The Face of Marble, Forerunner to Re-Animator

1985's "Re-Animator" was a perfect horror film. Directed by Stuart Gordon from an H.P. Lovecraft story, the gore-a-thon was just so much fun. Jeffrey Combs was the perfect mad scientist and Barbara Crampton's performance was the best scream queen portrayal of all time.  39 years earlier, this exact film was made and I'm sure you never saw it.  Today we look at 1946's "The Face of Marble," directed by William Beaudine and starring John Carradine as the mad scientist.

Dr. Charles Randolph (Carradine) had come up with a serum and machine that cures...death! Imagine that. Well...the process has not quite been perfected.  As the film begins, he and his hunk assistant, Dr. David Cochran (Robert Shayne) are trying to bring a corpse back to life...and it reanimates! The corpse, now living, has no facial expression and advances on the two doctors like it wants to murder them. Saved by a lightning  bolt...well timed, indeed. Now the two look to perfect the experiment but need...a corpse. Meanwhile, Charles' wife, the beautiful Elaine (Claudia Drake), unbeknownst to Charles, loves David. Uh oh...Elaine's devoted servant, Maria (Rosa Rey), does voodoo and casts spells to make David fall in love with Elaine.  This doesn't work. Oh, in Charles' desire for a corpse, he murders Elaine's huge hound and him and David bring it back to life. The hound is no longer friendly but a snarling devil dog that can pass through walls and doors as if it were a ghost.

Uh oh...surprise! The beautiful Linda (Maris Wrixon) visits. She is David's fiancé. Maria panics as she needs David to fall in love with Elaine. She'll try to murder Linda but accidentally kills Elaine. David and Charles rush Elaine's corpse to the lab and the duo do their thing and back from the dead is Elaine...sort of. Elaine is kind of...changed, and has similar attributes to her resurrected hound.  Now more murders will grace Dr. Randolph's mansion and a nosy detective (Thomas E. Jackson) investigates. Linda better be careful as Maria is still bent on uniting Elaine and David with love rituals.  Yep, Charles better be careful, too.

Will Linda and Elaine engage in a catfight while wearing negligees, in bed? Ha! No, I'm not being gratuitous!  Fooled you...THEY DO!!! Will the resurrected Elaine murder David or Charles?  Will Brutus the hound rip anyone's throat out?  This is a good one and almost the exact same film as the aforementioned 1985 classic.  See "The Face of Marble" and enjoy some negligee clad beauties in great peril.