Black Devil Doll (2007)

Directed by Jonathan Lewis
Starring Heather Murphy, Precious Cox, Natasha Talonz
Rated X (By an all-white jury!)
USA

"Ya'll got some big ass titties, but you ain't got no muthafuckin’ brains!"

Written and produced by two of the internet’s biggest hucksters/loudmouths – Brawlin’ Broads visionary Mitch Mayes and Rotten Cotton’s own Shawn Lewis – Black Devil Doll has been hyped in horror mags and blogs for what seems like decades. In actuality, the film was produced in ’07, and has steadily made fest and midnight screenings for the past two years. It’s finally on DVD, and now the world-at-large can see what all the moral outrage and panic the streets is about. Ostensibly a mash-up of 84’s weirdo camcorder epic Black Devil Doll from Hell and the Zuni fetish doll segment of infamous 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror, Devil Doll also throws in odes to Soul Vengeance, Faces of Death, Combat Shock, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and any interracial gonzo porn video from the past ten years. It’s the tender tale of a lonely girl with a huge rack and the mass-murdering, rape-happy ventriloquist’s dummy she falls in love with.

Our story opens with Mubia Abul-Jama, a 60’s era black power revolutionary, getting the electric chair. At some point he went berserk and raped/murdered a slew of white women. During the execution, he appears to be wearing a salad bowl on his head. I believe the scene is supposed to resemble the electric chair scene in Faces of Death. Anyway, he gets fried.

Meanwhile, a curvy chick named Heather (Heather Murphy) sits around watching TV, bored. She calls up her friend Natasha (Natasha Talonz), but she’s busy with a gang bang. Heather finally opts to play around with an Ouija board. She happens to experiment with it the same time as Abul- Jama gets executed, and he channels her through the board. Somehow his spirit shoots out of the board in a ball of fire and turns the ventriloquist doll she’s got sitting on the sofa into…that’s right, a black devil doll from hell.

Heather’s not all that shocked by this strange turn of events. But then her best friend is a gang-bang girl, so probably nothing rattles her at this point. Abul-Jama maintains his innocence, and Heather seems to be ok with it. And then she blows him. They develop a relationship, signified by a montage of days at the beach and the playground set to a slow jam. There’s a lot of girl/puppet sex too, which affords us ample opportunity to ogle Heather’s ample charms. So that's good.

The Devil Doll informs Heather that he cannot be happy with just one girl, and when she protests, he beats her about the face with his puppety arms. The puppet gets Heather to call her slutty friend Natasha and invite her and her friends over for a party. Devil Doll tells her to get her friends liquored up, and when he gives her the signal, she’s supposed to split. Go to “McDonalds or some shit”, he says. So then a bunch of big-assed porn chicks show up and, for whatever reason, wash a car. Then they head into Heather's. They even brought wine coolers.

There’s a plug for Rotten Cotton in there. One for Brawlin’ Broads, too. And then everybody shows off their giant boobs. One of the girls notices the puppet, but Heather just tells her she was thinking of taking up ventriloquism. Seems valid.

Then they all play Twister. Halfway through, Heather gets her cue to split. The other girls take the opportunity to shower, bathe, and tan. Why not? The puppet spikes Buffy’s (Precious Cox) drink and then puppet-rapes her. And then stabs her to death. Candy (Christine Svendsen) gets it next. He tosses a hairdryer into her bath and electrocutes her. Then he mouth-rapes her. While he does this, he flashes back to his days as a Black Panther style revolutionary.

Meanwhile, Heather’s ex-boyfriend Harold (Martin Boone) – AKA would-be rapper White T - is so distraught by Heather’s rejection that he vomits. He decides he’s going to kill the midget she’s going out with. He thinks the doll is a midget. He has not heard of reanimated fuck-hungry death-puppets. Also meanwhile, the puppet does a bunch of drugs. Then he beats another girl (Erika Branich) to death with an aluminum baseball bat. And then he fucks her.

Harold shows up and meets the puppet. They have a stand-off. Harold flashes his gun, but before he can shoot it, the puppet pulls out a blow-gun and shoots him the neck with a knock-out dart. When he wakes up, Puppet strangles him to death with a rope. And then he fucks him.

Natasha’s the last one left. She slips on her way out of the shower and smashes her head, but manages to snap out of it and fight with the puppet, Trilogy of Terror style. This affords us the opportunity to watch her naked ass jiggle as she runs around the apartment trying not get killed by the puppet. The Devil Doll tries to sweet-talk her out of the bedroom she’s locked herself in, but when that doesn’t work, he squirts acidic diarrhea against the door until it melts. And then he bangs her. I think he hypnotizes her first, though. And then, guess what? He kills her. He got the devil in him, this doll.

