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Great Film overall

Absolutely brilliant

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Few filmmakers understand the absurd's potential for horror: The German Expressionists, Luis Buniel, Roman Polanski, David Lynch, maybe a few others. Of that number, I'd never think to include William Castle. Though Castle's gimmick films weren't without effective shocks, most were content to be charmingly campy. His final feature, "Shanks," saw the filmmaker moving into new creative territory, creating a film that mines the absurd to uncanny, dream-like, humorous, and unnerving affect."Shanks" does have a gimmick, of course. It's the only starring role of Marcel Marceau, world-famous mime. Large portions of the film lack dialogue and silent movie-style intertitles are inserted throughout. The plot revolves around Malcolm Shanks, a deaf-mute puppeteer. His only friends are the neighborhood children and, at night, Shanks suffers abuse at the hands of his cruel sister and her alcoholic husband. When an elderly mad scientist, also played by Marceau, takes notices of the boy's puppetry skills, he hires him as a lab assistant. Inside of his sprawling Gothic manor, the scientist has been experimenting with animating dead corpses through diodes and remotes. After the scientist dies, Shanks continues his work, creating twitching, stiff corpse puppets for revenge and amusement."Shanks" features some truly unforgettable imagery, much of it deeply creepy. Marceau's double role allows him to employ his mime skills as the creaking mad scientist meat puppet. The moment when the scientist is first revived has Marceau slowly, stiffly moving through the house, Shanks learning the ins-and-outs of the puppetry. A slow-motion attack by an undead rooster, featured in close-shots and quick cuts, should be absurd but Castle's direction creates a truly unnerving effect. Once the sister and husband are killed and revived, the movie truly begins to use its gimmick fantastically. The corpse-puppets robotically moving while shopping at a convenience store is both surreal and absurdly funny, especially the image of the two bending their bodies in half to step down a curb. Though I wish Marceau could have done more mime work himself in the film, Tsilla Chelton and Philippe Clay are both excellent in the roles. They lean in the wind, gyrate on the ground, stiffly move about, and perform bizarre, contorting dances.The film takes a hard left turn in the last act. Shanks' closest friend is the young girl Celia. It's clear she has a crush on him and the film is ambiguous over whether the adult man shares the girl's affection. At first she is frightened by Shanks' new puppets but quickly learns to love them, especially once he gets them to stand up and dance. While having a birthday party in the scientist's dusty, creepy mansion, a group of cartoonishly evil bikers suddenly ride into the film. They invade the house, rape the girl, tie up Shanks, and steal the puppets. The film signals the story shift by having one of the intertitles go up in literal flames. The conflict is created for the purpose of the climax, in which Shanks revives his first people. The cliché of a corpse digging its way out of a grave is repurposed in a fresh, spooky, uncanny way. The last half features the most impressive mime work, even Marceau's sudden transformation into an action hero comes out of nowhere. The sepia-toned penultimate scene is poetic and bizarre, while the final scene suggests the whole film might have been a dream. That would certainly fit the surreal tone.Alex North's vibrant score propels the film and was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award. Unseen for many years, "Shanks" was recently released on Blu-Ray by Olive Films. Olive is slowly trying to win my heart by releasing oddball obscurity like this and "The Hellstrom Chronicles." However, if they truly want to be the Criterion of cult films, they'll have to work a little harder then this. The image transfer is sometimes lovely but too often scratchy and dusty. Worse yet, there's nary a special feature on the disk, not even a trailer. Still, "Shanks" warrants rediscovery. It's bound to be the only horror film you see about mime, at the very least.

Wearing tight pants and a wig, mute puppeteer Marcel Marceau (as Malcolm Shanks) takes over an expired old man's practice of re-animating the dead. Naturally, he begins by bringing back the old man. This process turns out to be more lifelike on chickens than people. Marceau gets a lot of grief from his brother's ex-wife, Tsilla Chelton, and her alcoholic husband, husband Philippe Clay. Pretty blonde Cindy Eilbacher (as Celia) is Marceau's girlfriend. Understandably, the underage girl's birthday is a cause for celebration, so Marceau has a party. An uninvited gang appears, stealing Marceau's puppets and abducting Ms. Eilbacher...This might have been a better film if director William Castle had settled upon a style. There are silent film "title cards" throughout, which are obviously there to accentuate the fact that Marceau is a mime playing a mute; but, other silent film techniques are unemployed. Incongruently, an obvious soundtrack seem the biggest strength. The visuals are tepid schlock horror. The more silent final segments, Eilbacher looking lovely in a sepia-tone and Marceau leading the cast in a bow, are most successful.** Shanks (10/9/74) William Castle ~ Marcel Marceau, Cindy Eilbacher, Tsilla Chelton, Philippe Clay

I am sure the cult followers of this film will not like my review, but that's partly what makes this film a cult classic--either you like it or you don't. Even with nothing else to do on a late Friday night, and a stiff drink, a bag of chips, and the need to escape from the cares of the week, I found myself flipping to other channels during the painfully slow segments of this film. The (un)editing and overall incredibly slow flow of this story made it a struggle to stay tuned in. If properly edited, it could have easily been a half-hour "Tales from the Dark Side." In fact, the quality of the shots and lighting made me convinced that it was a made-for-TV film.All that said, it's interesting to see the movie once, as if it was assigned in a "70s film appreciation" class. But be prepared with something else to do--like sorting receipts for taxes, or playing solitaire.You may find yourself yelling at the screen--"How many times does the editor have to cut back to his face? We've got the point! Now move on with the action!!!" and, "could he walk down that hallway any slower???" My favorite part of the movie was watching the great body movement of the actors who played the re-animated zombies. And it's funny that Marcel was NOT the best one of these!

Shanks is the final film of director William Castle; a man famous for his gimmicky horror films. This film breaks away from many norms and that has lead to it being called 'weird' by many that have seen it - but to me, this is Castle doing what he always does, namely making a film full of gimmicks...only this time the gimmicks don't work so well and the film is not much better than passable. Apparently Castle was going for a sort of grim fairy tale feel; but unfortunately he wasn't able to capture it, partly due to some truly lacklustre performances, but also because of the dull script and plotting. The film focuses on Malcolm Shanks; a deaf and mute puppeteer who lives with his sister and her boyfriend who abuse him. He is forced to get a job, and finds one with a mad doctor who is doing experiments on the dead in which he attempts to bring them back to life. Our hero's job is to move the corpses like he does his puppets. However, when the doctor turns up dead; the puppeteer seeks revenge on those he dislikes.The first gimmick featured is the casting of the central character - Marcel Marceau, a famous mime. Secondly, Castle tells his story via the use of storyboards which gives the film a silent movie type atmosphere. This fits the central character as he's a mute and thus doesn't speak; but it doesn't really serve any relevance to plot and feels like weirdness simply for the sake of it. The lead character is also really difficult to get into, which is a huge flaw because the plot isn't nearly interesting enough to carry the film on its own. The idea of reanimating the dead is about as morbid as it gets; but it's all done in a kind of pantomime fashion and this saps all the horror from the story; leaving the audience with nothing much to do other than roll their eyes at most scenes. The film is very difficult to find (unsurprisingly it hasn't been given a wide release like most of Castle's oeuvre) and I'm not really surprised at that. I can give plaudits to the film for some of the ideas on display, the originality and the score which is excellent; but really this is far too uneven to be successful and I can't say it's really worth going to the trouble of tracking down.