Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Starring Bryant Haliday, William Sylvester and Yvonne Romain
I'm sure it's been mentioned on the blog before, but I'm a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. My first experience with it was the feature film, and I waited - with rabid anticipation - for the next three years for the fine folks in the Worthington, Minnesota cable TV offices to grant us access to the channel that carried it. Well, we got it, and this was followed by yours truly waking up at 7:30 on Saturday morning all through high school to tape as many episodes as I could. And it was worth it, goddammit. At any rate, while most of the movies featured on this show were big steaming piles of dog shit, every once in a while we would get a flick that would actually be interesting without Mike and the 'Bots providing the soundtrack. Devil Doll is one of these movies.
Released in 1964, this British creeper is by no means perfect. The frequent monologues by the main villain, the presence of a lady whose butt cheeks are perpetually are on display (don't ask), and protracted bits of nothing happening indeed made for one of the best latter-season MST3K episodes. Still, there's a lot to enjoy about Devil Doll, not the least of which being that this is truly one of the best uses of atmosphere I've seen in any horror flick. Had this come out just a few years later, with a color palette and maybe somebody like Mario Bava calling the shots, this one would have truly gone down in the annals of unsung movies, which is something that I totally did not make up just now to make myself sound smart.
The movie tells the story of a popular ventriloquist self-dubbed "The Great Vorelli," boasting one of the slickest fake beards you'll ever see and a voice that can melt steel not unlike Robert Stack. He's played by Bryant Haliday, and, without exaggeration, it's a tour-de-force performance. Every syllable this guy utters is believable, no matter how ridiculous some of the material. Rooney Mara, take note. He performs in front of packed houses with his doll, an amazing little contraption dubbed "Hugo" that Vorelli shares an almost uncomfortable level of tension with. Not sexual, I promise, although the jokes are there for the picking. Unfortunately, there are some other people who want a piece of Vorelli's rise, and this is where we meet our other characters.
I say "unfortunately" because one of these characters is played by William Sylvester. Now, he's been in plenty of respectable stuff, including an acclaimed role in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as being the guy who really, really wanted to catch Robert Denby. For whatever reason, seeing him in anything is like Quint's fingernails on the chalkboard with me, and it's no different here. Here, he plays newspaper reporter Mark English, and he's out to prove that Hugo is some kind of fraud. He's also a wiseass without having any right to be, and he's engaged to the impossibly hot Marianne Horn (Yvonne Romain, who is simply fantastic to look at - check her out in the Hammer horror classic Curse of the Werewolf for further proof). After witnessing a performance by Vorelli that includes Hugo walking across the stage, it's all hands on deck.
Make no mistake, as good as Haliday is, Hugo is the true star of this movie. Yes, this was 1964, and we weren't getting any state-of-the-art puppet effects. The movie becomes much more effective for that very reason; whoever designed the look of this thing deserves more kudos than Mr. Burns could possibly ask for, because Hugo's creepy stare ranks right up there with Angela Baker in the horror hall of fame. Much like Chucky in the original Child's Play, we know something is up. Something is lurking underneath. But what? The movie does a good job with its pacing, never revealing too much information as a somewhat hackneyed and always cliched romance plot starts, with Vorelli wooing Marianne away from English with his combination of charisma and slick moves. At least, as slick as swarthy bearded American guys in early '60s British horror films can be.
We're also clued in here that Vorelli is some kind of master hypnotist, and has Marianne entranced to do his bidding. He utilizes this skill to mainly make her not talk. And that's just fine by me, because Miss Romain's delivery is mostly just about as wooden as...well, Hugo. Since we know that Hugo is alive in some way and that Vorelli is a hypnotist, we have a fairly good idea where it's going. But the flashback sequence that gives us all the answers is the best thing about Devil Doll, especially when we get to witness the younger Vorelli's final performance with his former partners. I'll leave that up to you to see.
By now, I'm sure all of you (all...eight) know whether or not you'll check this movie out. If nothing else, it really is worth a watch on MST3K, easily available with a YouTube search. But without it, this is a movie that demonstrates with pitch-perfect clarity one of my biggest gripes of modern cinema. Over the past fifteen years or so, we've gotten remakes. Of everything. Anything that's been good or successful has gotten the bastardization treatment. Sometimes, they turn out good. More often, they turn out incredibly bland and banal. I think the reason for this is simple. They pick the most beloved projects to give the fresh coat of paint, and doing that to movies that don't NEED it just make the whole undertaking feel unnecessary. On the other hand, there are movies like Devil Doll - movies with a GREAT concept that might have just been lacking in execution in one or two key areas. With a deft hand and some modern polish, they could be awesome. Picture Kiefer Sutherland as Vorelli, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Marianne and anyone other than William Sylvester as English and you've got the recipe for success, one that I would buy a movie ticket for fifteen times before I'd check out that awful-looking Ghostbusters remake.
Oh, and one last thing. The ending sequence here is both unintentionally hilarious and creepy as fuck. Again, I'll leave it up to you to see.
Rating time. Let's give this one *** out of ****. It's flawed, it's occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, but it's no doubt an effective little chiller that just needed a BIT more TLC to be a classic. And try to get this face out of your head afterward.
Enjoy the nightmares.
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