YMMV / Dolls (1987)

• Awesome Music: The main theme by Fuzzbee Morse feels both menacing and cute at the same time, befitting a film about killer toys.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene near the start where Judy daydreams her teddy bear attacking her parents. It is admittedly establishing that she has a big imagination, but it's still quite jarring.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The punk girls Isabel and Enid aren't in the film that much but are very memorable. Isabel in particular has less screen time and is the first victim, but is quite remembered. Enid likewise has several fans who wish more had been done with her character (see below).
• Funny Moments:
  • During Judy's daydream, after the bear attacks her parents, Judy scolds the bear and the bear just shrugs at her.
  • Mr. Punch comes at David with an electric drill during the climax. David stops him by simply unplugging it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Judy winds up startling Ralph, who says she could have given him a heart attack. Ralph’s actor, Stephen Lee, died of a heart attack in 2014.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • People getting turned into living dolls and kept as collection.
  • Gabriel's speech about how toys are very loyal (and of course the dolls coming alive when the characters aren't looking) is rather amusing to an audience that's grown up with the Toy Story films.
• Karmic Overkill: Enid, as noted below, doesn't actually get to commit any evil acts beyond not stopping Isabel attempting to rob Gabriel and Hillary (after she had protested against it, mind you). She did plan along with Isabel to steal Ralph's car and strand him in the middle of nowhere but never got the chance to anyway. The dolls never attempt to redeem her, so her fate of being shot by a bunch of soldier dolls and then being turned into a doll herself can feel a bit overblown.
• Love to Hate:
  • Rosemary is so delightfully evil and uncaring (and admittedly with a killer fashion sense, designed to evoke Cruella De Ville). The crowner is her stopping David from hitting Judy because she doesn't want to have to pay extra child support on his behalf.
  • Ian Patrick Williams likewise makes David so comically abusive that he's a hysterical villain, bordering on Villain Protagonist.
• Magnificent Bastard: Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke are a jovial, elderly couple who live in a fabulous English manor and believe in the joys of childhood. The two are also powerful witches who test every traveler who comes through their home and while children are deemed innocent and safe, they ensure adults are put through trials to see if they are good or bad within. When six visitors arrive, the Hartwickes monitor them with their living dolls tormenting them, the two thieves Enid and Isabelle taken to be transformed into new dolls. When the father of young Judy, David, is revealed to be a rather abusive and neglectful father like his wife Rosemary, the Hartwickes transform him into their new Mr. Punch doll before passing off the events as all just a dream to little Judy and the other survivor, a sweet man named Ralph, and giving them money to return to Judy's mother in Boston with a happy promise they can return any time and be welcomed joyously, then preparing for a new family to arrive and potentially join their collection.
• Moe: Judy is a precious little child with a cute imagination, while still being Wise Beyond Her Years. Even the dolls themselves can't harm her.
• Moral Event Horizon: Rosemary mistreated Judy, threw away her doll and threatened to hit her. Isabel and Enid planned to rob and strand Ralph after he helped them. And as for David, its hard to decide. He covers several kinds of abusive parenting. He neglected his daughter and planned on abandoning her, then graduated to emotional just stopping short of physical abuse and by the end he was nothing more than a raving lunatic who hit her so hard as to leave her unconscious and attempted to murder Ralph with no solid argument that he killed Rosemary.
• Narm: It's extremely hilarious that the two rebellious punks are named Enid and Isabel, as if the American director and screenwriter thought it was impossible for English characters to not have posh names.
• Older Than They Think: A movie about killer dolls, including a twist that humans can be turned into them too, released one year before Child's Play.
• Tough Act to Follow: As Stuart Gordon's follow-up to Re-Animator, Dolls found itself being compared unfavorably. Many fans were especially annoyed at its lack of gore compared to the former. Ironically, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon preferred this one. Despite that of course, the film does have a loyal following simply for how good it's effects are and how likable the "villains" are as well, to the point that they barely come across as villains compared to their victims.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Enid, given that she's against helping Isabel rob the old couple, shows concern for her missing friend and puts up a good fight against the toys. Borders on They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, as the toys and their masters could have tried to redeem her.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The special effects used to create the moving dolls hold up very well. Rather than using prototype CGI, they opted for stop-motion instead. And if the animation ever looks jerky, it just puts the dolls in the Unintentional Uncanny Valley, and adds to the creepiness (since animate toys wouldn't move as fluidly as humans either). Dolls actually won an award for its effects at the 1987 Italian Fantafestival.
• The Woobie: Judy. Thankfully, she is no longer this trope by the end of the movie.

---