If you're older than Renfield, you likely remember that wisecracking ventriloquist dummy, Charlie McCarthy.  And if you're around Renfield's age, you likely recall TV dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smif.  At any rate, the friendly and fun ventriloquist dummy of childhood somehow became dark and sinister when appearing on the silver screen in several memorable shockers.  One of these is Devil Doll a film we will examine in this, our look at...

By J. KNIGHT

(Note: This is the first installment of a two-part series.  It will conclude in next month's issue.)

In 1964, producer Richard Gordon graced movie theaters with his production of Devil Doll. Neither the first film in the malevolent-ventriloquist-dummy genre nor the most recent nor the most lavish, Devil Doll is arguably the most memorable.

Devil Doll is available on a fine "double feature" DVD from Image Entertainment, in which the second half of the "double feature" is…another version of Devil Doll, the Continental version with partial nudity.

Devil Doll tells the story of master hypnotist and ventriloquist The Great Vorelli (Bryant Haliday, mis-credited as "Bryant Halliday" on the Continental version). I've decided that stage hypnotists and magicians are an egotistical lot–they always seem to preface their names with "The Great," "The Amazing" or "The Incredible," even when their acts more properly qualify them for the title "The Pretty Good," "The Adequate" or "The Really, Really Lame."

Vorelli's act falls into the category of "The Truly Dreadful." He opens with a display of hypnosis, during which he mentally compels our heroine, Marianne Horn (Yvonne Romain), to dance the twist. (She gets off lucky, since a later volunteer is compelled to…well, I'll get to that.) The audience goes wild, apparently forgetting that Chubby Checker achieved the same result on a mass scale just by singing a song.

Vorelli's voluptuous but aging assistant, Magda (Sandra Dorne), then carries Vorelli's dummy, Hugo, on stage for the rousing finish. Vorelli may be a master ventriloquist but his stage patter leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, it leaves almost everything to be desired. Here's a sample:

Vorelli pours himself a glass of wine. Hugo says, "Give me some wine. I want some wine." Vorelli: "A dummy drinking wine? Don't be ridiculous." Hugo: "I want some. Give it to me. I know what wine is. I've had wine before. I want some wine. Why shouldn't I have some wine?"

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, it ain't.

The tension between Vorelli and Hugo is palpable. Vorelli obviously has some power issues as he insists that he is the master of the truculent Hugo. He forces Hugo to apologize to the audience, and here's where the act gets really good: Hugo gets up from Vorelli's lap and walks to the front of the stage.

Okay, now a little imagination is called for since Hugo is clearly a person (a female midget named Sadie Corre, uncredited) wearing a dummy suit. But if the effect had been real, it would have been startling, and the audience applauds madly.

Vorelli goes on to exert a malevolent influence over Marianne, using his mental powers to seduce her. Marianne's boyfriend, Mark English (William Sylvester) is suspicious of Vorelli and his amazing walking dummy and sneaks into Vorelli's room to examine Hugo up close and personal in his cage.

Yes, Hugo is kept in a steel cage when he's not on stage. No one in the film seems to wonder why. Maybe Hugo's contract had a no-box clause, I don't know. I do know that Hugo is one scary-looking dummy, and I'll admit to feeling some tension as Mark examines Hugo's mouth. Could a finger severing be far behind? In this case, no, as Hugo exhibits no sign of life even as he's being probed and partially undressed by Mark.

That night, however, Hugo escapes from his cage (we don't know how). He's already threatened Vorelli with a knife on stage, so a decent stratagem would be to lay low and kill Vorelli in his sleep. Hugo, though, proves himself to be a true dummy and opts instead to walk to Mark's room to beg for help.

Here again, logic disappears from the plot like a palmed coin. You might think that a living dummy held hostage by a mad ventriloquist would take advantage of this opportunity to say something like, "I'm a living dummy kept in a cage by a madman! You gotta help me, man!" And that Mark would then rouse the household and everyone would gather 'round the walking, talking Hugo and tell Vorelli to let the dummy go.

You'd be wrong, of course. What Hugo does is say a few terse words about Berlin in 1948 and then sneak back to his cage, and Mark keeps mum about the whole affair until the next day when proving that it wasn't a dream is impossible.

