenina. Pride and Prejudice. She was, I didn’t know this was, there was a Casablanca TV series
Stephen: Oh.
Rhys: the movie, and she was in that,
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: she was in a movie called The Tall Tea. It was a western, it was her favorite film that she did in her whole thing.
She did some soap work with all my children and guiding light. She was in Peggy Sue got married and,
Stephen: wow. That is getting recent.
Rhys: And she played Mia Pharaoh’s mother and Hannah and her sisters, the Woody Allen film. She passed away in 1998,
Stephen: wow. She had a long, lifelong career.
Rhys: She did. [00:25:00] The last one I’m gonna mention, I just, I was looking through everybody and I’m like, okay, like this guy was ancient when they did this.
He could have done a whole much, this guy was ancient when they did this. However, there’s a child in the film,
Stephen: Yes.
Rhys: Called Marguerite Cove. She was played by Juanita Quigley and, I just mention it because she did very little
Stephen: That’s not nice to say about to me.
Rhys: She was in National Velvet,
Stephen: Okay?
Rhys: which you know, was a kid’s film about horse racing back in the fifties. She was in a film called mystery Street.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: In the 1956 ish or so, and then nothing until porkies two the next day.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: If you’re gonna come back into theater after 30 year absence, porkies two is the way to do it.
Stephen: Sometimes you gotta [00:26:00] take what you get.
Rhys: It is true.
Stephen: That, that’s pretty, I, there’s gotta be some other story behind that. Maybe, was she a stay at home mom after that? Because.
Rhys: Maybe something like that.
Stephen: We’ve seen other actors, it’s like they did five movies and it stops. You never hear from ’em again. And in, in fact, what I remember Monica Potter from Conair the Nicholas Cage’s wife in that movie, she quit acting.
She is in Garrettsville. She has a little shop in Garyville now. You wonder what these people do afterwards
Rhys: you had the two female leads from the two full-sized female leads from Freaks. They both had a big gap in their career after that movie. The one who was the. Villain. She went on to act some more, and then the one who was the innocent ingenue was just like, I’m just stopping. I’m not going to continue acting.
I’m gonna take time to work on my family. Which hey, kudos to you.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: This [00:27:00] film is a very interesting film. For me for three reasons. One. There’s a romance involved that does not involve the main character, so it’s this sidecar romance attached to it, which is a really interesting thing, especially in films back then.
Stephen: Yeah and I made note of that. I was like, there are several subplots that really don’t have anything to do with the main story or the main people there. There are side things and nowadays. They are done differently. They’re woven in a little differently. This felt almost tacked on oh, I need a couple more minutes or something.
And it probably very much is, this is the dawn of making movies. There weren’t rules, there weren’t, we don’t know what works and what doesn’t type thing, that’s what I figured.
Rhys: Yeah. I thought that was really interesting. The special effects are incredible for the day,
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: they were all done through either double exposure or [00:28:00] they would build crazy, intricate. Set pieces where like when she’s on that jewelry table, stealing the jewelry, all that stuff was there.
Stephen: Wow. Okay. I was wondering if they did anything
Rhys: Yeah. So if you didn’t have people involved, they would build this giant set for them to interact with for the actors to interact with, which I just think’s amazing.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And the one, there was one scene on the one guy’s desk with the horse I think was moving around that you could tell again, early days, getting this where the horse is like moving here and he’s looking over here oh my gosh, but that I was like, forgiven. It’s 36.
What do
Rhys: Yeah, 1936. The last thing that I find interesting about this is that as I was looking through, people talk about this film. No one can agree on what it is. It’s a horror piece. It’s a crime story, it’s a feel good [00:29:00] tale. It’s a science fiction piece. And you can t it.
Stephen: Yeah. A revenge for love. Almost, if you count him and his daughter,
Rhys: Yeah it’s very odd, I think the best way to do it is just to do it. So let’s start talking about it.
Stephen: All right.
Rhys: The movie starts with this police chase at night, except it’s not much of a police chase. They’re in boats in the swamp, like scanning in the trees and stuff.
Stephen: But Victor Crowley was nowhere to be found.
