Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Sam Panico Six people are stranded at a mansion in the English countryside — David Bower and Rosemary Bower (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, wife of Stuart Gordon), two totally selfish and uncaring parents, and their daughter Judy. Plus, we have nice guy Ralph and two British punk rock hitchhikers, Isabel (played by Bunty Bailey, who starred in two landmark music videos for the band A-Ha) and Enid.The mansion is owned by Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke (Hilary Mason, the blind psychic from Don't Look Now), toy makers who fill their home with their creations. As Judy had to give up her old teddy bear by her evil stepmother, they give her a new doll, Mr. Punch.We soon discover that the dolls are alive and love to destroy humans — the eviler the better. The two girls try to steal antiques and get their faces smashed in and shot by toy soldiers before becoming dolls themselves. Rosemary is attacked by the dolls, then leaps out a window to her death. Her body is brought back to the house, leading David to believe Ralph is a killer.Meanwhile, Judy reveals to Ralph that the dolls are alive and talks them into saving his life. David attacks, knocking out his daughter and the man he blames for his wife's death, but the dolls save them. Mr. Punch battles David but is destroyed.The old owners of the house reveal themselves and explain that the house tests people. Either they pass — like Ralph and Judy. Or they fail, like everyone else, and are turned into dolls. It just depends on who believes in the power of childhood. David now becomes Judy's new doll, Judy picks Ralph to be her new dad and she leaves for home.Meanwhile, we see all the evil folks as dolls on the shelf as new people get stuck outside the house and the cycle begins again.Dolls is a Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Castle Freak) film and feels like a test run for the Demonic Toys movies. There are some moments of great invention, like the giant evil teddy bear and the eyeballs popping out of the punk girl. It was a theatrical release that actually didn't do well, but found new life on video — where a young version of my wife found it and rented it just about every day.Read more at https://bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/09/25/dolls-1987/

darksyde-63508 I remember first seeing this movie as a little kid,and that the cover for it scared the crap out of me. The movie itself did as well, and was one of the contributing factors to my life long fear of dolls. I found it on DVD a few years back in a used movie store, bought it, and found I still enjoyed it. Along the years I lost it some how, and have been unable to find it again until I found and got a blu ray copy of it on Amazon Now onto the actual movie While I still greatly enjoy the movie, I notice now things about it that I didn't really notice when I was younger. First off, you'd think it was a low budget movie made by the likes of Full Moon Productions or Troma, not a big budget movie studio. Second, the acting is horrible. Again, something you'd expect from a low budget studio, not a big name one. Since this is an older movie, a lot of the scares seem cheesy and ineffective. For example in the opening scene where in a day dream, a little girls stuffed teddy bear rips apart her prickish parents. You can obviously tell that the bear is someone in a bad costume. But there are some fairly effects scenes, like one that's always stuck in my mind, like where one of the girls is turned into a living doll and plucks out her own eyeballs. This scene is also the cover for the old DVD version. The dolls themselves remind me of the ones in the "Puppet Master" series. Not that that's a bad thing, its just not that original of an idea. All in all, this is a good old fashioned horror flick that while it has its flaws, its still highly enjoyable.

Johan Louwet I have seen this movie multiple times and I with every viewing I love it even more. The plot is pretty simple and straightforward. To me it is more than a movie where dolls just kill people. No these dolls don't just randomly pick their victims, they really do have a sense of justice. The movement of the dolls is done with stop-motion techniques and convincingly as if they really are alive. The casting is great: the old toymaker and his wife, little Judy, her father and stepmother, kid at heart Ralph and rock chicks Enid and Isabel, this small cast worked wonderfully well together. Kudos to writer and director to make such a coherent and likable piece of art. At last a movie about killer dolls that goes deeper than the typical boring slasher like Child's Play. Has grown into one of my favorites in a short time. If it only had some longer duration...

gavin6942 A group of people stop by a mansion during a storm and discover two magical toy makers, and their haunted collection of dolls.While this is a Stuart Gordon film, and therefore one of Empire's better pictures, it has the classic signs of a Charlie Band film, too. Killer dolls? The same theme Band has returned to almost twenty times now. One would have to assume he must have had a hand in the story. And, to some degree, he did. Allegedly, Band created a poster of a killer doll and asked writer Ed Naha ("Troll") to turn that single image into a script. Band also wanted this film to be like "Trilogy of Terror", though this was not followed as strictly as it could have been.Gordon had a three-picture deal with Empire Pictures, and had "Dolls" hoisted on him to do on the same set he was already going to do "From Beyond". ("Dolls" ended up actually being made first, shot in 1985 but not released for two years.) So it seems that "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond" were more Gordon, with this one just being part of a contract.Gordon calls the story a "fairytale", something of a take on "Hansel and Gretel". Gordon had been reading child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment", whereas writer Ed Naha had not intended any such thing and was ignorant of fairy tales. Naha was actually inspired in part by "Curse of the Cat People", the sequel to Val Lewton's 1940s classic.The casting is solid. Stuart's wife Carolyn Purdy and actor Ian Patrick Williams came out of Gordon's Organic Theater in Chicago, so they had already worked together a few times. Guy Rolfe was the veteran actor, as well as a descendant of Pocahontas and had previously been a boxer and race car driver. His career went back decades, with such stand-outs as Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out" and William Castle's "Mr. Sardonicus". Unfortunately, he finished out his career with four "Puppet Master" films. Hilary Mason had a decent career, too, appearing in Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now".Pay attention to the look and feel. Gordon had cinematographer Mac Ahlberg low camera angles to give a kid's point of view. (Ahlberg, incidentally, was hired on by Band, not Gordon.)Overall, this is a great film that has stood up pretty well. Watching it years apart and audiences will still remember it as clearly as the first time -- the girl, Ralph, Teddy, Punch... it is just one of those films that sticks in your mind and builds a nest. Exactly what the British punk rock girls were doing there is unclear, but maybe that made sense in the 1980s.Thanks to Scream Factory (possibly the best horror distributor out there), this film got the deluxe treatment. Two audio commentaries, some featurettes (including a mini-documentary). Just about everything you would want to know about this film can be revealed. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this film was Ed Naha teaming up again with Gordon and Brian Yuzna to write "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" (1989). Exactly how that came about is a whole other story, though.