Tod Browning (Freaks, Dracula, The Unknown, etc.) could translate horror to the screen with unsettling hyper-realism, and his 1936 Devil Doll remains one of the great works of Thirties grotesque. Combining Browning's themes of greed as a motivating force and transvestism as modus operandi, The Devil Doll features an “old woman” - Lionel Barrymore in drag - who possesses the ability to make miniature dolls out of normals, and then manipulate them through demonic telepathic commands. “Tenacity of willpower is another important trait found in Browning's central characters,” comments Stuart Rosenthal in “The Hollywood Professionals: Tod Browning...” “It...allows them to manipulate those with weaker personalities through a kind of mental control. (The presence of) feelings of external thought control...in Browning's work heightens its obsessive quality.... Even when Barrymore is not in physical proximity to the on-screen action, his presence is felt through the claustrophobic quality of the images which are composed with bar-like parallel lines (shadows of venetian blinds...etc.)....” But, psychiatrics aside, The Devil Doll is fantastic film fun for those who go for technics: split screen and glass shots, and oversize sets with monstrous props on which tiny people cavort to save their lives, and take the lives of others.
“A freak film, of course, and one which may overburden Junior's imagination....” --New York Times, 1936. (JB)