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Last month, we looked at Hollywood's use of ventriloquist dummies as figures of evil by examining a well-known example of that sub-genre. Now we're going to include a few more "evil dummy" films and even an example from the boob tube in our survey in order to gain a better appreciation of...
By J. KNIGHT (Note: This is the second and last installment of a two-part series. The first installment appeared in last month's issue.) The question is, what makes ventriloquist dummies so darned scary? I believe it's the elemental fact that human life comes from human women. You mess with that scenario at your own peril. When men try to make life by piecing together body parts, building intelligent robots or reanimating corpses, they always end up with abominations. So, too, when supernatural forces bring life to the lifeless, such as dolls, dummies and Al Gore.
Devil Doll, which I looked at last month, is arguably the most popular film in the malevolent-ventriloquist- dummy genre, but it was neither the first nor the last film of its kind. As soon as the movies learned to talk, could a ventriloquist movie be far behind? In 1928, Erich von Stroheim starred in his first talkie, The Great Gabbo, part of which he also directed. The Great Gabbo reminds me of the comic books of my youth where alien creatures took the form of hybrids–a lion with the head of an eagle, a turtle with the head of a lion–as if writers were designing from a flip book with legs, body and head in separate sections.
The Great Gabbo is a serious drama about an emotionally repressed man, grafted onto a stage musical. No, Erich von Stroheim doesn't burst into song, but his dummy Otto does, delighting a restaurant audience with his "lollipop song." The lollipop song and Otto's other number, "I'm Laughing," had me diving for the fast forward button. In fact, I wouldn't recommend that anyone assay the task of watching The Great Gabbo without benefit of a working fast forward button. Trying to sit through it as part of the art museum's Erich von Stroheim retrospective, for instance, would be sheer folly.
The actual story is a bit anorexic. Gabbo (Stroheim) is an arrogant and demanding jerk. His beautiful young female assistant, Mary (Betty Compson) tells him, "Little Otto, there, is the only human thing about you." As she's leaving, Gabbo blusters that she can't make it without him, that she'll be back, and only little Otto expresses regret over the breakup. Once Mary leaves, Gabbo and Otto become huge successes, headlining in a popular Manhattan revue in which Mary also stars as a singer and dancer. It's been two years since Mary left, and Gabbo is still an arrogant jerk, but he's an arrogant jerk who realizes that Mary was a pretty sweet dish. His misinterprets her kindness toward him as a sign that she's leaving her boyfriend, Frank (Donald Douglas), and is coming back to him and Otto.
Mary reveals that she's married to Frank, loves him, and has no intention of returning to Gabbo. Gabbo is crushed. He ruins the show's big finale and is fired. He walks off dragging Otto by the heel. The end. All in all, it's about twenty minutes' worth of story. The rest of the movie, directed by James Cruze, comprises various, sometimes lengthy, song and dance numbers performed on stage. One of them is particularly bizarre--"The Web of Love," a love duet between a fly (Mary) and a spider (Frank) that takes place in the middle of a huge spider web. The antique sound recording of 1928 makes the music and singing shrill to the point of painfulness, and that's another time when, if you don't have a fast forward button, you'll sell your soul for one.
Hugh Herbert wrote The Great Gabbo from a short story, "The Rival Dummy," by Ben Hecht. "The Rival Dummy" appeared in Liberty Magazine in 1928 and resurfaced twenty-one years later as the 22nd episode of the television show Studio One, a production that starred Anne Francis and Paul Lukas. Since the dummy in The Great Gabbo is neither evil nor possessing of a will of its own, the film's place in the pantheon of malevolent-ventriloquist-dummy movies derives from the fact that the people who made real malevolent-ventriloquist-dummy movies cite The Great Gabbo as an early influence. If you're more interested in early influences than you are in actually enjoying yourself, by all means check out The Great Gabbo. It's available on a new double feature DVD from Kino, along with another Erich von Stroheim starrer, Blind Husbands, which is actually pretty good.
1945 saw the establishment of the gold standard for diabolical dummy movies in the form of Dead of Night, a quintet of stories linked by a sixth tale about a man trapped in a recurring nightmare. If I were to list all of the various writing and directing credits for Dead of Night, we'd be here all afternoon. Luckily, this article is more limited in scope. Dead of Night is most famous for one segment, "Ventriloquist's Dummy," which was written by John Baines and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The movie was produced by Michael Balcon who gave us a number of other classics, including Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, and Tom Jones.
