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I just saw this movie, Shanks 1974, it's available on youtube. I can't believe this movie. The soundtrack is mostly Tubas and it stars the famous mime, Marcel Marceux.

 

It's set up like a silent movie with title cards announcing each chapter. In the first title card, it says it's a "fairy tale". Marcel Marceux plays a child like marionette artist who is hired by an elderly scientist. The scientist is also played by Marcel, he is experimenting on reanimating dead bodies. He hires Marcel Marceux to advise him on where to place "electrodes" on the dead bodies to animate them.

 

He animates a dead frog, and a chicken (which will later be used to kill one of the characters).

Marcel shows up one day to find the scientist dead, and proceeds to reanimate him.

 

The mime work in this movie is extraordinary. It's not a bad movie per say, I just don't get the tone at all and the content is fucking nuts. Is it horror? Is it vaudville? Is is a fairy tale? Is a black comedy?

 

He uses little remotes to control the corpse. The mime has two shitty parent figures (he's adopted, or something?). They steal his paychecks from working with the old man, when the checks stop coming they get mad. Marcels "father" who is the town drunk, goes to the scientist's house, confronts the puppeteered corpse, gets attacked by the puppeteered dead chicken, falls down the stairs and dies.

 

Marcel turns the drunk into a puppet and uses him to kill his "mother" by drawing her into the road in front of a car. Now he has her as a puppet too and uses them to entertain a 14-year girl. She is the 50 year old Marcel's love interest! Or she seems to be. I don't know. Here's a clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7s7RJhvl70

 

She gets raped to death later by a random biker gang who invade the house. What the fuck? Marcel tries to fight them off with the human puppets. He fails, they steal his remotes and play with the puppets by making them do weird contortions. This fucking movie..... you have to see it to believe it. Of course, he turns the dead girl into a puppet. They embrace at the end. Happy Ending?

 

The full movie is on youtube and this site http://networkawesome.com/show/movie-shanks-1974/

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