THE FACE OF MARBLE
US, 1946, 72 minutes, Black and white.
John Carradine, Claudia Drake, Robert Shayne, Maris Wrixon, Willie Best, Thomas E Jackson, Rosa Rey.
Directed by William Beaudine.
Another Dr Frankenstein variation from 1946, small-budget, directed by William Beaudine, (“one-take� Beaudine). The film is interesting insofar as the doctor is played by John Carradine, not a particularly sinister seeming character, rather with spectacles, well-dressed, gentlemanly. He is involved in the expected experiment of using electric shock to bring a dead person alive. He has a genial assistant played by Robert Shayne. They are not presented as threatening characters.
John Carradine’s doctor has married a young woman whom he helped after she had a head and brain injury. However, she has become infatuated with the young doctor – who has a fiancee and has been invited to celebrate his birthday in the house.
An interesting household because there is a very sinister housekeeper, in the Mrs Danvers vein, but devoted to voodoo, determined to help the mistress of the house in her infatuation for the doctor, planting dolls in coat pockets, burning herbs, praying at a shrine…
On the other hand, there is a servant played by African- American comic, Willie Best, who has a reasonable role (but, in the custom of the period, is frequently wide bug-eyed).
The film opens with an experiment on a dead fisherman which fails. When the body is found on the shore, the police find that he has experienced electric shock and so are suspicious of the doctor. The doctor’s wife has a huge dog and he becomes the target for the next experiment, turnng into a ghostlike presence, able to move through walls and doors. The doctor’s wife is kindly towards the fiancee and allows her to sleep in her room – and she in the visitor’s room, thus becoming the unwitting target of the fumes set up by the housekeeper.
When the wife dies, of course, she also becomes the object of a further experiment and comes alive, in a ghostly way. The servant calls the police, the young doctor also hurries to the help of his fiancee, the housekeeper realises what she has done and dies.
In some ways low key, but entertaining in its way.
