1987 horror movie
Rating: 14/20
Plot: Some people with car trouble wind up at a creepy house with creepy old people who have a collection of creepy toys. And those toys, of course, start killing everybody.
From the mind of Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator fame, this is never is really anything new but winds up entertaining enough with a balance of horror and comedy. And you’re satisfied on some cinematic moral level because everybody in this movie gets exactly what he or she deserves. I always appreciate when horror movies and their killers seem to be doing their deeds for moral reasons. It makes me feel better about all the blood, I guess. I really enjoyed the special effects. Doll movement, at times, filled the screen, and although things dragged a little bit when the dolls weren’t up to no good, the times we did get to see them made up for it. Although pulling off creepiness with doll imagery doesn’t necessarily seem that difficult–it’s like using clowns–Gordon and his special effects wizardry pull off some unique stuff here. The opening credits feature disembodied doll heads, and I’m not sure there’s anything out there that is that creepy without being designed to be creepy at all. Oh, and somebody named Fuzzbee Morse did the music for this. It makes me like humanity a little more knowing that somebody named a child Fuzzbee. With a wacky Teddy hallucination, some freaky doll effects, creepy old people, a great old house setting, and a twisted little sense of humor, Dolls is a cult classic that doesn’t quite have a cult.
