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Living Doll

UK 1990
produced by
Dick Randall for Spectacular Films
directed by George Dugdale, Peter Mackenzie Litten
starring Mark Jax, Katie Orgill, Gary Martin, Freddie Earle, Marcel Grant, Eartha Kitt, Heather Robbins, Jane Rawlins, Mandy Curzon
written by Paul Hart-Wilden, special effects by Paul Caitlin

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Howard (Mark Jax) is studying to be a doctor & is therefore doing an internship at a hospital's morgue. Otherwise though he's a bit of a loner, a weirdo even, but he is hopelessly in love with Kristine (Katie Orgill), the flowergirl at the hospital. Thing is she hardly even takes notice of him, & she has a boyfriend, Steve (Marcel Grant).

One day though, Kristine dies in a car-accident, & Howard finds her in the morgue as one of his clients. & as if that wasn't enough, he also has to be present at the autopsy ... Howard is heartbroken, until he realizes that death is not necessarily the end, but could be a new beginnin, so he digs her corpse up & takes it home, & he starts having a relationship with the dead Kristine (who for him is still alive), & all his other worries pale in comparison, that he still owes his landlady (Eartha Kitt) rentmoney, that he is accused of stealing in the morgue (which he did, but his best friend Jess [Gary Martin] covers up for him), that he is almost fired, that he misses out on his uniersity studies & is on the verge of being expelled ...

Even the fact that Kristine starts to slowly decompose, is covered in maggots & occasionally rats come by for a bite doesn't really bother him that much (as he still sees her as the woman she was when alive). Eventually, in a private ceremony, Howard marries Kristine - exactly the day the exterminator stops by (because of the rats who like to come to his appartment), & he can only just hide her on the fire escape.

Eventually, even Howard realizes that having a corpse lieing around in his appartment is a bit too risky in the long run, so he takes her with him to the morgue (which is pretty much where you would expect a corpse), where he's doing nightshifts anyway.

Soon, Kristine persuades Howard to bring Steve, her ex, to her (& there is pretty much only one way a man enters the morgue, if you know what I mean), so one day in Steve's appartment, Howard brutally attacks & kills him, even though Steve is not quite as easy to kill as expected. When Steve's corpse is brought to the morgueHoward gets his reward from Kristine by passionately kissing her ... & it is only then that he notices that she is not quite the woman he saw her to be but a rotting corpse. In horror he runs away & seeks solace from a prostitute (Heather Robbins) ... who also turns out to be not quite the woman he thought her to be but a man called Bruce. In terror, Howard slashes Gruce's throat, then returns to the morgue, where he loses himself in delirious hallucinations, seeing  Kristine & Steve dancing, laughing at him.

Finally he shoots them, then turns his gun around, aiming at himself and ...

 

Dick Randall, who over his long career as a filmproducer gave us some wonderful memorable trash from around the world (including The Clones of Bruce Lee, King of Kong Island or French Sex Murders) was never a man of subtleties, & I think he would wholeheartedly have agreed to that, priding himself to always provide the right fodder for the exploitation market. Living Doll though, his last film - & his first produced for direct-to-video distribution - is, beneath all its rotten corpses (well, actually just one rotten corpse), a very subtle film, a deliberately slow moving cross of romance, melodram, black comedy, horror & an empathetic portrait of your friendly neighbourhood psychopath htat is, in its blend, unlike pretty much everything else, & at the same time a highly entertaining film (if you are not put off by the subject of necrophilia of course).

Naturally though, upon its release the film did not get the recognition it would have deserved, because it was on one side produced by exploitation producer Dick Randall, & on the other hand who would take direct-to-video-films seriously anyways ? & then of course it's about necrophilia ...

Not to be missed.

 

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

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Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
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love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
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