I'll Spin You a Yarn

Welcome to The Shortening! For February, we adjust the height on our camera to focus on movies featuring vertically challenged villains. If you have your own blog or podcast and plan to do the same, be sure to leave a note in the comment with your links!

Fairy tales are the most public of all domains, but it still feels risky to tackle a property so perfectly immortalized on film already.

Quick Plot: Tim and Emma have recently moved from NYC to a sprawling country estate. Pregnant Emma is taking a break from her successful interior design, while Tim continues to run his wholesale yarn business. 

They are a very, very dynamic couple.

Life gets wild when Emma discovers a basket of yarn sitting in a corner. HOW COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN? she wonders, not satisfied with Tim's casual suggestion that maybe the previous owners forgot to pack it up. She stresses even more when she reads about a bear attack nearby, prompting my favorite cinematic rule: Chekhov's Law of Bear Traps.

Tim has his own reasons to worry. Buried in the yarn is a mask, and as we all know, nothing is more irresistible than putting a mysterious bit of plaster over your face.

Rumpelstiltskin is born! I guess?

Pop quiz: what do you know about this fairy tale? It's certainly one of the darker stories we tell children, teaching them to not make promises they don't intend on keeping (that IS the moral, right?). A quick recap:

A miller brags about his daughter, embellishing her talents to claim that she could spin straw into gold. A jerky king takes him up on it with the bet being his daughter's life or marriage (coincidentally, this is also how I met my husband). The young woman is devastated to realize she's about to be executed when salvation comes via a mysterious imp who does the job for her on one condition: his payment will be her firstborn child. Fast forward to the happy couple's pregnancy interrupted by the little magician coming to collect. He agrees to break the contract if she can figure out his unusual name. Thankfully, this guy is an even bigger braggart than the new princess's father, revealing himself to be Rumpelstiltskin in a drunken dance. She names him, he explodes, and everyone else lives happily ever after, save for the day they have to explain to their children what brought them together. 

Anyway, Rumpelstiltskin is a pretty messed up tale for children. But it's also pretty rad, hence why we have some great adaptations (Faerie Tale Theater, I'm looking at you). It's PERFECT fodder for a cheap horror movie. 

And yet. 

This is bad. This is very, very bad. So bad that it doesn't even understand how to use a public domain horror story to just direct its script. Did writer/director Brett Bentman just see open a library book to a picture of Rumpelstiltskin that showed an imp, pregnant woman, and loom and think that these were the keywords of the story? There's no bargain or bragging. Our only reference to gold comes in Emma's yuppie friend's husband who has a lot to say about crypto, then dies while filming most of his scenes in a completely different location than his killer. 

But that's not the worst of it.

I don't know how to say this easily, so I'm going to take an acting lesson from Rumpelstiltskin's star. Picture me mumbling, shifting weight on my feet, and scrunching my nose as I quickly blurt this out:

This Rumpelstiltskin is not short. 

When Tim, a man of average height, dons this mask, he simply morphs into it and goes about killing at his 5'9 frame. 

It's bullshit.

You may be thinking, "Emily! How can you close out the Shortening with such a villain?" and I excuse myself with three defenses:

1) The character is still constantly referred to as an imp

2) This was the second attempt I took at watching a low budget short-powered horror movie only to discover the killer was NOT SHORT. Folks, I watched a Canadian horror comedy called Scared Shitless which is mostly what you think it was (though slightly better than it sounds). I couldn't do this again

3) By the time I realized this movie wasn't going to pay for any kind of effect to change the height of our villain, I was more than halfway done with the film. Time, like me, is short. I wasn't going to waste it. 

So that's that. 

High Points

At a mere 78 minutes long, I can thankfully say that even if you (for whatever insane reason) decide to watch this movie, at least it won't take much time out of your life. Also, bear traps

Low Points

The fact that I'm trying to remember how the movie ended, and if indeed it actually ended, might be one of many

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate expense reports

The worst spun yarn gives the best stitch definition 

Sometimes you can judge a movie by its cover

Rent/Bury/Buy

I've had a surprisingly successful run of cheap-looking movies being way better than their titles and posters suggested this month. That ends here. If you're STILL a glutton for punishment, you can watch this on Peacock or, not surprisingly, Tubi. Don't say I didn't warn you. perfectly immortalized on film already.

Monkey Trouble

Welcome to The Shortening! For February, we adjust the height on our camera to focus on movies featuring vertically challenged villains. If you have your own blog or podcast and plan to do the same, be sure to leave a note in the comment with your links!

