GEORGE PAL : TONY RANDELL 'THE SEVEN FACES OF DR LAO' REVIEW AND GALLERY

There are certain actors who have made a reputation for playing multiple characters in the same film. Performers like Peter Sellers, Eddie Murphy and Jerry Lewis are a few that come to mind, but not Tony Randall.  But six roles, as a matter of fact, are what Randall took on in George Pal’s “7 Faces of Dr. Lao.”The film is based on a novel called The Circus of Dr. Lao, originally published in 1935.  

 

In the film, the mysterious Dr. Lao comes riding into the town of Abalone, Arizona to set up his circus.  The town is experiencing hard times and many residents have been selling their land to the wealthy Clinton Stark, played by Arthur O’Connell, and getting out of town.  Unknown to the townsfolk, Stark is in on plans for the railroad to come through town, making him a big profit on the land he bought cheaply from the residents.  Only a local newspaper man, played by Jon Ericson, suspects that Stark is up to something.

Despite the looming decision the townsfolk face, many decide to attend Lao’s circus.  There they are met by a strange collection of characters…Merlin the magician (yes “the” Merlin), Medusa, The abominable Snowman, the satyr Pan, and fortune tell Apollonius of Tyana…all of whom are played by Randall.  To say the citizens of Abalone have some unique encounters with these sideshow attractions would be an understatement.  Stark has a chat with a talking serpent (a puppet this time, not Randall) who’s face resembles his right down to the moustache, and Barabara Eden as the local librarian literally gets all hot an bothered when watching Pan, who takes a form resembling O’Connell’s character as he plays his flute.  

It’s a scene that is a wee bit uncomfortable to watch in a movie that is supposedly a family film.  As a matter of fact, something in the back of my head tells me that I saw part of this on the Family Classics program on Chicago’s channel 9 as a kid…and being scared to death by the scene where Medusa turns a woman to stone.

George Pal was well known for his work in the fantasy film genre.  Films like “When World’s Collide,” “The War of the Worlds,” and “The Time Machine” make up Pal’s resume…not to mention his series of stop motion animation Puppetoon shorts.  He was no stranger to the world of visual effects.  Though there are a few effects sequences here, this film is driven much more by Randall’s performances.

Overall, Randall is quite good.  His best performance is as Apollonius, a character he plays without any emotion, which fits a man who is doomed to know every misfortune the people he talks to will face.  The Merlin character didn’t quite work for me, though, coming across as more drunk than eccentric.  But his performance as Dr. Lao is hard to describe.  As the movie begins, you think that Lao is going to be played as the stereotypical “oh, me so solly” type of Asian character. But As the movie progresses, Lao’s voice changes.  Sometimes he speaks with no accent at all, sometimes he takes on the voice of a carnival barker or of other ethnicities all together.  Many viewers will probably feel, as I did, that all the characters in the circus are actually Lao taking on different forms.On a whole, “7 Face of Dr. Lao” is a good family film, though it does get a bit too talky in a few scenes where it tries too hard to be “deep.”

The makeup effects are great, well deserving of the honorary Oscar makeup artist William Tuttle received…the first ever makeup Oscar, predating even “Planet of the Apes.”  But like all film’s with big time makeup effects, the performance of a skilled actor is needed to make it work.  Randall is more than up to the task.

Review:Here 

Images: Marcus Brooks

'THE TIME MACHINE' THE BLACKBOXCLUB.COM TURNS BACK THE CLOCK TO THE 1960'S PAL CLASSIC.

