There may have been a few of you last week who read my review for The Devil-Doll and thought to yourselves--"Hmm, that doesn't sound like the movie I watched on Mystery Science Theater 3000." Wrong Devil Doll! This is, like a few other inhabitants of the A-List, one of the movies that Joel/Mike/Jonah and the Bots introduced me to. This indie British chiller is nothing special, but it has enough trashy weirdness that it makes for a pretty entertaining watch even outside the riffs of the Satellite of Love.
The Great Vorelli is a stage hypnotist who works with a ventriloquist dummy named Hugo. There are many early intimations that Vorelli's shows are more than a little upsetting. First, he hypnotizes a dude into mentally taking the place of a Chinese person who the man saw executed. The trauma isn't permanent--the man forgets everything once Vorelli snaps his fingers--but it's hard to imagine any audience that would want to watch something like this. Then, when Hugo comes out, he and Vorelli prove to have a mutually abusive relationship. Admittedly, the audience still applauds wildly in the wake of his "comedy" routine that's about as funny as a math test. What is truly impressive about Vorelli's act is that he can ventriloquize (sure, we'll call it that) through Hugo without even having to touch him. It's like the doll is really alive.
But our story doesn't truly begin until Vorelli has met Marianne Horne, a wealthy girl who he hypnotizes into an expert dancer. It's clear that Vorelli has some sort of perverse lust for her, and when we meet Vorelli's other assistant, a 30ish woman who only covers half her ass onstage, we start to understand what sort of man Vorelli really is. It's clear that his current assistant has been drained of all hope and life by Vorelli's cruelty, and Marianne is about to be put on the same path. Marianne is scared of Vorelli--she says that much to her reporter boyfriend, an American named Mark English (an American named English...was that someone's idea of a joke?). But he telepathically compels her to come visit him, so she can invite him to her aunt's charity ball. During this time he shows as a wine called "Blood of the Virgin," and he begins to hypnotize her he repeats that the wine is "deep...rich...red...warm..." Ughhh. Nothing happens yet, but after a once-again depressing excuse for a show at the charity ball, where Hugo actually threatens Vorelli with a knife, Vorelli drags Marianne further under his spell and rapes her. Hugo, whatever he is, has had enough. He goes to find Mark, and tells him to look up what he was doing in 1948 Berlin. Mark sends a reporter friend to Berlin to investigate. Meanwhile, Vorelli ends up in some rather confusing soup when Hugo kills his washed-up cheeky assistant, to frame him for murder. Not only is this point basically forgotten, but it paints Hugo, a sympathetic character, as a murderer. It contributes to a surreal noir-like griminess that haunts the movie even outside of Vorelli's shows.
It becomes clear that Hugo was not always a dummy--in the late '40s, in Germany, he was Vorelli's assistant, after the man spent a prolonged period of time studying both medicine and mystical techniques in soul-transference. Eventually, during a show, Vorelli killed Hugo in a way that trapped his soul in the dummy. Now Vorelli intends to do the same to Marianne, apparently so he can get her family's money. What?! I would assume he would want his "bride-to-be" to keep her human body for as long as possible, given what he's done to it so far--and what he has a habit of doing to his female assistants. For a movie with this much sexual grime oozing up from beneath, it's a little jarring for the film to claim that the primary interest of this villain is money.
But anyway, this is all leading up to one of the best fight scenes of all time, pitting man vs. dummy. I can't possibly describe how ludicrously awful this fight is, so I will encourage you only to seek the film out for yourselves. It's a sight to see.
Devil Doll is an ever-welcome combination of cheap sleaze and effective atmosphere. Vorelli's show at the beginning is murky, smoky, and sweaty--there is no music, save for the ominous thumping beat we the audience get to hear. It would be an astonishingly eerie experience to watch a man force another man to believe he's going to be shot in the head in silence, in the dark. This movie seems like the sort of thing that would be decently shocking in early-'60s Britain, if anyone actually saw it. Plus, Hugo is a scary motherfucker--when Vorelli calls him ugly, he unfortunately does have something of a point. I'm not saying that this is horror gold, but the mixture of the sleaze with the oily, claustrophobic atmosphere is interesting to watch. Especially when it all falls out and becomes funny again. Invite Tod Browning over and you'll have yourself a zany double feature.
Oh, and I'll quote it before you know it: "Ham! I love it."
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