Rhys: That did cross my mind. How funny would it be if all of a sudden the jean’s arm just gets pulled out of the boat?
Stephen: Yeah, that, see, that would be a Forrest Gump type thing to do with movies like this, with today’s stuff. That would be awesome. Take some of these public domain stuff and do a treatment like that, like the slashers invading every movie.
Rhys: but yeah, Victor Crowley in the black and white films. It would be awesome.
Stephen: I, I think Kane Hotter would love it.
Rhys: [00:30:00] Yeah. You have this speech between hang on. All right, we’ll just keep going I guess.
Stephen: Okay. Yeah the software takes out all the long pauses, so
Rhys: Oh, good one.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: The first speech between Paul and Marcel is like the worst piece of acting I think I’ve ever seen. We’ve just outta prison.
Stephen: Yeah. We gotta get this backstory. Here’s how to do it.
Rhys: Yes. They just basically take their stuff and they just dump it out.
Stephen: It’s kinda I always laugh about some of the He-Man cartoons because he would do stuff like, I must now leave the room and walk through the door. He would say that as part of the whole thing and then walk through. I’m like, oh, this is horrible.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, so it wasn’t good. It was a lot of discourse. You have Paul, you have Marcel. They’ve broken outta jail if you couldn’t tell, ’cause the cops are chasing him and they’re traveling through the swamp. Marcel wants to get back to his important scientific work, and [00:31:00] Paul wants to get revenge and kill people.
So
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: there you go. And that was delivered about as well as those lines were delivered in the film.
Stephen: Very good.
Rhys: Thank you. Thank you. I look forward to my what was that? My movie of the month award. We are now introduced to Melita and her dogs in this next scene. She’s got this Vampiric stare and sunken cheeks, which is a takeoff of the vampire thing.
When he was in Drac,
Stephen: And she had the bride of Frankenstein hair.
Rhys: she had the of Frankenstein, which came out in. 1935. So it was just the year before. And yeah, I was reading people reviewing this and they’re like, oh, she was horrible. Like the eyes just wide constantly. I was like, okay. It was 1936 and she’s supposed to be crazy,
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: let her be [00:32:00] crazy. She has a mentally challenged assistant called Lana who plays the organ rather well. I thought. She’s playing the organ at the start.
Stephen: prodigy.
Rhys: Paul and Marcella are outside. Marcella is suffering from some unknown illness. He has been working to reduce living creatures. One sixth their size into dull sized animals to help solve the whole food problem in the.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. So between her and the science, it’s okay, this is a little science fiction going on here, but then they’re talking about they’re, oh, it’s dead. No, it’s not. And I’m like, A little Frankenstein going on here. It’s, again, what exactly is this movie about? Because it’s got a little bit of everything going on.
It’s a little bit, very incohesive at times. When you’re trying to figure out why are we doing this type thing,
Rhys: yeah and maybe this is why it’s so hard to pin down as to what kind of genre it fits. His science is off ’cause he can shrink the atoms, which is not a thing. Not
Stephen: But [00:33:00] remove some of the space between them, like a zip file.
Rhys: Okay. You’d have to actually reduce the charges. So the things that you
Stephen: it on, I saw it on Star Trek.
Rhys: So the reduction in the size of the brain for some reason makes it not function properly. All the rest of your organs work fine, but your brain does not. And you’re being reduced into being a puppet to the will of someone else.
Stephen: And it’s amazing that you can control it with your mind. I was like, we don’t have any better way to do it. We’ll just say mind power, that’s now we’re really going off the rails of what this is.
Rhys: He does it with a couple dogs to prove to Paul that it can be done. And I think Barrymore did a great job of not overreacting, but like looking puzzled or disgusted all at the same time, alternating between the two. I thought that was good.
Stephen: Yeah. And didn’t the one dog looked like marmaduke, like almost identical to the Marmaduke cartoon
Rhys: Sure.
Stephen: when he is sitting there, he is. Just looked like Marma.
Rhys: That great big.
Stephen: Yeah. [00:34:00] Great.
Rhys: They decided they’re gonna experiment on Lana,
Stephen: Like you do
Rhys: her brain doesn’t work right. Anyway
Stephen: the Louisiana swamps, I’m sure Good out there.
