There are horror movies about killer dolls, and then there is Dolls, a movie that looks at the inherent creepiness of tiny porcelain people staring at you from a shelf and says, correctly, those little fuckers absolutely come alive after midnight. Stuart Gordon’s 1987 follow-up to Re-Animator and From Beyond is another creature entirely, though. Instead of Lovecraftian slime, exploding heads, and Barbara Crampton getting dragged into increasingly questionable situations, Gordon delivers a nasty little fairy tale disguised as a killer-toy movie. It is colorful, funny, surprisingly sweet, occasionally vicious, and populated by enough homicidal dolls to make you reconsider every childhood toy currently decomposing in your parents’ attic. Among the wonderfully disreputable movies collected in Arrow Video’s Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams, Dolls might be the one most likely to make you wonder why the hell it isn’t talked about more often.
A violent storm strands young Judy, her asshole father David, and his equally unpleasant girlfriend Rosemary at an isolated mansion belonging to elderly toy makers Gabriel and Hilary Hartwick. Soon they are joined by the wonderfully childlike Ralph and a pair of punk hitchhikers, and before long everyone settles in for what should be an uncomfortable but survivable night. Except the Hartwicks make dolls. Lots and lots and lots of dolls. They sit on shelves. They occupy cabinets. They watch from corners. Their little glass eyes seem to follow everyone around the room because of course they fucking do. Judy, being a child, accepts the possibility that the dolls might be alive almost immediately. Ralph, being one of the few adults in the movie whose imagination hasn’t been strangled to death, isn't far behind. Everyone else requires considerably more convincing, usually involving tiny knives, saws, hammers, and the realization that being six inches tall doesn't prevent something from murdering the absolute shit out of you.
What makes Dolls work so beautifully is Gordon’s refusal to treat any of this as a joke. The premise is ridiculous; the movie isn’t. The dolls are brought to life through puppetry, stop-motion animation, mechanical effects, and good old-fashioned cinematic trickery, and the handmade quality makes them infinitely creepier than anything a computer could manufacture. They move imperfectly. Their faces twitch. Their heads turn. Their little hands clutch weapons. And when a whole army of the bastards begins moving together, Dolls taps into something wonderfully primal. Every kid has stared at a toy in a dark bedroom and wondered whether it moved when they weren’t looking. Gordon simply confirms our childhood suspicions and then gives the little fucker a knife.
Yet underneath the bloodshed is something unexpectedly sincere. Dolls actually believes in childhood—not merely being young, but retaining the ability to imagine, wonder, play, and accept that the impossible might occasionally wander into the room. Ralph looks ridiculous carrying around a teddy bear until it becomes clear that his willingness to remain childlike might be the very thing keeping him alive. Judy understands the Hartwicks and their creations because she hasn't yet learned the adult habit of dismissing everything that cannot be rationally explained. Meanwhile, the cruel, greedy, selfish adults are dealt with according to the merciless logic of fairy tales, where being an asshole isn't merely a personality defect; it can get you dismembered by toys. The movie isn't especially subtle about any of this, but subtlety would only get in the way of watching a tiny porcelain bastard drag a corpse across the floor.
And then there are Guy Rolfe and Hilary Mason as Gabriel and Hilary Hartwick, who understand exactly what movie they’re inhabiting. Rolfe especially brings a twinkling ambiguity to Gabriel. He could be Santa Claus. He could be a wizard. He could be the Devil running a retirement hobby shop. Maybe he’s all three. Gordon wisely refuses to explain too much, allowing the mansion to operate according to fairy-tale rules rather than horror-movie logistics. Charles Band’s Empire Pictures may have been operating on budgets held together with duct tape and optimism, but Gordon and his collaborators make every dollar visible. The sets are atmospheric, the lighting is rich, Richard Band’s score knows when to become playful and when to become sinister, and the effects crew turns the house into one enormous practical-effects playground.
