Hitchcoc
My friends and I were used to going to lightweight movies in the Sixties. We would see Doris Day or Rock Hudson or Shirley MacLaine. Tony Randall often played a best friend to a romantic lead or some other less significant role. This one shows what a wonderful actor he was. He plays a strange Chinese "magician" who comes to a dying town in Arizona. The people are in disarray because they see that things are falling apart. Arthur O'Connel (who usually played kindly types) is aware of the railroad going through the town and is doing everything to get people to sell him their land. The thing with Dr. Lao's circus is that when one goes to it, they learn things about themselves. Some of things are very disturbing. Lao is able to bring up monsters and mythological figures. When someone does something evil, he counteracts their actions or punishes them in some way. Randall plays all seven faces, each having significant effect on the town-folks. Mostly, I remember how I could not get this film out of my head for weeks because it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I have since read the book and watched the film a couple more times. It has aged really well.
deschreiber
I was stunned to watch this awful piece of amateur garbage after hearing the glowing introduction on TCM. What was that host thinking? What are all these reviewers on IMDb thinking? Could they really be watching the same movie I watched?Where to start? You have to start with Tony Randall playing a "Chinese gentleman." That's bad enough just to watch, but when he opens his mouth you know you're in for something beyond the bounds of bad taste and beyond high-school amateurishness. His voice is pitched high and thin, and he speaks in the worst stage-Chinese, the kind of phony accent some idiot everyone hates would put on at a party--"So solly,"Please to ask question," Velly good." That alone pretty much makes the movie unbearable.But the writing! Who wrote such clunky drivel? Something happens, then eight people stand in front of the camera, as if posing for a group photograph, to react. Spectator A makes Comment A. Spectator B makes comment B. Spectator C makes Comment C. Clunk-clunk-clunk. If a machine could write a play, it would write like that. There's often something clunky, too, about the transitions to close-ups.Another example of amateurish writing. One scene is supposed to establish that an attractive young widow is burying herself from The Joy of Life, turning down the advances of a handsome young suitor. But the handsome young man is made so aggressive, even clutching at her against her will, so utterly without charm, that it is perfectly understandable that the widow would not want to go out to dinner with him. The scene was meant to show her as repressed and unable to respond to love; instead she seems spirited and perfectly right in turning away the loutish suitor.The movie is peppered with touches of "humour." Every 30 seconds or so there's a so-called funny bit of business--a man bending over and being hit on the ass by a tossed newspaper (Ha ha!), a woman stepping onto her porch in her bloomers (Ho ho!). None of it is funny, and the steady stream of such bits is truly annoying.Yes, this was made back in the sixties, but even that doesn't excuse the pathetic costume of the Abominable Snowman. Spare us, please.Oh, and will I ever forget Tony Randall's big dance number? He plays Pan, the half-man, half-goat satyr, the ancient symbol of lust. Lord help us, there is Tony with his shirt off, turning and twisting (that passes for dancing), leering at the woman over a set of pan pipes held to his mouth. It verges on the ridiculous, if it weren't quite so yukky. Yet the camera shows her getting hot and bothered, her clothes loosening, her hair coming undone, her breath an erotic panting. And, please, producers, since this was Pan, couldn't the music play some real pan pipes instead of the flute?I could go on all night. There's nothing to redeem this wreck of a movie. Even the casting is bad. The villain, a wicked businessman man who wants to buy up the property of everyone in town. who thinks human beings have no redeeming qualities, is played by Arthur O'Connell, that nice character actor who specialized in lovable, easily confused, old guys like Virgil who tries to rein in the young buck in "Bus Stop" or Elvis Presley's Pappy in "Kissin' Cousins"No, you'd have to go a long way to find a worse movie than this one, something that fails on as many levels as this. All I can think of to explain the positive reviews on IMDb is that people are turned to goo by the smarmy messages the movie paints in huge block letters over the junk canvas of this movie.
JoeKarlosi
A charming little film directed by George Pal, and made brilliant solely by Tony Randall's tour de force in taking on several different roles. He starts out as the oriental Dr. Lao, who is magical and can transform himself into various forms within his own traveling circus. When a small western town starts to come apart at the seams due to an unscrupulous businessman, the wondrous Lao helps the community to see through the manipulation and helps everyone come to their senses by entertaining them at his mystical circus. Randall wears many different makeups courtesy of the award-winning William Tuttle: Dr. Lao, Merlin the old magician, the Abominable Snowman, Medusa, Pan, and Apollonius of Tyana. He also has a brief cameo in his own face as a member of the audience. *** out of ****
whpratt1
This is a very entertaining film and great for a family to view and enjoy whenever it is shown on TV. The story is about a small Western town which is being controlled by a certain man named Clint Stark, (Arthur O'Connell) who wants all the home owners to sell their property to him and move to another town because he claims they cannot afford to provided a water supply to serve these peoples needs and it is too costly. There is a local newspaper owned by Ed Cunningham, (John Ericson) and he fights it out with Clint Stark and stands against him with newspaper editorials on a daily basis. One day a strange looking man enters their town by the name of Dr. Lao, (Tony Randall) who is from China and many things start to change once Dr. Lao puts on a circus in town and all the people seem to be transformed into different people. Enjoy.
