Review of The Story of Mankind

"The Story Of Mankind" is a film with a poor reputation, which may at first strike you as odd considering its incredibly star-filled cast, but it will become less odd if you actually see the movie: a lot of those stars have insignificant, blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos, and most of them are totally miscast and unconvincing. The beginning is promisingly strange and surreal, but soon you realize what a chintzy production this really is: much of it consists of Ronald Colman and Vincent Price reacting to stock footage of other films; the new scenes shot specifically for this film look much cheaper. But Vincent Price is excellent through it all (his arguments are more convincing than Colman's!), Colman and Judge Cedric Hardwicke are good too, and Groucho Marx's funny, deliberately anachronistic sequence is also worth seeing. **1/2 out of 4.