If there’s one thing schlock producer Charles Band seems to love (aside from making low budget movies, of course), its killer dolls. From the days of Empire Pictures to his later, Full Moon Entertainment label, the man has churned out a ludicrous number of flicks about murderous playthings such as the unending Puppet Master franchise, the more low rent Demonic Toys and – of course – Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys. However, this obsession seemed to have kicked off due to Stuart Gordon’s Dolls, a movie he originally made between H.P. Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator and From Beyond but oddly wasn’t released until 1987.
Taking a more traditional approach than the outlandish comic book grue of the former or the gloopy cosmic body horror of the latter, Dolls was something of a gentler entry from a filmmaker renowned for pushing the envelope when it came to graphic sex and violence – but on the other hand, dolls are creepy as shit, so maybe Gordon figured he wouldn’t have to play so hard…
The wildly dysfunctional Bower family find themselves stranded in a thunderstorm whilst in the middle of the English countryside and after a fair amount of bickering, finally make their way to a nearby mansion and break in in order to find shelter.
Disinterested father, David seems like he’s actively trying for Shitty Parent of the Year Award as he constantly berates his young daughter Judy for being an annoyance (she’s not), but he has ample competition from his rich, new wife Rosenary who dresses like Cruella Deville on casual Friday and casually tosses Judy’s teddy into the woods for no other reason than she simply can’t stand the kid.
After being found by Gabriel and Hilary Hardwicke, the mansion’s owners, the deeply eccentric old couple, the neglectful family unit is allowed to stay the night until the storm blows over and are even joined by more stranded travellers in the form of the sweetly immature businessman, Ralph and two painfully English hitchhikers, Isabel and Enid.
However, a quick wander around the house reveals it to be chock-full of hundreds of antique dolls and despite Gabriel’s claims of being a toy maker, there’s definitely something fishy about this sinister collection of porcelain trinkets.
That “something” is kicked off royally when Isabel decides to go on a search to find various things to steal only to find that not it are the dolls all alive, they don’t take kindly to adults who have lost the innocence of youth to become stern, miserable bastards. Soon everyone will have to face the doll’s judgement – including the big hearted ralph – but can Judy manage to call them off before they add to their malevolent number.
Compared to the gruesome magnificence of his early Lovecraft adaptations or even the incredibly spiteful nature of his nineties horror entries Castle Freak and The Pit And The Pendulum, Stuart Gordon’s Dolls seems stuck somewhere between his more aggressive fare and the more childish aspects of his filmography such as the Saturday morning cartoon inspired Robot Jox and his original script for Honey I Shrunk The Kids. On one hand, the movie is obviously going for an adult fairy tale theme, throwing in magic, wicked stepmothers and a very simplistic glance of good and evil as pint-sized karma hurls itself at anyone who acts like a piece of shit – on the other hand, Dolls also contains a mean streak a mile wide as the violent acts they perpetrate on anyone they deem worthy are impressively brutal. This approach is probably best visualized in an early scene which sees Judy imagine her lost teddy returning only to be eight feet tall and hiding a real bear inside that promptly devours her awful guardians and the guilty shrug that a blood stained “teddy” gives after being admonished by Judy is pitch perfect. But if I’m being honest, the rest of the movie fails to balance the whimsy and the gore anywhere near as well, especially considering that the movie is a remarkably slight 77 minutes that predominantly sees characters wandering around in the dark for most of it.
However, when Dolls gets down to the nitty gritty, it just about earns its keep, especially in the suprisingly vicious kills scenes. Getting it worse than anybody is Bunty Bailey from both the music video for a-ha’s Take On Me, and 80s dance group Hot Topic (ask your parents) whose character, Isabel, seems to be a highly punchable mix of an early career Madonna mixed with the vocal chords of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep from Mary Poppins. Her protracted demise, which begins with her getting her face repeatedly bashed against a sideboard and ends with her partially transformed into a doll as her eyes keep popping out, is a legitimate standout, as is the sneering, pantomime performance of Gordon’s real life wife, Caroline Purdy-Gordon who also gets a demise worthy of all the other times her husband has gruesomely dispatched her on film.
The dolls themselves, rendered practically by Empire’s go-to FX guy, John Carl Buchler and in impressively smooth stop motion by animation whizz David Allen, are appropriately eerie (Gordon reportedly was terrified of porcelain doll in real life) and the surprise that they have little corpses inside add another level of creepiness to matters, but compared to the director’s other, more energetic, offerings, Dolls simply lacks the wow factor of talking severed heads or sexually perverted cosmic monsters.
While the fairytale tone should give matters a spooky feel, its delivered in such a jokey, way, it’s often at odds with the scattered brutality and it’s accentuated all the more by a broad, comedic performance by Stephen Lee that, while genuinely amusing, threatens to upend the already muddled tone. Also, the fact that the movie ends with little trusting Judy being left in the hands of Ralph, a grown man she’s literally only known for barely eight hours, doesn’t really play well in this day and age.
Still, as killer doll movies go, Dolls may not have the recognition factor of a Chucky, an Annabelle, or a M3GAN, but when it comes to fulfilling the brief of having countless little freakish motherfuckers coming at you with murderous intent while waving miniature knives, hammers and hacksaws at you, it certainly fits the bill – it’s just a shame that these particular playthings can’t quite nail that slippery tone the way it should to satisfyingly “doll” out the punishment.
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