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I love him in Duel in the Sun. Barrymore's performance is the only one that matches the excess of the production. He revels in the overwhelming absurdity of it, and in this context, makes it believable. When he's on the screen, that insane bricolage comes together, and becomes absurdly moving...

He is a ham actor. His wheezing and operatic gestures are pretty over the top, and have been parodied in plenty of Warner Brothers cartoons. it's easy to make fun of him, and I have done it too. But I think that haminess is used well, and frighteningly so, by Browning here, and being in drag...

I don't know if ham is the right word. It's too too much, more than is needed for that character. He should vanish into the woodwork in order to achieve his goals. Instead, he stands out. And that's scary. His performance punches a hole in our sense of the everyday. It agitates. It makes the...

It's not just Lionel Barrymore in drag that's frightening, but that it inspires him to new heights of scenery chewing, so that the oxygen is drained from the room, and you wonder how those shrunken people, though tiny, are able to breathe.

In my domicile, every day is Halloween. But yeah, it would have been nice. I saw a stunning print of this at MOMA decades ago which looked like nitrate but I don't think was. Still, it glowed so gloriously, it really enhanced the film's images, transporting me to another realm. I was so...