Final Destination, but with a monkey-topped organ grinder in the Death role? Sign me up!

Quick Plot: Hal is having a hard time being twelve. His father Petey disappeared long ago, leaving his pessimistic mother Lois alone to raise Hal and his cruel twin brother Bill. 

Dad's career as a pilot left the family with a bundle of foreign objects and thingamajigs. While rummaging through his supply, the boys discover an organ grinder featuring a maniacally smiling monkey. They think little of it after turning its key, but later that night, their beloved babysitter dies in a freak accident at a hibachi restaurant. 

Hal quickly connects the dots. After one more round of brutal bullying, he snaps and decides to wind up his monkey again in the hopes that it will claim Bill. Unfortunately, he learns too late that the monkey's targets are out of his hands. Instead of his brother, it's his beloved mother who drops dead.

After a few more rounds of odd deaths, Hal and Bill drop the cursed object in a deep well and move on with their rather unhappy lives. 25 years down the road, Hal works a menial job and has a strained relationship with his teen son Petey, so much so that his ex-wife is starting the process of transferring parentage to her new husband (the delightful but underused Elijah Wood). 

Their plans change when Hal discovers his aunt has died in a bizarre but somewhat familiar freak accident. Bill is convinced the monkey has returned, so Hal heads back to his small Maine hometown to investigate. 

From there, a lot of people die.

In increasingly amusing ways.

I've seen most of Osgood Perkins' filmography (the exception being I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House and the new Keeper) and every time, I've found myself wanting to like them so much more than I could. The Blackcoat's Daughter is beautifully filmed but narratively empty, while Gretal & Hansel never came together for me. I'm in the minority on thinking Longlegs was just dumb, and not in a campy intentional way. My working theory is that Perkins is a much better director than he is writer. 

With all that in mind, I went into The Monkey without too much hope. 

For the second time in a row, it was a joy to be proven wrong.

The Monkey is FUN. It's mean but not cruel, and tonally so clear on what kind of story it's telling and how it must be told. This is a black comedy that establishes itself from the very opening scene and constantly reminds us by having virtually every character that isn't Hal (and even to an extent, Hal) be such an inappropriate weirdo that you wonder if Nicolas Cage's Longlegs villain didn't come from this same town. 

High Points

I really do mean it when I say the tone of The Monkey is consistently bananas in the best way. It starts with a bonkers opening scene with Adam Scott, but really solidifies itself during the most inappropriate eulogy you can imagine at the film's first funeral

Low Points

Playing twins should be an actor's dream, but Theo James never really seems to seize the moment

Lessons Learned

The best way to teach your kids about death is to pair the conversation with ice cream cones

The most surefire way to bond with an adolescent boy is via the art of dance

Nothing cramps your swinger lifestyle faster than guardianship of teen twins

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed The Monkey. It knows exactly what it wants to be, and achieves it with a wildly high level of camp. Find it on Hulu when you need a nasty laugh.

It's Another Shorten1ng!

 

Welcome to The Shortening! 

For those new around these parts, February is a special month here at the Doll's House. It's a short month that also happens to host the birthday of your short housekeeper (that's me) who, in case it wasn't clear, REALLY ENJOYS MOVIES ABOUT KILLER LITTLE THINGS.

Dolls, children, insects, leprechauns, whatever goobers are supposed to be... anything under 5'2 and murderous.

Over the last 17 years of this website and 44 years of my life, I've watched almost every killer doll movie with a budget of $500 or more ever made. PICKINS ARE GETTING SLIM.

When I first saw the poster for ROB1N (is it supposed to be caps? Unclear.), I worried that I had truly hit rock bottom. A M3GAN ripoff with a studio pedigree less reputable than The Asylum?

What was I getting myself into?

Turns out, a perfectly okay low budget movie. 

Quick Plot: Robin celebrates his 11th birthday in the traditional Welsh way: slaughtering everyone at his party with an axe before being shot.

34 years later, his wealthy father Aiden has retired from a career in military technology to rest in his sprawling countryside mansion with housekeeper Freya and cat Smokey (don't get attached). A car accident has left Aiden something of an amnesiac, but he appears to have maintained enough of his engineering memories to build a robot reminiscent of his late son.

Enter some competition: the newly engaged nephew Leo and Lexi. Leo holds some resentment for his uncle not adopting him after the death of his parents (seemingly NOT connected to the aforementioned bloody birthday; this family has rough luck). He also owes quite a debt to a violent loan shark. Could Uncle Aiden's legendary safe save the day?

