Directed by Stuart Gordon
Starring Stephen Lee, Guy Rolfe, Hilary Mason, Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy Gordon, Cassie Stuart, Bunty Bailey and Carrie Lorraine
Killer dolls. If there is one thing that Charles Band has made a living off of (like, to the point where the guy probably has enough cash stashed away from these low budget epics to buy his own solid gold island), it's killer doll movies. You might think that the Child's Play franchise was the film that invented this little subgenre of horror, but you'd be wrong-'em, boyo. Sure, there had been plenty of movies about this little villain ever since the dawn of man. But the movie in question today actually predates Chucky by a solid year, and it's the one that most closely resembles everything that would follow, so I'm giving the nod to Charles Band on this one when it comes to who set off this wave of "toys come alive" flicks.
Dolls was yet another in the long, long list of Empire movies released between 1986 and 1988, and it was from yet another of Band's list of buddy directors. Out of all the guys who worked with Band repeatedly over the years, I'd say that Stuart Gordon definitely has the biggest following, having also helmed the certifiable weirdo classic Re-Animator and later charging up Robot Jox during Empire's waning days and The Pit and the Pendulum for Full Moon Features. While all of the Empire and Full Moon movies have a similar style, these different directors really do bring their own flair to what we get from these stories. I think Gordon is probably the most polished of them; his movies feel bigger, flashier and sometimes just more insane. In the good way. I rented this movie back when I was in middle school and remember liking it quite a bit, although it has lost a little bit of its luster these days. Film criticism like this simply cannot be found anywhere else on the internet. On with the show.
Tell me if you've heard this one before: a group of characters find themselves trapped in a creepy old house while a thunderstorm rages outside, and while inside find themselves facing off with a powerful supernatural force. It's a plot mechanism that has been used in something like 17,478 films, and it's the device that we get for this particular cinematic masterwork. The first people we meet are the Bower family - father David (Ian Patrick Williams), stepmother Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy Gordon), and their young daughter Judy (Carrie Lorraine). Longtime readers of the blog know how I feel about kids in horror movies, and I've got to tell ya...this kid pushes it at times with her overt adorableness. Not QUITE to the point that I ever wanted to see her as doll fodder, but what the script does to this tyke's parents is the stuff of legend. These two are just hateable to the max, with the classic "wicked stepmother" bit being played to perfection with a dad who just actively does not even give half of a shit about his own offspring. What a douche. In short, I give these two 1:4 odds of survival.
Alas, their car gets stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere Europe (indicated by the position of the steering wheel), and they quickly find their way to a nearby castle. This place is lorded over by Gabriel Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe) and his wife Hilary (Hilary Mason), erstwhile old couple who seem way too nice to be living where they are. They're soon joined by lovable oaf Ralph Wilson (Stephen Lee) and a pair of punk-rock hitch-hikers whom I'm not even going to bother naming, due to the fact that they might as well just have "CANNON FODDER" spray-painted on their heads from the moment they appear on screen. The character of Ralph in particular is pretty well-done; I've seen Stephen Lee in a few other things, and he's a pretty damn good actor who dove right into this nice underdog guy who is a child at heart. Which is perfect, considering that this house is filled with goddamned dolls.
I think you know where it's going from here. Various characters are led away to their bedrooms, the punk chicks start talking about stealing things, Judy's father almost hits her (yes, really), a couple of characters are offed by the dolls coming alive...the usual. See, the whole idea is that the dolls are possessed by the souls of various unsavory characters that the Hartwicke's have met over the years, and this is their punishment for being asshats. Thus, everyone who gets killed in this film pretty much deserves it, and it's a crowd-pleaser all around. It's also especially worth noting that one of the creators of the dolls is played by Guy Rolfe, since he's the same guy who would go on to play the ultimate doll-maker Andre Toulon in a few of the Puppet Master movies. I swear to you that almost every Empire movie has a later counterpart in Full Moon, and folks, you can virtually see the blueprint for the PM franchise being formed before your very eyes in this flick's 77 minutes.
We actually do get a decent amount of kills here, and a couple of them are actually pretty horrific. The movie uses its most disturbing bit within the first ten minutes as the wicked stepmother throws Judy's teddy bear into the forest, which is then followed by an honest-to-goodness fantasy sequence where the bear returns - now fully grown - and morphs into a real-life monster bear that rips the parents apart. Not gonna lie, that one actually creeped me out. The scene where David comes back to find Rosemary dead and mummified in bed (come on, did that really need a spoiler alert?) is also pretty cringe-worthy. The effects stuff is once again by John Carl Buechler with some stop-motion help from David Allen, and once again, they do a fantastic job. Just one caveat: the dolls themselves aren't very memorable. And I think Charles Band knew this, too. The evidence is there in the Puppet Master films, where they decided to give each of the killer dolls a recognizable gimmick and weapon, and those films might just be awesomeness personified.
Dolls is a pretty predictable movie, all things considered. Within the first twenty minutes, we know what's going to happen, who is going to survive, and most likely how it is going to end. What the movie DOES spring on you is how likable the characters are that the script actually intended to make likable and how damn DETESTABLE the bad ones are, particularly Judy's parents. Those people are some real assholes, and when they get what they have coming, they're stand-up-and-cheer moments. The acting is also pretty good by and large. Guy Rolfe is always amazing, but really, everyone here seemed to be giving it their all with the exception of the punkers.
My only real complaint with this movie other than that it occasionally lags is that we get way, way, WAY too much of Judy onscreen in this one. I wouldn't have a problem with this if she were doing things other than crying about what she sees to her parents in a really, really high-pitched voice for the standard-issue horror movie "parents don't believe me" plot device, but yeah, that stuff takes up something like 15 minutes of running time here. Yeah, it makes the parents that much more worst people ever. But it does get tedious. Maybe I should check this movie out with the cast audio commentary, because it actually includes Carrie Lorraine. Hearing her today could be a revelation. Overall, however, you know what you're getting with Empire Pictures and Dolls delivers the goods fairly well. Good effects, a solid, basic plot and instantly identifiable characters. Color me there every time.
*** out of ****. It might not be a great flick like the first few Puppet Master movies, but it's still worth a watch. Eat it, Chucky.
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