Malcolm Shanks starts his journey into the unknown.
TCM Underground has shown some pretty strange movies over the course of its existence, but even with a good many of them under my belt I wasn't fully prepared for just how bizarre Shanks, this week's presentation, was going to be. Made in 1974, it was the last film directed by William Castle, who would go on to co-write and produce only one more film, 1975's Bug, before shuffling off this mortal coil two years later. And he must have had mortality on his mind when he took on this film -- his first in six years -- for Paramount at the age of 60.
"A Grim Fairy Tale," as the opening title card calls it, Shanks tells the story of a deaf-mute puppeteer (Marcel Marceau) who delights in entertaining children with his puppet shows but is treated like a slave (and talked down to like he's an imbecile) by his unpleasant sister-in-law (Tsilla Chelton) and her perpetually drunk second husband (Philippe Clay). The only light in his life is the girl he loves (Cindy Eilbacher) and for whom he's making a special doll. Then comes the invitation from an aged scientist (Marceau again) who hires him to perform experiments with manipulating the bodies of dead animals with electricity. This is about as off-putting to watch as you would expect it to be, but then Castle ramps up the creep factor by having the puppeteer graduate to people when the old scientist kicks the bucket.
If anything drew Marceau to this film, it must have been the chance to choreograph the movement of the dead bodies, which straddles the line between amusingly clumsy and just plain disturbing. One example of this is the scene where the puppeteer takes Chelton and Clay to the grocery store (this is after they've both met with fatal accidents) and they mechanically load up on food and drink while the grocer (played by Castle himself) grouses about the money they owe him. Then Eilbacher runs into Marceau and invites herself along on a picnic where she is amused by Chelton and Clay's antics until she discovers that they're animated cadavers. This understandably freaks her out, but she gets over it rather quickly and doesn't report him to the police. This leads to a bad end, though, when bikers -- representing "the outside world of evil" -- crash her birthday party and, after forcing themselves on her, face off against Marceau's automatons (who apparently don't have to worry about rigor mortis). What follows is a happy ending of sorts, but only for people who think necrophilia is simply another lifestyle choice.