Rhys: Yeah. Marcel or. Dies has a heart attack when this seems to be going and working well. But you end up with this fully functional little woman at the end of it.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: And this gives Paul an idea.
Stephen: Yeah, the story’s a little bit of a stretch. All throughout. I question the guy that died. Why did we need him at all? Cut him out of the story, whatever.
Rhys: I suppose he moves he goes with Malita to Paris under the precept that they’re going to consider Mar continue Marcel’s work to honor his memory, which isn’t his plan at all. But
Stephen: They do it. Technically they do continue. It is just why they do it.
Rhys: yeah, so we cut to [00:35:00] Paris. You have three wealthy bankers who screwed Paul Lavant over, and they’re panicking over the fact that he’s escaped
Stephen: So it’s a very modern story in that regard.
Rhys: you. The bankers are screwing people over.
They embezzled money from the bank. They kill a guard. One of them’s overly confident about the whole thing and he is they’re like, what if he comes to Paris?
And he is he’ll scream and cry like a woman, which I thought was interesting because he ends up disguised as a woman to walk the.
Stephen: But I really question the, okay. So you’re a banker and you’re gonna become a vigilante for revenge, and that’s the best way to clear your name. Okay. We’ll just go with it. We have people shrinking, so it’s
Rhys: Sure. The bankers after a 50,000 frank reward for his capture and the Johns armor are out looking everywhere, but.
Stephen: That scene cracked me up. Literally all these policemen walking around town, like looking at everybody, studying them furiously, [00:36:00] just looking at everyone like you’re, go catch ’em, like taking his laundry down to the laundromat.
Rhys: Ironic the reward goes up to a hundred thousand Francs until you have this Mrs. Doubtfire looking lady who like pulls down one of the flyers and goes into this doll shop and it’s actually lavant and disguise.
Stephen: Whoa. Crazy.
Rhys: He and ma have opened a doll shop in Paris, which is actually interesting ’cause like where did they get the dolls and the money for the building?
They’re staying in the nice glass and the name on the door and all that stuff.
Stephen: That’s what you’re questioning, not the shrinking of atoms in the small people and dogs. Okay. That’s
Rhys: the finances interest me.
Stephen: so if you shrunk money, would you be able to carry more of it around? I guess
Rhys: sure.
Stephen: that would work.
Rhys: That’s some real deflation right there.
Stephen: There you go. Yeah. Wait. Oh, yeah.
Rhys: We’re radio morning show.[00:37:00]
Stephen: We have the face for radio. What do you want?
Rhys: That’s true. He goes to the bank under the disguise of Madam Mandela to try and get financing for his doll shop. He brings this horse for demonstration which amazes this Banker Rankin, who is one of the Redden, who is one of the three. So she convinces him to come to her shop that evening, and it’s really interesting to me that. Everything is so Parisian, right? All of this stuff happens at the top of the Eiffel Tower and his shop is in mom March, right past the Moulin Rouge. So if you’re watching this in America, you can at least go, yeah, I’ve heard of those places.
Stephen: Yeah. Especially in 36 when people weren’t as traveled and stuff, there was probably like three places they knew. Let’s use ’em.
Rhys: Yeah in another five years lots of Americans went to Paris, but they were
Stephen: It’s true, but that’s a different story.
Rhys: guns. [00:38:00] They
They end up in Madam Mandala shop. Lana is there dressed as an a posh doll and it was a fashion based on a violent street gang. This aash thing, and it happens a couple times.
Stephen: Clockwork orange.
Rhys: Yeah, except more socially. Acceptable to dress in their style because the banker’s oh wow. Of course. And then they have a stiletto, a little mini stiletto for his street thug girl doll.
And he is this is amazing. It looks exactly it’s been tipped in poison and,
Stephen: are about to die Psycho Barbie.
Rhys: Yes, Levant stabs, redden in the leg with it which is a paralytic and he can’t move. And he like talks to him and he is you’re not going to die. I have uses for you.
Stephen: Wonderful writing.
Rhys: Yes, this was also written by Browning.
