User reviews

Here is a film I had wanted to see for some time and finally tracked down a low-quality bootleg video of. I am quite a fan of unusual films like this, although unlike the works of David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky, the weirdness of this film comes naturally from the storyline and not from any intentional strangeness just for the sake of strangeness. William Castle has created a neat, compact, self-contained movie universe here, with the setting being an odd juxtaposition between a dark Gothic castle and sunny Northern California. I couldn't help but be reminded of Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands", another modern fairy tale about a mad but gentle genius and his near-mute misfit assistant in a dark old castle surrounded by a sunny '50s style suburbia. In fact, call me crazy, but I will bet that Burton has seen this film before and was possibly inspired by it while making his own film. There are other similarities to that film: the genius dies leaving the misfit to fend for himself in the outside world, the villains are in a motorcycle gang, the misfit falls for a local blond teenage girl, and he also performs his "magic" for children in a school classroom. Also like the films of Burton, there is a mixture of visual motifs from the past and present, including silent-movie style story-cards, Alex North's heady music score, and a motorcycle gang.

Sadly missing, though, is a highly compelling storyline, but in this case style over substance is not such a bad thing. This film is hard to classify, as it is not completely horror, modern fairy tale, or art film. I think it would be best to classify it as an experimental curio - one of those films like "Eraserhead", Jacques Tati's "Playtime", "Cabinet of Dr. Caligaryi", or "El Topo", which have no conventional film equivalent yet continue to garner a following from a small group of adventurous filmgoers. If you are attracted to films such as these, you will not be disappointed with "Shanks."

Producer-director William Castle may have too often been dismissed in critical circles as a Grade Z Hitchcock or for having been little more than a gimmick-laden showman during his peak years, but nobody could have sensibly predicted that he would eventually be saving his greatest trick for last; in fact, SHANKS was Castle's directorial swan-song and it might well be his best film as well!

The artform of the mime is one that, understandably perhaps, hasn't been treated much on the silver screen (in this way, it elicits comparison with the classic ballet-oriented THE RED SHOES [1948] – which, similarly, adopted a stylized look throughout mixed with an adroit sense of the macabre); the most famous example is, of course, Jean-Louis Barrault's unforgettable Baptiste in Marcel Carne's LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (1945) and Marcel Marceau (who has died fairly recently) can be said to be the only mime artist that is renowned worldwide. Consequently, it comes as little surprise to see him feature in a couple of cult movies over the years – Roger Vadim's BARBARELLA (1968) and Mel Brooks' all-star comedy SILENT MOVIE (1976), where his presence extended to just a cameo in which, ironically, he utters the only word of dialogue in the whole movie!

SHANKS is another thing entirely: Marceau not only has a dual role and does the choreography but, for the most part, is virtually the whole show. As on-screen support, he has three talented actors – Tsilla Chelton and Philippe Clay (who are very adept at miming themselves) – and the young Cindy Eilbacher. The film was produced by Steven North, son of composer Alex who received another Oscar nomination (his twelfth) for his brilliantly inventive score – by turns playful, poignant and brooding – which, in a film like this, with very little dialogue and the intermittent use of intertitles, is as important as the on-screen characters themselves. Castle (who even has an amusing, unbilled cameo as a storekeeper) also employed other renowned Hollywood veterans behind the camera here, namely cinematographer Joseph Biroc (their third collaboration) and production designer Boris Leven.

The film itself has rightly been described as one of the strangest ever made (the subtitle "A Grim Fairy Tale" is most apt!): it deals with a deaf-mute puppeteer (Marceau, naturally) who, abused by his harridan sister and her boozing partner, takes comfort in his friendship with a little girl he meets at the fair and an eccentric dying scientist (also Marceau, made up to look almost Caligari-like) who experiments with reanimating dead bodies (most notably a frog) via two portable electronic devices. After the scientist dies and is buried, the puppeteer takes possession of the re-animating devices himself and, inevitably, they come in handy when his relatives die (one he kills himself in self-defense at the scientist's mansion with the help of a re-animated rooster and the other – when beside herself at Marceau's lateness – is mowed down by a speeding car outside their house in the middle of the night!); he takes them shopping and has them wait on him and perform tricks when he invites the girl to the doctor's mansion! Their idyllic tryst is short-lived, however, when a gang of bikers burst in on them to treat a wounded member of their party…

Watching SHANKS (which is the puppeteer's surname, by the way) right after Robert Hartford-Davis' CORRUPTION (1968), I couldn't help but be reminded of that film's analogous last segment (right down to the 'dreamy' coda); here, however, Castle has a trump card up his sleeve when a biker steals one of the doctor's electronic devices and fools around with the zombified 'servants' – the puppeteer, on the other hand, re-animates the scientist who, together with the servants now back in his control, beat up the gang. The narrative seems simple enough on paper, but the film is very much a unique experience (albeit an acquired taste, given the occasional longueurs brought on by its deliberate pace) – amusing, surreal, weird and disturbing. Certainly among the highlights is the puppeteer's re-animation of the scientist – whose movements made me think of a Jekyll/Hyde transformation as performed by Jimmy Cagney!!

