User reviews

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.

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.

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).

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

1946's "The Face of Marble" ended Poverty Row Monogram's run of genre titles since Bela Lugosi's "The Human Monster" in 1940. John Carradine had previously headlined 1943's "Revenge of the Zombies," conceding that Monogram paid higher wages ($3000 per week) than all the other Hollywood studios of the period, also featuring in "I Escaped from the Gestapo," "Return of the Ape Man," "Voodoo Man," and "Alaska." "Zombies" was a straight up remake of the 1941 "King of the Zombies, "with a very low key performance from the actor, while "Marble" is quite different; for one thing, his Dr. Charles Randolph is not depicted as a typical mad scientist but a rational and quite likable one with dedicated sidekick, Robert Shayne a good six years older though playing a younger assistant (he'd get the top slot by 1953's "The Neanderthal Man"). These experiments in raising the dead through a special serum coupled with bursts of electricity are intended to benefit mankind, but the drowned sailor fails to respond accordingly. Randolph next decides that his wife's beloved Great Dane would be perfect, but the dog becomes a vicious beast capable of walking through walls and thirsting for blood. With his wife secretly in love with Shayne, and a voodoo practicing housekeeper determined to make her mistress happy, it shouldn't come as a surprise that both Randolphs come to a bad end. The script is simply a mess, but it shapes up as Carradine's best Monogram horror, not returning to the genre until the 1956 all star entry "The Black Sleep."

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! * out of ****

A scientist (John Carradine--sadly) finds out how to bring the dead back to life. However they come back with faces of marble. Eventually this all leads to disaster.

Boring, totally predictable 1940s outing. This scared me silly when I was a kid but just bores me now. I had to struggle to stay awake! With one exception, the acting is horrible. Such expressionless boring actors! Hopeless.

There are some good things about this: Carradine, despite the script, actually gives a very good performance. And there are a few mildly creepy moments involving a ghost of a Great Dane walking through walls. There's also one of the worst-looking knockouts in cinema history. Still, none of this is fun enough to sit through this. Avoid.

John Carradine appeared in more films than any other actor. Many of them were B-Horrors like this one. But he has such a cool persona, he is able to lift this "been there, done that, return life to the dead" black and white horror film up a notch or two with the help of a largely likable and interesting cast. Carradine plays a doctor whose scientific experiments are bordering on bringing the dead back to life. There is a love triangle mixed into the plot as well as a sinister housekeeper who practices voodoo played to the hilt by wonderful Rosa Rey, who makes a perfectly ominous witch. She is worth the price of admission alone. A great way to spend a little over an hour if you like these kinds of horror movies.

This is a very unusual low-budget horror film. While it stars perennial horror star John Carradine, he plays a most unusual sort of 'mad' scientist. That's because while the idea of reanimating the dead seems quite crazy, his motivation and demeanor are rather normal. In fact, he even seems kindly and very well-intentioned. His notion is that a recently dead person might be brought back to life using electrical gizmos--and it's really not all that different from using shock to bring heart attack patients back to life today. Unfortunately, the secret formula and the flashing electric gizmos seem to be only partly successful--leading to a deathlike marble appearance on one corpse followed by an almost immediate re-death. Soon, the good doctor tries this formula out on his dog and the animal is revived. But when his wife is murdered by an evil voodoo priestess (seriously, folks), will he dare use the technique on his wife? And, if so, what will her new life be like? While the film isn't as silly as you'd expect, the film does suffer some from a relatively lifeless script. You want to like the film but there are just too many slow patches. A 3 is perhaps a bit overly generous but the movie doesn't quite raise to the appropriate level of awfulness to earn a 2.

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.

"Dr. Charles Randolph" (John Carradine) is a scientist who is working on a personal project at his home concerning bringing the dead back to life. Assisting him is a young doctor by the name of "David Cochran" (Robert Shayne). Also present in the house is Dr. Randolph's wife, "Elaine" (Claudia Drake) and her maid "Maria" (Rosa Rey). Anyway, because Dr. Randolph is so devoted to his work Elaine develops a crush on David. However, David doesn't share the same feelings toward Elaine due to his betrothal to another woman named "Linda Sinclair" (Maris Wrixon). So when Linda comes to visit this upsets both Elaine and Maria-who is devoted to Elaine and also happens to be a practitioner of voodoo. Now, rather than reveal any more of the story and risk ruining the film for those people who haven't seen it I will just say that it was a mildly entertaining B-movie for the most part. Although it had a good cast and they all played their parts well enough I didn't especially care for the ending at all. Likewise, the special abilities demonstrated by both "Brutus" (the dog) and Elaine defied the "normal" characteristics attributed to this particular genre. This is possibly explained by the combination of science and voodoo but it certainly wasn't made clear enough. That said while I don't consider this to be a bad movie by any means it certainly had some faults and as a result I rate this film as slightly below average.

There's a Lot Going On in this Monogram Quickie Directed by the King of Quick Draws, William Beaudine and Starring John Carradine. It is a Mad Scientist Movie but the Scientist Here is Really Not Mad, Just Determined to Help Mankind Although He Does Experiment Out of the Box.

