DOLLS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Often charming little horror piece done to near-perfection further establishes Empire Pictures' reputation for being *the* creative horror film maker of today--perhaps a latter-day Hammer Films. Rating: high +1.
Back in the mid-1950s while the science fiction film was first blossoming, the horror film was foundering. The Universal cycle that started in 1930 had gone into unconscious, then self-conscious self-parody and died a decade before. Horror films meant shoddy productions in which neurotic teenagers turned into vampires or werewolves or Frankenstein monsters. Then in 1957 budget studio Hammer Films tried some radically new approaches to horror films and turned out well-made products and the horror film was reborn.
Today the horror film is foundering in self-parody, in teen-age films, and in innumerable repeats of being chased by a bogeyman whom you cannot kill. Knock him down and he just gets up (HALLOWEEN 1 and 2, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART N, THE TERMINATOR, THE HITCHER, etc., etc.--even the final sequence of FATAL ATTRACTION).
The one-time rip-off producer who *is* exercising different nightmares and making some of the most creative horror films today is Charles Band's Empire Pictures. That is the company who made the HOUSE films, THE RE- ANIMATOR, and FROM BEYOND. Among their most creative is TROLL which started as a film about a troll running around murdering people. When the decision was made that the film had to be rated PG, the gore was eliminated, the horror toned down, and both were replaced by a heavy dose of high fantasy. TROLL is uneven but often charming and surprisingly entertaining. More recently they have released DOLLS. a sort of horror fairy tale in the tradition of A. E. Merritt that is also creative, charming, and entertaining, but with a much better sense of mood and atmosphere than TROLL had.
During a storm six people are stranded in an old house with a mysterious old toymaker (one-time British swashbuckling star Guy Rolfe) and his wife. The house is full of toys and especially dolls. The two visitors who are young in heart enough find all the dolls enchanting. The other four find being surrounded by toys *deadly dull*. Of course, as the evening wears on they find it less and less dull and more and more deadly. Like an episode of the old TWILIGHT ZONE episode it is not very surprising where the story is going, but the telling of the story is nicely and originally done with enough special effects to capture the imagination but not so much as to distract from the people.
DOLLS is a gentle film with a gentle message and just a tad too much gore--as if it is walking a line between EC Comics and TWILIGHT ZONE, but in a market where filmmakers are retreading each other's ideas, DOLLS recently released to cassette, is something different. The story is fairly (not entirely) new and done with high production values. The same could have been said of Hammer Films' first big success, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Rate it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
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