A Grimm Retrospective: Dolls (1986)

February 23, 2024February 23, 2024 GrimmReflecty83Leave a comment

One of my fondest memories as a kid was sneaking through the Horror section at my local Blockbuster Video. It was here that I was introduced to the stunning VHS box-art designed to titillate as well as horrify. But there was one movie’s cover that stood out from all the others and that movie was DOLLS.

You see; in the days before streaming, before blu-ray, before even DVDS, we had VHS. Bulky tapes that required rewinding. That needed Vertical Hold adjustments to get a clear picture. Tapes that your VHS player could randomly eat and destroy. These wonderful relics dominated home entertainment as early as the late 70s and stayed popular until the early 2000s when DVD finally took their place. And while I do miss taping my favorite television shows as they aired live, I don’t miss the hassle that came with owning VHS. They took up a ton of space. Rewinding them was a pain in the ass and you never knew when your favorite tape would finally degrade to the point of being unwatchable.

That said, there is something that I do miss about the VHS tapes of yore. That being the box art. They grabbed your attention with their heavily stylized and usually hand-drawn artwork.

What made these so memorable, however, was that some art did not even depict a scene from the actual movie. Instead it exercised creative liberties with the movie’s overall concept. One example would be the box art for the horror-comedy HOUSE. It showed an overly detailed rotting hand ringing a doorbell. I remember it terrifying me whenever I saw it at my local Blockbuster Video. The brown flesh, the cracked fingernails, the visible muscle and bone; how could this movie NOT be scary?

Chopping Mall is another one that stands out. The robotic hand carrying a blood red shopping bag with body parts poking out of it. I learned later that the art had nothing to do with the movie but still! It looked awesome!

You have Fright Night with the clouds forming a vampire’s face above a house, Critters with a Crite standing center stage with that creepy, hungry smile upon it’s face. WaxWork with the butler opening a door to a wall of twisted monstrous faces. And who could forget ALIEN with its minimalist style of a single Xeno egg floating in the darkness of space.

Beautiful. All of them.

But then you had movies that were a mix of live action and hand drawn art. One of my personal favorites was the cover for Dead Alive (Brain Dead). It had a woman pulling her lips apart while a screaming skull peaked out from the inside of her mouth. Or what about THEY LIVE with a closeup of Roddy Piper’s face with an alien reflection in his sunglasses?

You have Tremors with the live action cast standing in the desert with a hand-drawn Graboid tentacle coming up from beneath them and Nancy’s frightened face with Freddy’s claws over her face in the original Nightmare on Elm Street VHS Cover.

The fact is, these covers were a work of art and although every movie had their own style, it was the horror genre that took box art to a different level.

Which leads me to today’s Retrospective.

Dolls (1986): A Visceral Treat for the Eyes.

As I mentioned earlier, there was one movie that stood out among all the others and that movie was Dolls. Dolls had some of the creepiest box art that I had ever seen. It was of a dolly in a red dress and black curly hair. The left side of her face was flawless. Shadows, however, bathed the right side of her face. Through these shadows you could make out the hint of a human skull. Contained within both of her hands, risen for the audience to see, were a pair of human eyes.

It had its desired effect. It scared the living hell out of me. This box art was one of those images that I would see whenever I was alone in the dark. I would imagine that little doll in my closet; staring at me with those empty eye sockets. I hadn’t even seen the movie and already I was afraid of it!
But what about the movie itself?

The original release of Dolls came during the 1985 Italian MILFED Film Festival. It’s story revolves around several people who become stranded in a gigantic mansion during a horrible thunderstorm. As it turns out, the mansion is home to former toymakers Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke; both of whom welcome the strangers to stay the night.

The group includes a young girl named Judy and her despicable father David and equally foul stepmother Rosemary; businessman Ralph, and hitchhikers Isabel and Enid. The kind-hearted Hartwickes are more than happy to let them stay the night as long as they all behave themselves.

