Devil Doll – 1964 | 81 mins | Horror | B&W

Plot Synopsis

This slow-paced macabre picture never comes up to its title in the way of shocks, thrills, scares, sex or other dividends for fright fans. Filmed in England, its gimmick – a ventriloquist’s dummy’s revenge on his manipulator – has been done before and better by Cavalcanti and Michael Redgrave in Ealing’s anthology horror classic Dead of Night. And therein lies the problem with Devil Doll, the story is a vignette that can’t sustain a feature-length film.

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American reporter Mark English (William Sylvester) is assigned to do an investigative story on an arrogant German hypnotist-ventriloquist wowing London, The Great Vorelli (Bryant Halliday), who is suspected of being a fake, English takes his socialite girlfriend Marianne (Yvonne Romain) along to Vorelli’s stage show and both are impressed, if somewhat disturbed, by the act. The hypnotist is invited to perform at a charity affair at the country estate of Marianne’s aunt, hypnotizes the girl and, without the others knowing it, leaves her in a trance.

Vorelli plans to repeat, with the girl, an experiment he had done years previously in Berlin, transferring a human soul to the body of a dummy, which he will keep subservient and force it to carry out his demands. While English travels to Germany to track down the truth, Vorelli’s dummy, Hugo, takes matters into his own hands. Sylvester gives an honest, realistic touch to the role of the journalist. Halliday, however, burdened with a messy beard and one expression, the hypnotic stare, depends on his resonant voice to make the role credible.