Review #58: Dolls (1986)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #6: Dolls

Today I watched Dolls (or as the version I downloaded was titled: Bonecas Macabras, as mine had hard-coded spanish subtitles). This was a fun movie- I spent most of the film thinking it was a Full Moon Pictures movie, as I saw Charles Band's name in the credits at the beginning, but no, this might have been too early for that. Whatever the case, it's the same kind of movie.

This film follows a random group of travelers who get stuck on the road in a storm and take shelter in an old house owned by an old man and old woman who it turns out have a bunch of living dolls that (through the magic of stop motion animation and a healthy dose of ordinary puppetry) start killing people. Not something I've seen a million times, but once or twice at least.

This movie gets an immediate point for having a character named Gabriel. However, it loses a point for having the most Sean Astin-looking Sean Astin lookalike I've ever seen, playing Sean Astin if Sean Astin cost about half as much. I can't stress how many times I said to myself, "No, that's not Sean Astin. Or is it? No. But maybe it is..."

I will also say that there were a ton of parts of this movie that made my jaw drop- the effects were great, and not just that, but the things they had happen were almost always fun and inventive. The part where one of the British hitchhikers discovers her friend's body was amazing, and then her getting shot by a battalion of toy soldiers was super clever! It even makes up for the incredibly lame scene right before where the jerk mom somehow accidentally jumps out a window (which I had to rewind a couple times because I couldn't figure out how or why that happened).

One plus and one minus: This movie sort of fixes a problem I have with other doll-based horror movies- the dolls are, largely, incapable of doing direct harm. Like, if you watch Child's Play, Chucky is hitting people with hammers and lifting things and using all sorts of leverage that a ~5-pound doll would not be able to do. It's always a bit annoying that nobody just like kicks him across the room and/or puts him in a box and then tapes it up or something. In Dolls, the titular dolls get up to some shenanigans, but whenever we see them directly attacking someone, it's little more an an annoyance (even their knives and saws look to be only slightly breaking the skin and nothing else). But that's not always the case, like the scene where a few of the dolls somehow pick up one of the hitchhikers and slam her against a wall, so the movie didn't perfectly fix the problem.

One thing I was mildly disappointed by- I kept hoping Teddy would show up and save the day, or turn out to be real, or something. But that never happened. Maybe in an early draft.

Whatever the case this was a fun movie, and the last five minutes had me laughing out loud by how quickly and succinctly it was resolved. ("Oh, he wrote... 'I'm taking the hitchhikers with me.'" And that's actually how it happens.) It's like they had ten minutes to write and shoot an ending, and so they did it. It was so bold-faced that there's no way it wasn't self-aware, know what I mean?

Anyway, fun movie with fun effects and I can definitely see how this eventually led to Puppet Master and beyond.

Overall rating: 8/10

Favorite Doll Weapon: That little tiny working power drill! It was adorable, and why the heck would a doll have that?

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Tune in tomorrow: Grave Encounters!