Demond Doll (1987)

... aka: Doll, The

... aka: Hell Doll

... aka: Infernal Doom

... aka: Joker, The

... aka: Muerte infernal (Infernal Death)

Directed by:

Roberto Guinar (uncredited)

Ronald Wertheim

According to Señor Hernandez over at Trash-Mex, who was able to speak to the film's producer, this ultra-obscure curio was filmed in English in Mexico City in the late 80s. It was released theatrically in the U.S. soon after by Great World Pictures out of Los Angeles. Don't worry, I've never heard of them before either. The poster has an R rating on it which, unless they're lying (wouldn't be the first time), means it had been submitted to the MPAA. After what one can assume was an extremely limited theatrical run, the film was never released on VHS here in the U.S. but did turn up on home video in Mexico in 1992. Without the producer's authorization, someone had gotten their hands on it, re-dubbed it into Spanish and re-titled it Muerte infernal ("Infernal Death"). 

Nearly two decades later, the original English-language version mysteriously surfaced again, this time being hawked on DVD-R by bootleggers under another new title (Hell Doll). This cut also contains extra scenes (including stock footage of bullfighting and Brazilian Carnival dancers) that had been removed from the Mexican VHS version. At around the same time, Guinar uploaded a (rather sloppily put together) two minute trailer for "Hell Doll" to his Youtube page, which can be viewed RIGHT HERE.

While this is currently listed nearly everywhere as a 1992 release under the Muerte infernal title, I'm going to roll with 1987 per the end credits copyright date and use the title on the original U.S. theatrical poster, Demond Doll. And, yes, even having to type out "Demond" irks the hell out of me. I want to call this "Demon Doll" so damn bad. Was it supposed to be "Demondoll," one word, and they accidentally added an extra d? Was it actually supposed to be "Demond" and, if so, what does that even mean? Figuring this was just a word I'd never heard of before, I tried to translate it (nope) and look it up (nada). The only thing I came up with was "a boy's name of American origin that means 'of man'". What am I missing here folks?

Attractive young widow Julia Mercero (Erika Carlsson - THE DRACULA DYNASTY) runs "The House of Dolls" shop out of her home, along with her grown son Lawrence (Benny Corral), who designs creepy masks. Right away, you can tell this isn't your usual mother / son relationship, at least not outside of Appalachia. She longingly watches him as he washes up and parades around the home in a negligee. He's needy, overly sensitive, whines like a young child ("Ma-ma-mommy please!") and can't seem to keep his hands off of her. The two run their fingers through each other's hair and over each other's faces, hug, hold hands, rub noses, kiss on the lips, lie on bed together in each other's arms and do other icky things.

Even though these two clearly share too much already, one thing mom's not ready to divulge is what's really in a large wooden box with holes drilled in it down in the store room. She claims it's a wedding keepsake, "a very special doll," gifted to her from her late husband, who died before Lawrence was even born. When the son asks, "Is he big?" her face lightens up as she responds "He is!" Since he has the maturity level of a young child, Lawrence refuses to STFU about the doll, driving his mum crazy in the process. After she loses it and goes off on him, he has a tantrum and runs away.

Lawrence goes to visit his female friend, Margaret (Sandra Felix), a costume designer, who's been helping him put on weird "theater" performances in the living room for the mom. When Margaret comes on to him, he finds himself unable to have sex with her. He runs back home and starts sobbing, but thankfully his mother is around to comfort him. And, by "comfort," I unfortunately mean making out with him and allowing him to fondle her breasts and crotch (!!) Oh yeah, and the doll is finally allowed out of the box. Said doll, called Yerzo (Aurelio Pérez), is played by a heavily painted-up dwarf in a medieval jester outfit, a pageboy wig and silver sequin gloves (!) that, according to a note left with it, houses the spirit of a man who'd been executed for "sexual atrocities" by a king's court long ago.

After word gets round about Lawrence's impotence, two bullies berate him and throw both him and his bicycle into a fountain. He responds to that by riding off the edge of a bridge and ends up on suicide watch at a nuthouse under the care of doctors Emmanuel Richter (Roger Cudney) and Holly O'Hara (Yria Bazegui). Per hospital rules, he's not allowed any visitors, including his mother, but they do allow him some things from home, including Yerzo, who comes in handy when a nympho nurse ("Hellen Goyas" / Ellen Gollas) sneaks into his room and tries to molest him. Instead, she ends up getting her clothes ripped off and bludgeoned with a puppet head by the "doll."

The plot starts to sputter a bit after Lawrence escapes the institution and disappears from most of the rest of the film. Focus then mostly swings over to the two doctors and their relationship, which seems like an excuse to squeeze in an awkward sex scene. After the male half dies of a heart attack because someone put a skeleton at his front door (!), the female doctor attempts to help Julia, while the Margaret character comes back into the picture and tries to befriend her. Whatever they were trying to do here, it doesn't really work.

