Dolls

Alternate titles : None

Tagline : "They want to play with you!"

A bickering couple and their young step-daughter break down on a deserted back road during a torrential rain storm late one night. Seeing a mansion house down the road, they call in looking for help. But needless to say, they don't end up doing the Timewarp with Dr Frankenfurter.

They are greeted by an elderly couple named Gabriel and Hillary Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe and Hillary Mason) and soon after, they are joined by some other stranded motorists, a fat tourist named Ralph and a couple of obnoxious girls he picked up hitch hiking.

Welcoming them all inside, the group are somewhat disturbed by the elderly couples large collection of creepy dolls, which seem to fill every room. But it isn't too long before they realise something's amiss.

When the young step-daughter gets up in the night and sees one of the girls being dragged away by some of the old man's dolls, they realise these are no ordinary toys and leaving the house alive is going to be no easy matter. As the unwitting guests soon find themselves being over run and mauled by the malevolent miniature monsters.

Now I must admit that when I first came to view this, I wasn't too sure that a film about killer dolls would be particularly interesting. But decided to give it a go after seeing the "Puppet Master" films, which producer Charles Band also worked on. However, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The film has a good mix of humour and horror, which definitely works in its favour, and overall proved fairly entertaining.

OK, there's a bit of dodgy stop-motion animation, being as this was filmed in the 1980s, but then if they used modern CGI I guess we'd be complaining about that too. Horror stalwarts Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna also handled direction and production on this, so "Re-Animator" fans will probably want to check this one out as well.

Overall Marks : 5.5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate tag line "They walk, they talk, they kill".
• irector Stuart Gordon used the same sets to film "From Beyond", though they were dressed differently.
• Guy Rolfe had to bleach his hair white to play the elderly Gabriel, unfortunately it didn't work first time and turned his hair bright yellow.
• The whispering sounds that the dolls make where actually made by Stuart Gordon's friends and family, including his wife and kids.
• Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, who played Rosemary the nasty step-mother, also doubled for both the hitch-hiking girls for several scenes, as the actresses weren't available on those particular days.
• Stuart Gordon did plan on making a sequel, which would have followed the exploits of Ralph and the young step- daughter, several years later, but he never developed the idea.
• Charles Band, who co-produced the film, got the idea for his later "Puppet Master" films from this.
• Some additional gore was filmed for Rosemary's death scene, but they decided this didn't fit in with the tone of the film, and so was not used.
• Though filmed before "From Beyond", the film wasn't released until a year afterwards, due to the amount of special effects that needed to be filmed in post production to animate the dolls.

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