Guilty Pleasures: Dolls
There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.
DOLLS
When you look at the films of Full Moon Pictures, it’s easy to see that Charles Band has a mild obsession with puppets and dolls. In fact, they even released a compilation DVD of death scenes called When Puppets and Dolls Attack. However, before Puppet Master and Demonic Toys there was Dolls; a demented fairy tale with a horror film twist.
Stuart Gordon and Charles Band helped provide Empire pictures with some of their best offerings. Dolls was famously shot in-between their Lovecraft inspired Re-Animator and From Beyond movies; even using the same set pieces as From Beyond.
The opening credits reminds me vaguely of Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse (another painfully underrated 80’s horror film). The film follows Judy Bower (played by the adorable Carrie Lorraine), her father and Stepmother (quite possibly the most evil parents in history). Multiple times in the first 5 minutes they threaten to beat and kill her. In a particularly bizarre sequence, her stepmother Rosemary (played by Stuart Gordon’s wife Carolyn) throws her stuffed Teddy Bear doll in the woods and Judy imagines the bear attacking and killing her family. The scene ends with Judy sounding apathetically disappointed in her bear going “oh Teddy” while the bear covered in blood simply shrugs.
A storm causes them to crash at the house of Gabriel and Hilary Hatwicke; an elder couple of doll makers. Their creepy house is filled floor to roof with dolls of all shapes and sizes. Gabriel takes notice of Judy’s lack of toys and offers her a Punch doll (Judy and Punch… adorable). Suddenly Ralph Morris and 2 british punk rockers Enid and Isabel storm the house. They also got caught in the rain and are looking for a place to sleep. Thus ends our cast of characters, we will meet no one else for the next hour.
That night Enid and Isabel decide to rob the Hatwicke’s, meanwhile Judy is feeling thirsty and goes to get a drink. She sees Isabel getting murdered by some dolls. She runs and tells her parents who assume she’s just making up nonsense; so she goes to Ralph instead (the only trust worthy person in the house). In a scene of quick conclusion jumping, they decide that Ralph is both a murderer and a pedophile.
Judy’s father suddenly decides to do a non-awful parent thing and chases Judy and Ralph in an attempt to get her away from the man he assumes is a pedophile. Meanwhile Enid goes on a search for her missing best friend and succeeds. In one of the eeriest moments in the movie, Enid finds Isabel, with her face turned into a dolls face, her glass eyeballs roll out of her head and Enid is attacked by a swarm of dolls. While fighting them off, she cracks in their faces revealing corpses and skulls underneath the porcelain.
Alone in her bedroom, Rosemary is also attacked. She takes her fate into her own hands and decides she’d rather take her own life than have a bunch of tiny stop motion dolls take it from her and jumps out the nearest window.
Judy’s father finds her body and assuming that Ralph murdered her, quickly deciding to exact his revenge. Before he’s able to kill Ralph though, he’s attacked by the Punch doll. He destroys Punch and is discovered by the Hatwickes. They decide that he must replace their Punch doll and so transform him into a doll using witchcraft.
They make a fake letter for Judy informing her that her father no longer loves her and has moved far away forever. She’s to return home to her mother and Ralph.
Dolls is a truly dark fairy tale story. It has all of the elements of a Brothers Grimm tale. The wicked stepmother, a hero, witches and mystic elements. At one point Judy even refers to Ralph as a prince in disguise. Sadly, the film is overshadowed by Stuart Gordon’s H.P Lovecraft Adaptions and Charles Band’s other killer doll movies. But Dolls ranks right up there with the better Puppet Master movies. It’s funny, gory and charming all at once. Carrie Lorraine never worked after this film, but she’s adorable as Judy.
The film has a nice eerie feel. There’s no clear line between good and evil. And while slightly dated and cheesy, the doll effects are for the most part quite impressive. At one point a sequel was even pitched where Ralph and Judy receive a box in the mail containing dolls of the Hatwickes. Sadly, the audience for that sequel doesn’t really exist; but I would have loved to have seen it.
