Leofwine_draca An intriguing and often over-looked slice of melodrama from the 1930s, this film remains neglected alongside its bigger 'brothers' - namely Dracula, FRANKENSTEIN, and THE INVISIBLE MAN. However that doesn't mean that it should be forgotten - it's actually a very good little film that plays more like a standard romance tale than your usual horror flick.THE DEVIL-DOLL cleverly intermingles three plot strands into one and it gels nicely. The first is the standard melodramatic tale of a father loving a daughter who hates him for what he has done. All of the cast involved in this give good performances and it works nicely. Maureen O'Sullivan (star of the Tarzan films of the '30s) is excellent as the daughter who learns to forgive and forget.There is also the routine plot about a man returning to wreak revenge on the men who are responsible for his demise, and this section of the story too is quite interesting and enlivened by some varied, inspired acting. The final section - and the best - is the horrific element of the shrinking process involved in the film. Although made over sixty years ago, the special effects of the shrunken people still hold up even to this day. The special effects are elaborate and it isn't obvious that rear-screen projection was used. They're eye-opening and that's saying something.Unfortunately there is also an over the top performance from the woman playing Malita, who seems to think that opening her eyes wide will evoke terror - however all it evokes is laughter. She may be eye-opening but for all the wrong reasons. Along with that are the standard laboratory clichés - bubbling test tubes of poison, steam, foam, lots of glass tubing and containers. Barrymore carries the film somewhat and is excellent in his role as the tormented criminal with a heart of gold. This is one of those little films that has a bit of everything and it's well worth tracking down.

TheRedDeath30 This was one of the last few "classic horror films" of the 30s that I had not yet seen, so I was looking forward to viewing what I hoped would be another golden era fright flick. This was especially true as I am a big fan of Tod Browning's work and would consider most of his films to be among from favorites. Sadly, I was pretty disappointed in the movie overall and became another reminder of why other studios just weren't able to compete with Universal in this time period.The movie starts off promising. Two convicts escape from jail and retreat to a home in the swamp owned by one of the men. Here, his wife has been continuing the scientific experiments that he'd begun before his imprisonment. The idea was to miniaturize people so that we would consume less resources, therefore making it one of the first earth conscious movies I can remember. The other convict is played by Lionel Barrymore, who is bent on revenge against the three men who set him up on false charges to steal his fortune. When the scientist dies his wife is determined to finish his research and enlists Barrymore who sees this as an opportunity to enact his revenge, so off to Paris they go to fulfill the master plan.My biggest issue with the movie starts with the character played by Barrymore. The police are searching for him and assume he's returned to Paris, so he is forced to go incognito. This involves him dressing in drag and taking on the false identity of an old matron. As the main character, who takes up the majority of the screen time, Barrymore is exceedingly annoying in this role. The false female falsetto he employs is grating to listen to for an entire movie and rather than being any kind of effective villain to carry the thriller, the viewer ends up longing for any scene that won't involve this caricature. Those scenes are just as dull, though. This movie is much longer than the standard horror film of the time and suffers for it. There is far too much padding and most of it involves a trite story about Barrymore's estranged daughter and his attempts to reconcile the life he's left for her. We, also, get a standard cliché romance between his daughter and her beau, Toto, a cab driver who's trying to make a better life for them. The end result is far too much run time playing out plots that needed to be trimmed out and not nearly enough time devoted to the revenge plot that should have been the central premise.The actual revenge involves Barrymore utilizing these miniature people to carry out his plots as he tries to prove his innocence and bring down his enemies. We've all seen plenty of horror movies that use miniature people or dolls to chilling effect. There is something naturally unsettling about seeing something like a doll being used as a force of evil. Here, though, there is very little scary about them. Instead they are more used as little sneaks to steal things or prick people with miniature knives. This is far from something like the doll in TRILOGY OF TERROR or CAT'S EYE.I will give a lot of credit for the special effects used to create the mini people and animals. They must have been mind-blowing to an audience at the time and still hold up fairly well, despite being able to see some cracks in the design during certain scenes when it doesn't translate as well.There was a great idea in here somewhere that probably could have been pulled off much more effectively were the script to utilize Barrymore more in his IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE villain persona and far less as an annoying cross-dresser.

marcslope Silly horror-melodrama is loads of fun, with Tod Browning ably directing a creepy story set in then-modern Paris, and Lionel Barrymore showing rather more range than usual as a wrongfully convicted criminal exacting terrible revenge on the bankers who set him up. Not at all MGM-like in its perversity and macabre-ness, it has escaped convict Barrymore stumbling upon mad scientist Henry Walthall and his even madder wife, Rafaela Ottiano, whose entertaining performance is all eye-popping and screeching and hobbling on a crutch. Both have stumbled on a way to shrink living creatures to one-sixth their size, leading to some excellently executed special effects. The details surrounding the miniaturization is sketchy--what rouses these beings or puts them to sleep, how much if any free will they possess, why they don't talk--but it serves the hoary plot of Barrymore's revenge. He's in drag about half the time, dressing up as a kindly old French madame to fool the authorities, and there's a grafted-on, dreary subplot about his unforgiving daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan, doing her usual thing efficiently) loving an ambitious cabbie (Frank Lawton). It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it wraps up neatly (even if the climax isn't credible--would O'Sullivan really not recognize her own father?), and it entertains every step of the way.

Claudio Carvalho After seventeen years in prison, the former respected Parisian banker Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) flees with his friend, the lunatic scientist Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) that is researching with his wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano) the miniaturization of animals and human beings to improve the resources of mankind. Paul Lavond was framed for robbery by his scoundrel associates Emil Coulvet (Robert Greig), Charles Matin (Pedro de Cordoba) and Victor Radin (Arthur Hohl) that had stolen his business while his family was doomed to shame, poverty and tragedy. When Marcel reduces the retarded servant Lachna (Grace Ford), he learns that the woman is motionless and only responds to the control of his brain and has a heart attack. After the death of Marcel, Paul Lavond sees the chance to use the miniaturization process as instrument of vengeance and he travels to Paris with the insane Malita disguised of Madame Mandilip, a nice old lady and owner of a dolls store. Paul Lavond, using the identity of Madame Mandilip, befriends his resented and estranged daughter Lorraine Lavond (Maureen O'Sullivan) and plots a scheme to revenge and vindicate his family name. "The Devil Doll" is an entertaining film by Tod Browning with a good story and special effects still impressive in 2011. The cast has great performances but Lionel Barrymore is excellent in his double role, and convincing as an old woman. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Boneca do Diabo" ("The Devil Doll")