Blood Dolls (1999)

Plot Outline: Virgil Travis is a wealthy recluse who lives in his mansion with his dwarf butler and his servant with a painted face. He keeps a female rock band imprisoned in an electrified cage and who play music on his command. And he also has a trio of deformed, living dolls who will do his every bidding. He sends the dolls out to kill his corporate buddies who have just swindled him out of a million dollars but doesn't expect to fall in love with one of them.

The Review: Full Moon's single-handed "little killer things" genre continues with what is essentially another poor reworking of Puppet Master. Blood Dolls is clearly an attempt to create another franchise in that vein as each of the little killer dolls have their own personalities and different methods of killing. They look and act much like their genre counterparts - quite cool looking little things which come to life pretty well when they're in puppet form but as soon as they become digital (no stop-motion here folks) then they look daft. If the thought of little dolls killing people wasn't weird enough, check out the rest of the film. It's just totally weird from the get go as two investigators head to the mansion and we're introduced to the rock band, the dwarf,  Mr Mascaro (the man servant with a clown-painted face) and then Virgil himself, who wears a huge mask but eventually takes it off to reveal he has a shrunken head! It's hard to root for anyone in this film as originally we're led to believe that Virgil, Mascaro and the dolls will be the villains but later on in the film we come to see that maybe he's not so bad after all and it's the slimy corporate suits that are the real bad guys. It's nice to see evil vs evil for a change instead of some goody-two shoes heroes. Acting wise, it's your usual mixed bag from Full Moon. There's plenty of unknowns in the lead roles and a couple of character actors in supporting roles. Williams Burns as Mr Mascaro is probably the best of lot. Being able to act serious when you've got clown make-up on was probably hard to do but he comes across as intelligent and calculated. Add in a couple of amusing moments with S&M, some ok gore effects, some not so good, and you have a watchable flick that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Final Verdict: Blood Dolls may not be Puppet Master but at least Charles Band still knows how to create an interesting low budget flick filled with weird characters and wacky situations. How many mainstream films can you say included most of the mentioned above?

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