Doll Face Meme!

So I'm a woman of a few talents (surviving bad cinema, badminton, Boggle) but like any mere mortal, certain skills elude me. Organization. Social planning. Planning. Planning socialism, you get the idea.

For instance, I announced a contest several months back which still excites me, and yet I've yet to select a winner. What this means is 1) I will do so this weekend and 2) Said winner will receive a special "I'm sorry I'm a procrastinating poophead prize," fear not, not comprised of poop. This also means I will start reviewing the recommended films with intros from the lovely and daring souls who entered.

Also, it's social blogging season and like most times of year, I rarely seem to be 'wid it.' I've had half a Billy Loves Stu  inspired meme sitting in my draft box for a month, 9 entries into my Horror Digest  honored Willies, and terribly lax thank yous for Versatile Blogging. 

But finally, I found a trend I can easily hop onto! No, not Bandz or street dancing (well, kind of street dancing...hint hint bonus episode of the GleeKast coming at you in 3D!) but the Screen Grab Meme Spectacular bestowed upon me by none other than the baton-twirling BJ-C of Day of the Woman .  Bloggers are ordered to grab a few images with one unifying theme. Now I combed through my globby brain for days trying to figure out what would be appropriate before finally bashing my own noggin with a frying pan for overlooking the obvious.

Starting with The Godfather of Dollinema...

whose name need not be said

Baby Oopsy Daisy, Demonic Toys

Dolly Dearest, Chucky's first true love

Cowboy Curtis (I'm guessing), from Stuart Gordon's Dolls

My Cheat (not screen grab of cinema)

Billy Baloney, Pee-Wee Herman's naughty friend. True story: despite my doll phobia, this thing lived in my house all through my childhood. As recently as three years ago, my mother kept it on top of the refrigerator and would occasionally bring it to the dinner table with the prime aim of making me uncomfortable.

Dream Warriors Got No Strings!

One of the eeriest (if memory serves) PG-Rated films of all time, Roland Emmerich's (yes, that Roland Emmerich) Joey, aka Making Contact

Further proof that all dummies are evil: Anthony Hopkins and Fats, Magic 

May and Suzy

The soon-to-be-Criterioned Night of the Hunter

It takes a bad man to combine clowns with dolls. 

Steven Spielberg, I see your true soul.

Blade, the respectable leader of the Puppet Master series

Mannequins = Dolls all grown up.

Mannequins=me crying in the corner

Tourist Trap 

An underrated anthology classic, Tales From the Hood

And we conclude with the question that's plagued mankind throughout the ages:

How'd it get buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurned?

I was supposed to use this space to tag fellow bloggers to make them work, but how can I focus on choosing who to assign Googling to when the best YouTube compilation of all time is screaming at me?

Like Beauty & the Beast, but with more killing

What happens in horror when common household goods get angry? Generally, really great things. For the audience. Observe:

The Refrigerator

Yes, this movie exists and yes, it’s fabulous. A young couple moves into a furnished Brooklyn apartment and find a vintage refrigerator-freezer welcoming them with a plate of cheese. Too good to be true? Naturally, as the titular appliance turns out to be a portal to hell (ironic, cause you know...refrigerators are cold). The fridge doesn’t do much in the way of menace, other than hiding your keys and occasionally closing back and forth on human bodies, but the film itself is quite a hoot. Plus, for extra bonus points, there’s a homicidal blender, house fan, and garbage can (that naturally kills by...closing back and forth on human limbs).\n\n

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

How, you might ask yourself, could one possibly make a monster out of that giant rectangle you snuggle atop every evening? Apparently, with very little talent and money. Make no mistake: Death Bed is a terrible, terrible film that barely can be called one. Characters never actually speak to each other, instead taking turns narrating their emotions. No relationships make any sense. And the bed, ahhhhh the bed. It eats. Should you dare lie down for a nap, expect to be sucked inside so that director George Barry can show off the film’s sole special effect: gooey yellow plasma dissolving whatever floats. It doesn't quite end there, as we learn that while Death Beds don't dream of electric sheep, they do fantasize about spinning newspaper reels that highlight their killing sprees on the cover. It's kind of adorable.

