Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984)

     Back in the mid-eighties amateur filmmakers decided to avoid costly middle men, hoist their own heavy camcorders on their shoulders and churn out movies themselves.  Thus, the "Shot-On-Video" period began which brought films like The Dead Next Door, Video Dead, Video Violence and The Woodchipper Massacre to local mom-and-pop video rental stores across the nation.  This opened the market up to, literally, any Tom, Dick or Harry that had zero professional vision or insight into the craft to churn out whatever the fuck they wanted to shoot.  Suffice to say, most of these movies were irredeemable pieces of shit that left the poor sap that rented it hightailing it back to the video store at mach speeds to demand their money back.  This scenario couldn't be stressed more in the case of Black Devil Doll from Hell.

     According to producer and director Chester N. Turner, most of BDDfH was excised by the video distributor, David Ichikawa , as well as the original title of the film, "The Puppet."  Right off the bat I can tell you that reducing this tripe to seventy minutes was correct on Ichikawa's part.  I mean, would you prefer to double the length of a root canal?  Considering Turner's entire movie takes place in only three settings, do you really think you're missing anything?  However, using up nearly SEVEN FUCKING MINUTES of the scant running time on Ichikawa's ear-splitting intro song, "I'm Your Nightmare" was one of the poorest decisions in human history.  At least you had time to pop in the vhs, order a pizza, wait for it, pay the pizza guy, eat half of it and down six or seven Old Milwaukees before the opening begins.  And begin it does...

     Somewhere on Chicago's south side, bespectacled, God-fearing Helen, performed by local Shirley L. Jones, who would go on to date Turner during filming, attends church.  Allow me to interject here that the dialogue is mostly inaudible so, bear with me.    On her walk back home, accompanied by Turner's background music courtesy of a Casio keyboard demo song, she is approached by an enterprising young salesman that tries to interest Helen in a new coat amongst the items out of the trunk of his car:

"I call it cracka-ass white."

 

Clutching her bible, she admonishes him for stealing and returns home.  The sinners are relentless as Helen takes a call from her friend who wants to hook her up with Sam.  She's not having it as Helen wishes to delay all sexual activity until after she is a bride.  While this conversation is conducted, and by "conversation" I mean both actresses speak at equal volume into the same microphone, Turner takes the opportunity to pan the camera around the room so we can get a visual on her home decor and various knick-knacks.  Why stop there Chester?  Why not go into her pantry and see how many boxes of macaroni and cheese she has or see if there's enough toiler paper in the bathroom?  Helen's proselytizing is successful and rewards herself by heading over to the Road's End antique store for some Sunday shopping.  While browsing the store, she comes across the titular nemesis:

"Hell kicked him out for snorting Satan's cocaine."

The woman behind the counter provides some backstory for the puppet.  Too bad we can't hear a fucking thing:

As far as I can discern, the original owner of the doll was from the West Indies and imbued it with the power to grant its owner's heartfelt desire.  She warns Helen that she has sold this doll on four separate occasions and each time the puppet has returned to the store.  Then why keep selling the fucking thing?  She reluctantly puts the puppet back, however, after giggling to herself in the store  like a creep she decides that this Rick James-looking motherfucker is comin' home wit Momma!
     Helen returns home singing "Jesus loves me" (I believe those are the only words.) unpacks the puppet, places him on the toilet like he's ready to drop a log (Get it?  Because he's wood?  Sorry...) and undresses for the shower.  Let's pause again and address something else.  There are two kinds of people in the world; those that should be nude in movies and those that shouldn't.  Shirley L. Jones, along with Harvey Keitel, are in the latter.  While Helen is in the shower the puppet comes to life.  Either that or the fucking single-note background music that sounds like a goddamn air raid siren jars it awake.  He pulls the shower curtain aside to witness his owner soaping up her pancake titties.  The puppet immediately turns to stone and shatters when it hits the floor.  Oh wait, that was actually my libido.  Small snippets of the puppet licking said titties are interspersed in this scene as if you're aren't already completely horrified.  You're still not?  Okay, how about superfreak pounding Helen's virginal poon into submission?  After what seemed an eternity, the scene ends when Helen's shame (She has none.) snaps her out of her naughty soaping while I pour bleach into my eye sockets.
     While in bed, Helen has a nightmare where the puppet assaults her and blows smoke out of his mouth.  She's jolted awake and decides to move the doll back into the bathroom.  When she's roused by her alarm — an alarm that has all the subtlety of a battleship cannon — Helen becomes distressed when she sees that the puppet is back in her bedroom.  Turner must have been asleep behind the camera because Jones sits in bed shaking her head in silent disbelief for about a third of the film.  Helen packs him away in his box placed in the closet.
     Helen returns from work and checks to see if the puppet remained in the closet.  She's relieved to find it still there and prepares herself for a shower.  While bathing, the puppet exits his quarters and stalks into the bathroom.  Once she exits the doll is ready to pounce:

Open field tackling: A lost art-form

After the take-down the puppet, channeling his inner Ronnie Lott, stands over his victim and gloats, "How do you like that, bitch?"  When Helen awakens, she finds herself tied to the bed with a salty rapists doll staring back at her.  He cackles in morbid glee:

"I'm gonna give you your heartfelt wish!  I'm gonna fuck you, bitch!"

He mounts the bed, blows a little 420 smokage into her face and begins the morbid task of licking her naked body:

"Why does your breath smell like Pinocchio's dick?"

He journeys down south, wetting the runway, and then proceeds to fuck her.  It's pretty humorous for the first few seconds, however, Turner decides to film this like it's actual porn.  How long do we need to watch a puppet with 10-foot dreads, jackhammering this sexually stunting woman?  Almost as if Turner didn't stress to his audience how much of a scumbag he is, he has the demonic doll force Helen to beg it for more throttling.  Our ghetto rape fantasy concludes with Helen climaxing.  Burn those fucking sheets.

     She wakes the next morning thinking it was all a dream in spite of the fact that her vagina is still aching from logjammin'.  Helen prowls around the house enticing "Mr. Wonderful" to come out of hiding and lay some more wood.  Okay, that's the last one.  After a search of the home comes up empty she decides to call into work sick and do housework.  Yep, housework.  Cleaning dishes, vacuuming, cleaning the fucking tub.  Suddenly we went from hardcore puppet fucking to Home and Garden TV.  What a fucking hack!  The work doesn't bring her closer to God as she collects all her bibles and religious articles and throws them in the trash.  So... she's a Jehovah's Witness?  

     Helen spies the hustler at the beginning of the movie plying his trade outside her home.  She invites him in and divulges exactly what happened to her the last few days.  Too bad towards the end of her story our hack director decides to go in hot with the Casio:

Young playa ain't havin' none of that bullshit.  Helen flashes her bedroom eyes and the next thing you know, the con artist is probing her wares.  Visibly frustrated, she tells the impromptu playmate to hurry his weak shit up.  Turner, ever the visionary director, captures the very essence of the moment:

"She's never satisfied — she's never satisfied!"

Disappointed at her choice of lover, Helen decides to doll herself up and head over to Elmo's Lounge to find a gorilla dick motherfucker.  Immediately she spots this Beat Street reject:

"Ain't got cash on me.  D'yall take checks?"

Who needs dialogue when you have an overbearing soundtrack?  Turner switches to documentarian mode as we shockingly learn that patrons who frequent a dance club indeed dance!  The scene shifts back to the bedroom where Helen is, once again, let down by her sexual partner.  She sobs in her bed while masturbating over the loss of her puppet.  Helen suddenly remembers that the lady at the antique store told her that the puppet returns on its own and she departs for there immediately.  The doll has reappeared at the store, however, the shopkeeper tells Helen that she has to pay for it again.  She does, returns home, places him on the bed, disrobes and begs the puppet to satisfy her.  Predictably, the doll doesn't budge.  Frustrated, Helen attempts to destroy the puppet when it comes to life:

"The spice must flow, bitch!"

This causes Helen to hemorrhage from her eyes and nose and collapse in death.

     Back at the antique store the saleslady is hoodwinking the next victim into purchasing the doll.  This is the same shakedown that constituents of Jesse Jackson Jr's district found themselves in.  The woman returns home, places the box on her couch and when she returns to it finds it empty.  She mouths the words "What the fuck?" mirroring precisely what 99.9% of the viewers said as the ending credits roll.  

     Currently, there's some hipster douchebag from Michigan who struck a deal with Chester "No Talent" Turner and is hawking this ugly piece of shit for $30.  Nostalgia tends to cloud judgments so let me implore you that this is a monumental waste of time.  I wouldn't spend thirty cents to watch this ugly fucking rape fantasy garbage and neither should you.  Fuck you, Chester Turner and fuck your stupid Cubs hat you carpetbagging hack.