The Story of Mankind is a buffet of all-star overacting and stock footage. I had no clue what I was getting into: I just saw the premise, Vincent Price, and the Marx Brothers and that had me sold. What was intended to be a message about humanity's potential for good and evil is instead an unintentional comedy, almost an accidental parody of the bloated Technicolor historical epics that were being thrown at 1950s audiences to get them away from their black-and-white television sets.
The tone is all over the place. One minute we're looking at murder and depravity, and then the next we have Groucho Marx swindling the Native Americans. The acting runs the gamut from campy to atrocious. Agnes Moorehead screams and devours the expensive sets as Queen Elizabeth while Peter Lorre as Emperor Nero roars and cackles during the most hilarious orgy in history. The woman discussing medicine with Charles Coburn's Hippocraties has to be one of the most dreadful actresses ever. Vincent Price is the best actor in the whole thing, delivering a charismatic performance as Satan himself. Ronald Colman gives his final screen role as The Spirit of Mankind, and is the only actor who doesn't indulge in any ham or cheese.
There's tons of stock footage too. Badly integrated stock footage, at that.
In conclusion, this is wonderfully awful. Watch it.
The tone is all over the place. One minute we're looking at murder and depravity, and then the next we have Groucho Marx swindling the Native Americans. The acting runs the gamut from campy to atrocious. Agnes Moorehead screams and devours the expensive sets as Queen Elizabeth while Peter Lorre as Emperor Nero roars and cackles during the most hilarious orgy in history. The woman discussing medicine with Charles Coburn's Hippocraties has to be one of the most dreadful actresses ever. Vincent Price is the best actor in the whole thing, delivering a charismatic performance as Satan himself. Ronald Colman gives his final screen role as The Spirit of Mankind, and is the only actor who doesn't indulge in any ham or cheese.
There's tons of stock footage too. Badly integrated stock footage, at that.
In conclusion, this is wonderfully awful. Watch it.