It's an adaptation of a book by way of three screenwriters, including Erich von Stroheim, of all people, yet "The Devil-Doll" is still largely a recycling of director Tod Browning's "The Unholy Three" (1925)--albeit plus a revenge plot involving mad doctors shrinking people into mind-controlled dolls. It's wacky enough, and "The Unholy Three" movies (1925 and 1930) were good to begin with, that it's an entertaining cult film nonetheless.
Former D.W. Griffith player Henry B. Walthall makes one of his final appearances as the initial mad scientist. His wife (Rafaela Ottiano) walks around with a cane and a "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) lightening streak through her hair. Originally, according to Martin E. Norden and Madeleine A. Cahill (see "Violence, Women, and Disability in Tod Browning's Freaks and The Devil Doll"), the initial script for "The Witch of Timbuctoo," which became "The Devil-Doll," featured black characters from the Belgian Congo who practiced voodoo and witchcraft in these roles. Reportedly, British censors, however, objected out of fears it would incite black subjects of the British Empire. So, instead, we get a derivative female character whose disability is equated with evil and an actor most famous for the most notorious racist film against black people ever made, "The Birth of a Nation" (1915).
Meanwhile, Lionel Barrymore substitutes for the late Lon Chaney, as he had in Browning's prior "Mark of the Vampire" (1935), by crossdressing as a granny for his jewel heists. They even steal the suspenseful scene of hiding the jewels in a toy while being interviewed by a detective from "The Unholy Three" films. There's the usual bubbling beakers to represent science-y stuff, and the matte work developed in prior horror pictures, such as "The Invisible Man" (1933), along with superimpositions, is extrapolated well to the animated, living dolls here. The mind-control stuff is amusing.
Only the subplot involving the daughter played by Maureen O'Sullivan and her beau is a drag--and not in the ridiculously amusing sense of Barrymore wearing a wig and a dress as a disguise. After the inevitable completion of the revenge plot and an explosion--because that's what they did in the "Frankenstein" films seemingly being the logic--this boring subplot extends the picture for an entire, anti-climactic sequence that it would've been better off without. Just blow it up and roll the credits. It's what the better monster movies this one is clearly derivative of, besides "The Unholy Three" crime genre entries, did.
Former D.W. Griffith player Henry B. Walthall makes one of his final appearances as the initial mad scientist. His wife (Rafaela Ottiano) walks around with a cane and a "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) lightening streak through her hair. Originally, according to Martin E. Norden and Madeleine A. Cahill (see "Violence, Women, and Disability in Tod Browning's Freaks and The Devil Doll"), the initial script for "The Witch of Timbuctoo," which became "The Devil-Doll," featured black characters from the Belgian Congo who practiced voodoo and witchcraft in these roles. Reportedly, British censors, however, objected out of fears it would incite black subjects of the British Empire. So, instead, we get a derivative female character whose disability is equated with evil and an actor most famous for the most notorious racist film against black people ever made, "The Birth of a Nation" (1915).
Meanwhile, Lionel Barrymore substitutes for the late Lon Chaney, as he had in Browning's prior "Mark of the Vampire" (1935), by crossdressing as a granny for his jewel heists. They even steal the suspenseful scene of hiding the jewels in a toy while being interviewed by a detective from "The Unholy Three" films. There's the usual bubbling beakers to represent science-y stuff, and the matte work developed in prior horror pictures, such as "The Invisible Man" (1933), along with superimpositions, is extrapolated well to the animated, living dolls here. The mind-control stuff is amusing.
Only the subplot involving the daughter played by Maureen O'Sullivan and her beau is a drag--and not in the ridiculously amusing sense of Barrymore wearing a wig and a dress as a disguise. After the inevitable completion of the revenge plot and an explosion--because that's what they did in the "Frankenstein" films seemingly being the logic--this boring subplot extends the picture for an entire, anti-climactic sequence that it would've been better off without. Just blow it up and roll the credits. It's what the better monster movies this one is clearly derivative of, besides "The Unholy Three" crime genre entries, did.