Shanks

Shanks (1974)

Runtime: 93 minutes

Directed by: William Castle

Starring: Marcel Marceau, Tsilla Chelton, Philippe Clay, Cindy Eilbacher, Larry Bishop

From: Paramount

This was in fact as strange as I’ve always heard, and this is a movie I’ve known of for many years. There’s no real good explanation for why it was only last night that I finally pulled the trigger and checked out something I’ve thought of watching for ages. Not only was this William Castle’s last movie, but only the second of his I’ve ever seen-after House on Haunted Hill. He chose quite the movie to go out on.

After all, this features the most famous mime of all time (Marcel Marceau) as a deaf-mute puppeteer somewhat improbably named Malcolm Shanks who is hired by an ancient-looking mad scientist (also Marceau, although it took me a minute to realize that) to assist with experiments to reanimate the dead and via a magic device, controls them like they are marionettes. When the scientist dies and the sister & brother in law start treating Shanks even worse than usual-one of several reasons why the movie calls itself “a grim fairy tale”-he realizes that humans can be reanimated also…

Unexpected elements, multiple scenes of dead people moving around like they’re marionettes, Malcolm having a relationship with a girl that looks around 14 which is portrayed as innocuous although in modern times it is unfortunately easy to assume the very worst with that, a graveyard showdown… this is very weird. Thankfully for me the end product isn’t an off-putting surreal or bizarre pretentious crap. To show how different times were back then, this was released by Paramount.

I probably enjoyed this more than most; while flawed I was never bored despite a pace I’ll describe as methodical and others may think as “glacially slow.” The music by Alex North was a real highlight, matching the wide variety of different scenes. For a mime it’s no surprise that Marceau is able to act nonverbally without a problem; he also could act like a marionette although so did Tsilla Chelton & Philippe Clay as his awful family members. It’s happened before that I’ve been let down after a build-up that literally was years long; one of the posters for the film describes itself as “deliciously grotesque”; that is an apt description.