Blood Dolls — Blood Dolls( Blu Ray)
Blood Dolls is a Charles Band film from the late 90’s, which stands as one of his most wacked out & comic-book creations. It regards a masked eccentric billionaire-come mad doctor, who decides to take revenge on competitors via killer dolls he’s created. It also features a caged girl rock band, a philosophical clown-faced painted butler, moments of spurting red gore, and a hell-of-a-lot campness. Here from Full Moon Features, as either a Blu-ray or DVD, is a release of the film, taking in a few archive extras
Charles Band directed Blood Dolls in 1999. It was his 19th film, but since he’s gone onto rack-up another ninety-three director's credits. I feel there’s little point in doing a bio of Mr Band, as I’m sure everyone reading this will know who he is, and his importance in the history of B-movie genre films.
After the credits, we open up with two lawyers turning up at the house of eccentric billionaire Virgil Travis(Kristopher Logan). They are met at the door by Mr Mascaro (William Paul Burns) a clown-faced, painted butler with a gruff comic book voice. As they are led into Virgil's office, we see in its entrance a cage full of a four-piece female rock band.
The lawyers sit down, and we get our first look at our eccentric billionaire- he has a huge stone effect mask of his head, which looks like it came off a statue of some bald-headed superhero villain. It’s revealed that three of his competitors have done him over- costing him money & pride. So he unveils his latest- three killer dolls- the blood dolls- Pimp, tattooed & pierced Sideshow muscleman, and multi-armed oriental Ms Fortune.
Initially, the film plays like a wacked-out revenge story- but fairly soon it starts to twist off on its own weird/ wonky path that is full of surprises, with the film rounding up with two alternative endings.
So along the film's length, we see the female rock band being encouraged to play by electrocution. Our southern billionaire rants & raves, as Mr Mascaro executes his orders with suavely sinister flair. There are a few gory kills- taking in a drilled chest, a wire sliced up bodies, and a few others. And a rather bizarre romance, and some S&M.
All in all, Blood Dolls was a lot of fun- but you’ve got to be open to the camp, comic book, at points wacked out, and ridiculous to fully enjoy what’s on offer here.
The scan for this release looks largely very good/ well defined, though maybe lacking some clarity and depth in the darker scenes. On the extras side- it’s all archive material, but we do get an episode of Full Moon's videozine Videozone- this runs at just over the twenty six minute mark. In this we get interviews with Band and the cast, and a fair selection of the behind the secenes footage- with the episode topped off with trailers of the upcoming films on Full Moon. It’s all in all fairly interesting, and amazingly, the whole film was shot in two weeks.
Otherwise, we get a music video for one of the songs played by the female rock band called “Pain” which isn’t half bad- if you're into moody/ tuneful light rock. There’s a blooper reel( 2.27), and a trailer for Hollyweird, which was a doc made about Blood Dolls, but sadly, we don’t get the doc itself.
If you enjoy horror fantasy with a decidedly wacked-out, at times fairly unpredictable unfold, I’d say give Blood Dolls a go.