I'm beginning to see why screenwriters Ronald Kinnoch and Charles F. Vetter assumed pen names for this one (George Barclay and Lance Z. Hargreaves, respectively). The film is based on a story, "The Devil Doll," by Frederick E. Smith who had sold it, film rights included, to London Mystery Magazine for about fourteen dollars. When London Mystery Magazine resold the film rights to Gordon, no one bothered to tell Smith. The first he heard about it was when his son mentioned that a movie called Devil Doll was playing down the street. Such is the respect commanded by the freelance writer.

Getting back to the movie: I have to mention here that Mark English is a reporter, and he has the cushiest reporting job I've ever seen. He has his own office, his own secretary, and he never writes anything. He smokes cigarettes and ponders, and he looks at papers on his desk, but his typewriter sits in the corner gathering cobwebs. Faced with Hugo's cryptic remarks, Mark does what Mark does best; he ponders and smokes a cigarette.

The plot plods along. Mark calls a real reporter, Bob Garrett (Alan Gifford), in Berlin. Garrett also has a swell gig, with a hotel room complete with a hot young babe in a nightie (topless, in the Continental version), but he does get the scoop on Vorelli and arranges an interview with one of Vorelli's former assistants, Louisa (Ella Tracey). Louisa tells Bob and Mark the incredible story of Hugo and how Vorelli transferred Hugo's soul into the dummy. We don't learn exactly why, maybe just because he could, but at any rate, he did it. After a few months, the human Hugo died.

Vorelli's new plot is to marry Marianne, transfer her soul into a new dummy, let her die and then inherit her wealth. His assistant, Magda, objects and threatens to call the police, thus setting her up to be murdered, and here's where the Continental version deviates seriously from the American one.

The scene establishing why Vorelli wants to kill Magda is gone from the Continental version, replaced by a scene in which Vorelli compels a prissy young woman, Miss Penton ("real" name, Trixie Dallas) to dance a striptease on stage, trading off a key motivational scene for one with a couple of bare boobs. Those wacky Europeans! No wonder their movies don't make sense.

In one of the more suspenseful moments of the film, Vorelli uses his mental powers on Hugo to make him stab Magda to death. (Here, too, the Continental version includes healthier female breast.) Vorelli himself has an airtight alibi.

Marianne, under Vorelli's hypnotic spell, dumps Mark for Vorelli (maybe if he'd called himself "The Great Mark" he'd have had better luck). Mark takes drastic action, transcending smoking to swig a couple of drinks while he mopes over his lost love. Apparently, getting this guy to actually do something is like pushing water with a rake.

Luckily the climax of the film doesn't depend on Mark getting off his boozy duff. Vorelli accidentally leaves Hugo's cage door open, Hugo attacks him with a knife, and midget wrestling ensues. Then there's the twist ending that you've been expecting for the last half hour but wondering how the movie would get there, plopped on your doorstep like a frog that has rained from the sky.

Devil Doll is not a great movie, but dang, that Hugo dummy is creepy, especially when he's coming at the screen with a knife or when his eyes shift so subtly that you wonder if they've moved at all. The actors are good and directors Lindsay Shonteff and Sidney J. Furie (uncredited) did an admirable job for a low-budget picture. Devil Doll was shot for about $75,000, and every dollar is on the screen. Really, I'm not being sarcastic. Excellent production value for such a low-budget flick.

The Image DVD also includes commentary by producer Richard Gordon and film historian Tom Weaver, publicity and production photos and the original U.S. theatrical trailer.

Buy it now. The Great Vorelli commands you.

In Part Two of "Deadly Dummies," I'll take a look at two malevolent-ventriloquist-dummy films that bookend Devil Doll, 1945's Dead of Night and the Anthony Hopkins-starrer, Magic. Plus maybe a television episode or two.

(J. Knight is the author of Risen, coming from Pinnacle Books in January 2004. He maintains a Website you can visit by clicking here.)

Thanks, Jan!  Although Hugo is indeed a deadly dummy, one that cuts to the quick on command, he's also a sympathetic character, quite unlike most deadly ventriloquist dummies on the big and small screens.   That last fact will become clear in part two of this series.  In Devil Doll, the real dummy, of course, is Vorelli...how could any sane male want to make that lovely real doll, Yvonne Romain, into a sawdust-filled dummy?

Article copyright © J. Knight

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