The police stop and tell madam [00:39:00] mandala to clean up the alley. ’cause it’s a mess. ’cause you’re thinking, oh, they’re here because red end’s been missing. No, that wasn’t it. Just, Hey, your alley’s a mess. Clean
Stephen: Just another banker. Nobody noticed.
Rhys: Melita was all set to shrink the policeman down, but Lavant says he’s already small in mind and they do make a point of how stupid police are in this movie.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Apparently he goes to see his mother often, which Mita thinks is a mistake ’cause he’s gonna get caught. But this day he’s going to see his daughter, Lorraine. She works at the laundry and so she walks in and like Lorraine doesn’t recognize her.
Stephen: You know what they were missing right here, where the laundry scene, it’s a hard knock life for me. I was waiting for it, it just that everything seemed to fit.
Rhys: I thought you were gonna say, you know what they’re missing right here. A romance. Have I got news for
Stephen: Alright, let’s go.
Rhys: in walks Toto who is a [00:40:00] struggling taxi driver, he has his own fleet of taxis and he is there to, because he’s Lorraine’s boyfriend. Leaves the shop and she tells Toto there’s something about that woman that makes me wanna cry. She just does, makes wanna cry. So Toto and Lorraine go off to the Eiffel Tower. He professes his love for her and she’s you can’t love me. Ugh. My father is the scoundrel, Paul Lavant, and I would just be ruining your life by dragging you down.
I hate him. Mother killed herself because he was so horrible. She could never ask any man to share that shame her.
Stephen: No overly dramatization of anything going on here.
Rhys: It gets even better. Madam Mandala walks right past two policemen to go with newly purchased violets to go visit his mother. And his mother knows that it’s. Paul, and she’s worried about him. [00:41:00] She, but he can’t stand to see Lorraine toil in that laundry anymore. He wants to tell her. But his mother convinces him to wait, and then Lorraine comes home. And he almost screws up because he picks up this rosary and he gave it to her. And so he says something about that and she’s she hates it. She hates that rosary because it was a gift for Paul. And then she goes off on this five minute tirade about how much she hates her father, and you just don’t understand.
Stephen: A couple times I thought that Lucas seemed to have taken some pointers from Browning on the dialogue and stuff.
Rhys: And some of the science.
Stephen: yeah, exactly. Actually it’s like just get somebody to help polish it a little bit. You got good ideas. I know what you’re going for here, but it’s a little rough at times.
Rhys: Yeah, he, I think Browning was having a hard time finding people to work with at this point in his career. A police officer comes in to check on the mother and point out that, Hey, you know what? It’s against the law if your son shows up and you don’t tell us,
Stephen: And I love how [00:42:00] everywhere this guy goes, the police just show up, but never rec. It’s like some magnetic force in the universe drawing them. Yeah.
Rhys: The bankers are worried about Lavant. It turns out that Madam Mandala is at Cove’s house showing off the dolls to his wife. And he’s just oh, get rid of heroin, blah, blah, blah. He is this 250 francs for the doll, which he’s oh, that’s horrible. And it’s we see Redden is now actually a doll, which is interesting to me that he brings his fellow banker with him to a house of a banker who doesn’t recognize the doll.
Stephen: Psychos, they always gotta do that. I’m smarter than you and you won’t even recognize this type
Rhys: Yep. L Lavant makes a point of noticing his wife’s fine jewelry. And then Covey agrees to buy the doll, which thrills meta mandala and Margarite. Their child comes in and is all excited about the doll. And she gets to keep the doll.
Stephen: Spooky little El Doll,
Rhys: Yes. Yes. [00:43:00] So this is, this is not the Redan doll that she gets. She gets the Lana Doll, the girl.
Stephen: right?
Rhys: So we see Madam Cove taking off her jewelry and going to bed. She puts it in a little box. She lays down, Lavant is downstairs out in the alley or something.
Stephen: Thinking very heavily
Rhys: Yes, to wake the lach na doll who crawls out from under Marguerite’s arms and sneaks out onto the hall.
Then over to the nightstand, climbing up with the assistance of a giant shoe, which they built for this thing.
