Miss Leslie's Dolls

'Miss Leslie's Dolls' is an early 1970's attempt at satanist horror in the grindhouse style. Imagine, if you will, a high school theatre production put on celluloid, the acting in this flick is far worse! Having said that, it kept my attention and some of the ideas were fairly original. You might find the titular character odd, but don't let that interfere with the movie. Glad I watched it, but really for horror lovers only.

I had the privilege to catch this at a single BFI Southbank screening in London last night. I loved the introduction from Julian Marsh III, who told of how he discovered the last remaining print in his hallway and I loved his recorded telephone conversation with second male lead, Charles W. Pitt. The film itself starts very predictably in a graveyard at night in the rain. Inside a nearby dwelling the three lost students and their teacher are given some sort of welcome by the statuesque but clearly male, Miss Leslie. Despite the fact that the central character is in drag for the entire film almost nothing is made of it. The film is rather slow but does pick up with the frantic bed swapping of the teens and their 'liberated' teacher and the nocturnal wanderings of the axe man (lady). There is corny dialogue to laugh at, an unbelievable acceptance of the goings on by the youngsters but a sinister tone is established and when the dolls appear we know we are watching something, just that little bit different. Great fun and after that slow start very enjoyable.

"Miss Leslie's Dolls" follows a young female professor and three of her students who seek shelter at the home of a reclusive, strange woman named Leslie during a torrential storm. Unfortunately, Leslie is an outspoken occultist who collects female corpses with the hopes of transferring her soul into them--and her four guests are in grave danger.

This highly-obscure quasi-slasher flick is one of the weirder offerings of the early 1970s, and has remained largely buried (I believe it was for a time thought to be a lost film). For fans of garish horror, "Miss Leslie's Dolls" certainly delivers; it feels like a low-rent take on a Mario Bava film, chock full of awkwardly dubbed, rambling explanatory dialogue from the gender-bending protagonist/antihero, extended single shot takes, and stilted performances.

While there are many amateurish streaks here, the film does have its pluses: It is at times colorful and nightmarish, and there are a handful of truly creepy sequences involving Leslie's "dolls," which again recall the bright, floral color tones of films like "Blood and Black Lace." At its dreariest, the film looks drab and depressing (probably intentionally so), especially with the dull interior sets of Leslie's home. Midway through, the film nearly becomes a sexploitation flick with attempted threesomes and a lesbian tryst, before going into full-blown axe slasher mode. The finale is ridiculous and the final girl is unexpected, but the conclusion of it all is weirdly fitting given how outlandish everything else is.

All in all, "Miss Leslie's Dolls" is a strange offering; a mix of proto-slasher with late-'60s occult hangover. It's silly by and large, but it does have some interesting visual elements and an atmosphere that is indelibly bizarre. If nothing else, I've never seen anything quite like it. 6/10.

'Miss Leslie's Dolls' - Who WOULDN'T want to play with REAL dolls!' But do take special care when toying with this bizarre, grimly subversive, fiendishly freaked-out occult nightmare! Previously considered lost, this fabulous freak-fest is more dangerously deranged 'Madhouse' than ditsy Dollhouse. Welcome to a truly hellish, backwoods B-Movie bedlam, this scurvy curve ball of deliciously whacked-out, creepy-kitsch 70s weirdness will play havoc with your troubled think sponge! The darkly bewitching Miss Leslie's Dolls remains an unhinged, body snatching, Axe-swinging, sexually sinister, ketchup-slinging Grindhouse sickie, gleefully twisting your poor noodle into a quivering morass of alphabetti-splatter-spaghetti!

By any measurement, this is one weird film for several reasons.

It's a cheap-oh drive in movie that is actually fairly well made.

The acting is pretty OK, as movies like this go.

The title character is a dude in a dress.

Many people here wrongly characterize the Miss Leslie character as a transsexual, trying to include this in some positive way with the LGBT movement. Unfortunately it's an erroneous assumption.

Miss Leslie was played by Salvador Ugarte, who was a Cuban playright and actor out of Florida perforing in Spanish language productions.

He was a friend of mine and I can telly you that Miss Leslie is actually supposed to be a man in a dress. In other words, I transvestite, not a transsexual. Sal told me the character has no interest in becoming a woman for real; he's manifesting a fantasy of his mother. Sort of an Ed Gein character, actually.

You'll also notice his voice is dubbed with that of an American woman in the movie. Sal had a Spanish accent!!

Anyway I saw this orginally in what may be the only place it played theatrically in 1972 -- at the Gulf States Twin Air West Driveiin in Penssacola Fl., double billed with a Brit Comedy Drama called "Girly." (And in case you are wondering, the character Girly is a female actress."

Anyway, some of the dialog is dumb but it's such an odd movie, you will want to seek it out and watch.