Occasionally this will cut to the son and the doll laughing maniacally, wagging their tongues and making strange noises. A despondent-looking Lawrence is briefly seen sitting on the patio wearing a short cami dress (!) while the dwarf attempts to sexually assault Dr. O'Hara and then attacks her with a knife while she runs around her home topless and screaming. The ending suggests that not everything is what it seems, but it's too muddled to really tell for sure.

Though obviously low budget and highly flawed, this is saved to an extent because it just does its own trashy, outrageous, bizarre thing and becomes a kind of singular warped vision in the process. Parts of it are genuinely creepy and disturbing while others are clearly played for laughs or downright dumb. One thing it's generally not, is predictable.

There's some decent camerawork prowling around the home looking at creepy dolls and masks, plus two very bizarre original songs ("The Joker" and "Hungerin'") written by the director and featuring the vocals of leads Corral (who does some spoken word thing) and Carlsson (who actually sings). I had to settle for watching the cut Spanish dubbed version since I couldn't find the English one. In the process I did miss a flashback scene showing the dwarf slicing off a woman's breast while wearing a powdered wig.

So who actually directed this thing? Mex-Trash refers to Roberto Guinar as the "writer, producer and co-director." However, he's only listed as the producer on the poster, and is only listed in the on-screen credits as producer and actor (for a cameo appearance as a delivery man). The actual credited director and writer is Ronald Wertheim, who has a filmography of soft and hardcore porn stretching all the way back the late 60s. He wrote classic era adult films like Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) and Through the Looking Glass (1976) and was the production manager (and also appears in) Deep Throat (1972). In an interview with Rialto Report, a former associate described Wertheim as being "clearly mentally unstable."

Credited with the "original idea" is Alfred Salazar, who I have no doubt in my mind is actually the prolific  Alfredo Salazar, a man who had his hand in all kinds of Mexican films as far back as the late 1940s. He wrote the AZTEC MUMMY (1957) series, the Jekyll & Hyde inspired THE MAN AND THE MONSTER (1959), lots of wrestling movies starring Las Luchadoras or Santo and, fittingly enough, CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE (1961). Salazar also directed a handful of films, including the weird THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS (1965), the pervy A RAT IN THE DARKNESS (1979) and Diabolical Inheritance (1993), which is yet another dwarf-playing-a-killer-doll flick that also happens to star Guinar. I guess Salazar could be considered the Mexican answer to Charles Band with his doll fetish.

Also quite interesting that Carlsson, Corral, Cudney and Gollas all appeared in the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi hit Total Recall a few years later. There really has to be some kind of interesting story there. Corral would go on to become one of the top music video directors in Latin America and has worked with Mark Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Julio Iglesias and many others over the years. Considering how most people who make it in show business like to hide their association with films like this later on, Corral amusingly lists this film twice on his resume, first as a 1989 film called "The Jocker" (sic) and directed by Wertheim, and then under the 1992 Muerte infernal title and directed by Guinar.

★★1/2

Dracula Sucks (1979)

... aka: Coming of Dracula's Bride, The

... aka: Dracula's Bride

... aka: Dracula... ti succhio (Dracula... I'll Suck You)

... aka: Dracula X

... aka: Eruption

... aka: Le vampire X

... aka: Liebling, du beißt so gut (Darling, You Suck So Well)

... aka: Lust at First Bite

Directed by:

Phillip Marshak

There are many different versions of this film; some with more nudity and sex (both hard and softcore) and some with more blood and violence, on the market. Not only that, but depending on the edit, dub and country of release, you could be watching an incoherent porn movie, a dead serious horror film, a comedy spoof, or an incredibly awkward mixture of all three! Usually it's the latter. This is a highly-confused tonal mishmash coming from filmmakers who don't appear to know what kind of film they're even making. It's no surprise then to learn that five different writers are credited (not including Mr. Bram Stoker) and, according to at least one cast member, the film was in the process of being rewritten while shooting was going on. That's always a recipe for success!

What we'll be covering here today is the 95 minute version (under the title Dracula Sucks) that was released by Vinegar Syndrome in 2022, which contains all of the horror content but only some of the hardcore sex footage. I will provide some brief details about the other versions down below if you're interested, but the VS release is certainly going to be the version most people will be seeing nowadays. This is also one of those instances where there's really no approximation of a definitive director's cut. The intent all along appears to have been to prep multiple releases from this one shoot; a horror / soft sex exploitation film and second as a straight porn film. Scenes steering it in one direction or another are utilized when needed for different markets.

