Shanks 1974

Overview

Shanks is a 1974 American surrealist horror film directed by producer-director William Castle. The film stars mime Marcel Marceau in his first major film role as Malcolm Shanks, a sad and lonely man who is deaf, mute, and lives with his cruel sister and her husband. Shanks finds his only pleasure in making and controlling puppets, which leads to him being offered a job as a lab assistant to Dr. Walker. Dr. Walker is working on ways to re-animate dead bodies by inserting electrodes at key nerve points and manipulating them as if they were on strings. After the professor suddenly dies one night, Shanks decides to apply their experimental results to a human body, using his puppetry skills to manipulate the dead and exact revenge on those who made him miserable. The fantasy and horror feature has a runtime of one hour and thirty-three minutes and was released in the United States on October 9, 1974.