Dolly Dearest

Dolly Dearest is an evil doll movie from 1992 about a young girl who is menaced by a killer doll that is possessed by the son of satan… or something like that.

Dolly Dearest is really just a cheap rip-off of Child’s Play, complete with bad special effects and even worse acting. Still, any evil doll movie is a good evil doll movie if you pack it with scenes of a killer dolly scuttling about in the shadows. In this movie, there’s plenty of that.

Dolly Dearest begins with a family inheriting a creepy old doll factory in Mexico. When the mom and dad give a doll to their daughter as a present, you just know it isn’t going to turn out well. The doll attacks the family’s Mexican maid, pushing her down the stairs, stabbing her with a knife, knocking her into a pool of water, and finally electrocuting her. Despite all of this, the family still isn’t convinced that the doll is possessed. I mean, come on, how much evidence do you need?

Luckily, they do some research and discover that the doll factory was built on property owned by a Mexican satanic religious cult. Apparently, the cult wanted to create a Satan Child of some sort. They made a creature with the body of a child and the head of a goat and then fed it the blood of sacrificed children. Now that’s really evil!

Somehow, the spirit of the goat-headed child jumped into the doll and that’s how it got possessed. Don’t worry, it makes no sense to me either. Eventually, it comes down to a big showdown between the family and the evil dolly. At first, they try killing the doll with religion, but when that doesn’t work, they blast it with a shotgun and blow it up with dynamite. That ought to do it!

The best bits in Dolly Dearest are when the doll’s face morphs to look like an evil old lady and when the mom screams “I am not losing my daughter to a goddamn 900-year-old goat head!” That made me laugh.