Tourist Trap

Though it’s the eerie mannequins and evil mannequin maker responsible for most of the terror in this underrated 1979 classic, Tourist Trap does open with some very angry living room furniture, including a Beauty and the Beast-esque armoire armed with an arsenal of weaponry. Beware self-closing windows, flying dishes, and of course, the occasional knife with the mind of its own.

The Mangler

Cynics would say The Mangler was most likely inspired by Stephen King’s need for a new swimming pool. We can imagine America’s most successful horror novelist gazing around the house, hungry for some inspiration and thinking “well, nobody’s ever done a killer washing machine before.” I’ll give him and director Mick Garris a little more credit for eventually ending up with The Mangler, mostly because for all the film’s failings, it does find some innovation in using not just your average Maytag. Set in an industrial laundromat that thirsts for the blood of virgins, The Mangler epitomizes the cheap messiness of '90s horror, for better and worse. And hey: a killer ice machine costars. Anyone else smell a spinoff?

Maximum Overdrive

In 1986, a comet hits the world, mechanical objects of all shapes and sizes go postal, and Stephen King does a whole lot of cocaine. The results of all three are oddly fabulous, as everything from arcade games to a drawbridge take their pent-up rage against all things human (and in the case of a toy car, canine). Sure, the main attraction and biggest baddies is the well-trained army of mack trucks that round up a ragtag band of survivors at a gas station, but we should never forget that for all its bad movieness, Maximum Overdrive does boast a few unique kills. Who knew playing arcade games could be so dangerous?

Final Destination

Technically, it's more of an Invisible Man version of the Grim Reaper that does most of the slaughtering in this modern franchise, but considering the fact that every installment featured an inanimate killer, I couldn't not include it on this list. Examine:

Part 1: Killer water spill, Ginsu knives, violent computer

Part 2: Naughty sink holds jerk hostage in a complicated series of events leading to his eventual death via fire escape. The stovetop serves as an accomplice.

Part 3: Frisky tanning beds

Part 4: Clumsy lawnmower, cheeky chair

Poltergeist

It was not my intention to include any form of satanic or demon possessed doll on this list, as that warrants an entire encyclopedia of films that can't even be touched here. So ignore, for a moment, the laughing clown-faced elephant in the room and instead consider the many tangible and typically household objects turned angry meanies: a swimming pool, bucket o' chicken, kitchen chair, braces (Part 2) and mirrors (Part 3). This house can't be clean if you're afraid to touch the vacuum!

I expect--and really, kind of hope--I’ve missed an entire pantry worth of violent appliance films. Share yours below...right after you shut down the power and dispose of all batteries.

Vay-Slay-tion...eh, it's vacation; I can't be bothered to make a clever title

There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing a vacation plan. Too bad most are simply one-way tickets taking you straight into horror movie hell. 

Examine:

Cabin In the Woods

Sometimes you just want to get away from it all, snuggle into a flannel and tap into your inner woodsy hermit. Too bad this usually ends in zombification, skin-rotting disease, sexual abuse via forestry or genital mutilation. What, you think Evil Dead, Cabin Fever, and Lars Von Trier's Antichrist are exceptions to the rule?

Athletic Excursions

Most of us prefer to exercise our alcohol tolerance during a vacation, but there are the bizarre few who escape to foreign lands in order to best be active. Serves these physical overachievers right for encountering such horrors. Robert Fuest's 1970 chiller, And Soon the Darkness, follows two fit young women exploring the French countryside via bicycle, working their legs so much that it becomes impossible to run away from the mysterious menace hunting their ten-speed path. Similarly, the kickass girl group at the center of The Descent could be enjoying leisure tours of the Appalachian Mountains, but sadly, the only thing they learned from Deliverance was that a sleeveless red leather jacket looks good in the wilderness.

Snowy Escape

If you're like me, you see the sweltering heat of summer as a preview of hell, making a winter getaway in June as close as you'll come to the pearly gates. It makes perfect sense for the Norwegian med students to snowmobile their way through Dead Snow while on a school break; it's just a shame their drinking games get interrupted by Nazi zombies. Things could be worse. They could be fighting their own flesh and blood, much like the ill-fated parents of The Children, another winter-break horror that ends in doom.

