One of the most important things about being a serious movie fan is to take one for what it is, and not for what it isn’t. If we are going to invest our time into a movie, we should cast off prejudices, ignore excessive hype, and avoid pre-conceived notions.
Stuart Gordon’s Dolls is one of the most important lessons I learned about the subject.
Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond are not only the best movies ever released from Charles Band’s toy factory movie production line, they are among the most important horror features we’ve ever had. They seem incredibly out of place amid the bland Band movies about killer dolls, toys, and puppets.
I remember reading about Stuart Gordon’s Dolls in Fangoria. This was back when I actually liked the magazine. I was more than a little bit dumbfounded. Dolls? Where was H.P. Lovecraft? Jeffrey Combs? Barbara Crampton?
Re-Animator and From Beyond set impossibly high standards. They were a new approach. Or at least new to American audiences. European sleazemeisters like Jess Franco and Joe D’Amato were making transgressive, sexually explicit horror movies for a long time prior to Re-Animator. As far as I am concerned, Gordon’s movies are far superior to anything those other guys made.
Dolls. Ok, I was in. When the tape landed on the shelf at my local Erol’s Video, I snatched it up. I watched it immediately and was sorely disappointed.
Dolls is, by any standard, a long way down from Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft movies, but it’s not a bad little trinket. It’s well-shot, especially by Band standards. There are some nice gory moments, generous humor, and a dreamy fairy tale atmosphere.
Dolls is set up in the classic Old Dark House scenario. A couple of carloads of people break down and are stranded for the night at a creepy old mansion. A spooky old couple own the place, which is filled with unnerving dolls. You don’t have to be a fortune teller to know the dolls are going to come to life and wreak havoc on the guests.
There’s a quaint little moppet girl that got on my nerves back in 1988. I was in my mid-twenties and craved harder material. Two sitcom-level punker girls were a little more entertaining.
Looking back from today, I can almost see the gears working in Charles Band’s head. Why, he could do a lot of these kinds of pictures. After all, Tourist Trap worked out well nearly a decade beforehand.
In a few years Band abandoned his Empire Pictures and launched Full Moon Productions. It was an assembly line-type studio that cranked out movies like Puppetmaster (and many sequels), Dollman, Demonic Toys, Shrunken Heads, and endless variations of them all.
I’m all too often the oldest guy in the room. Most people I know feel a great deal of fondness for these movies. That’s because they watched them when they were very young. I was nearly thirty years old when the first Full Moon movie, Puppetmaster, hit the video stores. My head was elsewhere. I recently watched the early John Waters atrocities, which led me down some dark and seedy paths. Doctor Mordrid simply wasn't cutting it.
There are similarities, but Dolls is much better than the kind of Full Moon quickies directors like Albert Pyun, Ted Nicolaou, David Schmoeller, and C. Courtney Joyner were cranking out.
I don’t hate the Full Moon fodder, but I don’t have time for them either. I haven’t watched one in over thirty years.
Stuart Gordon made some good post-Re-Animator/From Beyond movies, like Castle Freak Stuck, and King of the Ants, but he never quite regained the brilliance of those first two masterpieces. Dolls was the first step in the wrong direction.
And yet I enjoyed revisiting Dolls this morning. On its own the movie is a fun little horror show. Nothing spectacular, but well made, earnest, and a lot of indiscriminate fun.
Stuart Gordon left us in early 2020. We don’t have Herbert West to return him to life, but we can enjoy his movies. There’s still a couple I haven’t seen. I’m especially interested in Edmond, which was written by David Mamet. Maybe I’ll end up eating my words and say it’s the best movie Gordon ever made.
Written by Mark Sieber
Stuart Gordon’s Dolls is one of the most important lessons I learned about the subject.
Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond are not only the best movies ever released from Charles Band’s toy factory movie production line, they are among the most important horror features we’ve ever had. They seem incredibly out of place amid the bland Band movies about killer dolls, toys, and puppets.I remember reading about Stuart Gordon’s Dolls in Fangoria. This was back when I actually liked the magazine. I was more than a little bit dumbfounded. Dolls? Where was H.P. Lovecraft? Jeffrey Combs? Barbara Crampton?
Re-Animator and From Beyond set impossibly high standards. They were a new approach. Or at least new to American audiences. European sleazemeisters like Jess Franco and Joe D’Amato were making transgressive, sexually explicit horror movies for a long time prior to Re-Animator. As far as I am concerned, Gordon’s movies are far superior to anything those other guys made.
Dolls. Ok, I was in. When the tape landed on the shelf at my local Erol’s Video, I snatched it up. I watched it immediately and was sorely disappointed.
Dolls is, by any standard, a long way down from Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft movies, but it’s not a bad little trinket. It’s well-shot, especially by Band standards. There are some nice gory moments, generous humor, and a dreamy fairy tale atmosphere.
Dolls is set up in the classic Old Dark House scenario. A couple of carloads of people break down and are stranded for the night at a creepy old mansion. A spooky old couple own the place, which is filled with unnerving dolls. You don’t have to be a fortune teller to know the dolls are going to come to life and wreak havoc on the guests.
There’s a quaint little moppet girl that got on my nerves back in 1988. I was in my mid-twenties and craved harder material. Two sitcom-level punker girls were a little more entertaining.
Looking back from today, I can almost see the gears working in Charles Band’s head. Why, he could do a lot of these kinds of pictures. After all, Tourist Trap worked out well nearly a decade beforehand.
In a few years Band abandoned his Empire Pictures and launched Full Moon Productions. It was an assembly line-type studio that cranked out movies like Puppetmaster (and many sequels), Dollman, Demonic Toys, Shrunken Heads, and endless variations of them all.
I’m all too often the oldest guy in the room. Most people I know feel a great deal of fondness for these movies. That’s because they watched them when they were very young. I was nearly thirty years old when the first Full Moon movie, Puppetmaster, hit the video stores. My head was elsewhere. I recently watched the early John Waters atrocities, which led me down some dark and seedy paths. Doctor Mordrid simply wasn't cutting it.
There are similarities, but Dolls is much better than the kind of Full Moon quickies directors like Albert Pyun, Ted Nicolaou, David Schmoeller, and C. Courtney Joyner were cranking out.
I don’t hate the Full Moon fodder, but I don’t have time for them either. I haven’t watched one in over thirty years.
Stuart Gordon made some good post-Re-Animator/From Beyond movies, like Castle Freak Stuck, and King of the Ants, but he never quite regained the brilliance of those first two masterpieces. Dolls was the first step in the wrong direction.
And yet I enjoyed revisiting Dolls this morning. On its own the movie is a fun little horror show. Nothing spectacular, but well made, earnest, and a lot of indiscriminate fun.
Stuart Gordon left us in early 2020. We don’t have Herbert West to return him to life, but we can enjoy his movies. There’s still a couple I haven’t seen. I’m especially interested in Edmond, which was written by David Mamet. Maybe I’ll end up eating my words and say it’s the best movie Gordon ever made.
Written by Mark Sieber
The author does not allow comments to this entry
No comments