Medical student Howard (Mark Jax) is down on his luck, behind on his classes and rent and working a menial job in the city morgue. He's also developed an unhealthy, unrequited, obsession with 'Miss Gardenia' (Katy Orgill), the girl at the hospital's flower counter.
One night Miss G's body turns up at the morgue, neck broken after her asshole boyfriend crashed their car but otherwise intact – until the autopsy…
Not that this discourages Howard who, believing her still to be alive – the device of her possessing a card indicating its bearer suffers from catalepsy doesn't really work – and reciprocating his interest, takes her back to his dingy bedsit…
Necrophilia, like cannibalism or paedophilia, is one of those taboo subjects that offers the filmmaker the chance to make or break their name.
Get it right – as Jorg Buttgereit and Lynne Stopkewich did in their different ways with Nekromantik and Kissed – and you secure a reputation as a bold filmmaker willing to tackle risky subject matter.
Get it wrong and you're liable to labelled a sick pervert, with predictable effects on your longer-term career prospects.
Unusually, however, it would seem that this 1990 Dick Randall production, co-directed by George Dugdale and Peter Mackenzie Litten from a script by Paul Hart-Wilden provoked little reaction and was met more by a loud indifference.
It's a shame, because Living Doll is actually a better film than its exploitation pedigree and straight-to-video destination would suggest, balancing out some predictable morgue hijinks with a surprisingly tender, serious, touching and mature take on its central relationship. (The contrast with Michael Dunn's polymorphously perverse borderline necropiliac dwarf in Randall's earlier Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974) is telling.)
Likewise, if the commercial need for narrative closure results in a somewhat hurried and over-the-top final act after 80 minutes of slower-burning drama, the direction exhibits some nice touches – the incessant neon signs illuminating Howard's apartment with red and blue light would be enough to drive anyone crazy; a shot of Miss G's treacherous boyfriend framed in a symbolic noose – and a general confidence and ability beyond the usual "let's stick a camera in front and flood the scene with light" approach, especially with the oscillations between objective and subjective representations of the central relationship. (The term "cognitive dissonance" springs to mind.)
Nor is it the case that anything else is really bad. In that he elicits your empathy and sympathy as Howard, Mark Jax's performance has to be considered a success.
The same can be said for Katie Orgill as Miss Gardenia, even if she's not really 'doing' anything in conventional acting terms by alternating between a supine, progressively rotting corpse – the contribution of the impressive make up effects by Paul Hellraiser Caitlin must also be acknowledged here – and an attractive young woman, hardly the greatest of challenges for a Page 3 Girl type. (Or, to put it another way, you just know the snobs who would look down on Orgill's performance would be forced to change their mind if the filmmakers were to assert they had been inspired here by Robert Bresson's use of "models" in his films.)
Similarly while Gary Martin is somewhat broad as Howard's colleague at the morgue and best/only friend, this seems partly the point for his comic relief role; a remark that is equally applicable to Eartha Kitt's (?!) marquee-value-adding turn – at least that is what one assumes it is supposed to be – as Howard's landlady.
Maybe Randall's low-rent reputation unfairly preceded the picture, encouraging reviewers to focus on detrimental incidentals like the curiously mid-Atlantic atmosphere, establishing and location shots of New York failing to compensate for obvious British settings elsewhere, to the exclusion of the film's merits.
Or maybe it just wasn't arty or extreme enough for audiences in the wake of Buttgereit's "Sex Murder Art" / "Corpse Fucking Art" aesthetic.
Whatever happened 15 years ago, Living Doll is now ripe for re-evaluation post Six Feet Under as a film with more to offer than might be expected.
The second volume in Mondo Macabro's ongoing Dick Randall collection, following The Paris Sex Murders , this Region 0 NTSC DVD of Living Doll marks the film's first appearance in the shiny disc format.
Picture quality, sourced from the original negative and presented in anamorphic widescreen, is about as good as you're going to get, while there are likewise no complaints about the audio.
Once again, Mondo Macabro have not skimped on the extras, with a package that puts many a major release to shame.
The most significant of them is a 50 minute promo film made for Randall's 1984 slasher film Don't Open Till Christmas , ostensibly showing us a typical day in his as exploitation producer and showing a lot of behind the scenes material.
Also relating to this English period in the globe-spanning impresario's career is David McGillivray's diary, a nine minute reading in the man's initimitably dry, cynical style documenting his attempts to write a script for Randall's abortive sitcom Park Lane, described as Sex and the City avant la lettre.
As far as Living Doll itself goes we get an 18 minute interview with Paul Hart-Wilden and an eight minute interview with Mark Jax, explaining where they were coming from in terms of ideas and performance respectively; Horrorshow , a four minute short calling card by Hart-Wilden; informative production notes – who else would tell you that Gary Martin is now one of the UK's top voice-over artists for commercials, and the voice of the Honey Monster ? – an extensive stills gallery and the film's trailer.
Interesting film; excellent presentation.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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