A Disappointing Continuation

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Gathering up titles to watch for this year's IMDb's Horror Challenge,I was happy to discover on the side of a shelf a movie which I've been meaning to re-watch since 2012!,which led to me getting 'Hugo' off the shelf,so that he could at last speak again.The plot:Note:this is a review for the 'British cut' of the film.Attending a performance by a magician called 'The Great Vorelli' journalist Mark English finds himself becoming unexpectedly unsettled by the display of aggravation from Vorelli towards a dummy which he calls Hugo.Requesting for an audience member to come up on the stage,English's girlfriend Marianne Horn decides that if no one else in the crowd will go up,then she will go up for them.Recognizing Horn as the daughter of a wealthy heiress,Vorelli hypnotises Horn to perform a dance.Desperate to keep some grip on her,Vorelli secretly leaves Horn partially hypnotised.Being incredibly interested in finding out more about Vorelli and Hugo,English gets Horn to arrange for the pair to perform at her mum's party.As everyone starts to leave the party,Vorelli invites Horn to his room.Using his hypnotising skills,Vorelli seduces Horn and begins making plans for how she can become his slave.As Vorelli seduces Horn,English witnesses a living nightmare,when Hugo enters his bedroom from out of nowhere,and gives English a cryptic message.View on the film:Opening on a stage performance of Vorelli and Hugo,director Lindsay Shonteff and cinematographer Gerald Gibbs give the title a haunting Film Noir flavor,thanks to Shonteff and Gibbs making each of the locations look like a macabre magician's playhouse,with hues of smoke,abrasive low-lights showing the mysterious world that Horn and English find themselves entering.Along with the Film Noir mood,Shonteff also shows a tremendous skill in pulling every shred of terror out of Hugo's wooden face,with Shonteff using low angles so that the viewer is unable to escape from Hugo's (voiced eerily by actress Sadie Corre) actions.Adapted from Fredric E.Smith's 1951 London Mystery Magazine pulp short story,writers Robert Kinnoch and Charles F.Vetter smartly match the titles most wonderfully rough moments (from strippers to a fighting dummy!) with a number of striking psychological chiller aspects,as Vetter and Kinnoch gradually unravel the history around Hugo,and reveal who the real puppet master really is.

Effective British thriller about a cruel ventriloquist called The Great Vorelli (Bryant Haliday) who keeps the soul of his former partner imprisoned within the confines of his wooden dummy, Hugo. His latest intended female victim is one of the most stunning women to ever grace this planet, the gorgeous Yvonne Romain. There have been a number of such movies made about ventriloquist dummies that come to life and kill, but DEVIL DOLL is one of the more unsettling ones I've seen. The only drawback is, the film is shot with far too many tight closeups, making the film feel claustrophobic and TV-like. There is a US version and a "Continental" version available. The US version is preferable because it contains a scene that is crucial to the story, while the Continental version omits this sequence in favor of showing some unrelated topless nudity. **1/2 out of ****

Unlike most failed attempts at horror this film actually does succeed in being creepy (if you're as creeped out as I am at a living ventriloquist dummy)... Its not nearly as terrible as most of the films done on the hilarious show Mystery Science Theater 3000 in that it's actually 'scary' and is one of the earliest examples of the animate doll/dummy/toy concept in film. It has an eeriness about it that can get to you a little. The acting isn't awful, the dialog isn't always awful, and the film is creepy thus my giving it an almost passing grade of 5 out of 10...The movie may not be completely terrible, but its not good either as the MST3K version points out... And what's with his assistant's constant lack of pants, it might make sense if she were a stereotypically attractive magicians assistant but they apparently couldn't afford on of those...If you get really bored, watch it, if you can't find a copy there's always the MST3K version...

After seeing Devil Doll, I do have to say that it is not a great film; but it's certainly not a particularly bad one either and in no way does this film deserve a rating of 2.8 on this site. The plot is similar to a number of more modern films such as Magic and Child's Play and focuses on the common horror theme of a malevolent ventriloquist's dummy. I'm not an expert on this type of film - or a big fan of it - but to the best of my knowledge, there weren't too many films like this that predated Devil Doll - the best segment of Dead of Night and 1929 film 'The Great Gabbo' are the only ones that spring to mind. The central plot idea is the evil dummy but there's a fairly complicated story revolving around it. The main character is "The Great Vorelli", a ventriloquist with a dummy named Hugo. Vorelli sets his sights on rich heiress named Marianne and sets his sights on her fortune. He hypnotises her, and that induces a strange coma. However, Vorelli's mistress Magda soon finds out about the hypnotist's plans and threatens to expose him; but she is soon dealt with, leading Marianne's boyfriend to suspect Vorelli...The main problem with this film is that there's a bit too much going on and at just eighty minutes, there's not a lot of time to fit everything in. However, director Lindsay Shonteff does a good job of telling the story in spite of that and the film does remain interesting for most of the duration. Bryant Haliday takes the lead role, and I wasn't surprised to discover that he hasn't had many roles other than this one because he's very hammy and his performance does give the film a ridiculous edge, which is a bit of a problem. The film does have a good atmosphere, however, and the dummy used looks suitably malevolent. The film never becomes boring and it more or less succeeds in explaining all the important elements about the plot and how the doll at the centre of the film came about. There is another subplot that takes centre stage towards the end that plays out rather well and is very similar to an idea used in a recent Chucky movie. Overall, I do have to say that I'm surprised at all the flack that this movie takes but do have to admit that it's a long way from perfect. Still, Devil Doll gets my recommendation.