Judy, ever the curious one, discovers that the mansion is chalk full of wonderful toys. This includes stuffed animals, marionettes, and beautifully detailed dolls. Gabriel tells Judy that he and his wife were toy makers and these were their toys. The collection enthralls not only Judy but also the businessman Ralph. As it turns out, Ralph has never outgrown his fondness for toys and is very excited to see such a collection. It does not take long for Judy and Ralph to become friends; having bonded over their mutual love for the Hartwickes’ work.

But the fun doesn’t last long. As the guests turn in for the night, one of the hitchhikers sneak out of their room with the intent of robbing the mansion. What they find instead is a pack of pissed off dolls who brutally attack the hitchhiker. Judy witnesses this event and tries to warn her parents who promptly ignore then punish her for “making up stories”. Upset, she turns to Ralph who, having seen some of the dolls move himself, believes her. Now they must team up to survive the rest of the evening while also figuring out the mystery behind the killer toys and their creators.

Right off the bat I want to talk about the movie’s special effects. They are absolutely fantastic. The crew used a mixture of marionettes, stop motion, and animatronics to bring the dolls to life and it works wonderfully. Because of the different styles of movement, it gives each toy their own distinct aura of creepiness. The jittery, twitchy stop-motion just gives a sense of wrongness to some of the dolls’ movements. Compare this to the dolls controlled by animatronics – with their eyes moving slowly in their eye sockets, their limbs moving smoothly, almost as if they were actually alive – all of which add a sense of danger to these particular toys.

Then you have the bounciness of the marionettes that somehow provide a weird sense of silliness, yet realness, of the situation. There is a scene, for example, in which a marionette gets set on fire. Its body begins bouncing and jerking about as if someone is yanking on its strings. I don’t know why but it just makes the doll feel that much more real. Like it’s actually reacting to the fire. I mean, we know there is a stagehand off camera pulling on the strings to make it move but because we never see the strings or the person pulling it, it just makes the doll feel alive.

On top of that we have the fact that the dolls are not just hollow shells but actual living, breathing creatures complete with a skeleton, muscles, and functional organs. Whenever they take damage, chunks of ceramic break off exposing their ooey gooey insides. It is a wonderful little detail that piles onto that sense of wrongness that I mentioned earlier. It makes us question the toys’ origins. Where did they really come from? How did Hartwickes manufacture them? Are they truly alive or are they possessed by something out of this world? I absolutely love it.

The same cannot be said for some of the characters. While there is nothing wrong with our victims, they do amount to nothing more than a bunch of walking cliches. You have the neglectful father, the cruel stepmother, and the greedy punk rockers. They don’t really have any development outside of their one personality trait but you know what? That’s okay. We are not supposed to root for these people. They are all despicable one way or another which makes watching them get what is coming to them that much more enjoyable.

That said, we do get some great development between Judy and Ralph. As the only characters with good intentions and kind hearts, we cannot help but worry for Judy and Ralph’s safety. I could not help but love the bond that forms between them.

I also enjoyed the toymakers Gabriel and Hilary. They are not just mindless psychopaths, luring people into their home to die for their own sick pleasure. There is a method to their madness and it makes them that much more interesting to watch. In fact, they remind me a lot of John Kramer from the SAW franchise with their philosophy on appreciating the little things in life. I don’t want to go into too much detail but there is a lot more to the Hartwickes than meets the eye.

Then we come to the gore. We get some pretty wicked kills – from someone having their eyes gouged out and replaced with doll eyes, body parts being sliced and chopped with little knives and saw blades, and even a firing squad! But the highlight comes from the doll’s themselves.

Like I said before, the dolls all contain these slimy, almost mummified bodies beneath their ceramic shells. So, seeing their true forms come out whenever they are damaged is a real treat. And they are not created equal either. Some are look as if they had been dead for decades whereas others look as if they were recently deceased. Some have pumping organs, some have red and white muscles, and some even have their eyes intact. I love the variety as it keeps each reveal fresh and unique.
Honestly, I love this movie. The story is simple yet solid enough to keep you engaged, the kills are fun, the special effects top notch, and the victims despicable enough for us to root against. And honestly? I really do believe that this movie helped pave the way for other movies such as Child’s Play and Puppet Master. It contains many elements that both franchises would explore in greater detail and I feel like the effects for Dolls helped inspire the way Chuckie and the Puppets would be animated in the future.

