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

Tsuitô no zawameki (1988)

... aka: 追悼のざわめき

... aka: Noisy Requiem, The

Directed by:

Yoshihiko Matsui

The seriously disturbed Makoto Ishikawa (Kazuhiro Sano) is first seen aimlessly wandering around the slums of the impoverished Kamagasaki district of Osaka. He stops to feed pigeons, then suddenly bludgeons one with a hammer and rips its head off, adding it to a collection of dead birds he keeps hidden in the sewer. He treats his human prey about the same way. A serial killer, Makoto beats his victims, robs them, defiles their corpses and then dumps them in junkyards, trash heaps and abandoned buildings around the city when he's done with them. He sometimes strips naked, takes the entrails from his victims and stuffs them into a hole bored out of the crotch of his mannequin "girlfriend," whom he shares a "home" (actually a rooftop) with, buys an engagement ring and expensive dresses for, dances naked with, cuddles with, has sex with and licks bird droppings off the face of (!) Also, great news for the couple: She's recently become "pregnant."

A schoolgirl discusses a dream she had that involved gray pigeons preventing a single white one from eating some beans, the white pigeon turning into a crow, the beans turning into starving people ("Like in that song 'We Are the World'!"), the starving people turning into dead bodies and the crow feasting upon those bodies, finally noting that we all have the capacity to be that crow picking at the carcasses of the weak and dying, granted we're hungry enough. This prompts her to give more than her friend thinks she should to a pair of disabled Pacific War vets panhandling by a fountain. Immediately after, Makoto extinguishes that good deed by accusing the men of being Koreans faking being Japanese. He knocks them both down, bites them, stomps on them and stabs one of them in the leg with a crowbar, which he then twists around to intensify the pain. He then steals their money.

No doubt like many others living there, Makoto has a long criminal record, though he's still free to roam the streets among the other undesirables. Aside from the assorted criminals are the mentally ill, the homeless, the poor, the deformed, the disabled, the different; all of those folks "polite society" has no place, and often no compassion, for. At the end of the day everyone wants love in any way they can find it, even those whose idea of love would be viewed as sick, immoral or perverse by the standards of the world at large. And we get to meet many such folks here.

A drooling, filthy bum (Isamu Osuga) who's been reduced to having sex with a tree stump (!) stumbles upon Makoto's mannequin, attempts to have sex with it and ends up cutting his dick on a broken bottle top shoved inside her crotch hole (an extra precaution from her man to prevent "cheating" I suppose). Makoto is hired by a dwarf (Toshihiko Hino) and his dwarf sister, Natsuko (Mamiko Nakai), to clean out sewers. She has bad burn scars all over her neck, arm and chest from getting splashed with hot oil as a kid, is constantly laughed at and ridiculed and manages to drive people away simply by existing. Lacking in the romance department, she's reduced to sex toys and the occasional hookup with pedophiles who try to pretend like she's a child. Oh yeah, and once a year her brother gives it to her out of pity, per their dead mother's final request!

Also weaved into the film is a touching story of a teenage boy (Simon Kumai) and his sweet young sister (Yukiko Murata). They chill at the beach, play hopscotch and give each other knowing, loving looks. And then he decides to rape her to death, tries to spit her blood back into her mouth, paints her face, buries her in a lot, digs her back up and then cannibalizes her corpse. After stripping all of the flesh off, he then carries around her bones in a bag. He's not the only person to go mad either. Poor Makoto loses it too, starts killing people with a claw hammer, burns down a building and, in a very striking and surprisingly moving scene captured in long shots, runs toward a hundred or so schoolgirls for help, only for them to flee from her in horror.

There's an out of body experience, a headless Buddha statue with eggs on its neck stump, a dead parakeet, a ghost, a hand getting impaled, self-mutilation, spitting up half-chewed food, a disembowelment, a fetus getting ripped apart, a close-up shot of a dirty asshole, puking on someone's face, accidental death by discus hit to the back of the head and many, many incidents of casual, seemingly senseless cruelty and violence.

Societal alienation has always been a key theme in all of the director's films. His debut, Rusty Empty Can (1979), dealt with a homosexual love affair at a time when gays were heavily discriminated against in Japan. That was followed by Pig-Chicken Suicide (1981), which dealt with racism against Koreans living in Japan and also reputedly has many scenes of real animal slaughter, which is why I've avoided it thus far. Many of the same themes, namely the search for love and affection in a world filled with prejudices and obstacles, have carried on over to this one.

This proved to be something of a challenging view for me and it took three separate tries to finally make it all the way to the end. The controversial content didn't bother me at all, nor did the grotesque and gory imagery. What was more of a struggle was the formless plot, which takes seemingly forever to start taking shape, and the repulsive, thinly-drawn characters, This really could have used some tightening up in the editing room as well. While I don't necessarily have a problem with a 2 1/2 hour movie, I do have a problem with a 2 1/2 hour movie packed with unnecessary long shots of mundane things that seem to go on forever. There's making a point and then there's making a point and then beating the audience over the head with that point for an additional hour.

Aside from the prolific Sano, who's a director himself and a regular presence in Hisayasu Satô movies like RE-WIND and SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST, the cast is comprised almost entirely of amateurs, though everyone plays their part effectively.

What really saves the day here is the style. This is one of the most visually remarkable pieces I've seen in quite awhile. It's shot in grainy 16mm and black-and-white (one of my personal favorite aesthetic choices), with lots of unsteady handheld camerawork roaming about, great framing and very striking shots and camera placements. There's one great high contrast shot after another and the whole thing looks fantastically gritty. That by itself is enough of an incentive to give this a look, though the narrative and the content may not be to everyone's tastes. I'm a bit torn. Even though I really appreciate the artistry and imagination behind this, and there are a number of powerful moments worth seeing, it's definitely not something I'll ever sit through again.

This project began all the way back in 1983, took three years to complete and another two years to release. It caused controversy in its home country but became a big underground cult hit, playing in one theater until 2004! However, the film didn't make much of an impact in other parts of the world. Supposedly a number of film festivals, even those outside of Japan, refused to show it. It also didn't do much for the career of the director, who wouldn't make anything else until twenty years later. His next and, as of this writing, last film, Where Are We Going? (2008), once again dealt with love among the marginalized, this time between a young male factory worker with a traumatic past and a transsexual.

While the film took forever to release on home video (which wouldn't occur until the late 2000s), there are several Japanese DVDs on the market now and English subs are available. Though uncredited, Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man), Gakuryû 'Sogo' Ishii (Burst City) and Takahisa Zeze (In the Wake), all supposedly worked on this in some capacity.

★★★