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Feb. 4th, 2012 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreYou guys, let me tell you about the movie I just watched.
It is called The Devil Doll (the one from 1936, not the one that got riffed on MST3K) and it is kind of amazing. I mean, not amazingly good, because it really isn't that, but just, y'know, amazing.
First of all, the plot of the movie is basically the plot of Count of Monte Cristo. If Count of Monte Cristo involved tiny shrunken mind-controlled assassins and a hell of a lot more crossdressing. See, there is this guy. His name is Paul Lavond and he has spent the last 17 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Fortunately, he has spent much of those 17 years sharing a cell with an actualfax mad scientist. They manage to escape from jail and Marcel (the mad scientist) takes Paul home with him. At home is Malita, Marcel's wife.
Malita and Marcel are my second point of things about the film that are awesome, because they are Mad Scientists In Love. Seriously, they are completely adorable. There are hugs and "I knew you would wait for me!" and she isn't just an assistant, she's a mad scientist herself and I love them.*
Their project is seriously whacked-out crazycakes because basically, they shrink stuff.*** That's the plan. Marcel and Malita have a Great Work and it is shrinking the entire population of the world to one-sixth its current size, because this will Solve World Hunger. Yes. Unfortunately, when you shrink something, its brain doesn't work anymore and it becomes a mindless tiny automaton, helpless to act on its on. The only way the shrunken people/animals can move around is by having an original-size person will them to do so. How this willing-them-to-do-so is accomplished is never quite explained by the movie, but it seems to involve staring hard at the shrunken thing. (Well, the staring is important. Line of sight is apparently not required, as will be demonstrated later.)
Paul is totally creeped out by the shrunken things, btw, so Malita puts him to bed. Marcel thinks that he's come up with a way to get around the brainless tiny people thing, so he and Malita decide this would be a really great time to test it on their housemaid, Lachna. It doesn't work, alas, and Lachna is turned into a mindless 8 inch tall doll person. Marcel is crushed by the disappointment which, alas, on top of escaping and generally being unwell, kills him. Woe!
Malita is of course very sad about this but is determined to go on with the work (because mad scientist! and also Marcel would want her to!) and equally determined that Paul should help her. He on the other hand wants to go to Paris and take his revenge on the men who framed him. So...they move to Paris and open a toyshop that Paul runs while dressed like an old lady named Madame Mandelip!
Of course. That is what any right thinking person would do.
The rest of the movie is mostly about Paul sneaking "dolls" into the homes of the people who wronged him and then using them as assassins. (They have tiny little weapons because they are Apache dolls (the French kind, not the Native American kind). All I can says is that if I had been given dolls that came with tiny replica stilettos when I was a child, I might have been more interested in dolls.) He sells the family a doll and then lurks around their house in the middle of the night, dressed as an old lady, and, I guess, concentrating hard enough that his will can act on the tiny shrunken person and allow it to move. (There is also some stuff about Paul trying to see his mother and estranged daughter while not getting them into trouble and also his daughter hates him because she thinks he is a criminal and all that is very sweet but it is not nearly as awesome as tiny shrunken assassins.)
Eventually, the last of the conspirators who sent Paul to prison confesses and Paul is vindicated. However, now he has to leave Paris because he did, in fact, attack people with shrunken assassins and no one can ever know. Malita is all "So, now can we get on with the Great Shrinking Project?" but Paul isn't actually interested in shrinking people! He thinks it's creepy and kinda sick! He never had any intention of helping Malita with her work and just wanted to be able to carry out his revenge. Now he wants to destroy all of it so that the police will never catch on. Malita, of course, is having none of that. She tries to kill Paul with a shrunken person and then threatens to blow up the lab and him and herself with some sort of...beaker full of explosiveness, I don't know. It's that kind of movie. Paul tries to talk her out of it in pretty much the worst way possible. He's all "Think about your work, about Marcel," but basically he just said that her work can't continue and it's all that she has left of Marcel, so she throws the beaker and apparently it is incredibly explosive because everything goes up in flames.
Paul escapes, though, and has a touching moment with his daughter on the top of the Eiffel Tower before disappearing forever. (It's gently implied that he's going to kill himself but the movie doesn't confirm it.) The End.
*When I am Queen of Everything, there will be a thriving fandom for Wacky Horror Movies From The 1930s. And someone will write the Amazing Fluffy Mad Scientist Adventures of Marcel and Malita that happened before this movie and it will be wonderful. Yes. It is on the list of stories I want, along with Kay Caldwell: Vampire Badass (with potential crossover femslash with Countess Marya Zaleska, because if ever a character needed a femslash fix-it fic!), The Bride of Frankenstein AU Where Everybody Lives, The Frankenstein/Re-Animator Crossover,** and Dr Pretorius Is Catty At Everyone (And Has Adventures). I realize that that last one could (and ought to) combine with other stories on the list, but I feel it also deserves to be its own thing.
**If you keep the timeline of the original story but steal the "studying in Switzerland" thing from the movie, you can completely make it work. (Assuming, of course, that the Frankenstein movies are set in Switzerland (like the book) and that you can pretend they take place in the 30's when they were made.)
***I am occasionally really sad that we seem, as a culture, to have mostly gotten over shrinking people in sci-fi. I love stories about shrunken people.
In conclusion: tiny shrunken people and Mad Scientist In Love. What did I tell you? Amazing.
It is called The Devil Doll (the one from 1936, not the one that got riffed on MST3K) and it is kind of amazing. I mean, not amazingly good, because it really isn't that, but just, y'know, amazing.
