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.
