“The longest night in the world.”
Tourist Trap (1979) and Dolls (1987) are by far the creepiest Charles Band productions I have ever seen. Dolls oozes a Gothic atmosphere and Stuart Gordon’s less is more approach to the material gives it a hauntingly uncanny atmosphere. Dolls is a minimalist and pulpy work of horror that has, deservedly so, maintained a significant cult following since its release.
Dolls is often overshadowed by Gordon’s films Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986). But Dolls is equally a tour de force in low budget resourcefulness and direction. Gordon wisely orchestrates the attacks of the dolls so that violence is implied rather than made visually explicit. This leaves much to the imagination. When the film does become explicit it goes all in on gore and macabre designs, delivering a singularly harrowing spectacle.
There are literally a dozen films about killer dolls but none of them boast the atmosphere Gordon creates in his film. Using a traditional Gothic setting, Gordon shoots his film from extreme angles that re-iterate the difference in scale between grown-up and child, human and doll. This disorients the viewer and allows for terrifying jump scares and gradual reveals.
Dolls shares with Tourist Trap a rural setting. But more than that both films are interested in a kind of body horror. In these two films the human body is violently fused with inanimate objects that only suggest the human form. Inside every doll is a twisted, mangled human being. It’s a terrifying concept that connects Dolls with the explicit body horrors of Re-Animator and From Beyond.
As affecting as Dolls is as a work of horror, it is also quite funny at times. The character of Ralph (Stephen Lee) has some choice quips as does actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as the wicked step-mother. The humor is dark, often twisted, but carefully parceled out to allow for brief moments of levity. Gordon is an expert at finding humor in the morbid and macabre and Dolls is no exception.
The real star of the film are, of course, the dolls themselves. Here they are rendered via a combination of puppetry and stop-motion animation. The way that the dolls move is part of what makes them so terrifying. The limitations of stop-motion actually works for the film in giving the inanimate dolls an eerie and uncanny life on screen. Dolls shouldn’t move and yet here they are on a bloodthirsty rampage.
Clocking in at seventy-seven minutes Dolls is an exercise in narrative economy. Not a single frame of Dolls feels out of place, unnecessary or like some kind of indulgence. Dolls is all essentials packaged for brevity and terror. Dolls is a masterclass in genre filmmaking by one of the masters of the form.
