merklekranz This British production is an intriguing entry in the rather small necrophilia category of horror films. Instead of a relentless assault of slice and dice, what we get is a somewhat playful script that handles the macabre topic quite well. Both Freddie Earlle as the morgue manager, and Ertha Kitt as a nosy landlady, provide some welcome dark humor. Mark Jax plays the medical student whose infatuation with a hospital flower girl goes way beyond normal. His obsession eventually leads to stalking, grave robbing, and murder. Kate Orgill is the lifeless and slowly decomposing corpse who speaks telepathically to Mark Jax, from beyond the grave. The catchy tune "Living Doll", and general lighthearted chemistry, make "Living Doll" one of the better films of it's type. - MERK

reptilicus Okay let me get this out of the way first thing. I know I come down hard on certain movies but to be fair I do try to find the good in just abot every movie I review. Well not this time! This movie deserves everything it gets! Why? Stick with me.Medical student Howard (Mark Jax) is one sick puppy. In fact he would make a good workmate with Bob from NEKROMANTIC. Howard is in love with Christine (Kate Orgill) who works in the flower shop of the hospital but he is too shy to even give her a flower. Christine also has an abusive boyfriend and you just know that Howard will do something about that . . . eventually; but I am getting ahead of myself.One night a cadaver comes into the morgue and it turns out to be . . . wait for it . . . Christine! He does not buy the boyfriend's story about Christine's drunk driving causing an accident. Well this pushes Bob, who was thirty cents short of a quarter to begin with, right over the edge. He steals her body from the grave and makes her his roommate; he buys her clothes, cooks her meals and so on. In his own sick mind she responds warmly but in real life she is slowly rotting into one very gross looking paperweight. It isn't long before she is talking to him and suggesting he do . . . well . . . certain things.So does he go on a killing spree? NO! It takes over an HOUR of screen time before he gets revenge for Christine's death. Does he bother to get even with his mean landlady (Eartha Kitt, who must have been starving at the time) or his sleazebag boss? NO! This is the sorriest example of a terror movie I have seen in many moons! Howard's boss dies but it's fron natural causes! No, that was not meant to be a sapoiler. This whole darn movie is a spoiler in itself!If you want an example of a scary movie involving corpses see Jorg Buttgereit's NEKROMANTIC. This British import will leave a bad taste in your mouth, sort of like rotten meat.

the colster Ten years ago somebody told me to watch this movie. They explained to me that it consisted of a lonely man finding out that the girl he was obsessed with had died. He then decides to keep her rotting corpse at his flat. I could not wait to watch it as I assumed from that brief synopsis there was so much potential for a really interesting movie. Unfortunately all I saw was an interesting idea far from utilize it's potential. Unlike Randall's earlier movie "Slaughter High" I feel this film wanted to be more than it was but fell well short of the mark. On the upside the pure subject matter may keep you interested for the whole movie and the grossness of the decaying corpse is funny, however these are not enough to win over most fans of the horror genre and it is unlikely to win many casual viewers. So the choice is yours. Rent it, but don't expect too much.

gavcrimson Living Doll was the last in an unrelated trilogy of British horror films made by legendary exploitation movie producer Dick Randall. Its bedfellows being Edmund Purdom's ode to Santa Claus abuse, Don't Open Till Christmas (1983/5) and Slaughter High (85) the only slasher movie in which a person is killed by drinking beer, it was also Randall's final work for the cinema (he died in 1996). Unfortunately Living Doll is the ugly duckling of this eccentric batch, but at least the lead actor didn't commit suicide this time around. Living Doll tells the tale of Howard, a medical student hopelessly obsessed with pretty lass Katie Orgill, but when the said girl appears dead on the slab, a grief stricken Howard takes her corpse back to his crummy bed-sit. While captured in the spirit of romance, he fails to notice his true love is quickly becoming a rotting corpse, at least he does until the movies weak denouncement. Like Slaughter High, Living Doll is a British film that goes to great lengths to convince its an American one, mainly by having a cardboard cut-out of the New York skyline as a prop and a days worth of shooting from the real deal. Presumably the film is meant to take place in the little known English quarter of New York! Living Doll falls inbetween being too lightweight to live up to its gristly potential, while being too adult to carry a `romantic horror comedy' tag. The lack-lustre script was apparently jazzed up by Randall but to little avail. To say that Randall's tried and tested exploitation movie approach locks horns with the films aspirations towards that droll mainstay of the British film industry, the romantic comedy is like saying that Four Weddings and a Funeral isn't Love Me Deadly. Whats left is diluted Randall sleaze with moments of bonesaw gore, rotting corpse effects and the casting of tabloid bust model Orgill who gives her worth by appearing as the world's most topless corpse. Amidst sly moments of humour, namely the (Sir) Cliff Richard connotations of the title (the end credits serves up a cover version) and a frankly bizarre cameo by Eartha Kitt. Still at a time when the words `Dodo' and `British Horror Movie' seem synonymous, it would be nice to say Living Doll is more of a heavy hitter. Unfortunately its not, and certainly fails to provide a decent epitaph to Randall's wild and outrageous thirty year career. Dust off your copies of The Wild World of Jayne Mansfield, Pieces, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks or The Bogeyman and the French Murders and remember him that way.