Unfortunately, the print quality left much to be desired: it seemed like a tenth-generation VHS copy, with the detail all soft and fuzzy and the picture excessively dark to boot; being a Paramount film, one hopes that Legend Films – or, better still, Criterion – will eventually get the opportunity to give this bizarre gem a decent release and, consequently, the exposure it greatly deserves…since Paramount themselves seem unwilling to do anything with it!

When one thinks of Marcel Marceau they think of the world's most famous mime. A performer who has entertained millions of people throughout the years with his mastery of pantomime. You certainly don't think of him as a manipulator of dead bodies!! But that's what he is here in this very strange film. He plays Malcolm Shanks, a mime who loves to entertain the neighborhood children. He lives with his sister & brother-in-law who are a shrew & a drunk & abuse him constantly. He is hired by a scientist who has perfected the art of reanimating the dead. I must stop for a second and let anyone who is reading this know that the film, while it sounds intriguing, doesn't play out the way you would think. It is at heart a fairy tale. A morality story perhaps. But most definitely NOT a horror story. To continue, The scientist dies & having learned his secrets while working with him, Malcolm reanimates his corpse & becomes very proficient at it. I'm not gonna get any deeper into it at this point. Suffice it to say that more than a few people get their corpses reanimated by Malcolm and no good can come from that.....

Marceau plays both Malcolm & The Scientist(Walker) & performs admirably in both roles. There is a scene where Malcolm learns to animate Walker's facial muscles that is very effective. He goes from slack-jawed to smiling so slowly & eerily that at first you think the film is frozen. Almost like time lapse photography. It really shows off Marceau's expertise. There is very little dialogue in the film. It plays like a silent film(It even has title cards)because it is 90% silent. The score by Alex North is therefore very important to the tone of the film, & it is very effective in conveying the mood that the filmmakers were trying to achieve. It was so effective it was nominated for an academy award.

I enjoyed the film but there are VERY SLOW PASSAGES in it. So slow that it will turn many people off. It also ends very curiously. It is a very odd but lyrical film that is a great attempt at a Grim fairy tale. But ultimately it fails because of it's terrible pacing & low budget. You might dig it if you're willing to accept it's idiosyncracies. If not...well give it a try anyway. Who knows??

And that's not an exaggeration. I searched for this movie for a long time, and I'm glad I found it. Marcel Marceau plays Shanks, a deaf puppet maker, and Walker, an old scientist who has discovered the secret of reanimating the dead. He plays both beautifully, using his pantomime skills to achieve silent movie style acting. In fact, that's what this movie reminds me of - a silent fairy tale (the use of title cards to introduce scenes further suggests this), with a little George Romero thrown in! It's incredible that something this abstract and individualistic was made; I wish more movies would be as bold. The opening credits sequence, with tinted photos of kids watching Shanks' puppet show while the weird Oscar nominated (!) music plays is incredibly strange, memorable, and disturbing.

William Castle, of all people, directed. This movie shows, more than any other, that he was more than just the "King of Gimmicks". To see such an expressionistic and disturbing vision.......is to regret that this was his final film as director.

Deaf-mute puppeteer, living with his despicable relatives, learns how to reanimate the dead from his employer; using the corpses of his step-sister and brother-in-law, he exacts revenge on a group of bikers who have crashed his castle. Ridiculous acting vehicle for mime extraordinaire Marcel Marceau, produced on the cheap in Vancouver and barely released by Paramount. Scare-master William Castle directs in a pedestrian, uncertain fashion--even the little bits and pieces that do come off well are eventually buried under the clumsy handling. A sequence where two corpses arise in unison in a country field has a small-scaled lunatic grandeur which might have been darkly comic under different circumstances; however, one doesn't know how to respond to the movie because it isn't directed toward any particular audience (it's too static and silly for adults, and too garish for kids). There's a strange romance in the film between Marceau (looking his age in a too-dark hairstyle borrowed from Tom Jones) and a teenage girl still wearing pigtails. Castle shows no finesse--it's as if he had never directed a picture before--while his cast appears understandably perplexed. The talented Helena Kallianiotes (playing a halter-top wearing biker chick in hoop earrings) stumbles about in a graveyard swilling vodka, sees a hand emerge from the earth, and stumbles away. Castle doesn't know how to make these incidents eerie and funny at the same time. With "Shanks", his final effort as director, he lost his touch. * from ****

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.

