Dolly Dearest

The Wade family moves from Los Angeles into a Mexican home sight-unseen after buying a Mexican doll factory sight-unseen. Already, this plot sounds like something that would only feasibly happen in a bad horror movie…nobody does that! But this is their lucky day, because some ancient Mayan ruins are nearby and an anthropologist accidently unleashed a ball of red glowing energy--errrr, I mean, an evil spirit!After being given a doll from the factory, their young daughter begins acting strangely. Her mother Marylin (Denise Crosby; Pet Sematary) has caught her talking to "Dolly" frequently, she draws violent depictions of animals, hisses at priests and rosaries, and speaks in the ancient Sanzian language to their devout housekeeper.What's more is that we (the audience) see the Dolly move on her own and it's implied that she scampers about the house at night very early in the film. And once her murderous intentions are known, we see Dolly's creepy little doll hands locking doors and picking up sharp objects, sneaking, hiding and stabbing! It's straight out of the Child's Play (1988) playbook staged in a Mexican Poltergeist (1982) scenario.The jump scares are tedious but Dolly is sufficiently creepy (even scary) enough to make it work…and well! As the story progresses, so too does the little girl's weirdness. She becomes increasingly attached to Dolly and disengaged from her family…even hostile to them.This may not be a good film, but it's a solid B-horror. It's greatest gift is its pacing. Most B-horror takes 40-60 minutes for anything at all interesting to happen. Whereas we find eerie goings on with Dolly nearly from the start, ambulatory murderous Dolly within about 30 minutes, and after an hour things continue to escalate into bonkersville. There are no great effects, but the walking talking creepy dolls are every bit as effective as we need for his to be a lot of fun.Speaking of this being a B-movie, Rip Torn (The Man Who Fell to Earth, RoboCop 3) plays an archaeologist and seemingly shows up for no other reason than to explain that Sanzia means "Satan on Earth," reveal the ancient burial grounds entomb a Devil child with a goat head, and to blurt out an occasional displaced Spanish phrase even though everyone is always speaking English. He is movie exposition personified, walking and talking and explaining everything.By the way, the dolls follow suit behind Child's Play (1988) pretty hard. They utter similar lines like "now we'll be together forever" and "time to play" and their faces become more and more evil-looking as we approach the finale as if they were slowly sapping the soul and humanity from the little girl to transmute Dolly into a living entity of flesh. Then you have Rip Torn filling the Zelda Rubenstein's Poltergeist (1982) role and the ancient burial ground unleashing spirits that want the youngest child, a little girl whose parents have moved for the father's job, just like Caroll Anne and her family--plus the slightly older boy who discovers the evil, just like Caroll Anne's brother.After this film, writer/director Maria Lease went on to do a few episodes of the sultry Silk Stalkings show and then backed off from direction entirely. I'm not sure why she didn't do more horror. Not only did this movie surprisingly not suck, it was pretty solidly entertaining. I had been procrastinating seeing this for over a decade (some of the poster/cover art is not very promising LOL) and now I find myself recommending it to fans of evil doll movies and 80s-90s B-movie horror…as this was more of a B+ movie (the same can be said for Pumpkinhead and Subspecies 1-2).The poster art makes this movie look like something you'd want to skip. But trust me, DON'T SKIP IT. This is solid gold B+ horror and a decent evil doll movie!

Got here on time for movie night. Recommend this horror film!

I had never heard of this movie until I found it on here, and I have thing for killer dolls, so I thought I would go ahead and buy this. When I received it, I just had to watch it. It is a bit cheesy, but what can you expect, it was made in the early 90's. The acting was pretty good, but the possessed doll was kinda strange, it looked like they used a regular doll that they moved with there own hands. But besides that, the movie is not bad, happy I bought it, but sad that it wasn't better than inticipated.

It was weird, but good. It's labeled as a slasher movie, which it isn't. So don't go into this expecting lots of gore! This is a more laid back chucky-esque film. The acting was excellent, it was enjoyable, but i wish they would have focused a bit more on the sub-plot. The subplot is about the son who isn't extremely interesting but the lore and legends he finds out are!It's basically a movie about a family who moves to a factory in the desert, where the husband makes dolls, and has a mine nearby (?! ). They have two kids, a daughter and a son. The daughter finds a doll her dad is making and immediately claims one as her own. That's about all i can say before i delve too deep into the plot. I watched this for free on amazon, and i don't regret watching it, it had some very strong points, but also some real boring points.

This movie kept my interest but it's not as good as Child's Play. Chucky is funny and has a great personality (Even though he kills people for fun), his character really draws you in. If you like creepy doll movies it's worth watching! It's really not scary and there are no pop up scares (in my opinion anyways). If you're like me and just like watching B rated horror movies for the heck of it, this one should be on your list.

This is one of the best old school horror flicks and horror flicks were the best in those times. Thats why its unavailable. Ive been wanting to rewatch it for some time now.

I remember watching this as a kid and the doll scared the crapola out of me! The movie itself isn't scary but , its still good for night in. I just wish they would convert it to blu ray. Definitely recommend this movie if you have an hour and a half to do nothing.

A really enjoyable Childs play rip off and killer doll genreThe cast is good and the doll was creepy enough good filmAnd great transfer !

This film terrified me as a kid and I had hoped one day it would find its way to DVD. Considering the movies age the DVD quality is good and the added extras were interesting. I was delighted to find it played on my R2 DVD player.

arrived on time, good quality, thanks again...

No hagáis caso de la descripción. No tiene ni subtitulos ni está doblada. La calidad es buena, pero le pongo una estrella por el engaño que hacen en la descripción.

Film sympa mais pas de sous-titres français contrairement à la description du DVD... Privilégiez les éditions MGM si vous souhaitez acheter du Z1.

Merci