The movie opens with two Frenchmen in a swamp who've just escaped prison. One is played by Lionel Barrymore, and for readers of these words he is Drew Barrymore's Grandfather? Great-Grandfather? A famous actor of the day, most seen today in It's a Wonderful Life(1947) where he plays Mr. Potter, and if you want to pretend Paul Lavond is Mr. Potter a bit earlier in life, be my guest.
Anyway, Frenchmen escaping swamp prison. Paul spent 17 years in that hell, done in by shitty business partners who framed him. Paul also makes it clear he is fueled by hate. He might literally say that; he spent 17 years in Prison, and he's out for vengeance. His accomplice, Marcel, stayed alive with the hope of continuing some nonspecific work.
Cut to: a swamp
There's a line slipped in that they've given the police the slip 'for weeks' but you could be forgiven for thinking this was the same swamp. It could be the same swamp.
Paul and Marcel get to Marcel's swamp shack, where his lame (in the literal sense) wife (ditto) greets him. Marcel and family have a lot of dogs, and a "inbred peasant halfwit" (his words) servant girl, who is clearly some pretty dancer putting on a she-gor act. Mrs. Marcel explains she kidnapped the girl because "she didn't want a servant with whole wits". Marcel then opens a door and there is a mad scientist lab, right there. And despite the fact he's literally just returned from escaping from Prison he's all "Come on, Marie, we must resume our great work!!" (Mrs. Marcel kinda looks like "what if Marie Curie was in Bride of Frankenstein", so I'll call her Marie.)
Paul knows nothing about what this great work is. So both men go into the lab and Marcel starts handing Paul small toy dogs. Only Paul comments on how they are curiously warm? See, they are not toys. Marcel is a scientist. And he has developed technology that can shrink people. And dogs. Any sort of animal really, to toy size. He has done this to solve world hunger, because you could raise toy pigs on 1/6th the normal diet, then enbiggen them and eat them. Marcel also proposes just shrinking everyone in the world, so there's 6x the space. Once again, Marcel just got back from escaping prison. The tiny dancers, pigs, etc have a drawback: their brains shrink with the rest of them. But fully grown people can use their thought-rays to not only make them animate, but also control them. Marcel demonstrates with the "toy" dogs.
Then, without like, some wine and cheese, a cup of tea, anything, he seizes Heidi, the maidservant, to fix her brain and render it perfect while small. It's unclear if that works, but Marcel then dies, of a Heart attack or stroke or similar, understandable considering the pace he's set in this scene. Marie is distraught because who will continue this crazy work now?!? Paul, seeing the setup, says "I WILL - But we have to relocate to Paris for my revenge. Marie agrees.
SMASH CUT
The Police are looking for Paul Lavond. God knows why. Like they seem to be hip to Lavond's motive, but it seems like his big crime is bank embezzlement? None the less, there are posters of Paul everywhere.
The posters and police activity are witnessed by a little old lady...and when I say little, I mean she's hunched over but seems pretty big. This is Lionel Barrymore, Paul Lavond, in drag as a little old lady which he will be for about 80% of the film's runtime.Anyway, Mrs. Lavond is a toymaker, new to Paris, and visits the three bankers he's gonna visit Nemesis on.
One is named Toto, he has a mustache. Mrs. Barrymore wants a bank loan to expand her business. Toto isn't interested in Toys, but Mrs. Barrymore breaks out a most lifelike Horse, who she puts on Toto's desk and gets to come to life and prance around. Now if Toto had what we'd call a modern education he'd run from the room screaming, but this is France in some modern but not really modern time, so Toto finds this shit fascinating, and agrees to stop by the toy store.
Later, the large Mrs. Lavond is showing Toto eerie, lifelike toy dogs. So, Toto is then shown a doll's stiletto, which Mrs. Lavond stabs him with. This causes Toto to freeze, like he's been given a dose of fish tranquilizer, and he sort of has been? Apparently Marie has worked up a poison that freezes you but keeps you conscious forever. Toto is then shrank. Revenge 1 complete.
So then Mrs. Barrymore goes to the laundry where his daughter is working. His daughter, Lorraine, HATES Lavond. She was like 4 when he was imprisoned, her and her mom's life really went to shit. First, her mom died, and then, thanks to the Hayes Code, under unspecified bad stuff happened, which in context sounds like Lorraine did sex work to keep herself and her grandmother alive. Naturally, Paul uses his Mrs. Lavond disguise to get Mrs. Doubtfire up in this bitch, IE using his little old lady persona to covertly spend time with his daughter, the laundress and former sex worker. Very much like Mrs. Doubtfire, if Mrs. Doubtfire was also riffing on the Count of Monte Cristo and using thought controlled dolls to enact terrible revenge on those that wronged him.
