DOLLY DEAREST (1992)

PLOT

A family moves to Mexico, where the father Elliot will oversee a doll factory, housed nearby an archaeological venture that inadvertently frees ancient mayan demons out into the land of the living, which make their way to the nearby doll factory and claim the dolls as hosts to their evil spirits

REVIEW
DOLLY DEAREST is one of those movies that you would pick out at the ma and pa video place mostly for shits and giggles. The type of movie that you could tell from the onset you wont be guaranteed entertainment but hope to at least pass the time laughing at how bad it is

Let's get it out of the way, yes it is very obvious this flick was spawned from the success of Chucky and the CHILD'S PLAY series, but while that movie had quite a lot going for it that made it a cult classic, DOLLY DEAREST is so empty conceptually it's ridiculous

Elliot's little daughter Jessica nabs a Dolly for herself, and gradually becomes trapped by it's evil influence, much to the chagrin of the family in particular Marilyn played by Denise Crosby (STAR TREK TNG, PET SEMATARY). Now, traditionally demons do have a hankering for possession, usually choosing hosts that can move freely, walk, blend in with society, able to use tools and that are not two feet tall, you know, people. When Charles Lee Ray transferred his soul into the good guy doll, he was shot, bleeding and near death, and had no other course but to go with the closest thing available, in DOLLY DEAREST the demons are set free and while having a short but plentiful supply of nearby humans to invade, they choose the dolls...

A long way from pazuzu, these retarded demons are

On that note despite all the dolls being possessed only one likes to get it's tiny hands dirty, the others do jack-shit until the end of the movie (I usually shy away from spoilers but if anything I’m doing you a favor)

Speaking of the doll, special effects can make or break a film that depends on them as much as a killer doll movie, may even serve to be a saving grace, where you could at least appreciate some technical mastery and have something neat to look at, after all film is a visual medium, and the Horror genre is absolutely ripe with the use of effective imagery. The effects here are barely almost-decent, I wasn't expecting an animatronic tour de force where the doll would do cartwheels and break-dance but at least try and make the doll not look stiff

THE GOOD
.I like the end-credits music, that's really it, not entirely sure if it's because the music itself is great or because it represents the end of the film

THE BAD
.Everything

THE FINAL CURTAIN

I remember as a kid at the San Diego Comic-con rabidly going through a box of discounted Fangorias and finding issue # 102, which has DOLLY DEAREST on the cover. I bought it, and upon reading the article I was aghast at director Maria Lease completely bad-mouthing the very movie she ripped off, like that would make people forget that CHILDS PLAY is 1000 times the movie DOLLY DEAREST isn't, not only was it dumb it was especially pathetic as she came nowhere close to backing up her shit

As far as killer doll movies, this scrapes the bottom of the barrel, this is the cheap shitty copy The Asylum (Transmorphers, Snakes on a train) would have released if they were around when CHILDS PLAY came out. Is it scary? It's as scary as stepping on a dirty gym sock, and as impressive to look at as watching a donkey fanning flies with it's tail. If you are a bad movie connoisseur (God knows why but they exist) It might get a reaction out of you, but as far as the old “so bad it's good” analogy applying here, it's slim to none

As you can probably deduce, I loathe this movie, I got a review for my site as a reward for watching it but 99.9% of the rest of the human population will get absolutely nothing but 90 mins of wasted time very horribly wasted. I kind of see it as a service to post a review for a movie this bad, it gives fair warning that glancing at it momentarily would give the impression of it being a cheap morsel of fun, but it's just that

cheap

It's on par with watching paint dry

RATING 0

*Available on Netflix instant streaming (If you must)