Film

Dolls

Name: Dolls
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Released: 1987
Cast: Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Carrie Lorraine, Guy Rolfe, Hilary Mason

Stuart Gordon's *Dolls* is a gleefully nasty fairy tale disguised as a haunted-house movie. An old couple's enchanted mansion punishes the cruel and rewards the kind through nightmarish, toybox-horror violence. It's genuinely unsettling but never takes itself seriously—camp and craft in perfect balance. For horror fans who like their darkness witty and inventive.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love small, mischievous horror where a fairy-tale nastiness gives way to giggles, and you enjoy old-school Charles Band style puppetry and gleefully grotesque set pieces more than polished modern scares.

Skip it if you need your horror to be genuinely frightening or your characters to earn sympathy, since most of the people here are broadly drawn and the tone keeps shifting toward cartoonish.

What it asks of you: It runs barely over an hour and a quarter, so it moves quickly, and it asks you to accept an odd, dreamlike logic and a willingness to laugh at grotesquerie rather than be frightened by it.

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If you liked this

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Mischievous creatures wreak havoc with dark humour and real menace. Combines creature-design artistry, slapstick chaos, and genuine scares in a way that respects the audience's intelligence and appetite for weirdness.

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Puppetmaster1989

Killer dolls animated by supernatural rage stalk victims through a creepy hotel. It's admirably committed to its premise, full of practical effects ingenuity, and understands that toys-gone-wrong taps something primal.

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Hellraiser1987

Clive Barker's theatrical, visceral take on cosmic horror. Elegant production design, genuinely transgressive ideas, and body-horror that comes from genuine artistic vision rather than exploitation.

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Dolls

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Conan the Barbarian1982

Both are Stuart Gordon films about worlds with strict moral architecture—cruelty is punished, kindness rewarded—where the supernatural enforces ethics. Both favor production design and atmosphere over dialogue.

Milius directs Schwarzenegger as a man shaped by cruelty in a dark, mythic world. Architecture, craft, philosophical weight—this is sword-and-sorcery as serious art, shot like a Caravaggio. The aesthetic and moral worldview overlap completely with *Dolls*.

But It moves slowly, the dialogue is often laughable, and if you expect action-movie pacing you'll be disappointed. It's a meditation wearing a barbarian's frame.

The Watcher in the Woods1980

A girl becomes entangled in the supernatural mystery of a haunted English estate. Atmospheric, genuinely eerie, built on mood and design rather than gore. John Carpenter's fingerprints are all over the uncanny sound design.

But It's slow-burn deliberately, which means long stretches of dread with minimal plot. The climax divides audiences—some find it transcendent, others anticlimactic.

Poltergeist1982

A family's suburban home becomes a portal to something malevolent. Spielberg's sense of wonder collides with genuine cosmic horror; it's slick, terrifically well-made, and genuinely frightening in ways that linger.

But The plot is straightforward to the point of simplicity, and it relies on technical spectacle more than character depth. Some of the effects feel dated now.

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie1990

Three horror stories with different tones and register—a nasty morality play, weird science, and genuine tragedy. Skillfully constructed to show what the format can do when filmmakers actually care.

But Anthology means uneven. The first story especially will turn some people cold. The whole thing's a bit of a curio now, harder to find than the TV series.

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie poster

Twilight Zone: The Movie1983

Four different directors take on iconic episodes in different styles. Spielberg goes sentimental, Dante goes comedic, Serling's original vision gets reinterpreted. A masterclass in what short-form horror and sci-fi can be.

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House1985

A widow confronting her past in her family home discovers it's alive and malevolent. Wildly imaginative set design, surreal logic, sincere emotional core beneath the strangeness. Japanese horror's influence on practical invention.

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The Company of Wolves1984

Like *Dolls*, it uses fairy-tale brutality as the actual engine. Both feature hostile supernatural spaces that test character through sudden, Gothic violence. Same era, same refusal to condescend to the audience.

Neil Jordan adapts Angela Carter—a teenage girl in a nightmarish forest where every shadow is predatory desire and folk tale logic. Gorgeous, grotesque, sexually charged. Practical effects that still horrify. Pure cinema, almost plot-free.

But It's deliberately dreamlike, so causality dissolves. If you watch films for story progression, this is hostile territory. It's also genuinely sexual in ways that can feel uncomfortable.

Come and See1985

Both films use supernatural or extreme violence to punish cruelty and moral weakness. Both feature a child observing horror that older, corrupt people deserve. *Dolls* is a fairy tale; *Come and See* is its real-world nightmare mirror.

A Soviet boy becomes a soldier in WWII and descends into hell. The most harrowing film ever made—not exploitative, but spiritually devastating. Filmmaking as unflinching witness. It's a masterpiece, and it matters.

But It is two hours of atrocity that does not look away. It's not entertainment. Some viewers will find it nihilistic rather than revelatory. You will not enjoy it—you will be changed by it.