PRODUCTION CREW:

Director/Producer – George Pal, Screenplay – David Duncan, Based on the Novel by H.G. Wells, Photography – Paul C. Vogel, Music – Russell Garcia, Special Effects – Wah Chang & Gene Warren, Makeup – William Tuttle, Art Direction – George W. Davis & William Ferrari. Production Company – Loews Inc/Galaxy Films. (1960)

CAST:

Rod Taylor (George), Alan Young (David Filby/James Filby), Yvette Mimieux (Weena), Sebastian Cabot (Dr Philip Hillyer), Whit Bissell (Walter Kemp)

SYNOPSIS:

At a dinner party on New Year’s Eve of 1899, George, a Victorian inventor, unveils his plans for a time machine to his dinner guests and astounds them by displaying a miniature working model. That evening George embarks on his maiden journey in the life-size version. Marvelling at seeing time speeded up, he passes through World Wars 1, 2 and 3 and eventually arrives in the year 802,701. There he meets the descendants that humanity has turned into – the gentle, lotus-eating Eloi. Among the Eloi, he falls for the lovely Weena. He then becomes embroiled in a fight to save the Eloi from the brutal, cannibalistic, underground-dwelling Morlocks.

COMMENTARY:

The Time Machine was one of the finest films to emerge from George Pal. Pal was the single most important contributor to science-fiction in the 1950s, having produced such films as Destination Moon (1950), When Worlds Collide (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953). (See below for George Pal’s other genre productions). The success of the adaptations of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956) had produced an interest in period science-fiction. After a number of Verne adaptations, filmmakers started to turn to Verne’s contemporary H.G. Wells as a source.

H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) is a science-fiction classic. It essentially popularized the concept of time travel and certainly of the time machine. H.G. Wells was a socialist with considerable opinions about the way society should be – in later life, social crusading took over completely from his fiction writing. In The Time Machine, his vision of humanity’s future was a satirical vision of the British class conflict. 

The Eloi are much more savagely condemned in the book than they are here in the film – Wells saw the Eloi as the upper-classes, dulled by creature comforts, while the underground-dwelling Morlocks were a stand-in for the Victorian mill workers. In an element that is missing from the film, Wells saw the relationship between the two as co-dependant and exploitative – the Morlocks provided everything for the Eloi while the Eloi in return allowed themselves to be devoured. 

In the film, the Eloi are merely an innocent race that needs to be delivered from oppressive thrall by an outsider. Now the story is not too different from 1950s science-fiction films such as Captive Women (1952), World Without End (1956), Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) and The Time Travelers (1964) where usually an astronaut or test pilot travels into the future and does two-fisted combat with the mutants and saves a remaining human girl. Gone altogether also is H.G. Wells’s climactic scenes where the time traveller travels into the far-flung future and sees humanity evolved into crustaceans and the end of the world.

Elsewhere though, The Time Machine remains a singular delight. Like 20000 Leagues et al, George Pal keeps the book to the period when it was written. Much charm is wrought from the beautiful production design and quaint Victorian attitude to science. The writing in these scenes is whimsical, especially the touching sequence where Philby tries to persuade George against using the device. The future scenes do descend to pedestrian adventure. However, the time travel sequences – where we see Rod Taylor accelerating the machine and everything around him speeding up, the passage of time being measured by candles melting and plants blossoming in seconds, the flickering of day and night overhead and the changing of fashions in the shop window opposite – hold a sense of wondrousness that is quite magical.

Right up until his death in 1980, George Pal had always planned a sequel to The Time Machine. One script that circulated incorporated H.G. Wells’s climactic ideas of the far future and the doom of humanity. Many writers have used the H.G. Wells novel as a basis for sequels and alternate histories.

The Time Machine was remade badly as a tv movie The Time Machine (1978). The Time Machine (2002) was a lavish big-budget remake, which had the novelty of being directed by the grandson of H.G. Wells. There is an appealing throwaway gag in the film here, – if one looks closely they can see that the plaque on the time machine shows that George’s real name is ‘H. George Wells’. The appeal of H.G. Wells himself as time-traveller is a recurrent one, having also been done in the film Time After Time (1979), the mini-series The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells (2001) and episodes of Doctor Who (1963-89) and Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-7).

George Pal’s other genre films are:- The Great Rupert (1949), Destination Moon (1950), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), The Naked Jungle (1954), Conquest of Space (1955), tom thumb (1958), Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964), The Power (1967) and Doc Savage – The Man of Bronze (1975).

REVIEW:Richard Scheib
IMAGES: Marcus Brooks
REVIEW: HERE