Some phobias, often triggered by movies, develop in childhood and stick with you for life like an overwhelming fear of circus clowns or anxieties about being alone in the dark or the bad luck that comes from walking under ladders or breaking mirrors. None of those things ever bothered me but ventriloquist dummies or anything similar to that like oversized lifelife dolls give me the creeps. And for my money the horror film that best visualizes this is a 1961 Mexican movie, directed by Benito Alazraki, called CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE (Mexican title: Munecos Infernales which translates roughly as “Infernal Dolls”).    

Senor, you might feel a slight prick!

While it obviously borrows elements from Tod Browning’s The Devil Doll (1936) and Dead of Night (1945) and even throws in a ratty-looking zombie for good measure, CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE also looks ahead to such scary-for-their-time chillers like the made-for-TV Trilogy of Terror (1975) with Karen Black being stalked by a Zuni warrior fetish doll. But the thing that places this South of the border horror in nightmare territory are the dolls themselves.   

They don’t have demonic or monstrous faces like the Chucky Doll in Child’s Play or the title creatures in Joe Dante’s Gremlins. No, they’re more disturbing than that. Is it the immobile quality of their mask-like faces with the dead staring eyes? Is it the fact that they look like miniaturized versions of authority figures? One could be a judge, another a doctor, another a government official. There is an inflexible grimness about them that is truly unsettling. And the way they move! Who’s behind those masks? Small children? Midgets? Dwarves? The manner in which the tiny assassins go about their business in CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE follows a relentless, repetitive pattern like a recurring nightmare that won’t go away. How would you like to wake up in the middle of the night and see one of these little fellas crawling up toward you from the foot of the bed with a long poisoned needle in its hand?  

In case you haven’t seen CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE, the plot is set in motion by four explorers secretly witnessing a voodoo ceremony in Haiti and being condemned to death by the high priest for observing the private ritual…and for stealing a stone idol from the temple. In due time, all four explorers die under mysterious circumstances but the curse doesn’t stop there. The families of the four men are also marked for death and the killings continue, committed by insidious little doll-like men who resemble their most recent murder victims. Behind it all, of course, is Zandor (Quintin Bulnes), the voodoo priest, who is using mind control to manipulate the dolls (the souls of his victims are trapped inside) and he’s aided in his revenge by his zombie assistant Sabood who makes spooky music with his flute.   

That is NOT Darby O'Gill and the Little People!

To be perfectly honest, CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE can be very s-l-o-w at times in its exposition and the behavior of the human protagonists is often exasperating. For instance, Linda (Elvira Quintana), the heroine, is so terrified by the sight of the dolls that she becomes paralyzed with fear, unable to move as they advance toward her. And all of the victims are so self-absorbed in their work or some activity that they never sense any danger or intrusion until the moment of attack. The little bastards might be stealthy as hell but you’d think that someone working in his office would notice one of the little buggers climbing up on a nearby chair and walking across the top of the desk toward him! But no, because this movie follows the illogical pattern of a bad dream.  

Even if it does have pacing problems and laughable English-dubbed dialogue, CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE makes up for it with eerie, atmospheric art direction and odd, poetic touches like the scene with Sabood and one of the doll-men walking off into the night, hand-in-hand, after committing a murder. Or one where a doll cries out in agony to Linda to help him. There are plenty of perverse touches as well – a gruesome doll autopsy scene and one where a tiny assassin crawls into the bed of a sleeping 12-year-old girl to “snuggle up.” Yikes.

Devil Doll autopsy

CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE is currently available on a double feature DVD disc from BCI/Eclipse with another Mexican horror favorite, Night of the Bloody Apes, which has wrestling matches, real footage of open-heart surgery, plenty of female nudity and a simian-like murderer (the result of a gorilla heart transplant) on the loose. The disc offers both a Spanish and an English-dubbed version of both films but the latter version of DOLL PEOPLE runs ten minutes shorter than the English-dubbed version release (a bootleg released by Beverly Wilshire Filmworks several years ago). You may still be able to find copies of it on the internet and Movies Unlimited still sells VHS copies of CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE.  http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/product.asp?sku=688367

Beware of what's under the bed

None of the available versions offer a stellar transfer and all of them look like they were taken from a 16mm TV print so don’t expect the Criterion treatment for a title like this…but we can dream, can’t we?

Drive-in ad for Curse of the Doll People & The Vampire (1958)

Here are some Youtube clips (the visual quality is lousy but you get the idea):

1. The big blonde nurse gets creepy-crawled!

2. Linda has trouble sleeping – wonder why?