Robert Shayne is the Assistant and Figures in a Love Triangle of Sorts and there is Voodoo Magic, a Brain Surgery Suffering Wife that Really has Nothing to do with the Story, Reincarnated Ghostly Apparitions, a Family Dog that Walks Through Walls, and Some Mad Lab Scenes that are Somewhat Impressive.

It's a Jammed Packed Little Low Budget Movie Crammed with Sincere Characters and One Loopy Lunatic, Some Grisly Murders, and the Whole Thing is Handled Perfectly Serious and Straight. That Makes for Some Edge and it is More Melodramatic than Scary and has More Food for Thought than Usually Found in This Type of Outlandish Horror.

Overall, it is Above Average and the Tone is Quite Different than the Usual B-Movie Crazy Scientist Stuff. The Cast is Good and the Result is an Unusual Display of a Number of Ingredients Thrown Together Quite Irrationally and Intentionally and that Makes this Stand Apart from its Poverty Row Cousins.

What a rather awkward combination of horror tropes and story! This one is a mix of mad doctor preforming a 'Frankenstein'-ish experiments, voodoo by a gypsy-witch, and a ghost dog rolled into a bizarre tale with a strange love triangle.

I feel the writers where trying for something different - and they achieved that but stirred too many ideas into one film.

2 main plots: The first plot is of a doctor and his assistant working on bringing back the dead. The other plot of a wife that fell in love with the assistant and her witch maid uses voodoo to try to capture the heart of the young assistant. The ghost-dog is just sorta there - the bridge between the two plots which fits together in the end.

Did I like the film? To a degree yes it was fun! But it's too much of a mixed bag to be good. Bonus points here for John Carradine who did his best with what was handed to him.

6/10.

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.

John Carradine plays well-meaning but misguided Dr. Charles Randolph, who is attempting to perfect a process for bringing the dead back to life; Robert Shayne is his assistant Dr. David Cochran. The pair successfully revive a dead dog, only for it to turn transparent, disappear through solid walls, and drink the blood of local livestock!

Meanwhile, Charles's wife Elaine (Claudia Drake) has secretly fallen for David, something that has not gone unnoticed by her loyal servant Maria (Rosa Rey). When David's fiancé Linda (Maris Wrixon) turns up, Maria conspires to get her out of the way using voodoo magic, but kills Elaine by mistake. Distraught, Charles takes his wife to the lab to try and restore her to life...

I've seen a lot of mad scientist movies from the '30s and '40s, but as far as I can recall, The Face of Marble (what does that title even mean?) is the only one to feature a transparent plasma-slurping pooch and a voodoo housemaid. Without these incredibly daft elements, the film would be instantly forgettable, but with the WTF? Factor so high, it's hard not to have a good time with this one.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for Willie Best doing what Willie does best.

Don't know if its the title or the bizarro plot, but THE FACE OF MARBLE has developed a cult following thru the years. Genuinely a one of a kind horror film.

Monogram Pictures wisely cast John Carradine in the lead, fresh from playing Count Dracula at Universal, now a mad doctor attempting to bring the dead back to life, including his wife. The studio writers had the knack for assembling some strange stories, and they hit the bullseye. The dead are subsequently turned into marble --yes MARBLE -- including a menacing Great Dane that walks through walls? Add an ominous housekeeper who practices voodoo at night. Just something about this flick that makes it campy fun right to the end.

Robert Shayne plays the good doc caught up in all the experimenting. He noted in later years the set was always dark, either for mood reasons or a tight budget, and Carradine spent his off camera time receiting Shakespeare! In fact, Carradine was known to have been seen walking the streets of Hollywood for years receiting Shakespeare, whether it was a hobby or whatever, perhaps just to get out of the house.

By the way, the gigantic Great Dane (Brutus) was also featured in some of the BOWERY BOYS movies, and had the same name as Carradine's dog in THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE (1944). Good trivia question.

Directed by William Beaudine, who obviously had fun with this story, behind the BOWERY BOYS series for Monogram. Good cast of popular B film actors; Claudia Drake, who had recently appeared in the cult film DETOUR, Thomas E. Jackson, once again as the detective, and comedian Willie Best.

An addiction to many of us cult film followers, and thankfully, finally restored and on dvd. Don't miss this.

For a horror movie, it's pretty hard to come up with a fresh version of reviving the dead. Here well-intentioned scientist Carradine wants no monsters, just an opportunity to give folks a second chance. Of course, things turn out otherwise, when a revived mastiff dog walks through walls on his way to ripping out throats. It doesn't help that creepy housekeeper Maria has her own voodoo plans, while a romantic triangle emerges between Carradine's wife Drake and lab assistant Shayne plus his girl Wriston.

Sound complicated. Yes, too bad the script didn't pare down and concentrate on creepy aspects. And I agree with others—we should see more of Carradine who's quite effective in restrained fashion. On other hand, there are those crackling Frankenstein arcs, better than expected for cheapo Monogram, while the spectral images passing through walls are also well done. However, maintaining a spooky mood with a more boffo ending would have really helped. Then too, I could have used more of the marble faces that are both novel and unsettling. But then, this is a low-budget quickie that still manages a few compensations.

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.