Gabbo (Erich Von Stroheim) is a ventriloquist whose dummy Otto is the toast of Broadway. When he spots his former assistant Mary (Betty Compson from Mad Youth) in a restaurant, he tries to coax her back into the act. She’s already in a relationship with another nightclub performer, who immediately becomes jealous at the thought of her having eyes for Gabbo, and a love triangle develops.
The Great Gabbo basically set the stage for all ventriloquist dummy movies and TV shows to come. What makes it different than The Twilight Zone, Devil Doll, and Magic is the fact that the dummy is a lot more well-adjusted and mannered than the ventriloquist. Von Stroheim is perfectly cast as the spiteful, egotistical Gabbo and effectively portrays him as such a tyrant that you can’t help but feel sorry for Mary… and Otto too. While later ventriloquist cinema would often make the dummy the villain of the piece, it’s actually sort of… creepier to have him playing the nice guy? That’s partially because you’re sort of waiting for a twist where he’s secretly a monster or something, but also because it’s a little unsettling to see other people treat Otto with dignity and class and him returning in kind.
Ultimately, it’s more of a melodrama than horror film. The constant musical numbers and dance sequences are the main thing that gets in the way of the fun. While it’s one thing to see Otto performing on stage, many of the numbers don’t have jack squat to do with anything. They’re intrusive to the plot and only serve to eat up a bunch of screen time. There is one sequence that’s pretty cool in which a bunch of chorus line dancers climb onto a giant spider web. For the most part though, these numbers just stop the movie on a dime. Originally, there was a color sequence in there too, but unfortunately all the prints that still exist are completely in black and white.
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