Island Adventure

Because you know how much directors like the contrast of blood on snow, you wise up and hit the sand somewhere safe where no real-life horror can ever find you. Of course what you get instead is generally a supernatural menace thirsting for your suntanned flesh. Look to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie for a pair of innocent (just slightly nude) scuba divers thrown into an undead infested Caribbean paradise. And no, don’t assume you’re safe just because you already survived a harrowing horror movie fate. Poor Sheriff Tiler has to rebattle the titular Jack Frost in the 2000 sequel to the world’s greatest film about a killer snowman. Yes, there’s a killer snowman in the tropics. Don’t think too hard. You’re on vacation.

Cruisin

As long as you’re immune to seasickness, why wouldn’t you hop on board a cruise ship? Live music, shuffleboard, and daily all-you-can-eat buffet trips...What’s the catch? Nothing really. Just the minor inconvenience of being stalked and slaughtered by a tall dude with a machete (if, of course, you’re referring to the first 3/4 of Jason Takes Manhattan). Rather keep your itinerary in your own hands? It’s hardly safer, at least if you’re weak to the charms of Billy Zane (and who isn’t?). That’s the lesson learned by Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in 1989’s Dead Calm, and unless you plan on having sex with a psychopath and aiming a bow and arrow at your beloved pooch, I advise you observe it carefully.

Road Trip Fun

See America the way Henry Ford intended with a cross-country road trip accompanied by hours of I Spy. One can only cycle through 99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall so many times before the  need for a new adventure rises, at which point there are plenty of inbred cannibals (Wrong Turn), possessed mannequins (Tourist Trap) and dysfunctional psychotic families (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) waiting to make your vacation a little more memorable.

I ate his liver with some wood chips and a nice chianti

Unless I’m crunching on nachos, I don’t normally make noises while watching films. No yelps, rare gasps. I couldn’t even tell you what my actual scream sounded like, which I suppose is a good thing although it seems, as a horror fan, somewhat sad.

Upon watching the trailer for Magic, I realized something. As I released loud “ew. ew. ew. agh. eiahhhhhh”s  at seeing a closeup of a smiling ventriloquist’s dummy taunt the audience--or just me!--with a nonsenical poem, it dawned on me that the last time I made such noises involved plastic jaws dropping and moaning in David Schmoeller’s Tourist Trap.


Big shocker: Dolls scare me.

But you know what? Watch this:

And convince me your pants are clean.

Quick Plot:

A young Anthony Hopkins plays Cork, a struggling magician in need of a gimmick. Enter Fats, his foul-mouthed wooden doppleganger and genuine crowd pleaser. A few sold-out NYC shows and a warm fuzzy agent Ben "Gangrene" (played by the most comforting actor in cinema history, Burgess Meredith) later, Cork and Fats get an NBC pilot deal. Fame, fortune, and funny voices all in one!

Naturally, there’s a catch. Before signing the Standard Rich And Famous Contract, Cork is supposed to take a medical test. He refuses on the grounds of his ‘principles,’ which we can infer may have something to do with his strange and extremely fraternal relationship with the wooden man quipping on his knee.

Cork flees the big bad city and returns to his childhood home in search of Peggy Ann Snow (Ann Margret!), the girl that got away. Now married to an outdoorsy husband who travels a lot, Peggy is quickly charmed by Cork’s newfound confidence and outspoken puppet companion. They make sweet swelling-soundtrack worthy love while ominous harmonica cues capture a possibly jealous Fats unamused by his friend’s diversion.

Is Fats a Chucky-esque killer with New Yawk charm, or a mere scapegoat for the unstable mind of the unstable accented Cork? The answer is fairly obvious and not really part of a twist, but the way director RIchard Attenborough (yes, the amber cane wielding John Hammond from Jurassic Park) plays with the pair’s relationship is always intriguing. Hopkins is a marvel, particularly when speaking in the insanely terrifying cackle of a large-headed doll. Mostly though, Magic is more disturbing than jumpy.

Yes, every single closeup of that wooden monster made me wince. I mean, look at the thing:

Ick ew ick aghhhh. 


But putting aside personal fears-

Jeez!

Let’s focus on the strange sadness of Cork’s fragile mind. While we never get much of a backstory, it’s clear that Fats isn’t the best influence on our shy magician. Sure, he wears matching sweater sets--

(which would be adorable if it wasn’t disgustingly terrifying)

but like the cool guy in any tale, Fats has the power to turn his weaker-willed friend into something fearsome. Nobody knows this better than Gangrene who, in the film’s most arresting scene, challenges Cork to go five minutes without being interrupted by Fats. It’s the most uncomfortable segment I’ve seen in some time.

