Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon once again made a low budget masterpiece with Dolls. It was released by Empire which was Charles Band's film company before the Full Moon days.
The casting of the film is perfect, all of the actors really did a fantastic job and it shows in their performances. Guy Rolfe as Gabriel turns in an especially noteworthy acting job, who also went on to play Andre Toulon in the later Puppetmaster series.
The Doll effects are mid-1980's, so they're not going to look like CGI effects these days. I think the effects are very good however and hold a certain magic of their own...perhaps since David Allen did most of the work, and later went on to the Puppetmaster series of films. The people who will say "this film sucks" are those who expect CGI quality in all old films, or expect all enjoyable films to cost 100 million to produce.
The Mansion in which most of the film takes place is particularly magical looking on film. It reminds me much of a large older house i spent my early childhood in.
To those interested there is a DVD version of Dolls out. It is an official licensed version from Hong Kong. The good thing is that it can play on any Region 1 players! The picture and sound quality are quite good and it has optional subtitles which you can turn off.
I just wish they still made lighter edged horror films as good as this, with a well written plot, good characters, creepy musical score, etc...
