• Directed by Charles Band
• Written by August White
• Starring
  • Jessica Morris
  • Deb Snyder
  • Dilio Nunez
  • Meredith McClain
  • Cheri Themer
• Executive produced by Dana Harrloe

I’m a secure enough individual that I’m willing to admit my mistaken assumptions. When I saw the premise of this movie — “Like killer dolls, but smaller!” — and the godawful title, I assumed that this would be the absolute nadir of Charles Band’s obsession with possessed or otherwise animated dolls. As it turns out, this is probably the best of the features that Band has directed and put out from his rebooted Full Moon Features company. Better than either of the Decadent Evil movies, better than Petrified (2006), and much better than, Lord help us, The Gingerdead Man (2005). That’s not to say that this is a good or impressive feature in any way, but I’ve drunk far too much of the Full Moon Kool-Aid to be able to look on these things objectively. So all I can say is, going in with bottom-of-the-barrel expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. Your mileage may vary.

One thing that helps immensely is that this isn’t just a movie about murderous toys. It’s actually a women-in-prison movie, with murderous toys tacked on. Eva (Jessica Morris of Decadent Evil 2 (2007) and Dead Man’s Hand (2007)) is serving a six-month sentence in the Meredith Detention Center for Women, and getting off pretty light for being the getaway driver in a botch robbery that resulted in a dead store clerk. But though the sentence is light time-wise, it’s heavy in all the normal ways. The tri-ethnic trio that rules the roost, lead by Kim (Meredith McClain), wants Eva to mule for their drug trade (though with only maybe a dozen inmates that we ever see, I can’t imagine they turn that much of a profit for their efforts). The warden, Miss Ivar (Deb Snyder), is the factory issue sadistic bitch who wants to turn Eva’s six months into a living hell because she “causes trouble” — i.e., she tries to stand up to Kim and her friends. (It’s through Miss Ivar that we get the steaming gob of exposition on Eva’s past: her broken home and her mother’s drug us and prostitution, Eva’s own teen motherhood and general wrong-side-of-the-tracks life culminating in the robbery gone bad.) And as Mouse (Cheri Themer), the quietest of the inmates, warns her, one of the guards, Carl (Dilio Nunez), has a “something” going that involves taking the inmate of his choice down to the boiler room in the middle of the night.

“Wow.  I really have to start looking over these scripts before I arrive on set.”

Yeah, life in the big house pretty much sucks for Eva. Even what should be the bright spot of her existence, a visit from her daughter Meg (Rebekah Crane), is spoiled by Eva’s manipulative Aunt Kathy (Ronnie Green) who tries to launch into a lecture about Eva’s general unfitness in front of Meg.

The only slightly greyer points in the blackness of her existence are Russell (Paul Boukadakis), the prison guard with a heart of gold who genuinely cares about rules and justice and all that stuff; and the wee present that Meg gives her at the end of her visit: a set of Guatemalan worry dolls. You’re supposed to tell your troubles to them and put them under your pillow, and overnight they’re supposed to take your worries away.

And I guess this would be a good night to get them, since this is the night that Carl decides it’s Eva’s turn to be dragged to the boiler room and raped with a strap-on while the videocameras roll. (This is an exploitation movie. I know that. But rape has never equaled titillation for me, and the idea that even a scene which tries to indicate it obliquely – by cutting to the frosted glass window in the door when Eva starts screaming – is supposed to be all-in-good-fun entertainment for a red-blooded B-movie fan turns my stomach. If you’re going to do a movie about rape, do a serious movie about rape; don’t simply use it as a plot point for a schlocky movie that was designed to sell tie-in collectible figurines. Okay, rant done.)

Well, at least the budget allowed for a Bad Cop and a Good Cop.

So when the tear-streaked Eva ends back on her bunk, she whispers her troubles to the four worry dolls and puts them under her pillow… and while she sleeps, the skeleton-like worry doll CRAWLS INTO HER EAR! (And I’ll be honest, the oversized prop ear used for the special FX here is more believable than the one they used for Chekov in Star Trek 2 (1982).)

The next morning, Eva’s distressingly spritely and high-spirited, much to Mouse’s confusion. The only odd thing about her is the small smeared dot of pink greasepaint on her forehead. That, and the fact that when one of the bitch trio Liz (Ker’in Hayden) gets bull-dykey on Mouse, Eva instantly breaks her arm in three places. So much for staying out of trouble.

