HAUNTED DOLLHOUSE (2013)

Studio:       Full Moon Features
Director:    Charles Band
Writer:       August White, Craig Hamann
Producer:  Charles Band
Stars:     Robin Sydney, Jessica Morris, Meredith McClain, Tim Thomerson, Tracy Scoggins, Phil Fondacaro, Frank Welker

Review Score:

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Summary:

A doll-centric horror anthology featuring tales about legendary Italian Skull Heads that protect their guardians, Worry Dolls that can take away a person’s troubles, and Demonic Toys forced to fight interplanetary police officer Dollman.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

The Protectors – Three filmmakers scouting locations are greeted at an Italian castle by a housekeeper who tries to turn them away hastily. Naomi, the eccentric daughter of the house, is starstruck and welcomes the trio inside. Carver Arkoff, Naomi’s father, intervenes and angrily dismisses the guests.

Naomi fantasizes about Jenson, the director. Inexplicably, the filmmakers are suddenly back at the house eating dinner with the Arkoffs. The guests hear noises that Naomi identifies as “The Protectors.” Also known as “Skull Heads,” they are elementals that have been around for 200 years in the underground catacombs. The Skull Heads were born from witchcraft and protect the dead from being plundered, only showing themselves to the face of true evil. They also have the power to give life and to take it.

Naomi convinces her father to allow the filmmakers to shoot in the family castle, although he tells his daughter that she is “still due for a trip downstairs.” After dinner, the filmmakers are revealed to be thieves planning to rob the castle, although Jenson is afraid of hurting Naomi.

The next morning, Carver puts his daughter downstairs for letting strangers into the house. Peter, the male housekeeper, tries sexually assaulting the female housekeeper, but Carver stops him before assaulting the female housekeeper himself. Outside, the thieves plan their heist while Carver and his wife are inside discussing the family.

When the thieves enter the home and split up, Jenson finds Naomi strapped to a rack device in the basement and rescues her. The Arkoffs hear noises and search the house before encountering Jenson and Naomi. The robbery plot is exposed just as thief Kimi shoots the parents. Peter wrestles with the third thief in another room. Jenson refuses to let Kimi harm Naomi. At gunpoint, Kimi forces the pair into the basement and puts them both in torture devices.

Upstairs, a Skull Head appears and fires a beam from its eyes, reanimating the Arkoffs’ corpses. Peter comes to the basement and rescues Naomi. She then rescues Jenson. A Skull Head confronts the two thieves upstairs and blows deadly smoke at one of them. They try to escape through the front gate but are confronted by the reanimated Arkoffs, who kill and eat the two thieves. Naomi checks on her grandpa in his bedroom and seems to undergo some sort of transformation. Jenson flees in fright and tries shooting the reanimated Arkoffs. He makes it outside the front gate, but a screaming Naomi reaches out and pulls him back inside for an unknown fate.

Worry Dolls – Eva is the new girl at a women’s prison. Carl is a guard with nefarious intentions while Russell establishes himself as the kind one. A little girl gives Eva four tiny Worry Dolls. They make problems go away by whispering a worry to each one and then sleeping with them under a pillow.

In the night, Carl takes Eva into the basement where he uses a strap-on dildo to film a rape video with her. Fellow inmate Mouse tries consoling Eva afterwards. Eva uses the worry dolls and one of them crawls into her ear while she sleeps.

Offscreen, Eva fractures inmate Liz’s arm in three places. A small red bump appears on Eva’s forehead that she claims is a pimple. While she speaks to warden Ms. Ivar, Russell searches Eva’s belongings and finds the worry doll box. The bump on Eva’s forehead grows larger. She comes on to Russell, but he turns her down. After he leaves, a bloody worry doll peeks out of the bump on Eva’s head.

Inmates Kim and Alexis put pressure on Mouse to aid in their criminal activities. Carl tries filming another video with Eva and reveals that Ms. Ivar is behind the videos. She posts them on the website prisonbangers.net. Eva attacks Carl and discovers that he is actually a woman. The worry doll shows itself in her forehead as Eva wears the strap-on and assaults Carl. She then takes this new video to Ms. Ivar. The worry doll appears again and Eva attacks the warden.

Eva finds Mouse with marks on her face caused by Kim. Russell discovers Ms. Ivar dead in her office with a nightstick jammed down her throat. Eva and the worry doll confront Kim and Alexis. Alexis loses her hand in a garbage disposal while Eva brings Kim back to Mouse. The worry doll appears again when Mouse refuses to kick Kim. Russell enters and convinces the possessed Eva to think about her daughter, which causes the worry doll to recede and disappear.

Demonic Toys – Diminutive interplanetary cop Dollman finds 11-inch tall Nurse Ginger after she does an interview on the news. Police officer Judith Gray tracks down the tiny pair for their help with taking out the Demonic Toys at a local warehouse.

The Demonic Toys have enlisted a little person security guard to bring them hookers as sacrifices. Judith shoots the guard during the warehouse raid, but a robot toy uses its lasers to kill Judith. Dollman and Ginger do battle with the other toys.

