7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) Producer George Pal specialized in big special-effects heavy spectacles, and that’s how we ended up with SF classics such as Destination Moon, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. It’s also how we got the much stranger piece of western fantasy 7 Faces of Dr. Lao—and I here mean “western” as in “American west,” considering that the plot of the film gets started once the titular Dr. Lao stops by an Arizona town as it awaits the construction of a railroad. Lao isn’t a medical doctor—he’s a seven-thousand-year-old magician from the mysterious Orient (but played by Tony Randall under layers of makeup) with seven alter egos. All of them will be useful to untangle the romantic and financial complexity of the small town. Adapted from a fantasy novel by Charles G. Finney, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao ends up being another ideal special-effects showcase for Pal’s mixture of practical effects, heavy makeup, stop-motion animation and other visual effects tricks. Both the best and the worst thing about the film is that it’s almost chaotic in going from one special effect sequence to another. It’s definitely weird by the standards of Hollywood cinema at the time, and it clearly hasn’t aged particularly well in a CGI era. One can imagine 1964 audiences being wowed by the effects, although nowadays they’re often more grotesque than anything else. Randall is problematically cast as the Asian Dr. Lao but throws himself entirely in the seven (ish) roles required by the script. There’s something to be said about a “man comes into town” story in which said man isn’t a gunslinger but a magician with near-infinite wisdom. Sometimes, weird is a virtue in itself when it comes to Hollywood.

(Second Viewing, On Cable TV, November 2020) Director-producer George Pal was always about spectacle, and it’s not because 7 Faces of Dr. Lao constrains itself to a small wild west town that it’s any less intent on wowing the rubes than Pal’s other more outlandish movies. Here, we have a one-man travelling circus rolling into town, what with a mysterious and desperately stereotyped Dr. Lao promising untold wonders to the local newspaperman while taking notes on the local controversy. It feels like small potatoes compared to the time-travelling, world-altering, lost-continent-sinking scope of previous Pal movies, but the draw here is still on the special effects as the circus springs up and multiple special effects are presented in episodic segments. Tony Randall is arguably the film’s central special effect, as he plays more than a handful of roles under heavy makeup. The film plays off spooky circus tropes, with a heavy dose of now-uncomfortable ethnic clichés. The result may be worth a look for visual purposes (it did well in Academy Award technical categories), but as an overall film or story, it’s scattered, offensive, dull and overdone in rapid intervals. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao is interesting because of its uneven tone and its special effects, but I will stop short of a recommendation.