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

Director William Castle was renowned for his cinematic gimmicks; in his final film, Shanks, the novelty was the casting of French mime Marcel Marceau in the lead. The fact that the star remains silent throughout speaks volumes about the film's quirkiness, and how much you enjoy it will depend on whether you appreciate abject eccentricity for the sake of it. Having developed a fondness for the absurd, I found the film to be an enjoyable and charming experience - like something that Tim Burton might have made during his early years as a film-maker.

With a silent star, it's only apt that Castle treats Shanks like a silent film, introducing chapters with title cards, using occasional sepia tones, and allowing his performers' physicality to be the focus of the movie. Marceau shines in two roles: as deaf-mute puppeteer Malcolm Shanks, and wealthy Old Walker, who hires Malcolm to help him in his scientific experiments at his mansion. Malcolm is only too happy to work for Walker, since it gets him away from his shrewish step-sister, Mrs. Barton (Tsilla Chelton), and her alcoholic husband (Philippe Clay), who are mean to him; besides, Old Walker's experiments in reviving dead animals via implanted electrodes gives Malcolm the opportunity to be paid for his unique set of skills, the puppeteer deftly controlling the movements of reanimated frogs and chickens with a special hand-set (a small black box with three dials).

When Malcolm arrives at work to find Old Walker has passed away during the night, he realises that he is out of a job, and so inserts the electrodes into the dead man's body, giving him the appearance of life. As the reanimated Old Walker, Marceau makes full use of his agility, moving awkwardly and robotically; the effect is both amusing and macabre.

Malcolm is interrupted by a drunken Mr. Barton, who turns up at the mansion, demanding money. The puppeteer seizes the chance to rid himself of this horrible man by controlling his reanimated chicken (not a euphemism); face bloodied from the bird's pecking and clawing, Barton tumbles down some stairs and dies. Malcom then reanimates Mr. Barton and, through a twist of fate, also does away with, and subsequently revives, his nasty step-sister. To keep up appearances, Malcolm takes the dead couple for a stroll through the town, where he meets his teenage friend Celia (Cindy Eilbacher), whom he takes for a picnic. When Celia suddenly realises that she is in the company of dead people, she is horrified, but Malcolm assures her that she is safe; having calmed the girl, he takes her to the mansion where he organises a party to celebrate her birthday.

The fun comes to an end, however, when the party is crashed by a gang of bikers, who attack Cindy and tie up the puppeteer. When Malcolm escapes, he finds Celia's lifeless body lying in the undergrowth and exacts revenge.

Described in the opening credits as a 'grim fairy tale', Shanks is precisely that, a bizarre fantasy laced with black humour that doesn't end happily ever after. At times, it feels like a movie aimed at children, until one remembers that it is dealing with the very unsavoury and disrespectful idea of treating the dead like puppets. While Malcolm's relationship with Celia, a good thirty years his junior, is seemingly intended as innocent, one can't help feeling a little uneasy about such a creepy old guy hanging out with a pretty blonde girl in pigtails. And the ending, in which Malcolm brings Celia back to life so that he can dance with her only adds to the unsettling vibe, at least until the whole thing is revealed to have been a story being told by the puppeteer (dressed unnervingly like the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) to an eager audience of kids.

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for the ghoulish moment when dead Mrs. Barton accidentally severs her own finger while cutting Celia's birthday cake, and for reanimated Mr. And Mrs. Barton doing a Charleston-style dance.

This must surely be one of the most neglected fantasy films of all time. By all accounts a flop at the time of it's release, it has become the hardest to see of all William Castle's movies. It's also in colour, which is another rarity from this director. French mime/actor Marcel Marceau plays the title role of Malcolm Shanks, a deaf mute puppeteer who scratches out a living putting on shows for children, while bearing the brunt of a miserable home life with his money grabbing brother and sister-in-law, who take all the money he earns for themselves. One day, an elderly professor (also played by Marceau in a dual role) sees his puppet show and offers Shanks a job - to come to his home to assist him is some experiments involving the artificial stimulation of dead animals via electricity, or something...why or how it actually works is not expanded on, but it involves small implants being attached to the muscles and these are then activated by means of a small control box.

