Dolls remains the hidden gem of Stuart Gordon’s filmography. The film was a quickie foisted onto Gordon by the film’s producer, Charles Band, as something to do in between his Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator and From Beyond. The film actually came out afterwards to a frostier reception than Gordon’s previous films, especially Re-Animator, which was a surprise critical hit.
Gordon was attracted to the script because he saw it as a horror fairy tale. The book The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim was influential, as it applied Freudian analysis to fairy tales and discussed how fairy tales teach children that the world is scary and so on.. It’s understandable that Dolls failed to have the impact of Gordon’s previous other films due to the fact that it’s tonally very different and has a distinct lack of the gore that Gordon was known for. The fairy-tale element is also very pronounced, which probably turned some people off who were expecting a splatter fest in the vein of Re-Animator.
The film uses the timeless old dark house set-up, but turns it on its head. Judy (Carrie Lorraine) is a young girl who has a rich imagination. She gets stranded in a thunderstorm with her father and a stepmother who might as well be Cruella de Vil. There is no answer when they knock at the front door, but they find an opening into the basement and are greeted warmly by an elderly couple, Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke, and invited to spend the night. They are soon joined by good-natured American Ralph and some young punk girls, who may have ulterior motives. The house is full of beautifully detailed toys and dolls, as the couple are actually toy-makers. The toys, however, may have a life of their own, and perhaps only those who still maintain childhood wonder will survive the night in this old dark house.
Gordon took the fairy-tale elements very seriously, using them to deliver a strong message—which is basically, don’t be a dick to your kids. The sets were also used in From Beyond, and were built at Dino de Laurentiis’ old studio, which Charles Band bought. Gordon’s films at this time, and even more so Band’s films, had very high production values because they used the Italian studio and the cheap, often non-union, crew to keep the costs down but quality up. However, this period was short-lived, with the financial collapse of Band’s company Empire on the horizon.
Any film called Dolls should have excellent puppet work, and the film doesn’t disappoint. There is exceptional stop-motion work from David W. Allen, who would had a long and fruitful relationship with Band, including working on many of Band’s other films about evil little monsters: the Puppetmaster franchise! Dolls also has one of the best child performances of the ’80s from Carrie Lorraine, who is somewhat reminiscent of Mara Wilson’s turn in Matilda. Lorraine retired from acting after Dolls, doing the wise thing by becoming a criminal defense attorney.
However, Dolls will find a new life in this new boxset, Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams from Arrow Video. It includes all the Charles Band productions from the Empire years, but Dolls is far and away the highlight of the set. None of the other films, including The Dungeonmaster, Cellar Dweller, Arena and even Gordon’s own Robot Jox, are in the same league. When I interviewed Gordon a few years before he passed, he spoke very fondly of Dolls, which was always one of his favourites.
The extras include not one but three commentary tracks. The newest one is by David DeCoteau, the maestro of homoerotic VOD schlock AND Hallmark movies, and an Empire alumnus. The other two tracks are archival commentaries recorded in 2005 for the Region 1 MGM release: one with Gordon and writer Ed Naha, and the second with the main actors. The other new extra is an interview with the film’s editor, Lee Percy, who edited Gordon’s first three films and went on to have an interesting career. The excellent making-of documentary from Shout Factory’s long out-of-print Blu-Ray is also included, which is going elsewhere for the price of this boxset. Storyboard to finished film comparison, various trailers and a stills gallery finish off the extras on the disc. The boxset includes fifteen postcard-sized reproduction artcards, an Arrow Video store “membership card,” and an 80-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the films by Lee Gambin, Dave Jay, Megan Navarro and John Harrison, plus select archival material.
★★★★
Ian Schultz
psychotroniccinema.com 