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Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface
Charley McCarthy — these are just a few of the offerings
from le cinema puppet!
By Gary "Gepetto's boy" Morris
Pinocchio
What happens after
they're done dancing?
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Walt Disney made horror movies disguised as kidflix, and none —
except maybe the cosmically sadistic Old Yeller — is as
horrific yet strangely thrilling as Pinocchio. This veritable
catalog of perversities has sent many a child screaming for the exit,
and no wonder. What must mothers in the 1940s (or later) have thought
at the images of Pleasure Island, where bratty boys throw rocks through
stained-glass windows, smoke big cigars, and undergo an agonizing transformation
into donkey slaves? Pinocchio lives with his "daddy" Geppetto, a hunky
old confirmed bachelor who wouldn't look bad at all in chaps and studded
jockstrap, and probably wore them in outtakes. Yet Pinocchio is so desperate
to escape his puppet status to become just another boring "real boy"
that it leads him into all manner of mischief, including a sojourn with
quasi-pedophilic puppetmaster Stromboli, who shows Pinocchio's fate
should he choose to resist: a trunk full of frighteningly broken "dead"
puppets. Pleasure Island is everyboy's dream of violent antiauthoritarianism,
but the payback is too terrifying. Why couldn't he be happy as entertainer,
surrogate wife, and literal boytoy for the man who "made" him?
Attack of the Puppet People
John Hoyt as the evil puppetmaker.
Shouldn't
the girl be a little suspicious
of that headless doll at
lower left?
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Special fx sleazeball Bert I. Gordon (known to himself and his immediate
family as "Mr. B.I.G.") excelled at 1950s sci-fi and horror trash. One
of his best/worst is Attack of the Puppet People (1958). The name is
misleading — there is no attack, and the "puppet people" are teenagers
shrunken by an old dollmaking perv who's "lonely" and apparently too
maladjusted to make normal-sized friends. As compensation, there's loads
of cruelty and camp in this too-brief (79 minutes) feature. Mr. Franz
(the fabulous John Hoyt) is a "kindly" old man who rules his dolls with
an iron hand. They're only allowed out when he feels like it, or when
he thinks they've been good. When he does release them from their tubes,
they're forced to enact ridiculous rituals for his amusement: miniature
weddings, tiny teenage twist parties. There's a creepy sexual tone to
the whole affair, as if Mr. Franz, off-screen, may be using the dolls'
tubes as part of some wacky penis-enlargement scheme. The film's taglines
are as deceptive as the title, but fun: "Doll dwarves versus the crushing
giant beasts!" and "SEE a baby doll take a bubble bath in a coffee can!"
The "dolls" have a sense of humor about their situation when they're
not bitching, they refer to themselves as "bottle babies," sing self-reflexive
laments about their size, and dream of a "moonlight swimming party in
the sink." Watch for the genuinely creepy real puppet show toward the
end, a short but expertly rendered Jekyll & Hyde melodrama where a little-bitty
John Agar gets to punch out Mr. Hyde. Maybe Agar's practice in beating
up his former wife Shirley Temple during their mercifully brief marriage
helped bring verisimilitude to the part.
Black Devil Doll from Hell
Devil doll prepares to give "bitch"
her "heart's
desire" — cover art
from the video of this masterpiece
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Shirley L. Jones plays a good churchgoin' woman in Philadelphia who
buys a blackface Charlie McCarthy doll with dreadlocks from the local
Rapist Puppets store. Despite her devoutness, Shirley's horny as heck,
and the puppet knows it. At night he sneaks into her bed, exhales devilish
smoke in her face, and screams things like "I'm gonna fuck you now bitch!"
and "I'm gonna give you your heart's desire, bitch!" Shirley tries vaguely
to resist but her legs are soon spinning upward. She can't get enough
of that wooden pecker and his verbal abuse. But like so many men, Devil
Doll is fickle and abandons her, forcing her into the streets to pick
up men. But none of them measure up. She wants wood! Chester Novell
Turner is the auteur of this misogynist masterpiece of sleaze. Like
so many indie auteurs, he's a regular Renaissance man, writing, photographing,
scoring, and probably hiring his kid to dress up as the sex puppet star
in those scenes where the little guy has to run across the room and
dive into bed with Shirley. There's a queasy porn feel to much of BDDFH;
Mr. Turner lingers on Shirley as she soaps up naked in the shower. It's
not clear if the disco where she goes to pick up men — a rat-trap
bar with three or four people dancing to organ music – is typical of
the Philly disco scene at the time (1974). And oh yeah, in the Clutch
Cargo tradition, the puppet has a real tongue that wiggles out of
his mouth when he's ready to muff-dive. Sweet.
February 2003 | Issue 39
Copyright © 2003 by Gary Morris
ACCESS: Pinocchio and Attack of the Puppet People are easily had
on VHS and DVD. Black Devil Doll from Hell is available on ebay,
typically for $20 bucks or so these days in "collector to collector"
homemade VHS transfers. A fantastic bargain for this experience.
ALSO: More horror
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