Maybe, but first we have a lot of murders to pile up in the estate's barn! Because for whatever reason, that's where Rob1n decides to do his dirty work. 

Written and directed by Lawrence Fowler, ROB1N easily meets its low ambitions. The film is mostly confined to one location, and Fowler seems to know how to stage violence in shadow and amp up the horror without showing us his limitations. The storyline is probably a little more complicated than it needs to be. I spent far too much time in the first twenty minutes trying to unravel the timeline and still don't actually understand, well, what Rob1n is or how much Aiden is at fault. All that said, I needed a killer doll movie, and I found one that kept me interested for a breezy 90 minutes.

High Points

I won't spoil it here, but ROB1N has a decent twist in its last act that offered a nice ripple to where we thought the story was going

Low Points

There are a LOT of hints that ROB1N was made for less money than M3GAN's hair and wardrobe budget, but none more so than the fact that for whatever reason, almost all of the film's violence occurs in an empty, rarely lit barn

Lessons Learned

Never trust your audience to read text, even when it's on the screen long enough for them to wonder, "is the character going to audibly read this out loud?" before you let said character read it out loud

Welsh law requires a warrant to enter a house, but barns are free reign

More Welsh surprises: people will actually answer phonecalls from strangers

Rent/Bury/Buy

I went into ROB1N with the lowest of expectations, so it's hard to know if my middle of the road rating is genuine or just a "could have been so much worse." Fowler clearly knows how to put together a movie with limited resources. I wish this one had a little more umph or personality (especially in its titular villain) but I found myself pretty invested through the brief runtime. It's not a strong recommendation, but if you, like me, have exhausted cinema's homicidal doll output, then maybe this will somewhat work for you too. 

Making Contact With Joey

 

In my 43 years on this planet, there are a few images that have stuck in my brain in the worst of ways. 

One of them was Joey.

I was probably all of 7 when I caught a glance of this cover art on the shelf at my local sanctuary that was Long Island's largest independent video store. It was my mission to rent everything possible in the horror section, but for probably a good year or two, I circled that box like Pee-Wee side-eying the snake tank.

See, like any reasonable human being, I despise ventriloquist dummies.

I don't have strong memories of actually WATCHING Joey, but the image of that dummy on a dusty VHS cover has never left my brain. 16 years into February's Shortening, I'm simply running out of killer doll movies and hence, once again, I find myself circling that snake tank, knowing the time has come.

Quick Plot: Young Joey is mourning the death of his beloved father. As he longingly speaks to him through a photograph, Joey's pure '80s toy-filled room begins to come alive. Battery-operated cars start driving, balls are rolling, and records spinning. There is no safety to be found under the covers, even if they are part of a Return of the Jedi sheet set.

When Joey's toy phone begins ringing from the closet, things stop being so scary. It's Dad! 

You might not want to tell that to your bullies.

Back at school, other students mock Joey for, you know, talking to his dead dad on the phone. But Joey is undeterred. His toys lead him down a cobweb covered basement inhabited by something I speak of in hushed tones.

(whispers) Fletcher.

LOOK AT THIS THING.

It grunts, and a pile of soft stuffed animals do his bidding. They SMOTHER Joey's favorite, a blinky robot named Scooter who might otherwise protect the poor kid. All he has to do is turn his head, blink those marble eyes, and drop his crank jaw to let out a deep "BLAHHHHHHHHH" noise and lightning strikes. 

I hate dummies.

It's no better when the thing starts talking. He tells Joey his life's story, sitting on the knee of a master of the dark arts named Jonathon Fletcher who found a way to bridge realities. According to the dummy, it's Fletcher who's on the other side of that toy phone, not Joey's dear dead dad. The late magician has been trying to cross back over using both the dummy and Joey's innocence. When the dummy nearly kills Joey's mom, the kid does the only reasonable thing in this situation: tosses it in a hole and buries him. 

Things don't end there, especially since Joey also has to deal with some toy-killing bullies. Thankfully, we're working in a post-Carrie world where a dead dad and evil ventriloquist dummy ALSO include telekinetic powers for our titular hero. 

Before you know it, Making Contact goes full-out Poltergeist by way of E.T., with actual Darth Vader masks and lightsabers thrown in for good effect. How this movie would have ever managed to escape lawsuits is quite the mystery. I haven't even mentioned the Donald Duck that flies through Joey's hallway. 

