Devil Doll (1964), by Lindsey Shonteff

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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The Devil-Doll (1936), by Tod Browning

And we're back!

We are switching back to written reviews for 2019, but rest assured there will still be plenty of podcast action at the A-List with a new show, Continuity Cavalcade, where we'll be examining oddities of canon and continuity across a lot of different shows and movies. You'll get to listen to that later this month. For now, however, let's get back on familiarly loopy ground with a return to the world of Tod Browning.

Paul Levond (Lionel Barrymore) is a convict who has been running from prison for weeks in the company of his cellmate Marcel. (Before we go any further, yes, Lionel Barrymore is playing a Frenchman, and no, he does not attempt any sort of accent besides his own.) Levond has been sitting in stir for 17 years now after his cheating bank partners embezzled their institution and framed him for it. While Marcel notes that Levond's heart is full of hate, he insists that he has something worthy to contribute to mankind. The two limp through the feverish swamps to his hidden laboratory, maintained by his disabled wife Malita, who sports a skunk-stripe in her hair and happens to be a mistress of goofy mad-science faces. It turns out she and Marcel had been working on a strange experiment that involves shrinking people's atoms so they become doll-like. Smaller people require less food, and so why not shrink people until there's enough to go around? Certainly beats snapping your fingers to kill half the universe. What's interesting is that the shrinkage's effect on the brain causes them to become even more doll-like, in that they can't move. Can't move, that is, until they are animated by an outside will. Yep--Marcel and his wife have created shrunken telepathy-controlled zombies. That's a pretty convenient thing to have control over when your cellmate dies, and your primary goal in life involves covertly assassinating the jackals who screwed you over. What I'm saying is that Levond and Malita are moving to Paris, where the latter will continue her experiments for the benefit of the former, while giving him a secret weapon to use against the three crooked bankers.

And man oh man do Levond and his newfound assistant show up in style. When we finally see Levond in Paris it's after he's established himself as an elderly, kindly toy shop owner named Madame Mandelip. Yes, it's Lionel Barrymore in drag. This strange angle is an attempt to connect it to the A. Merritt story this is based on, Burn, Witch, Burn, which otherwise has nothing to do with superscientific doll people or even a man escaping from prison and hiding in drag. In the original story, however, there is a menacing old woman, and in order to adapt that part of the tale Browning had to have his criminal lead disguise himself as an aging widow. In any case, Madame Mandelip's toy business is a perfect cover to get the killer "dolls" into the millionaire's houses. Indeed, it's so easy that the movie needs another plot to keep itself as a respectable runtime. Levond also wants to make good for his daughter Lorraine, who hatefully believes him to be a criminal and is trapped in an awful laundry where she earns next to nothing. He is deeply hurt that she hates him so much, and this helps guide him into extracting a confession from the last surviving banker which exonerates his family. He visits her and her grandmother as Madame Mandelip, where we learn the specifics on how deep Lorraine's disgust of her father goes. After obtaining redemption, Levond has one last meeting with his daughter, where he tries to offer her closure. Posing as Marcel, he tells her that her father is dead, but that he loved her very much, and wants her to forget him so she can be happy with her taxi-driver boyfriend. Levond then leaves the Eiffel Tower to step out into an unknown fate.

Tod Browning loved sentimentalism when he wasn't being crass. Much of the emotion is overdone, especially with Barrymore chewing every bit of scenery he can get his jaws around--though nothing quite makes it to Mark of the Vampire's "He used it to--to cup the blood." In any case, the theme here is nakedly meant to be one of love vs. hate. Characters talk about the hate Levond holds in his heart, Lorraine talks about how much she hates her father, and both of them turn out to be wrong. By giving in to their love for each other, they share one last beautiful moment as father and daughter, even though the latter isn't aware of that the man speaking to her is her father. It's compassion rather than pure vengeance or disgust that fixes things. Hey, I'll take it. I love love.

But then you remember that this is welded onto a movie about shrunken people who can be telepathically controlled. And how we're supposed to buy that toy horses and dogs are acceptable stand-ins for such. When the matte effects do show up, they're startlingly effective for the time, but are still a little Bert I. Gordon-ish. What makes the mad science great is Malita. It is clear by film's end that she is totally unhinged, even if her madness is linked to a beneficial goal. Admittedly, however, Levond has a point when he calls her work "monstrous." How much would you want to be shrunken down, in the interest of saving resources? Especially if the process was notably flawed? Good mad science is something helpful gone wrong--because who would genuinely go out of their way to make monsters? I love Malita's character and she helps make everything work.