Due to his background with puppets, Shanks proves to be very adept at controlling the movement of his first animals (a dead frog, and later a rooster). However things take an unexpected turn when he turns up for work one day only to find the professor dead in his armchair, seemingly from natural causes. Shanks has all but been hounded out of his own home by his cruel relatives, and he realises that desperate measures are needed to avoid going back there...and so the professor becomes the first human subject for re-animation.

What follows is the beginning of a macabre and dreamlike fantasy. The "awakening" of the dead professor is one of the most ghoulish things I have ever seen. Marceau is famous as a physical performer, and his depiction of a dead body being artificially roused into movement is very skillful. With a shock of white hair, sunken face and glazed white eyeballs, the professor's body jerks up off the ground and begins to wobble around the laboratory, as Shanks perfects his manipulation of the control box. It isn't long before he feels confident enough to take his new puppet on a stroll into the streets outside, and this is the start of an escalation of events that you really need to watch to get the full enjoyment out of.

This is almost a silent movie for much of it's running time, with long scenes involving no dialogue whatsoever, but the film is so effective in holding your attention that you will barely even notice the fact that nobody is talking. Shanks himself never speaks at all, but the support character all talk naturally when required - except for when they are dead of course! And some rather charming silent movie-style subtitle boards on the screen fill in any required exposition. The acting in this film is amazing, I suspect that Marceau is not the only performer to have a background in mime or theatre, as when he has to animate other dead characters, the movements are always effectively creepy.

If I have any criticism, it would be that Castle - as he has often done before - stays shy of making the film as truly horrific as it could have been. He never exploits the "yuk" factor of the dead bodies, and there is no allusion to bloodshed or decomposition at any time. William Castle is an oddity among horror directors in that he always puts on the brakes before his subject matter goes to deep into unpleasant territory, whereas others would gleefully revel in the more gruesome aspects of a story like this, Castle seems to prefer to keep things suitable for family viewing! Plus, the movie even ends with a tacked on "it's only make-believe" epilogue that completely squashes the very dark ending of the real story...it's something he has done before, and it seems a shame that the films of William Castle are often sabotaged from being truly horror by the directors very own sensibilities.

That notwithstanding, I would call "Shanks" a success, as it holds your attention constantly throughout. If any one thinks Marcel Marceau's talents end with a white made-up face and leotard, they should see him in this...he is perfect for the part, effective in bringing his whole character to life without speaking a single word. The film is a true oddity, but almost impossible to classify. Ultimately, it's just a unique and bewildering experience, and I think everyone should see it.

The film opens with a bizarre sequence where Marceau's character is performing a puppet show for a small audience of children. There are certain avant-garde editing techniques used which set the mood for the film and are reminiscent of the intro sequence to The Night Walker. Castle decides to employ intertitle cards, however, they function as a self-reflexive prompt for the audience in lieu of a surrogate for vocal expressions by the lead character (a mute character throughout the film although Marceau plays a second role with spoken lines). The directing has little finesse in its execution. The shot-reverse-shot seeks to suture but is too clumsy and overt - there is no alternating use of sound. Staging/blocking uses frontality as dominant and much of the interesting mise-en-scene is wasted for observation when redundant and sterile cut-ins continuously disrupt the mood while providing no extra insight to character psychology. The two roles played by Marceau are quite genius and provide great uplift for an otherwise pedestrian production effort. The two roles play into Castle's own authorial voice quite well and it is very surprising that he didn't direct this film better (keep in mind that it was his last). The two roles played by Marceau and the theme of the film itself concern concepts of interiority, exteriority, surrogacy and symbiosis (it is my thesis that Castle's gimmicks operated along these lines as well). There are some other provocative ideas at play within this script and its presentation by Castle (for the Freud and Lacan enthusiasts). There is a critical commentary about the corruption of sexual desire and the animation, re-animation and death of sexual drives in young and old bodies. There are criminological science ideas at play (issues of mens rea, Manson, culpability, etc.) rendering the film text richer and more relevant to its genre. Castle adds in some more self-reflexive touches that play well, including his bit role as shop owner, a horror film playing on a TV set, and a well shot and choreographed rooster attack which borrows significance from Strait-Jacket. The narrative frame keeps the fiction fenced in and frankly given Castle's oeuvre he could discard it pretty quickly in favor of a more open and interactive ending. The film is interesting and moderately entertaining but gets too cute pretending to be a fly caught in a spider's web when it should have been stampeding as an elephant until running into a frightened mouse.

