Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Rosa Rey is exactly here like the old woman who turns Raymond Burr into a creature of the jungle in "The Bride of the Gorilla". She's obsessed with her master's wife (Claudia Drake) and when she finds out that Ms. Drake is enamored of her husband's partner (Robert Shayne), she is determined to make sure that what her mistress wants, her mistress gets. Along comes Maris Wrixon, Shayne's lady friend, and the nasty Rosa utilizes her own voodoo spells to get the rival lady out of the way-as a corpse! It adds to her convenience that boss John Carradine is experimenting with bringing humans back from the dead and they quickly die a horrible death, their faces literally turning into marble, although it looks more like they swallowed fluorescent light-bulbs and somebody plugged them in. When Drake's beloved pooch becomes one of the victims, it is very clear that the doggie isn't dead, only translucent and dangerously violent to anybody other than her. Rey arranges a potion to kill Wrixon but by coincidence, somebody else gets it, and now thanks to doctor Carradine's determination to bring them back from the dead, there are two violent creatures running around.Silly but fun, this fast moving Monogram horror film is the class-room example of what "camp" is on film. Over the top performances literally shine, although the lack of a catfight between Drake and Wrixon is sorely missing as it is obvious when Wrixon arrives that the two women both love Shayne. You know you've seen this done over and over again, especially in several earlier Boris Karloff films with titles such as "Before I Hang" and "The Man They Could Not Hang" where mad scientist Karloff played mad doctors obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. There's an actual haunting ending, almost ghost-like, which adds to the spookiness of the film. As directed by "one-shot" William Beaudine, this is a little forgotten thriller that deserves to be re-discovered and show that the minor poverty row studios could do magnificent things (at least technically) on a shoe-string budget.

Totally engrossed in his project to bring the dead back to life, Dr. Charles Randolph (John Carradine) fails to notice his wife Elaine's interest in Randolph's young lab partner, Dr. Cochran.The sound and picture of this film need serious clean up, if possible. And there is some strange, latent racism here. But beyond those issues, there is a lot of horror potential -- reviving the dead, voodoo and a lab with electricity going everywhere. Randolph fits the idea of a "mad scientist" perfectly (but with less wild hair).Some scenes are hard to follow because of how dark the picture is, but the story is decent, and if there was a way to fix this up, I would increase my rating.

Pretty nice black & white horror film starring the great John Carradine as Professor Charles Randolf, a prominent brain surgeon, who retires to his mansion on a cliff that overlooks the sea. Randolf summons one of his best students, scientist David Cochran(Robert Shayne), to partner with him in an obsessive project. The mad professor wants to revive a dead brain. A drown sailor washes up on the shore becoming a perfect subject. The brain is revived; but the sailor's hair turns white and has a face that looks like it was chiseled out of marble...only to die. The dumped body is found and Inspector Norton(Thomas E. Jackson)comes to the mansion asking questions. There is Randolf's wife Elaine(Claudia Drake), the butler Shadrach(Willie Best) and a house maid Maria(Rosa Rey), who dabbles with voodoo. But this will not stop the experimenting. Apt atmosphere that sustains interest. Also in the cast: Maris Wrixon, Neal Burns and Donald Kerr.

While The Face of Marble will never be confused with a great horror film, it is a decent little movie from the infamously cheap Monogram Pictures and director William Beaudine. John Carradine plays a doctor intent on discovering the secret to bringing the dead back to life. In most scenes, he rises above the material given and delivers a first class performance. The less said about the rest of the cast the better. They can generously be described as wooden and unemotional.The movie begins with Carradine and his assistant attempting to bring a dead man back to life. After this fails, he tries the procedure on his wife's dog (Carradine's character kills the dog with little or no remorse or care for his wife's feelings). And finally, his wife gets the opportunity to experience the whizzing and sparking machines in his lab. There's also a housekeeper who practices voodoo and has some sort of control over the dog and wife. The housekeeper uses her power to have the dog and wife do her bidding. Under the housekeeper's control, the wife kills Carradine and attempts to kill everyone else in the cast.For the limited budget, there are actually some good special effects. Some of the scenes where the dog walks through the walls are especially effective. Also, much of the budget appears to have been spent on fancy lab equipment. Carradine has a room full of electronic gadgets similar to those in Frankenstein. The marble effect (from which the movies title comes) is, however, not especially good or memorable.If you can get past the lackluster supporting performances and the obvious budget constraints, The Face of Marble can be a somewhat fun little film. Not the best, but watchable.