Credit also goes to novelist/screenwriter William Goldman for crafting such a neat and haunting dynamic. Couple that with the careful notes played by Hopkins--note the little things, like how his voice slowly starts to resemble Fats as his madness becomes more apparent--and the fine direction by Attenborough and you have an unnerving and tragic tale.

High Points

Ann Margaret’s presence is solid (and her breasts are quite fabulous), Hopkins is super as Cork and all the more impressive as twisted voice of Fats (odd that the actor can do an American accent in dummy form but not human), but it’s Meredith who truly makes Magic something truly, well, magical. Part of it may be my personal attachment to the actor, who made me cry in everything from Rocky to an animated version of Puff the Magic Dragon I got for free at Wendy’s, but the actor’s work as the sharp, but compassionate agent brings out the true tragedy of Cork’s state of mind

Mild Spoiler:

Although the body count is minimal, the two major kills are incredibly frightening. The camera shots of Fats swinging his surprisingly heavy body towards the camera and later, holding a tiny switchblade in his tiny non-opposable fingers is enough to give a hardened doll-watcher like me nightmares

Low Points

I suppose I could quibble with the fuzzy explanation of Fats' birth and Cork's lonely childhood. While we can infer from a very '70s flashback that Cork's dad was less than impressed by his son's whittling, I wanted a little more history of just how something as terrifying as Fats could come to be 

Lessons Learned

The definition of cute=Ronald Regan, at least according to dummies

Having a limey dad (who oddly enough, enjoys American football) and growing up in the Catskills will cause you to speak with a distinctively British accent unless, of course, you’re throwing your voice


NYC cab drivers are crappy secret keepers

Lessons From the Holy Book of Hollywood Agents

Never forget that an actor killed Lincoln

No man must ever touch a Rolls but a Rolls man

Rent/Bury/Buy

While Magic is more akin to Psycho than Child’s Play, I still find myself twitching nervously every time I see this:

The film is worth a careful watch for a whole lot of reasons, from its surprising pedigree to sad themes and absolutely positively undeniably creepy villain. The DVD has several features, the best of which is a 30 minute short that details the history of ventriloquism (always evil) and the making of Magic, including neat tidbits about how even Hannibal Lector was terrified of the dummy designed to bear a slight resemblance to his own mug. Fats himself gets the last lines, and while his self-aware attitude is funny in the latter Chucky style, he remains, in every moment of his existence, the kind of thing that makes me go agh. 

and stop it!

Excuse me while I go tend to my nightmares.

There Is a Place Between Heaven and Hell: It's Called Boredom

Few things are sadder than a filmmaker who debuted with a unique, creepy, and haunting little thriller making a piece of cinematic--actually, straight-to-video-matic--rotten oatmeal twelve years later. (I say oatmeal because it has the bland, thick, and generally hard-to-get-through texture and feels akin to a film that just sits in your stomach without a single bright spot of tastiness.)


Netherworld is such a bowl of emptiness, a 1992 release from Full Moon Entertainment, directed by Tourist Trap and Puppet Master’s maestro David Schmoeller. It’s an aggressively dull little “horror” that seems determined to squander any potential it builds. I imagine the filmmakers began the process by reading about Netherworlds in some mythology textbook, thinking them interesting and a ripe concept for a film, then falling asleep for three years and waking up on set in the middle of production to say “Oh. So we’re making this, eh?”

Quick Plot: A geeky young virgin buys his way into a Louisianian brothel, leading us through a dank maze inhabited by the world’s fugliest Marilyn Monroe impersonator. The real story, however, moves to a saucy prostitute getting raped by a nonpaying customer until security--in the form of a disembodied hand with carnivorously phallic fingers--violates his face. 

It’s actually a decent start but sadly, the five minute prologue is as good as the film could possibly dream of being. We’re soon introduced to Corey Thornton (Michael Bendetti), a young man of apparently no past personality save for the fact that he’s the “crackling image” of his long dead father. Corey arrives to stake his claim (I guess) on Pops’ sprawling N’Orleans estate, eager to read an old journal while drooling over the new caretaker’s underage daughter. Dad’s diary soon reveals that he’s been trapped in some sort of death dimension (a netherworld, perhaps? mmhmhmhm?) and Corey must visit a local hooker Pops used to shag to get him out.