Irene Renfield (Pat Manning) brings her mentally deranged adult son Richard aka "Dickie" (Richard Bulik) to Sewards Sanitarium, a castle mental institution in the middle of the California desert run by crippled, monocled Dr. Arthur Seward (John Leslie) and his sister, Dr. Sybil Seward (Kay Parker, of Taboo fame). Later that night, Dickie hears the voice of his dead father calling to him. He's lured outside and into another cobweb-filled estate called Carfax Abbey, cracks open a casket and removes a stake from the heart of Count Dracula (a bearded Jamie Gillis), reviving him and somehow simultaneously resurrecting his two vampire brides in the process. Dracula then bites Dickie, with hopes of making him a loyal servant just like his father before him had been. He's found the next day crawling around outside behaving like even more of a lunatic than before and has to be restrained in a straight jacket.

Coinciding with Dracula's arrival in the area are a number of guests showing up for a protracted stay at the sanitarium, including Dr. Seward's sweet, virginal niece, Mina (the lovely Annette Haven), her bland "homo" fiance Jonathan Harker (Paul Thomas) and Mina's saucy college acquaintance, Lucy Webster (Serena), who isn't quite as innocent as her buddy. Also prominently featured are Seward's intern, Dr. Peter Bradley (Mike Ranger), maid-diddling physician Dr. John Stoker (John Holmes), nurse Betty Lawson (Seka, in her X-rated film debut), Austrian scientist Dr. Van Helsing ("Detlef van Berg" - more on him later), a couple of orderlies (co-writer William Margold [whose screen appeal is virtually nil as usual] and hairdresser / make-up artist / prop man Martin L. Dorf) and a couple of black servants; a nameless maid (Irene Best) and chauffeur Jarvis (David Lee Bynum), who breaks into "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" while Serena gives Ranger a blowjob out on the patio (!) and seems to be attempting to channel Mantan Moreland with his cartoonish performance.

Most of the patients at the asylum, who were once well on the road to recovery, have suddenly gotten worse... and now have some strange puncture wounds on their necks for obvious reasons. Aside from Renfield, who has to be kept restrained, there's a woman whose mind has regressed to that of an 8-year-old, a cowboy and a Nazi. Van Helsing chimes in that "Ninety-nine perzent of all 'uman eells is chronic constipation!" and comes up with a possible solution: "I zuggest varm vater enemas!" As the cast are killed off one by one, Dracula zeroes in on Mina, who he'd like to add to his vampire harem.

While seeing a film of this nature with some atmosphere, decent 35mm cinematography, passable production values and good shooting locations, art direction, props and costumes is certainly a novelty (consult virtually any shot-on-video 80s vampire-themed porno quickie for comparison purposes), the movie itself is extremely uneven bordering on irritating much of the time. In fact, this actually may be the most disappointing horror porn hybrid I've ever watched. Yes, there are worse... most actually are far worse than this, but nobody is expecting quality from a one-day-wonder from the video era. This film actually has quality components, and had a budget, so watching the good things getting trampled over by inept writing, direction, sound and editing here is almost painful to endure. And speaking of painful, the non-stop "comic" voice-overs (inner monologues from various characters, intercom and radio voices...) are the absolute worst!

On the plus side, there are bits here and there that are tasteless, outrageous, nasty and / or just weird enough to kind of work. The most memorable of these seem to revolve around Holmes, who gets his giant penis bitten after having sex on a pool table with the vampirized maid and then is involved in a rough, bloody rape scene with Seka. Another crazy bit features Serena sitting on the toilet when Gillis barges into the bathroom, hypnotizes her and then masturbates after biting her on the tit and urinating all over her. In the 95 minute version, the more explicit bits from this scene are only shown in brief shots with some kind of reverse image / solarization effect added.

You also get a vampire girl biting a rabbit, rabbits humping, a rubber bat, bloody bite wounds on crotches, Vaseline-smeared hallucination sequences, sibling incest, necrophilia, flubbed lines (Leslie even mixes up character names at one point) and forced male-on-male oral, though that's hidden behind Dracula's cape.

While most of the top adult film stars from this period are present and accounted for (none of whom rise above fair in the acting department), more attention is usually bestowed upon the previously mentioned and pseudonymous "Detlef van Berg." Having mainstream actors in hardcore porn movies was a rarity back then, so seeing 70-something Austrian-born character actor Reggie Nalder, who'd previously acted for Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, John Frankenheimer and other esteemed directors, playing Dr. Van Helsing was a surprise. Nalder (thankfully!) doesn't participate in any of the sex scenes but he does have to spout a lot of embarrassing dialogue about bowel movements and mixing semen with blood. The good news for him is that immediately after appearing in this, he'd land one of his most famous roles as the vampire Kurt Barlow in the Stephen King adaptation Salem's Lot (1979). 