First of all, the plot of the movie is basically the plot of Count of Monte Cristo. If Count of Monte Cristo involved tiny shrunken mind-controlled assassins and a hell of a lot more crossdressing. See, there is this guy. His name is Paul Lavond and he has spent the last 17 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Fortunately, he has spent much of those 17 years sharing a cell with an actualfax mad scientist. They manage to escape from jail and Marcel (the mad scientist) takes Paul home with him. At home is Malita, Marcel's wife.
Malita and Marcel are my second point of things about the film that are awesome, because they are Mad Scientists In Love. Seriously, they are completely adorable. There are hugs and "I knew you would wait for me!" and she isn't just an assistant, she's a mad scientist herself and I love them.*
Their project is seriously whacked-out crazycakes because basically, they shrink stuff.*** That's the plan. Marcel and Malita have a Great Work and it is shrinking the entire population of the world to one-sixth its current size, because this will Solve World Hunger. Yes. Unfortunately, when you shrink something, its brain doesn't work anymore and it becomes a mindless tiny automaton, helpless to act on its on. The only way the shrunken people/animals can move around is by having an original-size person will them to do so. How this willing-them-to-do-so is accomplished is never quite explained by the movie, but it seems to involve staring hard at the shrunken thing. (Well, the staring is important. Line of sight is apparently not required, as will be demonstrated later.)
Paul is totally creeped out by the shrunken things, btw, so Malita puts him to bed. Marcel thinks that he's come up with a way to get around the brainless tiny people thing, so he and Malita decide this would be a really great time to test it on their housemaid, Lachna. It doesn't work, alas, and Lachna is turned into a mindless 8 inch tall doll person. Marcel is crushed by the disappointment which, alas, on top of escaping and generally being unwell, kills him. Woe!
Malita is of course very sad about this but is determined to go on with the work (because mad scientist! and also Marcel would want her to!) and equally determined that Paul should help her. He on the other hand wants to go to Paris and take his revenge on the men who framed him. So...they move to Paris and open a toyshop that Paul runs while dressed like an old lady named Madame Mandelip!
Of course. That is what any right thinking person would do.
The rest of the movie is mostly about Paul sneaking "dolls" into the homes of the people who wronged him and then using them as assassins. (They have tiny little weapons because they are Apache dolls (the French kind, not the Native American kind). All I can says is that if I had been given dolls that came with tiny replica stilettos when I was a child, I might have been more interested in dolls.) He sells the family a doll and then lurks around their house in the middle of the night, dressed as an old lady, and, I guess, concentrating hard enough that his will can act on the tiny shrunken person and allow it to move. (There is also some stuff about Paul trying to see his mother and estranged daughter while not getting them into trouble and also his daughter hates him because she thinks he is a criminal and all that is very sweet but it is not nearly as awesome as tiny shrunken assassins.)
Eventually, the last of the conspirators who sent Paul to prison confesses and Paul is vindicated. However, now he has to leave Paris because he did, in fact, attack people with shrunken assassins and no one can ever know. Malita is all "So, now can we get on with the Great Shrinking Project?" but Paul isn't actually interested in shrinking people! He thinks it's creepy and kinda sick! He never had any intention of helping Malita with her work and just wanted to be able to carry out his revenge. Now he wants to destroy all of it so that the police will never catch on. Malita, of course, is having none of that. She tries to kill Paul with a shrunken person and then threatens to blow up the lab and him and herself with some sort of...beaker full of explosiveness, I don't know. It's that kind of movie. Paul tries to talk her out of it in pretty much the worst way possible. He's all "Think about your work, about Marcel," but basically he just said that her work can't continue and it's all that she has left of Marcel, so she throws the beaker and apparently it is incredibly explosive because everything goes up in flames.
Paul escapes, though, and has a touching moment with his daughter on the top of the Eiffel Tower before disappearing forever. (It's gently implied that he's going to kill himself but the movie doesn't confirm it.) The End.
*When I am Queen of Everything, there will be a thriving fandom for Wacky Horror Movies From The 1930s. And someone will write the Amazing Fluffy Mad Scientist Adventures of Marcel and Malita that happened before this movie and it will be wonderful. Yes. It is on the list of stories I want, along with Kay Caldwell: Vampire Badass (with potential crossover femslash with Countess Marya Zaleska, because if ever a character needed a femslash fix-it fic!), The Bride of Frankenstein AU Where Everybody Lives, The Frankenstein/Re-Animator Crossover,** and Dr Pretorius Is Catty At Everyone (And Has Adventures). I realize that that last one could (and ought to) combine with other stories on the list, but I feel it also deserves to be its own thing.
**If you keep the timeline of the original story but steal the "studying in Switzerland" thing from the movie, you can completely make it work. (Assuming, of course, that the Frankenstein movies are set in Switzerland (like the book) and that you can pretend they take place in the 30's when they were made.)
***I am occasionally really sad that we seem, as a culture, to have mostly gotten over shrinking people in sci-fi. I love stories about shrunken people.
In conclusion: tiny shrunken people and Mad Scientist In Love. What did I tell you? Amazing.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 12:45 am (UTC)Well, I've probably seen every single old horror movie, so... but still *laughs*
And oh, yes! My favorite thing ever is the mad scientists in love thing *g*
I'm never looking for good cinema when I'm watching these kind of movies. I believe I can't let them go, because they make me feel as the little girl who watch them on black and white TV so many moons ago. Whatever the reason, I enjoy them in all their glorious badness :)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 08:51 pm (UTC)