a review of 魔鬼玩偶

HOOPTOBER 4.0 NIGHT TWO: A weirdly kooky and lighthearted sci-fi/horror movie from Tod Browning, with Lionel Barrymore playing a wrongfully disgraced banker who concocts a weirdly convoluted plan to get back at the colleagues who framed him that involves:

1. stumbling upon a secret formula that shrinks living things to 1/6 scale and freezes them in a doll-like state, but also allows him to control them with his mind,
2. setting up a fake doll shop where he gives away these creations to his targets, and
3. donning an old-lady disguise, a la Mrs. Doubtfire. Barrymore makes a meal out of all of this, and even manages to make his antihero character weirdly sympathetic even as he's mentally puppeting a tiny brain-dead woman into stabbing people with miniature poisoned knives. It's possibly Browning's strangest film outside of FREAKS, which is really saying something.