just watch it!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Highly Overrated But Still Good

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Deaf-mute puppeteer, living with his despicable relatives, learns how to reanimate the dead from his employer; using the corpses of his step-sister and brother-in-law, he exacts revenge on a group of bikers who have crashed his castle. Ridiculous acting vehicle for mime extraordinaire Marcel Marceau, produced on the cheap in Vancouver and barely released by Paramount. Scare-master William Castle directs in a pedestrian, uncertain fashion--even the little bits and pieces that do come off well are eventually buried under the clumsy handling. A sequence where two corpses arise in unison in a country field has a small-scaled lunatic grandeur which might have been darkly comic under different circumstances; however, one doesn't know how to respond to the movie because it isn't directed toward any particular audience (it's too static and silly for adults, and too garish for kids). There's a strange romance in the film between Marceau (looking his age in a too-dark hairstyle borrowed from Tom Jones) and a teenage girl still wearing pigtails. Castle shows no finesse--it's as if he had never directed a picture before--while his cast appears understandably perplexed. The talented Helena Kallianiotes (playing a halter-top wearing biker chick in hoop earrings) stumbles about in a graveyard swilling vodka, sees a hand emerge from the earth, and stumbles away. Castle doesn't know how to make these incidents eerie and funny at the same time. With "Shanks", his final effort as director, he lost his touch. * from ****

If ever there was a director who should have remained solely a producer it is William Castle. Though an extremely likable presence in his films (he cameos as the grocer in this one), the lovely man hasn't an ounce of talent as a director. Inspired in his choice of projects and endlessly innovative in promotion, he is hopelessly at sea when it comes to the most basic rudiments of competent film-making. His entire career reads like a catalogue of ingeniously promising themes ruined by his pedestrian direction and artless execution."Shanks" is no exception. It is so flat and unsophisticated that it is rather hard to believe that this film was released a year after "The Exorcist". Apparently Castle failed to learn anything about pacing, camera placement or the handling of actors after working with Roman Polanski on "Rosemary's Baby" (one shudders at the thought that for a brief moment William Castle actually intended to direct "Rosemary's Baby"). In fact, in Castle's own memoirs he practically admits to being so preoccupied with budget and time constraints on "Shanks" that Marceau virtually directed himself. The premise of "Shanks" is enticingly weird, it's too bad another director wasn't at the helm."Shanks" doesn't quite know if it wants to be a dark comedy, a horror film or macabre fantasy. Firing on all guns, William Castle fails to make any of those elements gel. It's merely a showcase for some very tedious mime antics and sloppy editing (the death of Shanks' drunken brother is so poorly done that it wouldn't pass muster on YouTube). Budget limitations keep hitting you in the face along with the meager talents of the supporting cast (What's up with the 48 year-old Marceau being paired with the 16 year-old female lead...even as just friends they look pretty creepy together...and really, by 1973 weren't biker gangs sort of played out as embodiments of anarchic evil?). It lacks any semblance of mood or atmosphere. The look is strictly 70s TV movie and the "performances" are MST3 worthy. I sat through "Shanks" somewhat flabbergasted that this was the best that Marcel Marceau's first starring role and William Castle's last directing effort could yield. After waiting several decades to see this film (the ad campaign was more inventive than the film) I couldn't have been more bored or disappointed. Castle wastes a great idea, a talented mime, and the time of every viewer. Talk about out with a whimper

I saw "Shanks" in Chicago on it's original release with another William Castle project "Bug". I remember it as being not very good, it had terrible word of mouth and was dumped into limited release. It was at the old Adelipha theater on the North side. I remember basically agreeing with this.... but one long, long shot of Helena Kalliniotes has lingered in my mind all these years.... She is a very distinct presence, I'm surprised She didn't do more after "Kansas City Bomber" and her memorable cameo in "Five Easy Pieces." I wish "Shanks" would surfice on DVD so I could take another look. It certainly isn't, or wasn't, the same old thing.

I saw this movie as a child of about 10 and found it to be a bizarre but fascinating story.The mute puppeteer who has to express himself through marionettes and can only voice his feelings through the manipulation of dolls has a similar feel to the John Cusack character in 'Being John Malkovich' (with the exception of the muteness, obviously) and the story unfolding in what appears to be the real world, but is in fact some strange fantasy world that only resembles the real world in looks, is a fine example of Good vs. Evil (tm).Some slightly scary scenes here, though, particularly, as I recall, one involving a rooster or chicken can make this unsuitable for young or easily disturbed viewers.