"Ventriloquist's Dummy" tells the tale of ventriloquist Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave, father of Vanessa and Lynn) and his dummy, Hugo Fitch. Frere's act features confrontational banter between himself and Hugo, a ventriloquists' staple and, possibly, a nod toward the inherently abominable nature of dummies. When Hugo solicits the attentions of another ventriloquist, Sylvester Kee (Hartley Power), we get the distinct feeling that he is more in control of the act than Frere, the human, is.
Tension is thick between Frere and Hugo, and Hugo is happy to flaunt his ambition and conviction that he can find a better partner than Frere. Frere comes to suspect that Hugo is trying to ruin him by canceling shows and is planning to leave him for Kee. Hugo turns up in Kee's hotel room one night, Frere accuses him of dummy-napping, violence ensues and Frere ends up in custody. "Ventriloquist's Dummy" is a tightly-woven story that is exactly as long as it ought to be, with a plot that makes sense. There's a great scene, too, where Frere is drinking at a bar with Hugo on the barstool next to him, and Hugo insults a woman. Her outraged boyfriend demands an apology and Hugo won't hand it over, so the boyfriend decks Frere. I'll admit, if I were a ventriloquist's living dummy, I'd have to pull this gag a time or two myself.
On all fronts, Dead of Night is a marvelous and effective thriller that deserves a place on your DVD shelf. (That same half-inch of space will also hold Queen of Spades, a nicely filmed but seemingly endless movie about a guy, a gal, and a deck of cards, the other half of the Dead of Night double feature DVD.) Although all of the stories in Dead of Night are solid (well, the golfing tale is a little dicey), "Ventriloquist's Dummy" is the most chilling and influential. In addition to inspiring Devil Doll, "Ventriloquist's Dummy" would appear to have inspired the Twilight Zone episode, "The Dummy," which first aired on May 4, 1962. "The Dummy" was adapted by Rod Serling from a story by Lee Polk. Jerry Etherson (Cliff Robertson) is the alcoholic ventriloquist this time around. The story is straight-forward: The dummy, Willy, is the clever and talented partner; Jerry tries to break free of Willy's mental grip; Willy won't let go; shock ending.
Surely the most prestigious ventriloquist's-dummy movie would be 1978's Magic starring Anthony Hopkins in a duel role as Corky Withers the ventriloquist, and the voice of Fats the Dummy. The movie also stars Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith, was written by William (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) Goldman, and was directed by Richard Attenborough. As a magician, Corky proves to be a great ventriloquist. With his magic act faltering, Corky adds Fats as a heckler and success follows quickly. Unfortunately, Corky becomes addicted to speaking through his alter-ego Fats who, typically, grows more and more obnoxious and controlling. Fats leads Corky into acts of murder, including that of his agent, Ben Greene (Meredith, smoking cigars the size of sewer pipes), but can Fats compel Corky to slay his girlfriend, Peggy (Ann-Margret)?
Hopkins, Meredith and Ann-Margret are all wonderful. Hopkins really gets to strut his stuff when Ben Greene challenges Corky to go five minutes without speaking through Fats. The feat is so tortuous to Corky, and Hopkins plays it so beautifully, that it's genuinely squirm-inducing. Still, Magic has a way of dividing audiences into Love-It and Hate-It camps. The Love-Its appreciate the fact that Fats is not demonically possessed or in any way supernatural, but is merely the other side of Corky's mind. Hate-Its hate it for the very same reason.
Like Gabbo before it, Magic might be measured ultimately by its influence on later malevolent- ventriloquist-dummy films. Unfortunately, there haven't been any in the past quarter-century. Love-Its would say that Magic was the ultimate film in the genre and any follow-ups would pale in comparison, while the Hate-Its would call it a genre killer. Or maybe there are only a few ways to play the ventriloquist-and-his- dummy shtick and the audience has seen them all. I guess I'll have to write my own malevolent- ventriloquist-dummy movie. Or better yet, I'll let my new writing partner, Nutsy McNut, write it for me. Come on, Nutsy--hop onto my lap and let's brainstorm. (More of J. Knight's writing can be found on his Website.) Thanks, Jan! It would seem that although the "evil dummy" motif is a seldom used one in Hollywood, it usually serves up an interesting film or TV episode. With so many politicians, corporate heads, and even some professional types using speechwriters and "spin doctors" to put words in their mouths, we must wonder how many "deadly dummies" we have among us today. And, of course, there's always our TV news presenters whom we already refer to as "talking heads." Article copyright © J. Knight |
