![]() ![]() version before, you'll get a kick out of the continental release which has several jarring and rather hilarious scenes of female nudity inserted at strategic points in the narrative such as a striptease number which follows the Great Vorelli's act on stage or the scene where Hugo creepy-crawls the blonde stage assistant, sleeping topless in her bed. release and the "hot" continental version. The special edition DVD of Devil Doll is a real find for fans of this fairly rare cult chiller and contains two new digitally remastered versions of the film - the original U.K. Hargreaves (based on the original story by Frederick E. And even though the possessed doll theme would later be exploited for black humor in the Chuckie series, here it's much more disturbing, thanks to the noir-like visual treatment of the story and an ingenious screenplay by George Barclay and Lance Z. Instead, it veers off on some strange tangents involving soul transference, hypnotism and black magic while tantalizing us with some pretty tawdry burlesque acts. Why? Because he's alive and capable of the most terrible things.Well, wouldn't you be if you found yourself trapped inside a ventriloquist's dummy? The great thing about Devil Doll is that it's not just about a possessed stage prop. His master is the Great Vorelli (Bryant Haliday) and every night after their stage performance Hugo is locked up in a steel cage. Produced and directed by Lindsay Shonteff, Devil Doll is now available in a special edition DVD from Image Entertainment and, if ventriloquist dummies give you the creeps, you ain't seen nothing yet! Hugo is one ugly hunk of carved wood with bad hair, big thick lips and swollen cheeks. Not to be confused with Tod Browning's 1936 fantasy thriller, The Devil Doll, starring Lionel Barrymore as a revenge-crazed scientist who uses doll-sized humans as assassins, this creepy little British thriller is the missing link between the nightmare ventriloquist segment of Dead of Night (1945) and the diminutive, homicidal star of Child's Play (1988). Vorelli's soul then becomes confined to the dummy, and Hugo's soul enters Vorelli's body.įorget about Chuckie. Hugo revolts, destroys the female dummy, and attacks Vorelli. Returning to London, English finds Marianne under the hypnotic influence of Vorelli, who plans to transfer her soul to a female dummy. English locates the other partner, who confesses to seeing Vorelli kill Hugo and transfer his soul to a dummy. He finds nothing unusual about the dummy, but he awakens that night to find the dummy standing near his bed seeking help and telling English to "find me in Berlin 1948." English goes to Berlin, and he learns that Vorelli had worked there in 1948 with two partners, and that one of them was named Hugo. ![]() Marianne, English's fiancée, persuades her aunt to have Vorelli perform at a charity ball in her home so that English can get a closer look at the dummy. At a London performance given by a ventriloquist-hypnotist called The Great Vorelli, newspaperman Mark English is puzzled by the tension that seems to exist between Vorelli and his dummy, Hugo.
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