That is ultimately why Dolls survives while so many other VHS-era killer-toy movies became little more than faded box art. There is an actual movie underneath the gimmick. It has a point of view. It has affection for its characters—well, some of them—and genuine enthusiasm for the macabre. It can be funny without mocking itself, sentimental without becoming syrupy, and gruesome without abandoning the fairy-tale atmosphere holding everything together. Dolls understands that childhood imagination and childhood terror come from exactly the same place: the absolute certainty that when the bedroom goes dark, the things around you might still be awake. Stuart Gordon takes that fear, winds it up, puts a tiny knife in its hand, and lets the little bastard loose. Thirty-nine years later, it still cuts.
4Blu-ray Edition
Home Video Distributor: Arrow Films
Available on Blu-ray - October 12, 2021
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English
Video: 1080p
Audio: English: LPCM 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single-disc set
Region Encoding: Blu-ray locked to Region A
A violent storm. A mysterious mansion. A kindly old couple with a house full of handmade toys. What could possibly go wrong? When six stranded travelers seek shelter in the isolated home of dollmakers Gabriel and Hilary Hartwick, they quickly discover that their hosts' creations have minds—and murderous intentions—of their own. Directed by Re-Animator and From Beyond filmmaker Stuart Gordon, Dolls transforms childhood imagination into a wickedly gruesome fairy tale where good children are rewarded, bad adults are punished, and the toys most definitely come out after dark.
VIDEO
Arrow presents Dolls in 1080p High Definition from a new 2K restoration, and this is exactly the sort of movie that benefits from the additional attention. Gordon and cinematographer Mac Ahlberg created something far richer-looking than its modest Empire Pictures origins might suggest, filling the Hartwick mansion with warm light, deep shadows, colorful rooms, and shelves overflowing with increasingly suspicious little bastards.
The transfer retains a pleasing filmic texture while allowing the production design and practical effects to shine. Most importantly, the restoration doesn't make the mistake of polishing away the handmade character of the effects. The puppets, stop-motion animation, makeup, miniature work, and mechanical dolls still look like physical objects occupying physical spaces, which remains a huge part of the movie's charm.
AUDIO
The lossless audio presentation handles Richard Band's wonderfully mischievous score particularly well, balancing its fairy-tale qualities against the increasingly nasty business unfolding inside the mansion. Dialogue remains clean and intelligible, while thunder, breaking glass, scurrying little feet, tiny weapons, screams, and the assorted sounds of adults being violently corrected by six-inch moral authorities come through with satisfying clarity.
Dolls isn't a movie that requires a room-shaking modern remix to work; its soundscape is intimate, theatrical, and deliberately old-fashioned, complementing Gordon's twisted bedtime-story atmosphere nicely. Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are also included.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- See Below for Details
Special Features:
Arrow gives Dolls the kind of treatment that makes this Empire of Screams collection such a pleasure to dig through. The supplements revisit the making of Gordon's wonderfully warped fairy tale through archival and newly assembled material involving the filmmakers, performers, and effects artists responsible for bringing the Hartwicks' miniature army to life. Particular attention is paid to the practical craftsmanship behind the dolls themselves—the puppetry, mechanical effects, stop-motion work, and other wonderfully analog tricks that remain the movie's greatest visual attraction.
Commentary material provides additional production history and perspective on Gordon's work with Empire Pictures, while trailers, promotional material, and an image gallery further document the film's journey from theatrical oddity to video-store favorite. As with the other films in the collection, Arrow's presentation treats Dolls not as disposable VHS nostalgia but as a movie worth preserving, examining, and celebrating—which, considering how good the damn thing still is, feels entirely appropriate.
- Audio commentary with director Stuart Gordon and writer Ed Naha
- Audio commentary with cast members Stephen Lee, Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and Carrie Lorraine
- Assembling Dolls — archive featurette featuring interviews with members of the cast and crew
- Toys of Terror: The Making of Dolls — archive making-of featurette
- Film-to-Storyboard Comparison
- Original theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork
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