The toys eventually capture Ginger and tie Dollman to two opposing RC monster trucks. Toy ringleader Baby Oopsy-Daisy then reveals their plan. “The Master” impregnated a human woman some 67 years earlier. But on Halloween night, the woman gave birth to a stillborn demon baby. They had some trick-or-treaters bury the body at a site where the warehouse would eventually be built, leaving The Master as a prisoner inside the corpse. Now, The Master is going to go inside Baby Oopsy-Daisy who will impregnate Ginger and give birth to The Master.

Ginger escapes from her ropes and cuts Dollman loose, but she cannot escape. Dollman fights a commando action figure and makes his way to a dollhouse where Baby Oopsy-Daisy has Ginger tied to a bed. Along the way, Dollman kills the clown puppet. At midnight, Baby Oopsy-Daisy begins changing when Dollman interrupts. Oopsy-Daisy uses a threat to make Dollman throw down his gun. Realizing that Oopsy-Daisy is now human-like, Ginger knees him in the groin. Dollman uses the ability to summon his gun back into his hand and destroys Baby Oopsy-Daisy. In an epilogue, Dollman and Ginger leave in a taxicab.

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Review:

Remember the heyday of Blockbuster Video, when a new Full Moon release meant hands that eagerly clutched a VHS tape with excited anticipation to see not only the movie, but the ahead-of-their-time Videozone segments that played after the film?  Those days are over.

They have been over for several years, in fact.  The exact beginning of Full Moon’s decline is difficult to pinpoint.  One top candidate for that dubious honor may be their predilection for filming two movies at the same time when in actuality they were splitting one cohesive story into two separate films (see Trancers 4 and 5 for an example).  Now, like “Devildolls” before it, Charles Band attains a new low in fan exploitation by presenting an “anthology” that is actually three truncated versions of previous Full Moon films cobbled together into one semi-coherent disappointment.

“The Protectors” is roughly 39% of the 2009 Full Moon feature “Skull Heads.”  Finding points in the story where the other 61% was pulled is easy.  A trio of filmmakers wants to use an Italian castle for a location shoot.  After making it perfectly clear that under no circumstances does he want the filmmakers anywhere near his house, Mr. Arkoff tears up a business card and angrily dismisses the group.  The next time we see the trio is just under two minutes later, when they are eating dinner over candlelight with the Arkoff family inside their home.  In addition to a housekeeper who suffers two assaults and is then never seen or heard from again, a physical confrontation between two men ensues during the climax.  There is a scene change while the fight is ongoing and then the next time either character is seen, they are suddenly each in a completely different location.  It should also be mentioned that the dolls this story centers on have a collective screen time of somewhere around one minute.

“Worry Dolls” fares the same.  The first scene introduces Eva, the new inmate at a women’s prison, and two guards who factor into the story.  The second scene shows Eva receiving a box of worry dolls from a little girl.  Maybe why this little girl is in the warden’s office of a women’s prison is a question answered in “Dangerous Worry Dolls,” the full movie that this was culled from.  Maybe that film also explains why there are four worry dolls, yet we only ever see one.  Just do not expect to find those answers here.  Almost as baffling is when Eva uses the worry dolls by whispering names of characters that have not even been introduced yet.  Similarly jarring jumps accompany every other scene change.  It’s obvious that pieces are missing, and this story was not meant to fit into the shortened runtime.

With a running time of 64 minutes, the original “Dollman vs. Demonic Toys” was barely feature length to begin with.  More than half of that one-hour movie must have been filler, because Band found a way to trim that down to just 30 minutes for the final segment, “Demonic Toys.”  As if half of a movie is not enough of a cheat, “Dollman vs. Demonic Toys” is a sequel to both “Dollman” and “Demonic Toys,” with a character from “Bad Channels” tossed in for good measure.  Anyone who has not seen those movies is already three films behind when this abbreviated story begins.

Whatever entertainment value there may be in the actual content of this collection is automatically negated by the very nature of its patchwork cash grab.  Frankensteining three full features into three short stories is already indefensible.  Couple that with the fact that these stories do not even work together.  “Worry Dolls” features strap-on sex toys, a transgender person, and prison rape.  Those elements have context in their own segment.  But this plays before a story about a foot-high cop from another planet spouting one-liners while shooting wisecracking demon puppets.  The juxtaposition of these two stories alone creates an extremely unbalanced tone.  The original release dates for these films further separate the segments by 15 years, and that age difference shows.

“Skull Heads” and “Dangerous Worry Dolls” were unfamiliar to me before I watched “The Haunted Dollhouse.”  I suspect that may be true for a number of Full Moon fans.  I am perplexed why Band did not just re-release those two titles as some sort of double-feature DVD instead of shrinking them down and packaging a “new” movie.  I would have seen those films on their own and would probably not be left shaking my head at the ever-diminishing value of the Full Moon brand.

Review Score:  10

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