The Best Movie Ever | Creepy Dolls

In the annals of horror history, few pieces of iconography have as universal an impact as creepy dolls. The original inhabitants of the Uncanny Valley, these little effigies may provide some comfort to small children but to full-grown adults, all we see are dead eyes and soulless smiles. Creepy dolls, we all subconsciously understand, are out to get us. Creepy dolls are evil.

And that’s why tons of movies have used dolls to elicit terror from their audience throughout the decades, sometimes symbolically and sometimes literally. Whether creepy dolls are just atmospheric or actually possessed by a homicidal maniac, they form an indelible aspect of the scary movie genre, and with the latest entry, The Boy, coming out in theaters this weekend we figured the time now to decide, once and for all… what’s the best creepy doll movie ever?

Join our panel of expert films critics – Crave’s William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold, and Collider’s Brian Formo – as they plunge headlong into their fears and present their picks for the creepiest of creepies. They can only pick one movie a piece, and we suspect that most of their picks this week will surprise you.

Find out what they chose, and come back next week for an all-new, highly debatable installment of Crave’s The Best Movie Ever!

Brian Formo’s Pick: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

United Artists

Is a Raggedy Ann doll creepy? With those vacant eyes and that limp form, I’m going to say yes. In The Night of the Hunter, the candy-striped doll is stuffed full of stolen money by a father who’s about to be hauled off to jail and then hung in the courtyard gallows. When awake, the doll is always in little Pearl’s hands and it rests by her head when she’s asleep. It’s an object of blank, unformed innocence that might be snatched by a devil. 

Hunter is most famous for the “LOVE/HATE” tattoos on Robert Mitchum’s knuckles (and his wrestling with the devil speech that goes along with it). Full of peering shadows, fire and brimstone ceremonies, and church songs sung by a preacher (Mitchum) who bends religion to get what he desires, Hunter is a creepy film. But it’s also a simple parable, of which the doll is a great representation.

Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) and her brother John (Billy Chapin) are separated by about six years, but it’s a precious six years because Pearl hasn’t learned how to determine trust. Their father tells the 12-year-old boy to lead the household and look after his sister and mother (Shelly Winters) before he’s hauled off, and to not tell a soul about where the money is hid. He quickly has to learn that trust is earned and not given right away. His father’s cellmate is the tattooed preacher who prefers burlesque shows and female punishment for showing sexual desire. This twisted preacher easily weasels his way into John and Pearl’s community (looking for the money) simply by quoting scripture and talking about the Lord. Nary a soul in town questions his intentions because of his cloth; even when his words get perverse he is defended. John knows not to trust him, but he also learns that keeping the money in the doll is keeping his father’s sin. And that’s what he’s really wrestling with.

Witney Seibold’s Pick: Pin (1988)

New World Pictures

On paper, Pin (a.k.a. Pin: A Plastic Nightmare) is a run-of-the-mill New World production; a usual, quotidian, schlock-tastic Psycho knockoff. In practice, however, Pin is actually much more. Written and directed by Sandor Stern (he of Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes infamy), Pin is about a young brother and sister (David Hewlett and Cyndy Preston) who are kept in line by the cold machinations of their stern medical doctor father. Father is also a ventriloquist who uses his anatomically correct, life-size visible-man doll – named Pin, short for Pinocchio – as the means to teach his children about the facts of life. The time has come to teach the kids about sex. Sister is game. Brother is… uncomfortable. 

As they grow, Hewlett becomes increasingly neurotic about sex, and has kept Pin as his surrogate childhood. He even begins throwing his own voice into Pin, forming, naturally, a split personality. Although it was perhaps pitched as something more sensational, and is most certainly a low-rent horror cheapie, Pin is actually psychologically correct about the way neuroses and hang-ups form and function. It’s thoughtful and well-written. It’s one of the great underrated horror films of the 1980s. 

William Bibbiani’s Pick: Child’s Play 2 (1990)

Universal Pictures

Confession time: Child’s Play is the movie that gave me nightmares as a kid. Recurring, horrible nightmares about that red-haired “Chucky” doll murdering me with my various childhood accoutrements. I still vividly remember the time he used a pair of safety scissors as a ninja throwing star and impaled my head. That sucked.

But here’s another confession: I never saw any of the Child’s Play movies until I was an adult. The trailers and the marketing were enough to scare me crapless as a child, and once I finally saw the original film I was a little surprised at what a conventional thriller it was. And then, of course, I saw Child’s Play 2… and I had the tar frightened out of me, all over again.

That’s because Child’s Play 2 is the film the original Child’s Play was always supposed to be. (Just ask series creator Don Mancini.) It is the saga of a little kid whose doll is secretly a killer, and all the know-it-all adults who don’t believe his stories. It is the story of childhood anxiety and paranoia, in which the iconography of youth is violently perverted. It’s a great slasher with a creepy doll to end all creepy dolls, looking more frightening than he ever had before (or ever would again, I think) thanks to disturbing advances in visual effects.

Excuse me, but I have to go hide under the covers again. Good night… forever.

Previously on The Best Movie Ever:

Top Photo: Universal Pictures / United Artists / New World Pictures