BDDicon

One of the most hotly debated films in the schlock world dur­ing 2009 was Black Devil Doll.  This pseudo-remake of an infa­mous shot-on-VHS hor­ror cheapie from the 1980’s acted as a line in the sand, polar­iz­ing the exploita­tion flick-loving faith­ful.  Reviews from were always even divided: either Black Devil Doll was the sec­ond com­ing of exploita­tion cin­ema or it was an aggressively-pitched hype that seduced the easily-duped true believ­ers.  As usual, the truth lies some­where in the middle.

Black Devil Doll starts by intro­duc­ing us to Heather (Heather Murphy), a buxom but sim­ple­minded good time girl.  One night, she fools around with a Ouija board that zaps the evil spirit of an exe­cuted African-American mass mur­derer into her ven­tril­o­quist dummy.  In short order, the dummy seduces her and she falls for the now jive-talking hunk of plas­tic.  Unfortunately, one sex part­ner isn’t enough for the doll so he gets her to invite over some friends for a sleep­over.  This is when the doll’s other need — a need for bloody car­nage — takes over…

It’s a solid setup for low­brow laughs & thrills and, on a pure con­tent level, Black Devil Doll deliv­ers the exploita­tive goods.  There are acres of bare flesh, a decent amount of car­toon­ish gore and a steady onslaught of raunchy humor.  It knows no shame (rape and racism are the major sources of its humor) and aggres­sively goes for the gusto in a way that grind­house fans will adore.  Unfortunately, Black Devil Doll can’t quite sus­tain its run­ning time.  After about a half hour, it becomes obvi­ous that the film­mak­ers had about 30 to 40 min­utes worth of actual story mate­r­ial and decided to pad out the rest of the run­ning time with skits and riffs on what­ever came to mind.

As a result, Black Devil Doll mean­ders when it should be tight­en­ing up, with the plot act­ing as a loose thread on which sev­eral digres­sions are hung.  Some pay off nicely: the best is a scene of Heather’s pals wash­ing a car that becomes an over-the-top par­ody of over­sexed hip-hop videos.  When the digres­sions don’t work, you get numb­ing excur­sions into poop jokes and extended takes of strip­pers soap­ing up their silicone-bombarded breasts.  Black Devil Doll also boasts the longest end-credits scene in recent mem­ory, built around in-jokey gags that aren’t as funny as the film­mak­ers thought they were.

It doesn’t help that the per­for­mances are mostly awful.  Granted, no sen­si­ble per­son should expect Shakespearean act­ing in a film like this but is it too much ask for a lit­tle charisma?  Heather and her pals are all inter­change­able, none show­ing a trace of per­son­al­ity beyond generic sexbomb man­ner­isms.  In fair­ness, Martin Boone does score a few chuck­les as White-T, a faux gangsta, but the liveli­est, wit­ti­est work comes from the doll him­self, who basi­cally car­ries the flick on his lit­tle plas­tic shoulders.

However, Black Devil Doll does sur­prise with its unex­pected level of tech­ni­cal pol­ish.  The James Bond-parody title sequence and a few other visual effects boast above-average CGI work for a no-budget pro­duc­tion.  There’s also a cer­tain sophis­ti­ca­tion to the edit­ing, includ­ing some inspired use of mov­ing, multi-split screen effects (kudos to John Osteen, who served as CGI designer, co-editor and cin­e­matog­ra­pher).  The end result has a slicker, more visu­ally imag­i­na­tive style than most films at this bud­getary level ever have.  Your Humble Reviewer was left feel­ing there is tal­ent here but, cre­atively speak­ing, it’s just tak­ing the eas­i­est way out.

In short, the folks behind Black Devil Doll have more tech­ni­cal skill and poten­tial than their detrac­tors are will­ing to admit but their admir­ers are over­look­ing  their lack of focus and weak sto­ry­telling chops.  Hopefully, next time the Lewis broth­ers will try to com­pete with the best exam­ples of the grind­house era instead of its worst and invest more effort in the conceptual/script phase of their project.

“General Audiences” Trailer — But Still Pretty Much Not Safe For Work: