Dolls

As much as I love them I just don’t trust punk women who walk around with their nips out. Perfect length for a killer toy movie at 77 minutes. If you even mention a doll coming to life Charles Band will fund anything you throw at him.

Two groups of travelers are stranded by a storm and end up spending the night in the mansion of a creepy old doll-maker, where most of them get slaughtered by the possessed toys. Lots of goofy overacting, but the stop motion doll effects are good, and there are plenty of novel and gory kills. The kid character is even smart and funny without being obnoxiously cute or precocious. Not a great film but a lot of fun.

I have a soft spot for this, despite the fact that it never quite lived up to it's poster.

Possibly my new personal favorite Stuart Gordon movie. Very well done, very creepy. Gabe Bartalos is a genius.

Halfway through, I thought, "wait, I think I have seen this." I checked, and sure enough, I had. I am not sure how I forgot this absolutely bonkers film. All films should be under 80 minutes. That's worth an extra few points.

Dolls is like 10% away from being a heartwarming family film, which kind of makes sense when you realize Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and Ed Naha would all team up again to write Honey, I Shrunk the Kids a couple of years later.

This movie holds a special place in my heart for two reasons: 1. Guy Rolfe, Mr. Sardonicus himself, is simply amazing with fantastic support from Hilary Mason. 2. This was a too much, too young movie for my wife. It didn't scare her off of horror altogether (I don't expect you to know me, but our marriage would be null during the month of October if it had), but she couldn't watch five minutes of it this last year. Those first horrors are special ones indeed. Mine was Burt Reynolds' chest hair.

Let's give credit where credit is due: Stuart Gordon's "Dolls" was seminal, instigating the "Child's Play", "Puppet Master" and "Demonic Toys" franchises quickly after its release. That said, I wouldn't call it Gordon's finest hour. In fact, screenplay, acting and directing are all amateurish. It does have some nice prop designs - in a better film, some of these dolls and their parts could have been quite creepy.

not quite good, but those dolls are done well, the deaths have imagination behind them and the characters might be a bit cardboard but there's a variety to them that makes for a pleasant mix to watch. you could call this feel-good horror for wonky 80s horror genre fans. enjoyed it slightly less but with the same general feeling as the also kid-centric movie The Gate

Gordon does what he can with the mediocre material, and in its defense, _Dolls_ includes the best killer-teddy-bear sequence I've seen since _Bloodbath at the House of Death_.

I wish I'd seen this when I was a kid

Typical horror flick with stupid characters. One teenage girl starts smart (trashing the dolls with her huge belt buckle), but then turning incredibly stupid (just standing like a dope, letting the toy soldiers shoot her). However, it did have a happy ending, so that's worth something.

This is a weird horror movie with some ridicules and bizarre characters. Some of the characters like the female punk rockers are absurd. Overall this movie is a bizarre experience.

The first ten or fifteen minutes showed a lot of promise, but once the killings started it didn't deliver. While it's not as bad as most other killer doll movies, it lacked the fun energy needed to really make it stand out. The kills themselves were uninspired and some of the characters and lines were just too goofy for my tastes.

This is the kind of Stuart Gordon I can get behind: such pride in stupidity while punctuated with some cool fantastical effects. Outside of the death scenes it's fairly awful, but all the murder is delectable with its use of campy stop motion. There are far worse examples of B-horror.

I only watched this bc I'm a Gordon fan but even he cannot make dolls scary - especially when he starts off w/ a giant teddy bear. Presumably Gremlins got this greenlit, & Gordon wanted a challenge, but this, unlike Gremlins, tries to be scary rather than a good guys vs bad guys adventure & can't help failing. Also unlike Gremlins, most of the performances are over the top B-movie acting & nothing ever feels at stake. Tonally, it would've worked best as a short in Creepshow.

Odd horror effort feels like it’s on the way to something, but never quite gets there; efforts to build tension are consistently undermined by the overwrought performances (especially Lee, but why the two British “tarts” are dragged into the story is a bit of a mystery) and ultimately don’t sit confidently with the moments of comparatively graphic violence. Rolfe and Mason do their best at simmeringly forbidding, but both seem too genial (and grandparently) to be the overseers of such carnage!

Moves quickly and constructed like a fairy tale. Loved it

Feels more like an episode of a show like Are You Afraid of The Dark than a fleshed our movie, but it's still enjoyable. Dolls are creepy.

(Viewed in 09/15): Dolls is a charming fairy tale in the guise of a horror, so it's easy why it doesn't impress fans of Gordon's Lovecraft films: it's entirely too tame and mild mannered. It is not lacking in violence, but it's more concerned with telling an offbeat fable than it is with being freaky, which merely cemented its anachronistic status in an era of increasing gore. Lorraine and Lee are likeable, and the stop motion effects are impressive given its budget deficit.

The only thing that elevates this horror a little is the dolls. Not scary but mostly entertaining. Cheesy dialogue and acting however.

I was expecting better with director Stuart Gordon coming off of the one-two punch of Re-Animator and From Beyond. The film is a bottle film with all of the action happening in this huge mansion. There is some impressive gore and I thought the dolls were actually kind of creepy but I didn't think the film worked as a whole.

Well-made, exciting, scary yet... nice. Another unique creation from Stuart Gordon

Far from good, but if you came for tiny stop-motion murderers, it delivers. And it's amusing.

With a sense of innocence lying underneath and simple very broad characters this plays like a children/family movie, but with a dark tense undertone cause it’s a horror, which suits the subject very well. The moments the dolls come alive and turn violent are very amusing.

OK horror from the director of _Re-Animator_. Nothing special here.

Toy Story goes wild. Tem até um cowboy Woody em chamas aqui. Não é memorável quanto as parcerias lovecraftianas entre Gordon e Yuzna, mas também é diversão garantida. Box Obras-primas do cinema Coleção anos 80 Volume 2.

With some clever moments and enjoyable- if also often hammy- performances, it's more all-around fun than Puppet Master despite usually getting less attention, and is perfectly fine as a cheesy 80's horror. The ridiculous concept works pretty well, largely thanks to solid effects & well-done, genuinely creepy atmosphere. Where it falters is in the plot, where lots of things just sort of happen without being explained and transitions from scene to scene are choppy. All-in-all, it's worth a look.

The death wish for a horror film is boredom and this film has that in spades. Gordon should stick to Lovecraft adaptations...

59.000

good movie

Dolls, for me, works much better than the Puppet Master series mainly due to the care taken to include characters that understand the value and importance of toys. This gives the film a fairy tale and child-like foundation before it jumps into some entertaining horror. The doll effects are what ultimately seal the deal, but everything leading up to them is pretty great.

Creeped me out 18 years ago and still creeps me out now.