Reviews & Ratings for
The Face of Marble More at IMDbPro »

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Considering it's Beaudine and Monogram - it's not that bad, 4 February 2005

Author: bensonmum2 from Tennessee

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

While The Face of Marble will never be confused with a great horror film, it is a decent little movie from the infamously cheap Monogram Pictures and director William Beaudine. John Carradine plays a doctor intent on discovering the secret to bringing the dead back to life. In most scenes, he rises above the material given and delivers a first class performance. The less said about the rest of the cast the better. They can generously be described as wooden and unemotional.

The movie begins with Carradine and his assistant attempting to bring a dead man back to life. After this fails, he tries the procedure on his wife's dog (Carradine's character kills the dog with little or no remorse or care for his wife's feelings). And finally, his wife gets the opportunity to experience the whizzing and sparking machines in his lab. There's also a housekeeper who practices voodoo and has some sort of control over the dog and wife. The housekeeper uses her power to have the dog and wife do her bidding. Under the housekeeper's control, the wife kills Carradine and attempts to kill everyone else in the cast.

For the limited budget, there are actually some good special effects. Some of the scenes where the dog walks through the walls are especially effective. Also, much of the budget appears to have been spent on fancy lab equipment. Carradine has a room full of electronic gadgets similar to those in Frankenstein. The marble effect (from which the movies title comes) is, however, not especially good or memorable.

If you can get past the lackluster supporting performances and the obvious budget constraints, The Face of Marble can be a somewhat fun little film. Not the best, but watchable.

6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
How Do You Handle a Problem Like Maria?, 13 July 2001

Author: BaronBl00d (baronbl00d@aol.com) from NC

Monogram Studios, director William "One Shot" Beaudine, and horror/character actor icon John Carradine team up in this fun yet implausible offering called The Face of Marble. The story deals with really two strands of plot that come together at the end. One strand tells the story of John Carradine and his young male assistant working on a way of bringing life back to life once dead. The scientific logic is weak, yet executed very nicely. The other story deals with a love triangle between Carradine, his assistant, and Carradine's wife who has fallen in love with the assistant. Carradine's wife(played by Claudia Drake) also happens to have a very "loyal" servant from Africa trained in the black arts. This servant's name is Maria, and she is the very personification of wickedness as she stops at nothing to satisfy her mistress and her own evil ends. Rosa Rey plays Maria and does a real fine job capturing and creating an atmosphere of foreboding and doom. The rest of the acting is all very acceptable. Carradine actually gives a nice, restrained performance as a somewhat misguided but basically good man. Considering the budgetary concerns, this little film is quite good. Some of the special effects are very innovative. The huge Great Dane that becomes a ghost and walks through windows and doors howling in the night is particularly effective and creepy.

4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Okay thriller with a rare lead for John Carradine, 6 July 2009

Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

John Carradine gets the chance to be the lead mad scientist in this good but not really remarkable tale about reviving the dead. Carradine's experiments result in a temporary return to life but give the subject the title face. An experiment on his wife's dog results in its ability to walk through walls. Add to the mix a love triangle between Carradine's "younger" assistant (played by an actor a half a decade older) and Carradine's wife. Oh yea the house keeper knows voodoo. It's a busy mix that still ends up being a bit too leisurely paced. Creepy at times the film the film never truly generates a great deal of thrills and by the time the end rolls around you'll be happy to have seen Carradine in a lead, and wish he had had a better vehicle to drive. Worth a shot for Carradine fans.

6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Pretty good little B-horror, 9 October 2002

Author: funkyfry from Oakland CA

This film is distinguished by high-quality high contrast photography. There's little else here in this standard-issue John Carradine mad scientist story, in which Carradine and his assistant manage to resurrect a man, then a large dog, and finally Carradine's wife (at his perhaps obsessed assistant's insistence!). A few interesting plot twists are turned when the script starts to lose its direction (owing in part literally to the director, infamous "One Shot" Beaudine, who probably prided himself on his ethic of efficiency over all artistic or dramatic considerations), but there seems to be no effort to make a really good movie here. Too bad; it just might have been a lot better with some effort (kudos to the actors, though, who all played it straight like Beaudine wanted them to).