This is, naturally, considered a problem by both Miss Ivar and by Kim and her (now reduced) crew, but Russell is the only one concerned for Eva rather than about her. Her behavior is somewhere between “spirited” and “vampish,” and you could probably characterize her as being possessed, though it’s not like the little skull doll (in her brain!) is controlling her. I think that we’re supposed to understand that it’s literally taken away her worries; she doesn’t brood in anxious anticipation. When no one’s bothering her that second, she’s happy and vivacious; when someone’s causing her trouble, her anger expresses itself quickly and violently. Thus when Miss Ivar summarily extends her sentence by two months (can wardens do that?), Eva just smiles and insults her. And when Miss Ivar then hooks her up to a retro-electro torture machine, full of coils and insulators, Eva just smiles with each jolt until the machine blows itself out. Meanwhile, the pink splot becomes a welt, then a boil, then a huge monster zit, and when she breaks out the violence on some deserving foe, the boil splits open and THE SKELETON LEANS OUT AND HISSES.

The size of the killer toy is directly proportional to the budget.

(Sorry about the emphasis there. Some scenes in this movie could be considered subtle through a squint in bad light, but these are not those scenes.)

Because this is a short movie, with four minutes of closing credits bringing it to a 74-minute tally, the story movies quickly enough that there’s no attenuated watered-down feel to it. I ranted above about the overkill of depicting reprehensible acts of rape and sadism solely to set up a shclocky B-movie concept, but I do have to say that you don’t have any qualms about Miss Ivar, Carl, and the rest getting their comeuppance. In fact, it’s almost disappointing that the worst of the violence against those deserving it takes place off-screen. I could charitably characterize it as a stylistic counterpoint to the worst of the violence against Eva herself similarly taking place off-screen, though I can probably also cite budgetary reasons (hey, use the audience’s imagination! It’s cheap!).

While it’s refreshing that this isn’t the standard reiteration of Dolls (1987)/Puppet Master (1989) that Band has been returning to for twenty years, that doesn’t excuse the most glaring logical lapses or situations of convenience in the script. When possessed Eva taunts Carl that he goes home and cries into his pillow every night because of his sorry life, my response was, “When? He and Russell are at the Detention Center 24 hours a day!” I guess that’s what you have to do when you’re the only two security personnel at a prison; besides them and Miss Ivar (similarly a workaholic at all hours), we never see any other correctional employees.

“Wow! I wonder how much that would go for on eBay?”

Along the same lines, these two security guards are probably overworked because this facility has worse security than most junior high schools. The kitchen is unlocked at all hours of day or night, as is the warden’s office. And with only two guards, there’s no way to make sure that the inmates are where they’re supposed to be. Even in the middle of a lockdown in the middle of the night after one body is discovered, there’s a scene in which Mouse is completely alone in the sleeping hall. Honestly, where could everyone else be?

The special effects are sometimes ambitious (for the budget), but spotty. Eva’s forehead lump often looks like a lump of chewing gum stuck between her eyes; I shouldn’t have to counsel makeup FX professionals to always extend the edges of the appliance beyond the main area of attention, should I? (I learned that in a Fangoria makeup FX magazine special back in the ’80s; I can send copies to them if they want.) The shots that show the boil bursting and the skeleton sticking out its head are composited nicely, with the digital matting done smoothly enough that the actress’ head doesn’t have to be stock still for the added elements not to be shaky; but the appearance of the boil in those composited shots doesn’t match the simple appliance used in other shots. These may sound like trivial complaints, but we’re talking about what’s supposed to be the “money shots” of the movie’s effects; if there’s anywhere that continuity counts, it’s in the scenes you want the audience to pay attention to.

“Peeky-boo!”

At least the movie as a whole seems like more of an attempt and honest-to-gosh storytelling than most of the movies Band has made with his relaunched company, which are usually nothing more than minimal sizzle designed to sell nonexistent steak. I can’t call it a good movie, and it’s probably indicative of a bizarre B-movie variety of Stockholm Syndrome that I enjoyed it even as much as I did, but if you wanted sane reviews that didn’t show myopia from concentrating on the dregs of marginal entertainment filmmaking, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 2
• breasts: 2 (plus 2 plastic ones — I mean prosthetic, not silicone)
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0