[Inspector Abberline]

The Devil-Doll (1936)

Mad scientist Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) and Lionel Barrymore as Paul Lavond escape devils island together and manage to return to Marcel's home in what looks like a swamp,and Marcel's crippled wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano),who seems to be sporting an Elsa Lancaster hairdo.What Lavond does not know is that Marcel has come up with away of reducing people to one-sixth of their size in order to help the worlds food shortage,either that or he has a thing for action figures...Lavond See's this as away of getting revenge on the three associates that swindled him and got him sent to devils island.So as soon as Marcel kicks the bucket,Lavond and Malita head for Paris to extract his REVENGE...Even Though there is 100.000 franc reward for Lavond,the police are unable to catch him,this is because Lavond is now crossdressing as an old woman,whether this is just to escape the police or for his own fun we are never quite sure,but he does seem to spend a lot of time in drag,looking something along the lines of Mrs Brown meets old mother Riley...In The shrinking people down to size genre,Devil Doll is not as fantastically as say Dr. Cyclops with its horned rimmed scientist and definitely no where near as thrilling as the great The Incredible Shrinking Man..In fact Todd Browning gives us a rather sedate thriller that never really capitalises on its miniscule murderers,and it gets a bit bogged down in melodrama when Lavond tries to win back the affections of his now estranged daughter,played by the rather attractive Maureen O'Sullivan.Devil Doll doesn't have any of Browning classic trade mark Gothic feel of his previous films and certainly not enough of the science fiction mumbo jumbo to make it a really satisfying.If you really want something salacious in the shrinking people stakes check out Attack of the Puppet People