Miss Leslie's Dolls

'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!

"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' 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.

Like so many cheesy horror films, Miss Leslie's Dolls opens with a group of youngsters - Roy, Martha and Lily (Charles Pitts, Kitty Lewis and Marcelle Bichette) - and their uptight teacher, Miss Frost (Terri Juston), experiencing car trouble during a storm and, after setting off on foot, chancing upon an old farmhouse where the owner, Miss Leslie (Salvador Ugarte), invites them to stay until the bad weather subsides. Unperturbed by the fact that their host is clearly a man in a dress (lip-synching badly to a woman's voice), and that 'she' obviously has a few screws loose, the guests remain for the night. The discovery of a strange room housing an altar with several scarily realistic life-size figures (so realistic that they sway gently from side to side) doesn't seem to concern them. Not even the blatantly obvious dead body under a sheet has them running scared. Basically, they deserve everything that happens to them for being so dumb.

During the night, Roy and Martha hook up to have sex, and their teacher shows that she's Frost by name but not by nature by seducing Lily (and who can blame her? Bichette is a babe!). Lily then hops into bed with Martha and Roy, who decides that he would rather have a whisky than a threesome. Meanwhile, Miss Leslie provides some awkward but much-needed exposition by talking to the skull of her dead mother in the basement: turns out that the crazy woman killed her mother and sister by causing a fire in their toy factory, and now intends to use an occult ritual to reincarnate herself in the nubile body of young Martha, who is the exact double of her dead sister.

When Roy arrives in the kitchen for his drink (that had better be a damn fine whisky!), he is attacked by Miss Leslie, who chokes him to death with the handle of an axe. Lily comes a cropper when she investigates, receiving an axe blow to the face. Somehow, Martha also dies (I can't remember how). Miss Frost wakes from a trippy dream to find everyone missing and searches the house, finding Lily's bloody body (we get to see the girl's messy axe wound - the one in her face!). Miss Leslie attacks Miss Frost, and in the struggle the teacher discovers what we all knew from the outset: that Miss Leslie is a man (like the 5 'o'clock shadow and burly frame weren't a dead giveaway). Miss Leslie decides that, with Martha dead, she'll have to possess Miss Frost instead...

Up until the final act, I wasn't very impressed with Miss Leslie's Dolls, the odd spot of nudity failing to compensate for a rather plodding pace and the clumsy dialogue. It also wasn't anywhere near as bizarre or original as I had been led to believe (the film's trans-killer clearly inspired by Psycho). However, the ending is a doozy. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's worth hanging in there.

4/10, plus an extra point for the stunning Marcelle Bichette, and for Miss Frost's final act of vengeance.

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.