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Perfect cast and a good story

Excellent adaptation.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I was stunned to watch this awful piece of amateur garbage after hearing the glowing introduction on TCM. What was that host thinking? What are all these reviewers on IMDb thinking? Could they really be watching the same movie I watched?Where to start? You have to start with Tony Randall playing a "Chinese gentleman." That's bad enough just to watch, but when he opens his mouth you know you're in for something beyond the bounds of bad taste and beyond high-school amateurishness. His voice is pitched high and thin, and he speaks in the worst stage-Chinese, the kind of phony accent some idiot everyone hates would put on at a party--"So solly,"Please to ask question," Velly good." That alone pretty much makes the movie unbearable.But the writing! Who wrote such clunky drivel? Something happens, then eight people stand in front of the camera, as if posing for a group photograph, to react. Spectator A makes Comment A. Spectator B makes comment B. Spectator C makes Comment C. Clunk-clunk-clunk. If a machine could write a play, it would write like that. There's often something clunky, too, about the transitions to close-ups.Another example of amateurish writing. One scene is supposed to establish that an attractive young widow is burying herself from The Joy of Life, turning down the advances of a handsome young suitor. But the handsome young man is made so aggressive, even clutching at her against her will, so utterly without charm, that it is perfectly understandable that the widow would not want to go out to dinner with him. The scene was meant to show her as repressed and unable to respond to love; instead she seems spirited and perfectly right in turning away the loutish suitor.The movie is peppered with touches of "humour." Every 30 seconds or so there's a so-called funny bit of business--a man bending over and being hit on the ass by a tossed newspaper (Ha ha!), a woman stepping onto her porch in her bloomers (Ho ho!). None of it is funny, and the steady stream of such bits is truly annoying.Yes, this was made back in the sixties, but even that doesn't excuse the pathetic costume of the Abominable Snowman. Spare us, please.Oh, and will I ever forget Tony Randall's big dance number? He plays Pan, the half-man, half-goat satyr, the ancient symbol of lust. Lord help us, there is Tony with his shirt off, turning and twisting (that passes for dancing), leering at the woman over a set of pan pipes held to his mouth. It verges on the ridiculous, if it weren't quite so yukky. Yet the camera shows her getting hot and bothered, her clothes loosening, her hair coming undone, her breath an erotic panting. And, please, producers, since this was Pan, couldn't the music play some real pan pipes instead of the flute?I could go on all night. There's nothing to redeem this wreck of a movie. Even the casting is bad. The villain, a wicked businessman man who wants to buy up the property of everyone in town. who thinks human beings have no redeeming qualities, is played by Arthur O'Connell, that nice character actor who specialized in lovable, easily confused, old guys like Virgil who tries to rein in the young buck in "Bus Stop" or Elvis Presley's Pappy in "Kissin' Cousins"No, you'd have to go a long way to find a worse movie than this one, something that fails on as many levels as this. All I can think of to explain the positive reviews on IMDb is that people are turned to goo by the smarmy messages the movie paints in huge block letters over the junk canvas of this movie.

In the turn of the Twentieth Century, the Chinese Dr. Lao (Tony Randall) arrives in Abalone, Arizona, riding a donkey carrying a fishbowl with a small fish and goes to the local newspaper Diary Star. He asks the owner Ed Cunningham (John Ericson) to publish one-page advertisement for two days for his traveling circus. Ed has unrequited love for the widow librarian Angela Benedict (Barbara Eden) and opposes to the powerful rancher Clint Stark (Arthur O'Connell) that wants to buy the lands of the inhabitants of Abalone. He uses the argument that the water supply pipe is decayed and needs to be replaced and it will be very expensive. However Stark has inside information that the railroad will pass by Abalone and will increase the value of the lands. There is a meeting in the town to decide whether the locals will sell their real estates to Stark or not but the decision is postponed after the arrival of Dr. Lao. During the night, the dwellers go to the circus to see The Abominable Snowman, Merlin the Magician, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent and Medusa. Each attraction gives a lesson to each resident, changing their future and behavior for the better. "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" is a delightful and magic cult-movie, with a beautiful and entertaining story and great direction of George Pal. Tony Randall "steals" the movie performing seven different roles. Barbara "Jeannie" Eden is gorgeous and her encounter with Pan the God of Joy is wonderfully erotic. Apollonius of Tyana telling the truth about the future of his clients is hilarious. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "As 7 Faces do Dr. Lao" ("The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao")

The year was 1964 when a very special circus came to town. The movie was called " The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. " As an audience member I was forever impressed and enthralled by the sheer genius of the story originally written by Charles J. Finney. Super talented Tony Randall gives a commanding and truly fantastic performance playing an ancient Chineese Faiker named Dr. Lao. In this magical role, he also plays Merlin / Pan / Abominable Snowman / Medusa / Giant Serpent and Apollonius of Tyana. Ariving in a Southerwestern town, he set out to bring the good citizens of Abalone hope and encouragement. Arthur O'Connell plays Clinton Stark, a rich greedy businessman out to steal the town for himself. John Doucette and Royal Dano play his hired hands out to bully the town-folks. Surprisingly, they prove excellent contributing actors. John Ericson is the city Editor who with Noah Beery Jr, are out to defend the populous with their newspaper. Barbara Eden plays Angela Benedict, mother to fatherless Mike, her son, who learns 'the whole world is a circus, if you look at it the right way'. Yet, it's the mythical characters of the film which add a believable quality to this exceptional movie. Added is the inner fable tale called 'The Fall of Waldercan.' Any fan of the director George Pal, can easily recognize 'Atlantis ' within this truly Classic movie. *****

The small western town of Abalone in Arizona is facing a tough future; the main pipe that carries water to the desert town is in need of urgent and very expensive repairs, repairs that the simple townsfolk may not be able to meet. The local bigwig Clint Stark is happy to help on his terms – which is to cheaply buy everyone out of their land so they might get out of their problem and move to another town. Many are willing to be bullied this way and only a small number want to find solutions to keep the town alive. Into the middle of this hopeless situation comes the enigmatic Dr Lao and his mysterious travelling circus.There is a certain weird cult appeal to this film and perhaps it is understandable that so many reviewers have found a certain amount of charm in that. For me I did get a certain novelty value from seeing these weird things, Tony Randall in multiple roles and the genre clash with the western but this was far from enough to carry a whole film. For me the novelty value wore off quick quickly and what was left was a film that rambles from one rather silly special-effects based scene to the next. I never really engaged with it and the best I could say of it in terms of interest was that I was held in a state of bemusement by the whole thing. The lessons of magic, kindness and love are all quite pat and obvious and don't save the day either.The main selling point is perhaps seeing Randall but this is not to say he is good. Indeed it is actually quite cringe-worthy to watch him doing his terribly dated Chinese impression among other so-so performances. It doesn't help him that the support cast are either wooden or just clichéd cowboy characters being all rowdy and speaking classic frontier gibberish. That they have to carry the majority of the plot (if not script) makes things worse.Don't get me wrong Dr Lao is worth a look simply because of how unusual it as a creation, however this doesn't translate into value as a film. Instead it flits between being silly, imaginative and wooden. The reason for the cult appeal is clear – but so is the lack of a wider, lasting appeal.