LeonLouisRicci
There's a Lot Going On in this Monogram Quickie Directed by the King of Quick Draws, William Beaudine and Starring John Carradine. It is a Mad Scientist Movie but the Scientist Here is Really Not Mad, Just Determined to Help Mankind Although He Does Experiment Out of the Box.Robert Shayne is the Assistant and Figures in a Love Triangle of Sorts and there is Voodoo Magic, a Brain Surgery Suffering Wife that Really has Nothing to do with the Story, Reincarnated Ghostly Apparitions, a Family Dog that Walks Through Walls, and Some Mad Lab Scenes that are Somewhat Impressive.It's a Jammed Packed Little Low Budget Movie Crammed with Sincere Characters and One Loopy Lunatic, Some Grisly Murders, and the Whole Thing is Handled Perfectly Serious and Straight. That Makes for Some Edge and it is More Melodramatic than Scary and has More Food for Thought than Usually Found in This Type of Outlandish Horror. Overall, it is Above Average and the Tone is Quite Different than the Usual B-Movie Crazy Scientist Stuff. The Cast is Good and the Result is an Unusual Display of a Number of Ingredients Thrown Together Quite Irrationally and Intentionally and that Makes this Stand Apart from its Poverty Row Cousins.
Michael_Elliott
Face of Marble, The (1946) * 1/2 (out of 4) Boring horror film has John Carradine playing a scientist who's so caught up in bringing the dead back to life that he doesn't notice his wife and assistant are getting it on. Carradine is quite mute in this outing, which is a shame and the story is boring and by the numbers. It really would have been a lot better had Carradine gone over the top and brought some life to the film. There's really no life or energy in this film, which is why the viewing will wish he'd turn into marble. This Monogram film hasn't yet turned up on DVD but you can find it at various online stores.
preppy-3
A scientist (John Carradine--sadly) finds out how to bring the dead back to life. However they come back with faces of marble. Eventually this all leads to disaster.Boring, totally predictable 1940s outing. This scared me silly when I was a kid but just bores me now. I had to struggle to stay awake! With one exception, the acting is horrible. Such expressionless boring actors! Hopeless.There are some good things about this: Carradine, despite the script, actually gives a very good performance. And there are a few mildly creepy moments involving a ghost of a Great Dane walking through walls. There's also one of the worst-looking knockouts in cinema history. Still, none of this is fun enough to sit through this. Avoid.
funkyfry
This film is distinguished by high-quality high contrast photography. There's little else here in this standard-issue John Carradine mad scientist story, in which Carradine and his assistant manage to resurrect a man, then a large dog, and finally Carradine's wife (at his perhaps obsessed assistant's insistence!). A few interesting plot twists are turned when the script starts to lose its direction (owing in part literally to the director, infamous "One Shot" Beaudine, who probably prided himself on his ethic of efficiency over all artistic or dramatic considerations), but there seems to be no effort to make a really good movie here. Too bad; it just might have been a lot better with some effort (kudos to the actors, though, who all played it straight like Beaudine wanted them to).
AD