I was lucky enough (?) to see this film, kind of. If you are up and it is 3:00 a.m. and you are watching showtime on digital cable and see Shanks. You'll probably change the channel or see Marcel Marceau and think that it must be intellectual. If for some reason you then decided that you should see what people on the internet think, you have wasted far too much time. If you are an insomniac, you are in luck. I have problems falling asleep and tried watching this movie three times. Because frankly, the storyline made me laugh. All three times I made it no further than eight minute intervals. Should you choose to continue viewing... best of luck to you.

Maybe some of the all american readers of IMDb will be insulted by my establishing a certain degree of comparision between this gem of a horror movie and Jackie Gleason's emotionally charged melodrama 'Gigot'. Well, if so, I ask for your pardon in advance, and state that, on no account, is my intention to offend you in any ways.

Nevertheless, the way I envision, this brilliant movie, 'Shanks' is a clever - if unintentional - satire of what would Gleason's Gigot do if he was an actual human being - after all, a man that wonderfully good could not be from this foul Earth of ours.

Marcel Marceau is a deaf mute aspiring to be a puppeteer whose existence is torn to shreds by his shrewish sister and drunken brother in law. Here, the shades of Gigot appear, since Jackie Gleason's character is constantly taunted - not by family, but by acquaintances who share the same street and later on, a woman, with whom he desperately falls in love.

Marceu is invited to work with a dying scientist working on a project to reanimate the dead. When he dies, Marceau uses the techniques trusted to him by his mentor to re-animate him as well. He has a lot of fun improving his work, and controlling his every move through a small remote control. That way he actually becomes more of a puppeteer than ever - only now, his manipulating powers are aimed towards the dead.

His vengeance towards his sister and brother in law are rather obvious, but frightening, nevertheless. He murders them - and deprives them from the little decency that exists in 'dying', by manipulating them, just like they manipulated him, when living. He leads the dead bodies around with morbid pleasure, and degrades them as much as he can, therefore, satisfying his justifiable yearnings. Yet, things begin the go sour after his protegee - a young adolescent whose character bears much of the little girl in 'Gigot' - discovers that those people that are constantly walking down the streets if the small town they live in, are, in fact, dead.

The movie's punch is lost in the ending, when the evil outside Marceau's world of vengeance - represented by a group of hilariously named Hell's Angels - encroaches on the little girl's birthday party. But the ending that examines the possibilities of the entire plot being a dark fantasy that Marceau has while performing for the town's children is absolutely fascinating.

Alex North's musical score replaces the lack of dialog with thorough efficiency. The ragtime and Charleston pieces North has composed for the few scenes in which Marceau's human puppets are performing for the little girl are absolutely brilliant, yet, never do they curtail the morbidness the film bears.

Gigot's vendetta is now, a refreshing reality. Yet, through another movie, 'Shanks', a brilliant, disturbingly delicious study in irony, reality, fantasy, and revenge.

Do forgive for the comparisions. I reiterate that they were not intended to harm any of you Jackie Gleason junkies out there, in any ways... :)

This oddball end to William Castle's directing career casts Marcel Marceau as a deaf-mute who joins up with a mad scientist to reanimate dead bodies. Wacky as that plot sounds, "Shanks" actually managed to receive an Oscar nod for Best Original Score (it lost to "The Godfather, Part 2"). It's not really a good movie or bad movie, more of a how'd-they-come-up-with-this movie. I suspect the viewers will be surprised to see Marceau out of costume.

One thing about the movie that now looks cringey is when the protagonist takes the girl to the castle. Would anyone be okay with a scene where a grown man takes a girl off somewhere nowadays, even if he does nothing bad?

Other than that, it's an interesting movie. Co-star Don Calfa (Einstein) later appeared as Scarface in "Foul Play" and the mortician in "Return of the Living Dead".

Without getting into the plot and characters, I don't understand the low rating. Marcel Marceau performance is so underrated here. Somehow, he carries this twisted fairy tale singlehandedly, flawlessly, effortlessly without uttering one syllable. Back in the day I owned a 16mm print of this William Castle gem and I loved it the first time I laid eyes. Dark, nightmarish and otherworldly. A surreal, macabre, foreboding film, and surreal is not easy to achieve, very few have captured that essence like LEMORA, THE LADY DRACULA, VAMPYR and KILL, BABY, KILL. Highly recommended.

