Malcolm Shanks is a sad and lonely man, deaf, mute and living with his cruel sister and her husband, who delight in making him miserable. His only pleasure, it seems, is in making and controlling puppets. Thanks to his skill, he is offered a job as a lab assistant to Dr. Walker, who is working on ways to re-animate dead bodies by inserting electrodes at key nerve points and manipulating the bodies as if they were on strings. When the professor suddenly dies one night, Shanks gets the idea to apply their experimental results to a human body, and then to start exacting some revenge.
Acting
Marcel Marceau's silent performance is genuinely haunting.
Direction
William Castle's final film goes full surrealist.
Practical Effects
Grotesque zombie marionette effects are nightmare fuel.
Director
William Castle
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was William Castle's final film—he died four years later. The man who invented 'Percepto' and 'Emergo' went out with a mime zombie movie.
Marcel Marceau, the world's most famous mime, rarely spoke on screen. Castle specifically wanted his silence to feel oppressive rather than artistic.
US
