DOLL FACTORY **** USA 2014 Dir: Stephen Wolfe. 90 mins
On Halloween 1976 in a small town in America local law enforcement with the help of a witch doctor type manage to thwart an evil doll uprising in a toy factory. Fast forward a few decades and it’s Halloween again and the now disused toy factory is broken into by some bored teens who use a spell book which summons back the evil dolls that quickly wreak havoc upon the town stealing souls hoping to resurrect their master Yegor, who will take over the world.
This horror/comedy is done in the vein of PUPPET MASTER and CHILD’S PLAY with a bit of EVIL DEAD thrown in for good measure and it is so much fun. Done in a very typical campy 80’s B movie style, the characters are stupid but really quite likeable. The 80’s inspired practical and very gory FX are fantastic with a shed load of blood and a rule that goes along the lines of; if you wave anything about in front of these dolls it WILL get chopped off in a hilarious fashion. I don’t quite know why this doll factory was making dolls that look like overweight Uncle Festers but they are suitably mean and scary. Other props used are also really quite funny with the spell book looking like a very shonky version of the Necronomicon.
The dialogue is incredibly immature but very in keeping with the style. The teens that go into the factory are suitably irritating and bratty with every other line beginning or ending with the quote “in my nuts”. As the movie moves on to them battling the dolls and Yegor they are taunted by lines like “I’ve come for your soul” and “come and get it naughty nipples” and other such hilarious lines. You would be forgiven for thinking with a title like DOLL FACTORY that this could be some awful ANNABELLE knock off. I was fearing this exact thing as I began watching but I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out the way it did, it’s funny, gory and highly enjoyable.
Review by Sarah Budd
