My favorite thing about killer dolls is the amount of effort they have to put into killing you, what with their tiny weapons and all. The mental image conjured by Richard Matheson’s 1969 short story Prey, in which a relentless doll tries to stab the heroine’s feet through the crack beneath her bathroom door, has stuck with me for life. You will find no shortage of forum posts proclaiming that “the scariest doll of all time” as it was later adapted in one-third of the Karen Black anthology film, Trilogy of Terror.
Look, toys that kill are irresistible. I don’t think there’s a kid in the world who didn’t wonder if the silhouettes of their toys were watching them after bedtime. The only thing that unnerved me more was spending the night at a friend’s house who had that Bo Jackson poster, the eyes of which seemed to be looking at you no matter where you were in the room.
In Stuart Gordon’s Dolls, a family of three end up stranded by a thunderstorm that leaves their car stuck in mud. The little girl’s name is Judy and she’ll be our main character. Her father’s a mentally abusive alcoholic and her step-mother (played by Gordon’s wife, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) is a cartoonishly evil bitch. When they finally decide to abandon the car, the step-mother takes Judy’s teddy bear and flings it into the shadows of the woods, just to see the girl’s distraught expression.
The family then seeks cover at a nearby mansion, which resembles a spooky castle. The elderly owners (Guy Rolfe, of Puppet Master fame, and Don’t Look Now’s Hilary Mason) are hospitable to the unwitting guests who—surprise-surprise—were expected all along. Three more hapless visitors wander into the house that night: a couple of punk rock chicks and Ralph, the naive schlub who was dumb enough to pick them up on the side of the road. The homeowners invite all six of the visitors to stay the night while they weather the storm.
As the punks scheme to rip off the old couple’s valuables, the estate’s patriarch takes a liking to Judy and the childlike Ralph as they’re the only ones who don’t roll their eyes at his love for toys. See, Guy Rolfe’s character is a doll maker and, although it isn’t officially revealed until the end, it’s not really a spoiler to reveal his wife is a witch. Together, the two of them craft animated dolls that defend their home from the ne’er-do-wells who (for reasons unexplained) are attracted to it like magnets.
Par for the course, the killer dolls mostly operate in the shadows until the second half of the film, at which point dozens of the suckers will come to life through David Allen’s smooth stop-motion effects, reminiscent of those on display in Gordon’s Robot Jox and the early Puppet Master films. I’m not sure what proprietary magic Allen employs in his animations, but I suspect there are dissolve cuts between frames like an early implementation of interpolation… or something? Beats me, but it’s pretty distinctive.
Dolls is a pleasantly paced horror movie along the lines of Tourist Trap and Motel Hell. There’s a gentle upward curve to the awesomeness at the end and there are plenty of characters you can’t wait to see die along the way. While it’s not quite as enjoyable as Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator or From Beyond, I don’t think you have to be a competitionist to find joy in this flick.
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