Stephen: now. So you know what I was thinking about, that if we build everything in our world to giant size, that would be the same thing as shrinking us. So we could live in a world like that.
Rhys: We could, although the idea of trying to save resources goes out the window that
Stephen: Yeah, that’s neither here nor there.
Rhys: Yeah. She gets to the jewelry box, she removes the necklaces and goes to the window and drops them, and Paul catches [00:44:00] them in his basket. Then she pulls out this dagger and stabs Cole leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Stephen: That’s crazy.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: I love the sneaking too. They all with that classic cartoon sneak. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Spy versus spy.
Stephen: Yes.
Rhys: We cut to a scene where the police are getting dressed down by their supervisor. Lavant is thrilled with his progress and he is stripping gemstones out of the jewelry, which is actually the smart way to move that. The dolls are over there performing this dance, which looks like a violent kind of thing.
That is the actual dance used in the time.
Stephen: Oh unless you’re on a tabletop.
Rhys: Unless you’re on a tabletop, which LA Nadal falls from the table and Lavant is very concerned for her. And then there’s a knock on the door and it’s the police.
Stephen: Of course.
Rhys: [00:45:00] Yes. They’re investigating the theft and the paralyzation of Ms. Vey. And then Madam Manola does this great thing. I think this was really good, where she’s oh, I’m so worried and the police are gonna take me away and just take me, I won’t, and the cop’s settle down. We’re not taking you in. Obviously it wasn’t you, but we have to get some questions. And the whole time all these gems are sitting in a.
Stephen: So you got a little humor injected in here with them, like the typical Laurel and Hardy type thing. Oh my gosh, the jewels are right here. We gotta cover it up. You know that again, it was a lot of different styles thrown in here at times.
Rhys: Yeah. And they do manage to get the gems hidden. The policeman even picks up the bobble and they’re like, oh, that’s a clown. That’s for boys. You have a girl, so here, take one of these instead.
Stephen: It was a donkey donkeys.
Rhys: Sure. Ms. Marten [00:46:00] is the last banker. He is a dinner with his doctor. He is a just complete brus douche bag. He always has been through this whole movie. Man Manela manages to sleep this coated message to him, which is literally just bible verses. And he goes home and he dec it and it says this.
Thou shalt likewise enter the shadow of death, confess and be saved.
Stephen: There, there’s a lot of hints of like later Hitchcock coming in here with some of the stuff there. There were definite feels of that at times.
Rhys: Yeah. They he cuts off the confess and be saved part of it and calls the police to say, Hey, I got this threatening note. And they come and fill his house full of police, which does nothing.
Stephen: They, maybe they were having a, they needed something for the policeman’s balls as Browning hired them all, or.
Rhys: The super ironic thing is it does nothing, but in the end it doesn’t make any [00:47:00] difference. And you’ll see why in a second it’s 9 45 as Madam Mandel is walking the streets and we see the Rodan doll is hanging on the Christmas tree with a bow like an ornament. And there’s this whole tension building thing where the doll comes off and makes a noise.
What’s that? And all this stuff. And he is on the stairs and he’s gonna get caught. And
Stephen: That, that whole scene was a little that made me laugh. It’s that’s really not how people are reacting. And yeah, it just seemed a little over the top, but whatever.
Rhys: oh yeah, Martin is nervous. He’s just a mess.
Stephen: And I got a question. He’s sitting there in a smoking robe or a soaky looking robe, but he is got shoes and spats on who the hell wears a robe in the house with shoes and spats.
Rhys: You never know if he might have to run away.
Stephen: And a tie. He had a tie under it too. I’m like, yeah, you look like you’re relaxing there.
Rhys: Yeah. Rodan is positioned behind his chair with the dagger out. All ready to [00:48:00] do the deed and then with two minutes to spare, Maran stands up and confesses and lavant is cleared. And I think I read somewhere that was actually supposed to be the end of the film.
Stephen: I was gonna say, that’s the main plot line there.
Rhys: It is. I also had to ask you your opinion.
Un not unlike motherly. This has a Christmas. Splash in it. Does that make this a Christmas?