Anyway
Mrs. Doubtfire Lavond visits his mom, (IE Lorraine's grandmother) who his daughter lives with and his Mom knows her son, but is also blind, so she doesn't know Lavond is dressing like a little old lady. Lorraine comes home, and is glad kindly, large Mrs. Lavond somebody is looking in on her old grandma. Lorraine, also has a suitor, a guy who's just bought his second Taxicab. He's handsome and nice so naturally the daughter wants him to forget her, because she's doomed, doomed I tell you! It's a bit strange.
BACK TO DEVIL DOLLS
Mrs. Lavond then takes a doll (this time, Heidi) to the wife of Evil Frenchman #2. Once again after doing the "they come to life" bit again, makes a sale. Evil Frenchman #2 is fat and comes in all worried that Toto has vanished. Now the Wife of Evil Frenchman #2 gives this doll to her four year old daughter, and thank fucking god we don't think about that too much. Heidi is shrunk, but still human, and can feel like a human, so this daughter could have inadvertently crippled her or broke her neck or something.
Anyway, that night Old Mrs. Barrymore at like three AM arrives outside Evil Frenchman #2's house
Broadcasting his thought waves (which go through walls, duh) he has Heidi escape the child, go to the Wife's room, and steal her fantastically expensive jewelry, dropping it to Mrs. Barrymore outside. Movie fans will find this whole sequence hilarious because to do them they just constructed a lot of really big furniture, and then had the actors clamber about on them. The Jewelry theft ends with Heidi escaping into Mrs. Barrymore's pick-anic basket, a double theft. This was for seed money to continue the shop front.
Presumably Heidi has done a lot of theft since being shrank I don't remember if this was combined or this is another theft.
Paul then gets Toto, now shrunk, to break into Evil Frenchman #2's house with a drug stiletto. Toto, controlled by thought waves by Mrs. Lavond, creeps up on the bed and manages to stab evil Frenchman #2, but not before #2 wakes up, and sees his old friend, Toto, shrank to doll size and coming at him with a knife. Evil Frenchman #2 now is frozen with a look of bewildered terror on his face. Paul makes a comment like "Well, he'll be imprisoned in his own mind, unable to do anything for the rest of his life. I guess that's good enough for my lost 17 years."
The vanishing of Toto and the strange fate of Evil Frenchman #2 convinces the Final Evil Frenchman that Paul is out there, somewhere, and behind these events. Paul sends the final Evil Frenchman a note, that he's gonna kill him at [a given date] at midnight unless he confesses his crime against Paul.
Come the night, Police and hired goons are guarding Final Evil Frenchman in his upscale townhouse. Again, Kindly old Mrs. Lavond and her picnic basket appear outside, and Lavond sends Toto in with the poison stiletto. For about 10 minutes, this movie becomes Tom Thumb, hired assassin. But just as Toto is in a good position to stab, Final Evil Frenchman breaks and confesses all to the police. Paul's name is cleared!
But here is where it gets a bit weird. Marie and Paul have a satisfying moment where they are like "We did it! Let's send our two dolls to the chief of police." You know, Heidi and Toto, who are still alive, and one who is literally an innocent kidnap victim. Also at least once when showing off Heidi, the "doll", Mrs. Lavond points out "her lifelike tears" which must be Heidi weeping as a doll - they move on from that. Then Marie says, "OK, now we continue the work to shrink the world" and Paul is not down, saying "no, that's a dumb idea." Marie takes this poorly, gets a little Murderous, and Paul manipulates her just enough to start a fire in the lab, and then shoves Marie into the fire. The toy shop burns down. Good thing Police Forensics isn't a thing, the bones of all those little dogs, horses, etc would be deeply confusing to a potential ME.
So now, Paul confesses to Handsome Cabbie, and tells him that "Paul freed himself from being falsely accused, but to do that I really did do a bunch more crimes, so now Lorraine will hate me for that. Listen, marry that girl already, here's some money" and a new plan is hatched.
Paul blames the new crimes, strange events etc on the now "dead" Mrs. Lavond, who has vanished but conveniently there's a female corpse in this toy store fire. Then he goes to the Eiffel Tower, with handsome cabbie and meets Lorraine. Lorraine doesn't recognize her dad, but also doesn't hate her dad now that she knows he was innocent (of bank embezzlement, a crime that is pretty pedestrian compared to what Paul was subsequently up to) Paul expresses all those feelings he has for his daughter, saying he's a friend of Paul's. He then leaves, wishing Lorraine a happy life, and here's some money.
The End
A thing I saw, or am I off my meds? You, the reader, decide
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