In an interview with David Del Valle conducted some time in the late 80s (and first published in a 1993 issue of Video Watchdog), Nalder called his time on the film "a very nerve-wracking experience" because of the constant rewrites ("Nobody knew their lines...") and the constant sex, both on and off set. He likened the whole thing to "an orgy."

Though no great talent, director Marshak seems to have been an interesting character in real life. He was a Korean War vet and entrepreneur who started several small businesses before attending Lee Strasberg school acting classes in New York, studying film at UCLA, opening one of the very first gay bars in Los Angeles (along with his wife) and making pseudo-arty shorts, mainstream features and a number of bizarre-o hardcore films. 

One of his earliest efforts - Savages (1971) - was a violent bisexual western (!) with both straight and gay sex and rape scenes. He co-directed the truly weird R-rated horror film Cataclysm (1980), a troubled production best known - in heavily truncated form - as one of stories in the notoriously bad anthology NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (1985). Some other ultra-obscure titles from him appear to have disappeared off the face of the planet. IAFD currently attributes a 1985 version of Frankenstein starring John Holmes (!) to him that is nowhere to be seen. Cine Mag (a more reliable source than IAFD) lists him as director of a million-dollar-budgeted Canadian production called Dante's Inferno (1982) starring John Ireland, which is also missing in action. And there is perhaps even more...

Combing through filmographies and browsing through a couple of other films, I think I've made a little discovery along the way: Marshak probably had even more X-rated credits under his belt than what many realize. You can link him directly to a mysterious chap who operated in the late 80s called "Max Schenk" or "Max Schreck." Not only do all of the "Schenk"-credited films feature Bulik (usually billed as "Long Chainy") in a non-sexual, acting-only capacity, but so do most of the Marshak films. There are also some thematic similarities. Marshak seemed to be a bit obsessed with Nazis as they figure into this film, Cataclysm and his later porn film Blue Ice (1985), which incidentally also features Nalder. Again, same can be said for a number of the "Schenk" films, like The Sex Life of Mata Hari (1988) and She Wolves of the SS (1989). One of the others is called (hmmm...) Hitler Sucks (1988). So, if I were a betting man, I'd place my chips on Mr. Schenk and Mr. Marshak being one in the same.

Phillip isn't the only Marshak in the credits. His son, Darryl A. Marshak, co-wrote the script, was one of the producers and receives a credit as third assistant director. He would go on to become a talent manager representing the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco, Hillary Swank, Alice Cooper and David Bowie (!) over the years. His other son, Shane Marshak, is credited as assistant best boy. Thanked in the end credits are parents Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Marshak, Phil's wife Pamela Marshak and his daughter, Tracy Marshak, who went on to co-star (as "Tracy Lea") in the minor cult item Desperate Teenager Lovedolls (1984) and its sequel Lovedolls Superstar (1986) before becoming a production accountant. Hey, ya gotta love seeing families spending quality time together, whether that be mandatory dinners at the dining room table, trips to Disney World or shooting porno vampire movies at a castle in the desert.

Associate producer and editor Nettie Peña, another UCLA film / theater grad, went on to make the slasher Home Sweet Home (1980) starring bodybuilder and fitness guru Jake Steinfeld. The camera operator was Ray Dennis Steckler film regular Titus Moede, Norman Thaddeus Vane (1983's FRIGHTMARE) was the second assistant director and Gillis and Leslie are credited as additional third assistant directors.

 

 

As for all of those alternate versions out there... An R-rated cut eliminating all of the hardcore material but still featuring full frontal nudity was released to theaters and on VHS here in America by both Media and Unicorn with a running time of 88 minutes. In other countries, such as the UK, it was whittled down to as little as 73 minutes. In 1980, a 75-minute new version titled either Lust at First Bite (its most common VHS title) or Dracula's Bride was released. This cut (which Vinegar Syndrome has included as an extra in the same release) is a complete re-edit of the film that shuffles the scene order around. Most of the plot, violence and blood are thrown out and lengthy explicit sex scenes that were filmed at the same time but not present in the earlier R-rated version or the 95 minute X version reviewed here are substituted in their place. This is likely the same cut that was released (dubbed) in France under the new title Dracula X. I have no clue what the South Korean VHS release (hilariously re-titled "Dracula Sucks Buttocks and Bossoms [sic]") featured. Fans of the film have put together composites of footage found in the various releases and the running time is well over 2 hours.

Though usually given an incorrect 1978 release date, this actually debuted in early 1979. Gillis would get to play Count Dracula yet again in Shaun Costello's Dracula Exotica (1980; aka Love at First Gulp). He was also in the vampire-themed PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT (1990).

★★