Heather comes home to find her friends dead. She pulls out a gun and starts shooting at him, but he smooth-talks her out of it. Or does he?

Listen, there’s no subtext or hidden meaning here. It’s just gut-bucket exploitation, with junky HG Lewis-style gore, moronic adolescent humor, and lots of fat asses and enormous jugs. While Black Devil Doll clearly aims to offend, it is very unlikely that anyone outraged by puppet-rape and cheap gore would watch it in the first place. It’s not like Black Devil Doll is going to sneak up on you next Saturday on Creature Double Feature. The film’s knee-jerk will to provoke is probably its weakest point – the shit and semen gags are more eye-rolling than shocking or funny – but director Jon Lewis makes up for it with a grisly handbag’s worth of cheap visual tricks – scratches, washed-out colors, split-screens – that quite often give off the illusion that you're actually watching slimy, early 70’s drive-in trash.

He also knows when to call it a day- the film clocks in at an economical 70 minutes. While it is not the quite the sick-fuck flick it aims for, Black Devil Doll is consistently entertaining, and should please blood-hungry sleaze beasts, especially those of us with an affection for big, floppy tits. Which is all of us, as far as I know.

- Ken McIntyre

Let My Puppets Come (1976)

Directed by Gerard Damiano
Starring a bunch of puppets
Rated X
USA

"Anything I can do to make you feel uncomfortable?"

Let My Puppets Come was directed by Gerard Damiano (RIP), best known as the director of 1972 porn blockbuster Deep Throat. All of Damiano's movies have some element of weirdness to them - just think about the actual plot to Deep Throat for a second - but this may be his strangest fuck-flick of all. For one thing, it has no sex in it, unless you count puppet sex. And if you do, woe unto you. Amazingly, even without humans and their grubby genitalia mucking up the screen, Puppets still retains that green-gilled 42nd Street griminess that permeated much of 70's east coast porn, that dead-body-in-the-hallway whiff of disease and desperation. That's pretty remarkable, considering it's a fuckin' puppet show. It should also be mentioned that, smut-minded script aside, the puppetry and character design here is inspired, and with a few tweaks, this could easily have been re-shot as a (very) demented kid's film.


I do not have much information on Let My Puppets Come, and that's probably good. It should probably remain sort of a mystery. I can tell you that it shares three cast members (Viju Krem, Lynette Sheldon, and Luis De Jesus, who played 'Mr Big', and who is also dead) with Joel Reed's notorious splatter-comedy Bloodsucking Freaks. It also features, in a dumb cameo, Al Goldstein of Screw magazine. Annie Sprinkle worked on production design, and the chief puppeteer, Paddy Blackwood, worked on the New Howdy Doody Show in the late 70's.

Gustavo Motta (also RIP - not too many people survived this one) did the music, which was actually pretty good, especially the proto-punk glam-slammer "American Dream Girl". Gustavo was a big musical theater guy in New York, and in 1971, he did a show called Kumquats, The World's First Erotic Puppet Show, which was performed by Wayland Flowers and Madame. Let My Puppets Come actually includes three of the songs, including American Dream Girl, from that show. So, really, Kumquats is the nucleus of this movie. Apparently, there are several different cuts of Puppets floating around on different VHS editions, ranging in running time from 20 minutes to 45. The version reviewed here was 80 minutes, which I'm assuming is the full cut that played in theaters.

So, the set-up. The three chief executives of Creative Concepts Systems & Procedures Brothers Unlimited Inc. of New York have unwisely invested a bunch of mob money in professional bocce ball league. The league went belly up, and now they owe their benefactor, Mr Big, half a million dollars. If they don't come up with the money in a week, he is going to pay them a visit and the shoot them all in the head.

A quick-witted courier named Jimmy - seen in the opening segment sharing a hot dog with director Damiano - suggests to the desperate men that they should shoot a "fuck flick" to make quick cash. They think it's a great idea, but what will it be about?

Jimmy dreams up a scenario, which we cut to. A scantily-dressed blonde puppet sits home alone. Her dog saunters up to her and asks her if she wants to have sex with him.
"B-but...you're a dog!" She says.
"So what?" He asks. "I've had all my shots."
That seems like a reasonable answer to her. So she has sex with the dog.
"Believe me," says Jimmy, when they cut back to the office, "Every guy will relate to that dog."

The fellas think that scenario will get them in hot water with the humane society, so it's back to the drawing board. Gramps - no explanation who he is or why he's there - has an idea.

It involves him in a four-way with some girls from the local massage parlor. Unfortunately, the brothers think the scenario is too unbelievable, even though Gramps assures them that it happened to him twice just last week. One of the brothers has the bright idea to have a hospital room scene, where a guys lies on his death bed, fading fast. He asks the nurse to help ease his pain, so she blows him, and he shoots puppet juice everywhere. And then he dies.