Now. I’ve never sought out a film for its sexual content and could generally care less if an unrated direct-to-video thriller utilizes its lack of a rating, but I do believe Netherworld features the lamest, tamest, and most incredibly awful sex scene I’ve seen in quite some time. For starters, it involves Bendetti, an actor who seems like the rejected older brother of the London twins who was busy watching paint dry while mid 90s audiences tried to decide who was Jason and who was Jeremy. His costar, Denise Gentile, exudes a mild spritz of heat, but since she’s previously been introduced as “the most sensual woman in the world,” are we supposed to buy that she’d keep her robe strategically covering her girly parts and use her flat early ‘90s perm to catch what’s left? Her biggest move is to softly touch Corey’s thigh. His signature is the boob cup. And whoa, the guardian of hell is named Delores? No offense to any Delori out there, but such a name calls to mind a bowling league captain before an erotic pinup girl. 

Oh, and did I mention the tepid kissing/sort of nude/not hot scene is cut with elevator style smooth jazz and a slow motion slow dance between Delores--dressed in a puffy white fringed Dallas inspired gown--and Corey’s 60 year old father? ‘Cause that’s what most witch guardians of hell fantasize about when rolling an ice cube over young men’s thighs. 

Yes, there is an ice cube. And no, it does not melt. That’s the amount of heat generated here. 

The biggest problem with a film too blah to even have good problems is that there is absolutely no reason for the audience to actually watch it. Bendetti is a tall pretty boy with the charisma of a DMV employee trying out for a community theater (and possibly named Delores), and yet we’re instantly supposed to follow him into an ill-defined underworld. The central romance is, I think, between the slick Corey and a character introduced as jailbait, so it’s nearly impossible to offer the would-be couple any sort of blessing, not to mention the fact that their chemistry is less kinetic than what happens inside a can of flat seltzer. Dialogue gets as exciting as this:

Corey: Can you teach me what I need to know?

Delores: I’ll teach you everything I know. About your body. Your mind. Your soul.

Corey: I’ll do anything, as long as you teach me what i need to know

Delores: I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you everything

Quentin Tarantino, watch your hunched-from-years-behind-a-video-store-counter back. This banter is hotter than dry ice.

High Points

I did dig a graphic, if makeup effects-y face ripoff in the film’s center. If only I had any reason whatsoever to care about the victim (or anybody else in Netherworld)

As someone with thesaurus.com bookmarked, I’m impressed by Schmoeller’s ability to use about 73 different adjectives to describe “mystical” in Thornton’s journal entry

Low Points

The only thing good about Michael Bendetti is that he has the kind of name you could hear a husky voiced trailer narrator reading off in a slightly menacing way

Why does a film like Netherworld feel the need for a two minute opening credits sequence when there’s nothing but a black screen to show? Even The Devil’s Rain found a few stock photos to toss under the names, giving us something to look forward to. Maybe it was the movie’s way of setting a blackened tone before we got remotely excited

Lessons Learned

The souls of bad people are stored in birds. Perhaps we should reinstall the tradition of throwing avian stomach-exploding rice at weddings once more

The neatest thing about having sex with your father’s prostitute mistress is that you’ll earn a colorful feather in your ear

Grabbing the breast of a 16 year old southern belle will summon all sorts of inner strength

Always dance with the dirty old redneck that likes to provide the jump scares

Rent/Bury/Buy

Why I rented this is foggy, but the day after my email informed me of its Netflixed delivery date, I came upon the badass blogger T.L. Bugg’s (of The Lightning Bug's Lair ) spot-on review of just how awful Netherworld was. With a heavy sigh and a hearty serving of pumpkin ale, I soon learned no amount of seasonal beer could make it better. And worst of all, Netherworld isn’t your so-bad-it’s-good Fear of Clowns or campily weird Demonic Toys. It’s just a bad, lazy, and dull 87 minutes that has no right to be seen, much less made by a director capable of so much more. When your best performances involves a filmmaker cameo demonstrating a neat party trick and an animatronic parrot on loan from Disneyland’s Enchanted TIki Room, you know your film needs a good old fashioned burial.