The skunk-stripe in her hair, though, points out something interesting, which I only just noticed on this watch-through: this movie is totally ripping off the previous year's Bride of Frankenstein. Malita resembles the bride herself. At one point, she makes the shrunken people dance for her, just like Pretorious' dancing homunculi. And part of the climax even involves someone yelling something about "blowing yourself to atoms"! The ripoff is frankly kind of obvious now that I think about it, and I really can't help but wonder if this was meant as Browning's middle finger to Universal. "You want to make a crazy-ass mad science movie that makes you a ton of money? Fine, I'll just go on to the same thing for MGM!" Of course, it could have been a studio mandate, too. But I want to give Browning some credit.

Sakes. This was nuts. But it's so good to be back.

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Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984), by Chester Novell Turner

Black Devil Doll from Hell opens with this proclamation: "We all have our personal horror stories to tell. May yours never be as devastating as Miss Helen Black's." I'm glad that director Chester Novell Turner decided to include this expression of sentiment. Because now, I dread the day where I find an antique shop that sells a ventriloquist doll which will not only molest me, but call me a bitch over and over again, until I am driven mad. Verily, there is no worse fate on this Earth, save for perhaps enduring an existence without Black Devil Doll from Hell.

Helen Black is an ultra-Christian in a world of sin. Her friends call her up to brag about their gangbangs, and she runs into thieves selling stolen goods out of their car trunks on her walk back from church. She's sanctimonious and has a rather large stick up her ass, but many of her peers are just as bad. It's pretty great that her friends think they can talk about sex with her when she's told them time and time again about her beliefs on such things. Anyway, Helen eventually ends up at an antique shop where she is fascinated by a ventriloquist puppet. The store owner tells her it once belonged to an East Indian sorcerer, and it always finds its way back to the shop--she's sold it four times but it's returned one way or another every time. Helen decides to try her luck, bringing the doll home with her. Soon the doll comes to life and introduces her to the world of rape, consensual sex, and being called "bitch" every five seconds, all at the same time. These scenes are virtually indescribable because it's a woman being fucked by a puppet. When she wakes up she finds the puppet missing, and tries to replace him with flesh-and-blood men. This isn't the same, though, and she eventually remembers that the puppet always returns to the store. But you only get one try at puppet dick, because when she re-purchases the doll and tries to make it fuck her, its eyes light up and she dies from what appears to be brain hemorrhage. Fin.

This movie is upsetting on basically every level. Not only is about puppet-rape and its transformation into puppet-lust, presented as an apparent consequence for religious devotion, but aesthetically and directorially it is also a sensory mess. Scenes end too late, music comes in too earlier. The stylishly awful Casio just sort of barges in with no cares about appropriateness or dialogue mixing. For example, when the antique store owner is giving Helen the doll's backstory, a high-pitched squeal immediately breaks in and starts muting the dialogue through pure aural force. Characters will start talking but a lack of union between the cuts and cues fill their lines with unnatural pauses. And, if you want to see the "ultimate VHS movie" that's still visible through its sea of fuzz, look no further. This is SOV as fuck, and it's a miracle.

Then of course there is the script. Helen puts nylons on the Black Devil Doll from Hell, saying, "These will make you just a shade darker...you'll look more real." She follows this up with, "These are the only eyes to ever see me NEKKID...until we're married." So, is she gonna marry the doll then? When the doll pops out to knock Helen unconscious, not only is he played by a child, but the soundtrack appears to consist of velociraptor noises taken from a nine-year time-portal opening up to a showing of Jurassic Park. It just gets better and better.

The rape scene is simultaneously disturbing and laughable. We get lines like "Now that you have smelled the foulness of my breath, you can know the sweetness of my tongue" and "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" The foul breath in question is represented by filling the dummy's mouth with dry ice. The actors also go all-out on making sex sounds, so it does sound like porn if you look away. But when you look back, it's a two-and-a-half foot tall puppet fucking a human woman. There is no preparation for this.

Somehow, the whole affair does manage to be a little boring at times, due to a large amount of padding, but this simple tale contains enough vomitous horror for everyone and anyone who can dare its cruel mysteries. Just be ready to get shocked to your soul.

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