I have to admit I find the whole notion of Lionel Barrymore as a mad scientist rather…odd. Yes, he was a member of the legendary Barrymore family of great actors, and was considered to be one of the greatest actors of his age. But, he is best remembered for the grouchy old men he played in the Thirties and Forties who generally were almost defiantly normal. Even when he was the bad guy, he never had the genuine over-the-top strangeness we expect from mad scientists (although, I’ll concede, I’ve never seen 1932’s Rasputin and the Empress and his much praised take on the notorious Russian monk). Yes, he did play his share of harsh or villainous men, and yes, it would be even harder to picture, say, Fred MacMurray as a mad scientist, but Lionel shouldn’t be your first choice!
But then, perhaps it’s not quite accurate to classify his role here as a mad scientist. He plays Paul Lavond, a falsely convicted prisoner on Devil’s Island who escapes with a genuinely mad scientist, this really nice guy who has been persecuted because he dreams of saving mankind. Mind you, he plans to do this by shrinking everyone down to the size of a doll. You know, they wouldn’t need as much food or resources. That sort of thing.
Of course the only minor problem so far is that it causes an extremely convenient form of brain damage, which leaves his subjects inert and without a will of their own — but allows him to control them with his mind.
Which works out nicely for Paul, as he wants revenge against the three bankers who framed him.
I suppose, technically, he is more or less in the role normally filled by a hunchbacked lab assistant, as he is working with his friend’s widow, an equally obsessed scientist who knows his process as well as he did. However, this wouldn’t be much of a mad scientist film without a hunchback, so she is badly crippled and deformed, hobbles around on crutches, and has a Bride of Frankenstein style hairdo, complete with white streak.
Lionel does get to show off his considerable acting chops, though (and, I suspect, enjoy himself considerably): Lavond disguises himself as an elderly woman running a doll shop, a part reminiscent of Lon Chaney (Sr.)’s role in one of Todd Browning’s earlier films, The Unholy Three. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that Lon would undoubtedly have starred in this one if it weren’t for his untimely death.
The effects work here is quite good, far better than one would expect from the mid-Thirties. We often forget that the blue screen process used today wasn’t available yet, and wouldn’t be for years. Inserting miniaturized people into the picture was a lot more difficult back then although the effect is used quite a bit here. There are some heavy matte lines and the lighting is all wrong in some of the shots (particularly in one of the girl “doll” in someone’s hand), but it would probably have taken John P. Fulton to do much better. The over-sized sets in several scenes are quite nicely done as well.
Todd is fondly remembered by horror fans for the 1931 Dracula, although I’m inclined to agree with those who think he did his best work in the silents. Like many of his sound films, Dracula starts well, but then slows down in the last third with a stagebound ending. This time around, I’m struck by the anti-climactic ending, which goes on long after the lab explosion that would ended your typical Frankenstein film. This is undoubtedly due to this film’s odd double nature: on the one hand, we have a revenge drama, with the hero who embraces things he knows are horrible in order to clear his name, while on the other we have some over the top horror film theatrics, obviously inspired by the scenes of miniature people in The Bride of Frankenstein just the year before.
It never quite gels, but it says a lot for Lionel Barrymore’s performance that he makes his revenge obsessed mad scientist in training into a very sympathetic character, and even wrings a few tears out of the audience when he says goodbye to his daughter without ever revealing who he really is.
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