Three weeks into the new year and I’m already starting to fall behind on my watch-one-movie-on-Tubi-a-day-for-an-entire-year project. It’s times like these I am grateful that Tubi has a bunch of these Japanese erotic thrillers that clock in under one hour. Tubi’s plot synopsis for this one described it as “an erotic retelling of The Grudge”. That’s not exactly the worst way to spend forty-six minutes, I guess.
A doctor and his new bride move into their dream home. They find a creepy doll in the house, and right away the doc starts having a weird obsession with it. Pretty soon, people start dying in the house, and anyone with half a brain could ascertain the doll is responsible.
I know that plot description doesn’t make it sound like an erotic retelling of The Grudge. However, the doll is possessed by one of those creepy Japanese girls on a bad hair day that are the hallmark of these J-Horror flicks. Also, the ghost attacks with her hair, and her scraggily locks turn up in odd places to portend her next attack. So, basically, it’s The Grudge with a little bit of the killer doll genre thrown in there for good measure.
As far as the “erotic” scenes go, they aren’t bad. In fact, when the ghost girl attacks someone, it’s usually a hooker or a naked chick, which at the very least makes it a lot more tolerable than many of the “official” entries in the franchise. The attack sequences aren’t too shabby either. I particularly liked the way the ghost is deliberately shown out of focus, which certainly makes it look cooler than the CGI-ed ghost gals found in the American remakes of The Grudge.
On the downside, this is another one of those edited erotic flicks that populate so much of Tubi. I already knew going in that’s how it was going to be. (The forty-six-minute running time was the dead giveaway.) Like many of these films, the sex scenes are cropped and/or abruptly edited so you can’t see any nudity. Fortunately, the shower and ghost attack scenes appear to be uncut. Despite having some obvious edits along the way, The Doll House is briskly paced and moderately effective, so it’s hard to hold a grudge against it.
AKA: The Dollhouse. AKA: Mansion of the Senses: Wife’s Ascension.
No comments:
Post a Comment