Directed by Roland Emmerich--yes, that Roland Emmerich--Making Contact is joyfully pandering to an audience looking for blockbuster '80s breadcrumbs. It's also a pretty big, albeit short mess. From a narrative point of view, nothing really adds up. It's never really clear what Fletcher or his dummy is after, or which is actually the villain. You can't think too hard about a movie that was clearly assembled mathematically.

High Points

Yes, the bullies are straight out of Spielberg, but it's kind of nice to have them acknowledge the fact that the boy they've tormented proved himself to be far braver than they ever would be when facing a murderous 1920s era magical dummy

Low Points

You know, the whole "this movie is patched together from references to far better material" thing

Lessons Learned

German children dubbed by Americans singing My Country Tis of Thee will still be out of tune

Fear comes in many forms, including 3' tall hamburgers

Every '80s lonely boy needs a blond sidekick

Rent/Bury/Buy

Making Contact is not what anyone would call a good movie. It was so clearly crafted to pull whatever bits of blockbusters it could and somehow hit a 90 minute mark without getting sued. That being said, anyone with a closeness to these kinds of movies will probably be highly amused by just how hard it was able to go. And if, like me, you find ventriloquist dummies to be pure nightmare fuel, you won't sleep easy. Find it on Tubi before Disney does. 

Shoe Goes There

 

As we continue honoring horror films that feature vertically challenged villains in the month of February (as one is wont to do), I find myself hitting against my first real existential question: does an object that one wears to become TALLER still fit the category? 

Quick Plot: Two teen girls are waiting in an empty subway tunnel when they discover a pair of lonely, flattering hot pink pumps. Like traveling pants, the shoes seem to be the perfect size for both young ladies, causing an immediate brawl over who is the rightful owner. As the victor stalks off, an invisible force follows at her ankles and, well, takes off a few inches.

Elsewhere in Seoul, an unhappy mother/wife named Sun-jae walks out on her distant husband after she discovers his affair. Sun-jae moves her young daughter Tae-su into a questionable apartment (amenities include a wacky old lady who lives in the basement) to start her new life. While riding home on the metro, Sun-jae stumbles upon a familiar pair of heels.

Sun-jae seems to be on the right track rebuilding her life. Her divorce is almost finalized, and she's close to opening her own eye clinic. She also begins a relationship with her interior designer, In-Cheol, much to the chagrin of Tae-soo.

But then there is the matter of those shoes. 

They seem to send out a siren song to any woman, be they 8-year-old Tae-su or Sun-Jae's best friend. The latter wears them a little too long down the street and ends up in an Argento-esque murder scene while Tae-su is hospitalized after a shoe-inspired bleeding frenzy. 

Internet searches, microfiche scrolling, and survivor interviews take us down a Ringu-like trail of discovery. Like many Korean horror films, The Red Shoes feels ten minutes too long, with a bit of a dueling narrative between the shoe's supernatural, ballet-filled history and the more immediate concerns of Sun-jae's very human flaws. Normally I'd never fault a movie for a last act detour into a choreographed dance, but The Red Shoes, dare I say it, didn't really need it. 

Sun-jae is a richly drawn mess of a woman, which I mean as an extreme compliment. Wonderfully played by Kim Hye-su, she hasn't made the best life choices, and that's before she brings home a pair of haunted high heels. Her relationship with her daughter is awkward. She doesn't stand up to her awful husband. She seems like a pretty crappy friend. 

It's actually kind of great! Somehow, mixing her life with a more lyrically melodramatic flashback to frenemy ballerinas in the 1940s takes AWAY from the more intriguing idea that a put-upon wife and mother might just need one sexy pair of heels to unleash something cruel and vain inside. There's plenty to explore, and had The Red Shoes been a little more confident in its core story, it would have been great. 

High Points

My Hoopla-rented copy of The Red Shoes wasn't of the highest image quality, but it was still clear to see how visually interesting a film it is. Director Yong-gyun Kim brings a unique color palette and off-kilter set design to keep the entire film in a slightly otherworldly realm

Low Points

I was never bored during The Red Shoes, but I also never really felt confident that I understood what was going on and why it was happening 

Lessons Learned

Self-pride will always do you wrong

There's an age limit to wearing red

To properly identify a body, one must check the face and feet

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Red Shoes is a messy story, but there's a lot here that I found quite striking. It has a great lead performance, visual intrigue, and some nasty twists fitting of the early aught era but with a slight sense of whimsy from the very nature of this being somewhat of a fairy tale. It's streaming on Hoopla, though the print quality is less than ideal. Keep an eye out for a cleaner version.