Stephen: I thought the same thing. I’m like, oh, we could watch this one at Christmas time. It’s not horrific enough. We, yeah, we need more slashers in there, to make it Christmas horror.
Rhys: Lavant wants to be done with his whole thing with man Manela. It’s all done. It’s good. He can’t stick around because there’s lots of questions that would be asked, so he has to go on the run, and Malita is not at all behind this plan. He wants to burn down everything and she wants to keep doing the work. So she plans on paralyzing lavant and he turns around and sees her staring [00:49:00] intently at the floor by his feet. There’s the Rodan doll with the dagger. So he stops her and she pulls up this vial like a flask, Erla Meyer flask. And he is you’re gonna blow us all up. And she throws it anyways and everything bursts into flames.
Stephen: These people have some crazy ideas of the best way to solve problems.
Rhys: Just some crazy ideas of how chemistry works,
You do see Lavant making it out the house. You don’t see Malita making it outta the, but maybe she did and sequel.
Stephen: See. Oh.
Rhys: Yes. Then you have this, the police searching the house. We can’t find anything. Case closed. It’s just like the worst depiction of the French police ever. Just.
Stephen: We did have inspector there, so you know,
Rhys: Levant climbs into Totos Taxi and he confesses to Toto that he’s Paul Lats. And this all felt very, it’s a wonderful wife to [00:50:00] me. They head up to the top of the Eiffel Tower to talk because hey, it’s France. It’s the only place to hang out.
Stephen: goes.
Rhys: Yes. Lorraine is gonna meet Toto up there eventually. And he tells Toto the whole deal and he is look, Lorraine can never.
But I’m leaving all my fortune and everything for her, so I’m assuming he sold the gemstones or whatever.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: But before he can get away, Lorraine shows up on top of the elevator and he asks if he can have a word with her. And he is I was a friend of your father’s. And she’s I’m going to hunt him down to the ends of the worth and beg his forgiveness.
And he is you can’t. He wanted her to tell, he wanted to tell her that he loved her, and this guy kisses her forehead, tells her to marry, be happy and forget about him. Then he gets in the elevator and rides down and Lorraine’s I have this,
Stephen: music.
Rhys: I have the strangest feeling. I’ve seen him before and playing along. ’cause what the [00:51:00] heck?
He just married. He gonna marry a.
Stephen: Heck yeah. And he knows where he can get some stuff to shrink her, to get her outta the way if he needs
Rhys: That’s true.
Stephen: And do you think people live longer
Rhys: It seems to work in nature.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s true.
Rhys: So that is the Devil Doll.
Stephen: The Devil Doll. Definitely not. They call it, it’s so funny, some of these titles for the old black and whites are so dramatic, but they don’t always fit what the movie ends up being about. Devil Doll’s a little extreme for what we get, it is an interesting piece with sci-fi and some horror in there, and revenge and mystery.
But Devil Doll, it’s a little extreme. I saw another one called Atomic Age Vampire, and it was about early plastic surgery.
Rhys: Heard about that one.
Stephen: yes. I was like, what the hell are you calling it? Atomic Age vampire for? So some of the titles sometimes make me laugh.
Rhys: Yes. The next [00:52:00] one won’t necessarily make you laugh, but it certainly has an interesting title. This time we’re, especially for this movie was more about the director and writer than the movie itself. This is more the story of Todd Browning. Last time we already talked about the story of one Jan Eversol who did baskets.
Stephen: right.
Rhys: We are going to watch his 2017 Film Housewife.
Stephen: Housewife. All right. Did he get permits to do this one?
Rhys: This is an English, this is, I don’t know, it might be his first English language film, so I don’t even know that it was shot in Turkey per se.
Stephen: Okay. Moving up. I guess it’s not even Turkey anymore, so that’s
Rhys: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah.
Stephen: All right, so we got a good one. In fact, I gotta go find that one. That one I, I
Rhys: I’ve already seen it once.
Stephen: Available.
Rhys: yeah, it’s out there.
Stephen: Okay. It’s out there, man. Alright we close it up on [00:53:00] Todd Browning.
Rhys: All right, we’ll see you.
Stephen: We.
