From Tod Browning, the director of horror classic Dracula (1931) and the infamous Freaks (1932), The Devil-Doll is a fun horror/fantasy that, while patently absurd, is very entertaining, with a great cast and some impressive special effects.Lionel Barrymore plays convicted banker Paul Lavond, who was sent to prison after being framed by his co-workers for embezzlement and murder. After 17 years inside, Lavond escapes with fellow prisoner Marcel (Henry B. Walthall), with revenge on his mind. On arrival at the swampland cabin inhabited by Marcel's crazy crippled wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano), Paul sees something that will make it possible to even the score with his old colleagues: the miniaturisation of human beings that can be controlled by telepathy.After Marcel dies, Levond and Malita travel to Paris, where they set up a toy shop. Disguised as Madame Mandelip, the shop's proprieter, the escaped convict sets into motion his plan for revenge.With not one person-not even the police chief with whom he converses-suspecting that Madame Mandelip is Lavond, the film stretches plausibility quite a long way, but Barrymore is so amusing as his doddery alter-ego that all is easily forgiven. And with some great visual trickery, using a combination of mattes and excellent oversized props, The Devil-Doll is a delight for anyone interested in the history of movie special effects.The film is also very touching at times, with Lavond desperately wanting to clear his name so that his daughter Lorraine (the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan) will no longer hate him. As Madame Mandelip, Lavond has several conversations with his daughter (who also sees nothing peculiar about the heavy set woman with masculine features), but even after proving his innocence, he is unable to reveal his true identity.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for the awesome line 'She's an inbred peasant halfwit'.

Lionel Barrymore escapes from Devil's Island along with an old scientist. The scientist has created a means of reducing humans to the size of dolls. After the scientist's death, his wife (Rafaela Ottiano) continues his work and helps Barrymore carry out his revenge plot. So they travel to Paris, where Barrymore dresses up like an old lady and opens a toy store! Great special effects, good performances, and solid MGM production values make this one of the best non-Universal horror-thrillers from the '30s. This was director Tod Browning's second-to-last film and his last horror film. It shows more polish than some of his earlier talkies. It's sad his career was so short. But he directed several classics, silent and sound, that have endured for decades. This is definitely a good one classic horror fans will want to see.

Although much has been said about Barrymore in drag, there can be too much of a good thing. The performance is outstanding but on screen so much, with that irritating but realistic cackling voice and hunchback, it comes dangerously close to a detrimental domination and detraction from the bizarre, that is the backbone of the film. The film as a whole has so much more interesting and odd characters, horror, and sci-fi elements, and just plain creepiness that it comes off as an excellent example of the the depression era 1930's proliferation of pictures that are completely removed from the everyday. It is a supernatural stew. The magical and the mystical, the supernatural and dementia, are all in view with believable special effects and a suspenseful script.The Director's lovely obsession with the dark side and physical and psychological abnormalities are an obvious, predominantly personalized vision that was his greatest asset and his greatest liability. Always on or beyond the cutting edge his movies are seen today with more respect and serious consideration than this renaissance man received while he was creating his work of the weird and wonderful.

MGM's THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936) is a campy sci-fi/horror classic. Perfect for those late-night curiosity viewings. The movie is preposterous, but elevated by impressive 1930s special effects along the lines of those in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935).THE DEVIL-DOLL tells the story of a man bent on revenge who gets mixed up in the outlandish schemes of a mad scientist. Hiding from the police, the man (a prison escapee) uses the mad scientist's strange experiments in his systematic plan to destroy those men who did him wrong.It seems the scientist had developed a technique that would shrink living things to one-sixth their normal size. Once shrunken, however, the subject lay paralyzed until willed to do something by the strong mental power of an outsider. The scientist had hoped to shrink everyone in the world to make the food supply last longer, but having miniature mind-control zombies has its uses, too.Oscar-winner Lionel Barrymore stars and spends much of the film in his disguise as an old woman. (I'm being totally serious.) The wonderful Rafaela Ottiano plays the crazed wife of the scientist, devoted to his twisted vision. Ottiano seemed to know what kind of movie she was making, going all-out in her performance. Maureen O'Sullivan plays Barrymore's daughter, with Frank Lawton as her taxi driver boyfriend. Among the rest of the cast, it's good to see Robert Greig play something other than a butler.The B-level cast does a good job with the B-level material, but the most impressive part of THE DEVIL-DOLL is the special visual effects. Creating the effect of miniaturized people required composite shots with an eye on camera angles and perspective. (Mixed, it seems, with some huge-furniture sequences.) A modern eye can often find the seams, but this kind of stuff is hard to do and I believe they did it as well as anybody could in 1936.The story, with its attempted father-daughter redemption arc, is just ridiculous. Barrymore is hardly a hero in this one. Nor is he even a nice guy. There's no one to root for, really. This is the kind of movie to pop in some late night and just enjoy with a bucket of popcorn and the company of your choice. A campy horror classic for anyone curious to see Lionel Barrymore dress in drag. Not one of the high points of Barrymore's career.