This ran on TCM last night after an evening of 1950's Sci-Fi films. It could be that I had just been burnt out by so many hours of mutants created by atomic bombs. Or, perhaps it's the fact that I just don't care for mimes. I must say I wasn't particularly entertained by seeing a frog electrocuted on a table either. In any case, this movie didn't make a huge impression on me.

Fact is, about 80% of this film has no dialog and I got the distinct feeling it was just a vehicle for Marcel Marceau to do his "mime" thing once more for an audience that had pretty much moved on from "mimery", except maybe in France. Considering other comments here from people who have not seen the movie for years, I should add this; The TCM version of this film is very clean and bright, and their Web site has a number of video clips from the film that are a few minutes each.

Shanks gets a 5 rating from me because it has some odd, interesting moments, but they are interspersed with some rather boring parts where the camera just goes to Marcel for the viewer to be blown away by his mime skills (I wasn't). It's like those guys that used to go on the Ed Sullivan Show and spin plates. Please, spare me.

However, I have to admit that this is the best zombie mime movie I've ever seen.

I saw "Shanks" in Chicago on it's original release with another William Castle project "Bug". I remember it as being not very good, it had terrible word of mouth and was dumped into limited release. It was at the old Adelipha theater on the North side.

I remember basically agreeing with this.... but one long, long shot of Helena Kalliniotes has lingered in my mind all these years.... She is a very distinct presence, I'm surprised She didn't do more after "Kansas City Bomber" and her memorable cameo in "Five Easy Pieces."

I wish "Shanks" would surfice on DVD so I could take another look. It certainly isn't, or wasn't, the same old thing.

Watching this on TCM as I type this. I recorded it to my DVR from TCM's airing last night- 3/12/10, in case anyone wants to get technical about it;)

My impression of this 1974 movie "Shanks"?

IT'S THE ONLY MOVIE CREATED FOR PEOPLE OVER 90.

It's dreadful. Extremely slow and needless to say, boring. The humor, or rather attempts at humor fall very, very flat. So flat in fact that what should be construed as humor comes across as mean-spirited, creepy and obviously to my eyes not funny. I mean trying to import Marcel Marceau's unique brand of French humor to U.S. audiences? Who thought this was going to work? William Castle apparently.

Poor Marcel. Watch him proudly strut about the American? countryside looking utterly and completely out of place. This debonair older sophisticate should be strolling the streets of Paris in his trendy euro fashions. Instead he's playing Uncle Creepy to a young blonde girl, who apparently has no friends or family even though she lives in a charming house with perfectly blooming flowers. The American kids just outside her door feign interest in Marcel Marceau, I think they merely humor the old creepy French guy into making him think that he's entertaining them.

Throughout the movie Marcel is stuck with an angry, confused look of "why the hell did I decide to make this movie again when I could have stayed in Paris drinking Absinthe?" And speaking of drinking, this movie is awash in Bombay Gin®. The product placement incidents actually out-number the cast members. No really. In one scene at a general store there's a shelf fully stocked with Bombay Gin®. So as clearly as the gin itself, this movie fueled by gin. Which explains a lot actually.

Oh god. I just watched a scene that involved the brother of Marcel's character being attacked by a reanimated rooster.

To illustrate this scene here I will provide makeshift screen captures to get across the immense lunacy of this movie:

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8048/image030g.jpg http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7955/image029a.jpg http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/4836/image028s.jpg http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/1905/image027n.jpg http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9040/image026k.jpg http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9454/image025ww.jpg http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/1715/image024qk.jpg http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2791/image023ck.jpg http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2702/image031bt.jpg

Shortly after this scene the be-wigged mother is struck down and killed in a hit-and-run accident in which the driver asks the important question of Marcel's brother Barton; "You didn't see anything did ya?"

I certainly wish I hadn't!

This is one of those movies in which I would have LOVED to have sat with a paying audience as they watched this thing unfold before them when it first came out. I dare say their reactions, most likely followed by their stampeding to the exits, would have made the price of admission worth it.

So I'm going to go back to giving my full attention to Shanks because I don't want to miss one priceless moment..

However, I still maintain the masterstroke in Marceau's (brief)film career was his brief appearance in Mel Brooks' 1976 movie "Silent Movie". It was such a brilliant thing too because Brooks made a silent movie for (then)modern cinema. And guess who had the only line of dialogue? Of course: Marcel Marceau.

So I will echo his one word utterance from that brilliant and funny 1976 Brooks' film to describe this 1974 experiment titled "Shanks":

NO!