Puppet Master, Child's Play and Poltergeist: Are Dolls Truly Scary?
Horror movies and toys. And by that I mean toys that are the horror in a horror movie. I'm not talking about your Freddy Krueger action figure. (If that's still in its original packaging and you haven't opened it up to play "Barbie and Ken get decapitated," then you're so far into Nerdland, they would point and laugh at you at a Star Trek convention). I'm talking dolls like in The Puppet Master. Psycho marionettes hacking and slashing their way through a pile of dim-witted actors? It got me to thinking: How did they come up with this stuff before crystal meth got rolling? Then I kept thinking and started to wonder... are toys scary? Let's take a look at the best examples in horror and figure it out.
Puppet Master:
• Movie quality: 4 (This will not rock your socks off, even those ankle socks without elastic.)
• Scare factor: 5 (When the one chick barfs up killer leeches? Not bad, but without that, this flick is about as frightening as a zombie Hello Kitty.)
• Doll quotient: 8 (There's a lot of doll loving in this one -- six killer puppets with a collective mean-on.)
• Total Scary-Doll Score: 17
Child's Play:
• Movie quality: 8 (This series was a mainstay of the '80s horror heyday.)
• Scare factor: 7 (I don't care how jaded you are. When Catherine Hicks picks up Chucky, and he goes wacko and calls her names, all snarly, head-tossing with his crazy hair, that is some scary crap right there.)
• Doll quotient: 6 (Come on, it's a "Good Guy." What, they couldn't get the licensing rights to make a CareBear rabid?)
• Total Scary-Doll Score: 21
Poltergeist (The clown doll scene):
• Movie quality: 10 (This bad boy is a benchmark of the genre.)
•
Scare factor: 9 (Everyone hates clowns. It's true. I don't even know
where they got the idea kids like clowns. Kids like candy.
Clowns and candy tend to be a package deal. No one wants just a clown. And clown dolls? They don't come with candy at all, so they're just flat-out freaky.)
• Doll quotient: 1 (It's just one scene.)
• Total Scary-Doll Score: 20
Trilogy of Terror: (I saw it as a kid and haven't seen it since, but the memory still scars me...)
• Movie quality: 8 (Plot? Who cares about plot? I just know I never want to see that doll again.)
• Scare factor: 8 (Like I said: The doll. If you've seen it, you know.)
• Doll quotient: 0.3 (It's only one section of a three-part movie.)
• Total Scary-Doll Score: 16.3
And there you have it: My highly advanced scientific measurements say that the marionettes of Puppet Master fall in the 35th percentile. Now that we've answered the hard
question, it's time for you to slice the head off the nearest Ken and
Barbie. If the kids complain, just tell them you're going to
make it up to them by renting a movie... Trilogy of Terror. The family will laugh and laugh and laugh!
I'm gonna hafta agree with Dee Schneider on "Child's Play"...
"IT'S A DOLL! KICK THAT THING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM!"
I admit, it would be painful if he had a knife, but really...
The Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror is so great. Creepy little evil thing. Just don't rent the remake. Bad,bad, bad!
LaDracul: you are right, but still, when she picks up that doll and he wigs out like he's on the brown acid mixed with Red Bull? That's good entertainment right there.
Taxonomy question here: Shouldn't we separate the Scare Factor (terror) from the Gross-out Factor (horror)?
Do ventriloquist dummies count as toys, because those things creep me the F out. I still get the creeps when I think about that Twilight zone about the Dummy. You are so dead on with the clown thing.
Dude, up the quotient on the Poltergeist clown doll. That nasty little thing has me freaked out to this day. Yes it may be, 90% clown and 10% doll, but hey, I still look under my bed now and then when my kid's toys go missing.
ColoradoDan, clearly you have more stones than I do. I just walled off the space under the bed. Not looking, sure as shootin' not going in there.
Mr. Marples? Is that you?
Dolls and clowns and/or clown dolls, don't really scare me that much, they are usually too small or friendly looking, so I feel confident that I could out think, if not out fight them. Size matters here, small isn't too scary, BIG can be scary.
Some portrayals of clowns do give me the creeps, like Pennywise in King's IT, but he looked scary and big. Perhaps it was that we knew he was really an evil entity and had those big scary pointy teeth. Teeth can be scary. Bozo doesn't scare me.
Now Robots ( I guess they're on a different branch of the family tree from dolls) scare me if they have Terminator behaviors or bizare features. Once again size matters here.
I do think that the warrior doll in Trilogy of Fear that chased Karen Black around and finally posessed her, was much scarier than the Puppet Master dolls or even the clown doll in Poltergeist. That warrior doll had big scary teeth and a spear. Being chased down and possessed by an entity hiding in a doll is a scary concept....like what Chucky was trying to do to the kid, but the Chucky doll was not scary looking. He was actually cute when he snarled.
Now, what if there was this HUGE, evil looking clown doll/robot with big, sharp teeth and a spear chasing me down, so the evil entity inside could kill, mutilate or posses me. That would scare me....especially if it carried a big roll of duct tape.
All of the old Full Moon productions were great, but I think The Puppetmaster tops them all. What a wonder group of movies made on the cheap!