(Originally reviewed September 1st, 2021)
When Sinthia (Shula Roan) was just twelve years old, she caught her parents making love. Since she had an unnatural sexual attraction to her father, she stabbed both of them to death and burned the house down. Years later, a psychiatrist tries to help her before she gets married and potentially snaps again.
Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll was co-written and directed by one of my favorite cult directors, Ray Dennis Steckler. After his career in campy B movies like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies dried up, he was forced to make nudies like this. At least his backyard bargain basement productions like Rat Pfink a Boo Boo had a certain charm about them. This one is just torturous. It’s not even fun in a cheesy way. The repetitive scenes of Sinthia hysterically yelling, “Daddy.... Daddy… Daddy!” over and over again will be an endurance test for even the most jaded exploitation fan.
The poorly framed sex scenes make it hard to tell who’s doing what to whom. Steckler also overdoes it on the psychedelic imagery, with all the blue, orange, and red lights only adding to the visual chaos on screen. The long dream sequences get on your nerves too. In most movies, they are usually there to help us understand the character’s psychosis, but here, it just feels like a cheap and easy way for Steckler (who was using his “Sven Christian” pseudonym, the tip-off that he was trying to pass this off as an “arty” Swedish movie) to pad out the running time. (The repeated sequences are another tell-tale sign Steckler’s trying to milk the running time for all its worth.) What’s worse, the constant roller rink music is enough to drive you certifiably insane. There are also beach scenes that look like leftover footage from Incredibly Strange Creatures.
We do get one good sequence where Sinthia goes to Hell and is forced to “love herself” and masturbates until she brings herself to a chest-heaving climax. This scene is solid, but it’s way too brief, lasting only about a minute. The other seventy-six minutes are often hellish.
AKA: Where the Devil Tolls. AKA: Teenage She Devil.
JANUA-RAY NOTES:
1) With Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll, we have Ray Dennis Steckler’s first foray into the world of adult moviemaking. He’s made just about every other kind of movie, so why not give skin flicks a try? After this film, he would spend the next decade or so toiling away in the adult cinema scene.
2) I think some of the music in the opening scene was later used in Doris Wishman’s Love Toy.
3) Director’s Signatures: A freak-out scene featuring people in red face paint (also a factor in The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies), dance numbers, beach scenes (Wild Guitar, Incredibly Strange Creatures), long chase scenes, long chase scenes on a beach, and like Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, there are scenes that are tinted different colors.
4) Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up: Gary Kent, Herb Robins (who also co-wrote the script), and E.M. Kevke (who played the Grasshopper in The Lemon Grove Kids).
5) At one point, a character says, “Oh, come on! Let’s get this show on the road!” I couldn’t agree more. This is one slow, sluggish, and boring movie.
6) Co-star Maria Lease went on to direct the XXX classics Expensive Tastes and Little Girls Blue.
7) Seriously, how can you make a skin flick about incest and devil worshipping this damned dull?
8) This is the only dirty movie of Steckler’s I’ve seen so far. They all can’t be this bad… Can they?
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