I will always recommend Dolls to anyone who’d listen. It’s fun. It’s unique. And it is one of the few movies that lived up to its terrifying VHS cover.

Please give it a go when you have the chance. I do not think you will be disappointed.

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Silent Hill 2 Remake – Combat Trailer Concerns

February 7, 2024February 7, 2024 GrimmReflecty83Leave a comment

I distinctly remember the exact moment in which I became interested in Silent Hill. I was in high-school and reading a game magazine (either Game Informer or Electronic Gaming Monthly) and there was an interview with one of the creators behind Silent Hill 2. Unfortunately, I cannot remember if it was with writer Hiroyuki Owaku or director Marashi Tsuboyama but what I do remember is how they described the game.

You see, before Silent Hill, horror games were all about the interaction. You interacted with the monsters in some degree. Whether engaging them in combat (Resident Evil) or running away and hiding (Clock Tower), you were constantly interacting. Thus, the design of these games followed the idea of “Showing” instead of “Telling.”

Games like Clock Tower, Resident Evil, and Dino Crisis wanted you to see the enemy. They wanted you to see the zombies, the Scissor Man, the dinosaurs and while these games relied on jump-scares; they also focused on Survival. So much so that Resident Evil often referred to as the father of “Survival-Horror”. That is having players manage their limited resources to make it to the end of the game. And sure, there can be an argument towards the Clock Tower franchise being the first – I mean it is literally about surviving an unstoppable enemy – it is Resident Evil’s mix of action and horror made it the go to example of the Survival Horror genre.

That all changed with the introduction of Silent Hill

Silent Hill was released on the Sony Playstation in 1999. At first, it was seen as nothing more than a Resident Evil clone but for those who sat down to play it; they discovered it was so much more.

Where Resident Evil focused more on jump-scares and inventory management, Silent Hill focused on atmosphere and the fear of what you can’t see.

Silent Hill takes place in a small town that is as foggy as it is barren. This fog acts as a visual barrier – keeping the players guessing at what horrors could be just beyond the curtain. It was common for players to be walking towards their destination only to have a monster appear in the distance. Shrouded by fog and emitting terrible, inhuman sounds; the glimpses of these creatures proved scarier than Resident Evil’s infamous jump-scares.

Silent Hill 2 took this idea and ran with it. As I said, I was reading an interview with the game’s developer. They explained that it was scarier knowing that something terrible exists than being surprised by its existence. The example they gave was something along the lines of: “Imagine you enter a hallway. In the distance you see something waiting for you. But instead of it coming for you, it turns around and leaves.”

So now you know there is something in the hallway. You know it’s there and that is the direction you need to go. Now you must make the conscious decision to trek down the dark, scary corridor with the knowledge that something is waiting for you. You don’t know where it is nor if there are others waiting with it. Only that it’s there.

Building upon this mechanic was the addition of making your character “combat inefficient”. James, the protagonist in Silent Hill 2, is not a cop, nor a soldier. He is a regular guy. He has troubles swinging heavy weapons and is not the best marksman with a firearm. This forced players to adapt to a new playstyle. That of “fight or flight”. Do you take the time (and the risk) to fight every monster you come across? Or is it better to just avoid them altogether, juking and dodging around them?

That is not to say that other games didn’t use this mechanic. Resident Evil, again, encouraged players to conserve their ammo by avoiding enemies whenever possible. However, this was not always the best (or easiest) option. Resident Evil’s infamous tank-controls made avoiding enemies rather difficult. On top of that, Resident Evil heavily relied upon backtracking – that is, returning to previous locations. By ignoring the monsters you leave yourself open to dealing with them upon returning.

Silent Hill 2 avoids this by sticking to a more linear format. Yes, you do have to backtrack throughout interior locations, the overall experience is still linear. This means you have a lot more freedom in avoiding your enemies, thus making most combat optional.