5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Pretty scary film for a young kid., 28 April 2002
Author: magazette (magazette@aol.com) from Shreveport, Louisiana

I saw this flick in 1946 as a 12-year-old, and found it pretty scary. Darkly black-and-white (most films were black and white then). What I remember most was that the faces of the dead revived didn't look like marble at all. Scared but disappointed. John W. Hall

5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Nice minor Monogram with a ghostly Great Dane., 28 January 2000

Author: gr8dane from southern california

Surprisingly atmospheric Monogram entry that features classic horror elements of bringing the dead back to life and voodoo. The story follows two scientists in their attempt to bring the dead back to life. A voodoo housekeeper throws a monkey wrench into their plans. The Great Dane plays a key part to this nifty melodrama.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Just try to revive a brain., 12 March 2011

Author: Michael O'Keefe from Muskogee OK

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Pretty nice black & white horror film starring the great John Carradine as Professor Charles Randolf, a prominent brain surgeon, who retires to his mansion on a cliff that overlooks the sea. Randolf summons one of his best students, scientist David Cochran(Robert Shayne), to partner with him in an obsessive project. The mad professor wants to revive a dead brain. A drown sailor washes up on the shore becoming a perfect subject. The brain is revived; but the sailor's hair turns white and has a face that looks like it was chiseled out of marble...only to die. The dumped body is found and Inspector Norton(Thomas E. Jackson)comes to the mansion asking questions. There is Randolf's wife Elaine(Claudia Drake), the butler Shadrach(Willie Best) and a house maid Maria(Rosa Rey), who dabbles with voodoo. But this will not stop the experimenting. Apt atmosphere that sustains interest. Also in the cast: Maris Wrixon, Neal Burns and Donald Kerr.

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
The Face of Marble (1946) *, 12 November 2007

Author: JoeKarlosi from U.S.A.

I thought I read somewhere that this was the last Monogram production, but whether that's true or not it doesn't matter, because if it wasn't, then it should have been. It's a deadly dull affair starring John Carradine with some gray in his hair to make himself appear like an older scientist who is experimenting with the aid of his young apprentice (Robert Shayne) in bringing the dead back to life. Every time their subjects are revived, they seem to have a whitish face like marble as they are lying strapped to the laboratory table (big deal). Carradine manages to restore his faithful dog to life after it's dead, and the mutt gains an unusual ability to walk through walls in a ghostlike fashion (wooooooooohhhh). That's about all she wrote.

For an ultra-cheap Monogram quickie, this thing at least actually utilizes a more fancy-schmancy lab setup than is usually allotted. The funniest running joke in the movie is that the "older" doctor Carradine constantly refers to his "young" assistant Shayne as "m'boy" when, in fact, Carradine was actually 40 and Shayne was 45 when they made this!

0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
John Carradine as a Mad Genius? Yes, Please!, 7 October 2011
Author: gavin6942 from United States

Totally engrossed in his project to bring the dead back to life, Dr. Charles Randolph (John Carradine) fails to notice his wife Elaine's interest in Randolph's young lab partner, Dr. Cochran.

The sound and picture of this film need serious clean up, if possible. And there is some strange, latent racism here. But beyond those issues, there is a lot of horror potential -- reviving the dead, voodoo and a lab with electricity going everywhere. Randolph fits the idea of a "mad scientist" perfectly (but with less wild hair).

Some scenes are hard to follow because of how dark the picture is, but the story is decent, and if there was a way to fix this up, I would increase my rating.

2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Boring, 11 March 2008
Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY

Face of Marble, The (1946)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Boring horror film has John Carradine playing a scientist who's so caught up in bringing the dead back to life that he doesn't notice his wife and assistant are getting it on. Carradine is quite mute in this outing, which is a shame and the story is boring and by the numbers. It really would have been a lot better had Carradine gone over the top and brought some life to the film. There's really no life or energy in this film, which is why the viewing will wish he'd turn into marble. This Monogram film hasn't yet turned up on DVD but you can find it at various online stores.

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

Add another review

Related Links