1988 killer mannequin movie
Rating: 14/20
Plot: Following the deaths of their parents, a brother and sister live in a home with the titular medical mannequin who the brother is convinced is alive. Pin starts acting strangely. Or maybe the brother does. Anyway, there's definitely some strangeness in this.
How can you not like a movie that features ventriloquism with an anatomy dummy in a doctor's office? That's just awesome. I'd never heard of this movie, sort of a B-grade psychological drama a la Psycho, but it's definitely worth watching for a pervading creepiness and subdued dark humor. Actually, I wouldn't bet money that it's supposed to be funny at all, but there is a scene where a nurse has a sexual encounter with Pin while Leon, as a child, looks on. That's as fantastic as you're imagining, but surely these medical mannequins don't have erect penises. It makes you wonder what's going on there. There's also a "Take the towel off my lap" scene--you probably need context here, but I'm not giving you any) that makes you think I might. Being eyewitness to a woman having sex with the thing and Pin, voiced engastrimythically by the kids' father, giving the birds-and-bees speech? No wonder Leon grew up so troubled. I identified with the kid, probably because I currently have an imaginary friend named Chauncy Decoupage. But Leon also wore his pants a little too high on the waist and had a severe part, and with the other kids calling him a spaz or a faggot, it takes me right back to my childhood. That, and my only friends were dummies. This starts to get a little soggy with its predictability, but a twist at the end still manages to work. It's an interesting little horror film from Canada.
I'd like to see Maltin use a word like "engastrimythically" in a movie review. That bitch!
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