If you wanted to make one of the strangest movies of the 1970s, I suppose there's no better creative team to do it than director William Castle and star Marcel Marceau. One is a practiced salesman of genre entertainment, creating a long list of B-movies that occasionally employed gimmicks to help boost box office fortunes. The other is perhaps the most famous mime artist in history, charming audiences for decades with his extraordinary bodily command. 1974's "Shanks" is a collaboration between the men, who labor to find ways to bring Ranald Graham's screenplay, "a grim fairy tale," to life. In a way, Castle and Marceau are wildly successful, generating an unnerving feature that achieves some of the dark whimsy it's hoping to find. Dramatically, the material isn't quite as commanding, losing a sense of storytelling hustle as it goes. It's certainly a memorable viewing experience, hitting a few peaks of insanity while highlighting outstanding mime work from the cast, making for a supremely bizarre effort for more adventurous audiences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com