Silent Doll

 

 (imdb)

THE DOLL-1919-In this silent fairy tale from Germany, the Baron (Max Kronert) wants his nephew Lancelot to marry and carry on his bloodline. Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), a real mama's boy starts crying at the thought of matrimony. There's a frenzied chase after Lancelot by all the eligible women in town. He seeks shelter in a monastery run by some glutinous monks who have no money. When they read that the Baron is offering Lancelot 300,000 francs for him to come home and marry, the greedy monks come up with a plan to have Lance marry a mechanical doll. A nutty inventor (Victor Janson) has made a whole batch of them including one that looks like his daughter Ossi (Ossi Oswalda). 

Of course, that's the one Lance wants. Unfortunately, the inventor's abused assistant breaks it and the real Ossi has to stand in. When the inventor finds out the deception his hair turns gray. Lancelot marries her and goes back to the monks. She causes quite a distraction dancing with them. When it's discovered that Ossi is human, she and Lancelot fall in love. 

Director/co-scripter Ernst Lubitsch later came to America and made movies like THE MERRY WIDOW (1935), NINOTCHKA (1939) and HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943).

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Bad...

 

 (moviesandmania.com)

ANNA-2017-Two obnoxious imbeciles steal a cursed doll from a private museum. The dialogue is ridiculous and most of it is so dark you can't see anything. Don't waste your time. The director Michael Crum also made LAKE FEAR (2014) and ANNA 2 (2019).

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Amicus Anthology

 

 (imdb)

ASYLUM-1972-A young Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) has a job interview in an insane asylum where the head doctor Rutherford has gone insane and is now a patient. Or so says his replacement (Patrick Magee). He says if Martin can identify the loony doc from the other patients, he gets a position.

The first story, “Frozen Fear” is related by Bonnie (Barbara Parkins) and how her lover Walter (Richard Todd) murdered his wife with an ax, chopped up her body and put it in a freezer. The pieces come back to life and kill hubby. Bonnie has to fight the pieces too and winds up insane and disfigured.

Then comes the tale “The Weird Tailor”. Bruno (Barry Morse), a tailor who can't pay his rent, is visited by a Mr. Smith (Peter Cushing) who wants the tailor to make a special suit for his son. He needs the suit to bring his son back to life. After he accidentally kills Smith, Bruno wants to burn the suit. His wife (Ann Firbank) wants to call the police. Fortunately, she puts the suit on Otto the dummy. An episode of TV's "Thriller" is based on the same story.

In the third story “Lucy Comes to Stay”, a woman named Barbara (Charlotte Rampling) comes to live with her stuffy brother George (James Villiers) after a mental breakdown. She has an annoyingly cheerful nurse called Higgins (Megs Jenkins). After Barbara takes some pills, her mysterious friend Lucy (Britt Eklund) shows up and convinces her that George is trying to kill her. But Lucy is just an illusion.

Last up is “Manikins of Horror”. Dr. Byron (Herbert Lom) makes little dolls that he says he can bring to life through thought control, which he does in the finale but there's a fatal twist ending for poor Dr. Martin. 

This is a cool horror anthology from Amicus with all the stories written by Robert Bloch who had performed a similar duty the year before on THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Director Roy Ward Baker's previous horror movie had been DR. JEYKLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971).

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Deadly Dolls

 

 (wikipedia)

DOLLS-1986-After she has a daydream about her teddy bear growing and killing her parents, a young girl named Judy (Carrie Lorraine), her dumb father David (Ian Patrick Williams) and her horrible stepmother Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) seek shelter from a storm at the home of doll maker Gabriel Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe) and his wife Hilary (Hilary Mason). During dinner they are joined by another traveler, the nice but naive Ralph (Steven Lee) and two idiotic punks. Everyone stays the night. After a while it turns out Hartwicke's dolls are alive and into killing not nice people. The dolls are pretty vicious, using knives, hammers and saws on their victims. They make Rosemary jump out a window and pull out the eyes of one of the punks. The other punk puts up a good fight but is shot by some toy soldiers. Some more dolls almost kill Ralph, but Judy convinces them to stop. David thinks Ralph killed his wife, so when he tries to kill Ralph, Hartwicke turns him into a “Mr. Punch” doll! The next day Ralph and Judy leave for Boston where her real mother lives. Mr. Punch bids them goodbye. Everyone else is now a puppet and a new couple arrives. 

This imaginative little movie from Charles Band's Empire pictures was the brainchild of writer Ed Naha (who later wrote the screenplay for HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS) and director Stuart Gordon (REANIMATOR). The funny violent dolls were created by David Allen.

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Evil Cult

 

(imdb)

 

THE DEVIL'S HAND-1961-A man named Rick Turner (Robert Alda) has mysterious reoccurring dreams about a beautiful woman. His fiancee Donna (Ariadna Welter) seems supportive until they visit a doll shop and see a doll that resembles his dream girl. The owner Mr. Lamont (Neil Hamilton) says Turner ordered the doll but he denies it. Then they see a doll that resembles Donna. She gets upset. Lamont seems to be practicing voodoo as he sticks a pin in the Donna doll and she winds up in the hospital. Finding out who it's for, Turner delivers the dream girl doll and meets Bianca Milan (Linda Christian), a breathy beauty who knows all about him. "You're evil but fascinating and beautiful…" he says. She belongs to a cult that worships "Gamba, the devil god of evil". Turner falls under her spell and dumps Donna. Although he's pledged his allegiance to Bianca and Gamba, he sneaks into their basement temple one night and removes the pin from the Donna doll. When Lamont finds out, he and Bianca plan to sacrifice Donna to their god (Bianca really just wants her out of the way) but Turner shows who he really cares about in the fiery finale where he saves Donna and frees himself from Bianca's spell...or does he?

 Little black & white supernatural thriller is like an overlong episode of 'Thriller". Not bad but drawn out. Director William Hole Jr. also made THE GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW (1959) and worked mostly in TV. Bruno VeSota and Jeanne Carmen have small roles. Lead actresses Christian (who was once married to Tyrone Power) and Welter were sisters. Screenwriter Jo Heims later wrote PLAY MISTY FOR ME.

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Amicus

THE PSYCHOPATH-1966-In this Amicus production (written by American Robert Bloch) a lawyer is crushed to death by a car and a doll resembling the victim his found with him. An inspector's (Patrick Wymark, in THE SKULL by the same director the year before)) investi-gation leads him to suspect American Donald Loftis (Canadian actor Don Borisenko) and his English girlfriend Louise (Judy Huxtable). Her father is played by Alexander Knox. Murders by poison, strangulation and acetylene torch follow. It all has to do with a doll obsessed wheel chair bound woman (Margaret Johnson) and her "Norman Bates" like son (John Standing) and her husband's suicide. Despite being almost blown up the inspector finds the real culprits. It's well directed by Oscar winning cinematographer Freddie Francis but there's a lot of talk and you know immediately who's the killer once the character is introduced. A weird freak out ending saves the whole thing!

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