Judy (Carrie Lorraine), the pigtailed 7-year-old heroine of Stuart Gordon’s Dolls (1987), clarifies that she isn’t scared of the dark — she’s scared of what might be in the dark. In the case of this often simultaneously horrifying and darkly humorous horror-comedy, always lurking around the mansion where the film is set is a seemingly endless number of carefully crafted, maybe-murderous dolls. They’re the creations of spouses Gabriel (Guy Rolfe) and Hilary (Hilary Mason), white-haired toymakers who bemoan the general public’s favoring of mass-produced playthings over one-of-a-kind designs.

Dolls’ characters land in the pair’s Dracula’s castle-like abode because their cars get stuck in the mud on the road outside during a pummeling rainstorm. Judy is the always-fantasizing daughter of the vacationing David (Ian Patrick Williams), a jerk who, along with his rich new wife, Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon), treats his imaginative offspring rottenly. Joining them soon after in this not-quite-haven of a manse is a goofy, young-at-heart businessman, Ralph (Stephen Lee), who’s picked up a pair of petty-thief hitchhikers (Bunty Bailey and Cassie Stuart) who’re dressed like Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)-era Madonna and Debi Mazar.

Dolls is a proto-Child’s Play (1988) slasher movie where Gabriel and Hilary’s creepy-faced, sinisterly giggling toys prove astonishingly gifted at collaboratively slamming a new victim’s head into crown molding or turning the human body into geography for a game of Whack-a-Mole where hammers are switched for a hodgepodge of ultra-sharp objects. But its vantage diverges. Dolls’ perspective is always grounded in Judy’s, which isn’t as freaked out by the dolls as she is enchanted by the up-to-something Gabriel and Hilary, who show her more kindness than any of the adults in her life. 

Watching Dolls, I was reminded of how, when you’re a kid, you might imagine particularly nasty fates for those you dislike in part because you don’t quite yet have a real grasp on how mortality and its finality work. (Early on in the movie, Judy daydreams that her always-in-hand teddy bear — which Rosemary rudely chucks into some bushes for no reason besides being mean — bloodily defends her from both her father and stepmother.) Dolls feels like the realization of one of those innocent-but-still-unpleasant fantasies, immediately narrowing in on a tone that’s commensurately spine-chilling (what will eventually happen to the film’s several antagonists is truly terrible) and a little fairytale-like. Judy ultimately gets what she desires; those targeted never include those who move about life with a sense of compassion. Seeming like it exists in a liminal space, mysterious Gabriel and Hilary’s mansion is a different kind of gateway to hell — a last chance for redemption before it’s too late.