Which brings me to the point of today’s post. Team Blooper, the developers for the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake just dropped a gameplay trailer titled “Combat Reveal Trailer”.

Now, I pride myself on keeping an open mind when it comes to remakes of classic games. I understand that things must change in order to fit in with modern sensibilities, but usually involve quality of life changes. Better controls, updated graphics, ability to save more often – things of that nature. What worries me is when a remake alters the fundamental nature of the game.

In the case of Silent Hill 2 – putting a higher emphasis on combat and mobility.

Do not get me wrong. The trailer starts off well enough. The return of classic puzzles, the beautifully updated graphics, the music, and environments; these all look wonderfully done. Then the trailer cuts to the combat.

It is here where my worry begins to sit in. Let’s go down the list.

My first concern revolves around the use of an over-the-shoulder camera. The original game used a somewhat isometric style (for the most part) with the camera high in the air at a sharp angle. This means you had a good idea of what’s directly in front of you and a little bit behind. Even in dark environments you can tell when something is sneaking up from behind.

Lighting comparison Silent Hill 2 — Left – original Right – Remake. Can you see what’s happening at all?

With this new over-the-shoulder camera, it feels a lot more constrained. During the trailer there are moments that seem so claustrophobic and so dark that I cannot even tell what’s going on except that we are being attacked. While this may be intense for a while, if not done properly it will be more irritating than it is scary. Hopefully this is just an early beta example with the camera and lighting being tightened up before launch. As of now, however, it feels a bit TOO close to the action to where everything seems cluttered and frustrating to deal with.

Secondly, I am disappointed with the introduction of Quick Time Events. We watch our main character tussle with one of the monsters – and the player needs to mash the X button to escape the monster’s grasp. Silent Hill 2 should be above such things. It should not be about button mashing but instead about losing yourself to the sights and sounds of the world around you. This works in more action-orientated games like Resident Evil 4 but just feels out of place with a slower-paced game like Silent Hill 3.

Finally, let’s talk about the mobility of the enemies. Specifically, at the 01:14 mark where we see one of the Nurses hopping, somewhat comically, over a barrier to reach your character.

Now I am not saying that we cannot update the movement and speed of our enemies but there is something disappointing about seeing one of these horrific monsters hopping around the environment as if it were a tactical shooter. In the original games, the Nurses were enemies that could equip weapons. They moved with creepy, unnatural movements (usually dragging seemingly broken limbs behind them) while carrying a variety of weapons. Weapons that include pipes, knives, and even handguns! They would limp towards you, their weapons glinting in the light of your flashlight; every movement bringing a sense of terror to the player.

And, like I said, the terror came not from the fact that they were agile and quick but because they were durable and moved in unnatural ways. So, seeing them becoming these quick, agile things in the remake just feels wrong. Maybe it’s the nostalgia in me, but I still believe that seeing something move in an unnatural state is a lot creepier than something rushing me like a normal person could; regardless with how they look.

So where do I stand? As of right now, I am cautious. Not cautiously optimistic, not cautiously pessimistic; just cautious. Silent Hill 2 is hands done one of my favorite games of all time. It’s no exaggeration either. I still stream this game every year for Halloween. I love this game so it makes sense that I would be worried with how this remake will turn out but as of now, I cannot form a more definite opinion without seeing actual gameplay. What I need is a full minute or two of actual gameplay. Let me see how our character moves, how the lighting looks, how the combat handles from start to finish. Once I get that, then I can make a more informed opinion.

I have hopes that Team Blooper is able to handle the complexity and psychological aspects that makes Silent Hill 2 such a timeless game. Just as I hope they remember that combat is not a necessity to the original Silent Hill games. Only time will tell.

Let’s see what the next trailer brings us. When it drops, you can be sure we’ll be revisiting this topic but until then, I am not holding my breath.

Tell us, readers: what are your hopes for the Silent Hill 2 remake? Are you excited or are you in the same camp as me, worried with a dash of caution? Let me know in the comments below!