Everybody thinks that one is pretty funny.

Another one of the brothers comes up with the idea of a horny blowfish who sucks off unsuspecting swimmers. Weirdo.
"Haha", he chortles. "We'll call it 'Deep Trout'. "

Their secretary, Miss Bliss, tells them she wants to be in the movie. They tell her this would be impossible without an audition, so they attempt to gang-bang her on the conference table. Unfortunately, Miss Bliss has a nasty secret, so the deal is called off pretty quickly.
"Either one of you guys left your cock in there, or Miss Bliss is a boy!" yells Jimmy.
Miss Bliss just shrugs. "Nobody's perfect."

Jimmy heads down to the sex shop The Pleasure Chest to see his old friend Lash. They worked on Army training films together. Jimmy wants Lash to be the cameraman on their movie He is at first reluctant, but when Jimmy tells him they'll be ample opportunity to whip the actors, the mustachioed superfreak signs on.

And then Geppetto shows up. He's an old friend of Gramps. Gepetto helps out by constructing more porn actors from scratch. Creepiness hits new heights when Geppetto's unfinished fuck-puppet comes to life too early and starts hitting on him.

Lash arrives on set, and they start shooting. The first scene involves a Canadian mountie and a blonde in a frilly dress. Don't they all? They sing a song together. I think it's called "Let's Run Amuck." And then they take a quick break so Lash get a violent blowjob from one of the fluffers. Things go from bad to worse, however, when the lead actress gets her period.

Gepetto is disgusted with the whole affair and threatens to quit, but than a black chick with a Pam Grier 'fro shows up and sings a sunshine-y pop song about smiles to Geppetto. This is intercut with scenes of dogs and children frolicking at the beach. It's a very strange juxtaposition for a puppet porn flick.

Then Fred, the cameraman/producer, takes off to get drunk and get away from crazy naked people for five minutes. Unfortunately, the bar he goes to has a naked dancing bartender. He tries to avoid a scene, but then some drunk masher hits on the stripper/bartender and the cameraman gets konked in the head in the ensuing melee.

Somehow he ends up in bed with the bartender. They have weird fetish-y sex. He wears her underwear on his head while she pelts him with grapes.

Somehow or another, the brothers end up with a rough cut of their film. The only problem is, it's too short. To pad the running time, the fellas decide to shoot some porn-y ad parodies and stick 'em in the movie. One of them is for a feminine deodorant spray called "Sweet Fish". Another one features a women who goes to see her gynecologist.



After an elbow-deep struggle, he pulls a still-ticking "Climax" watch out her vagina, where she lost it some time ago.

Another one has Screw's own Al Goldstein getting blown by the fluffer puppet. He's advertising "Lusterine" mouthwash. You know, stuff like that.

It looks like they're actually going to finish their movie on time, but while they're editing it, Mr Big (who is actually a midget) shows up looking for his half a million dollars. They boys, of course, don't have it yet. They tell him he'll get paid as soon as they release the movie, but that's not good enough for Mr Big.
"Ernie," he says to his super-sized bodyguard, "Hock all this equipment. And then give the money to the widows."

I'm not sure where the chauffeur and the Madame-esque puppet came from, but they show up in the nick of time to help the brothers out. First, though, Madame sings a song. And then Pinocchio (did I mention Geppetto cast his wooden-dicked son in the movie?) turns into a real boy after having seven orgasms. He celebrates by performing the aforementioned "American Dream Girl", a weird/awesome glam rock number about a tranny. I think the cocaine started getting to the filmmakers at this point.

So, then a cop shows up and throws everybody in jail for shooting porn. But they get sprung pretty quickly when, as the cop tells them, "Some faggot judge decided your film had socially redeeming value".

And then their movie wins an Oscar, and everybody ends up rich. The end.

In summation: Let My Puppets Come is another one of those once in a lifetime experiences. Well, it would be if Peter Jackson didn't besmirch it with Meet the Feebles, his painfully unfunny Muppets-on-acid movie from the late 80's. This one is a lot less cynical than Feebles and, to me, represents just how loose and weird and cool and experimental the 70's really were. Imagine this movie playing at an actual movie theater. Who would be the audience for this? There is no audience for this. It's the work of lunatics. And if that's what you'd like to see - demented 70's cinema that mashes kid-show puppetry with Borsht-belt comedy and a fuck-everybody low-budget porn vibe, then you are very much in luck.

Then again, maybe it's the worst movie ever made. My judgment for these sorts of things is very wobbly at this point.

Let My Puppets Come is available on DVD.

Clip: Jimmy saves the day. "Make a doity movie!"

- Ken McIntyre