Lindsay Shonteff's Devil Doll feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits that was mercilessly stretched into a full-length feature film. It begins in London with a disturbingly realistic ventriloquist act by a magician named "The Great Vorelli" and his dummy Hugo. His act captivates an American reporter, Mark English, who tries to interview him. When "The Great Vorelli" discovers that his girlfriend, Marianne Horn, is the heir to a vast fortune, he agrees. What follows is a thoroughly disturbing tale as Vorelli hypnotizes Marianne and other women into sexual slavery and uses Hugo, who may or may not be alive, to murder people who get in his way. The "possessed ventriloquist dummy" plot was old even when Devil Doll first came out. Thankfully, the film is (mostly) saved by Bryant Haliday's chilling performance as Vorelli and Shonteff's atmospheric direction and mise en scène. The ending is formulaic and predictable, however. As can be expected, Hugo really was alive in the sense that he was possessed by the soul of one of Vorelli's past assistants. I think I would have enjoyed the film more if the twist had been that Hugo wasn't alive and instead Vorelli was just one of the best ventriloquists in history. Or maybe they should have swung for the fences and revealed that Hugo was a live midget and Vorelli was a puppet. But anyhow, for all its lack of originality, Devil Doll still has the power to creep viewers out.
5/10
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