Devil Doll (1964) Stylish Brit Horror Noir

Directed by Lindsay Shonteff.

Writen by Ronald Kinnoch. Charles F. Vetter, and Frederick E. Smith, from an original story by Frederick Escreet Smith. 

Cinematography was by Gerald Gibbs (No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Station Six Sahara). 

The film stars Bryant Haliday as The Great Vorelli, William Sylvester (Dublin Nightmare, Busting) as Mark English, Yvonne Romain (Pickup Alley, The Swinger, The Last Of Sheila) as Marianne Horn, Sandra Dorne (The Clouded Yellow, Roadhouse Girl) as Magda Cardenas, Nora Nicholson as Aunt Eva, Alan Gifford as Bob Garrett, Karel Stepanek as Dr Heller, Francis de Wolff as Dr Keisling, and Philip Ray as Uncle Walter (uncredited).

Story

The credit sequence gives us a taxi cab view of London. In the cab are the Great Vorelli a ventriloquist and hypnotist, and his dummy Hugo. 

Bryant Haliday as The Great Vorelli

Vorelli and Hugo

The ride ends at the theater where they are preforming. 

We cut to the end of Vorelli's act. We get a rear view. 

Vorelli standing, holding Hugo, to thunderous applause before a black background of the auditorium. Beside him the props of his act a chair, a table, upon which sits a pitcher of water and a glass.

Vorelli exits and we first see Magda his assistant. We cut to their dressing room. It's hear we get the first clue that we are heading into Noirsville when Vorelli places Hugo in a cage, and locks the door.

Sandra Dorne as Magda

The act is a sensation. A London newspaper assigns their American reporter Mark English to find out what the brouhaha is all about. Mark grumbles but agrees to go. His girlfriend is Marianne Horn of one of the wealthier families in the U,K. He invites her to go see the performance.

William Sylvester as Mark English

They attend the show. On the stage is a mike and a small card table with a bottle of wine and a glass sitting atop it.

Vorelli starts with a demonstration of hypnosis upon audience members. His first volunteer is a man who he hypnotizes into believing he is about to be shot in the back of the head. 

We see Vorelli momentarily in a negative image as the hypnosis is performed. The man under the hypnotic trance convincingly displays genuine anxiety.

Vorelli snaps his fingers and the man is released from his trance. For his second demonstration he asks for a female volunteer.

Mark nudges Marianne to volunteer. Marianne is helped up to the stage by Magda. 

Yvonne Romain as Marianne Horn

Vorelli is taken in with Marianne's beauty.  He not only hypnotizes her during the performance but he realizes she is also highly vulnerable to his power of suggestion. 

Vorelli suggests to Marianne that she is a professional dancer and when she hears the music she will dance with a professional partner. Magda escorts Marianne's partner to her side. the music starts and they dance a nice version of the twist.

 

When the dance is done Vorelli snaps Marianne out of it, and she returns to Mark. She asks him what happened. 

The final part of the act begins when Magda brings out a chair and Hugo. Vorelli and Hugo have a slightly contentious type of act.

Hugo complains that he's thirsty. Vorelli chastises Hugo reminding him that he's made of wood.

Vorelli fills a wine glass from the bottle wows the crowd by taking a drink while Hugo continues to whine about being thirsty too.

The crowd cheers. 

When all the applause dies down, Vorelli then loudly instructs Hugo to go out to the edge of the stage and thank the audience. Hugo slips off Vorelli's leg and walks slightly hesitantly to the edge. 

Immediately you're thinking mechanical doll, or puppet with almost invisible strings. Hugo's saying thanks is the big finale of the show.

Mark and Marianne are just as surprised as the rest, but Mark wants to figure out the gimmick. On their drive home Mark convinces Marianne to ask Vorelli if he'd agree to doing the charity benefit ball that her aunt is giving soon. 

Mark figures he'd have a better chance of examining the dummy when it's at Marianne's Aunt's estate. We also get a brief interlude of some heavy petting between Mark and Marianne in we assume a lovers lane. 

So Marianne goes and visits Vorelli in his dressing rooms. Magda lets her in, Magda. gives us the impression that she's a bit jealous. She brings Marianne to the door of the inner room, knocks and Vorelli tells her to come in.

When Marianne is just about to ask Vorelli if he would consider doing her aunts charity benefit, he beats her to the punch by asking if she's come to ask him to perform at the benefit. It plays as if he's read her mind. He tells her yes he will perform. Vorelli offers her some wine, to celebrate. she hesitates at first but she is in his trance and accepts.

We cut to the charity ball. Vorelli again does does his contentious act with Hugo. Hugo walks this time over to a buffet table and grabs a knife with which when he returns  he tries to stab Vorelli with. Vorelli uses his will to stop him. The audience applauds and thinks its all a part of the act. 

Once the act is done Vorelli goes up to his room and puts Hugo in his cage, minus the knife that he took away from him. Vorelli covers Hugo's cage with a shear black cover as if it was a birdcage. He we get another clue that things are not what they seem when we see Hugo's eyes follow Vorelli when he leaves the room.

Mark waits until Vorelli comes back down to the benefit. before making his way upstairs to examine Hugo. 

Meanwhile, Marianne and Vorelli split off from the other attendees. Vorelli tells her to come to him later that night once everyone's asleep. 

We cut back to Mark in Vorelli's room examining Hugo, looking for any mechanisms. He even pulls his head off in the process. Nothing. 

We jump ahead to later that night. Mark and Marianne are sleeping in separate bedrooms. Vorelli is awake and waiting. We watch as Marianne awakens and leaves her bed for a rendezvous with Vorelli. They meet, they kiss as Vorelli zips down the back of her nightie. Fade to black. 

We cut back to Mark's bedroom. He's still asleep. 

"Help me. 1948. Berlin."

We cut to Hugo, then Hugo's feet as he walks down the hall. We next see Mark awakened and Hugo tells him "Help me. 1948. Berlin."

The next day Mark gets a call from Marianne's Uncle telling Mark that Marianne fell strangely ill and is in a semi-coma. Mark immediately runs back out to the estate to see if there's anything he could do. 

The family doctor explains to Mark that he has no idea what ails her.

Marianne, at one point when she comes out of it momentarily, asks Mark to "tell him to stop," and "he keeps calling me." Mark knows its Vorelli. 

Back at his office at the paperm Mark with the OK of the editor, calls their reporter in Berlin instructing him to find out all he can about Vorelli from 1947 and 1948.

At this point there's two different cuts in the film. Domestic -  International.

The domestic release shows a confrontation between Vorelli and Magda. 

Magda is jealous of Marianne, to assure her that she's still "the one" Vorelli has sex with Magda on the chaise lounge, off screen of course. Vorelli is however not pleased.

The international cut shows us another Vorelli theater performance. We pop into it where Vorelli has just asked for a female volunteer. 

The Striptease Sequence

A prim and proper woman, who if you had to guess, would guess her profession was a librarian, is helped up to the stage by Magda. Vorelli interviews her for a bit before putting her under hypnosis. He tells her that when she hears the music she should let all her inhibitions go and dance. 

The music starts and its a striptease number and our prim and proper volunteer does a strip. 

The Striptease ends...

Here both versions return to same point in film.

We first see Magda in an apparent post coital snooze on the chaise lounge. 

In the main dressing room Vorelli is with Hugo. He has Hugo in his cage. He shows Hugo a knife, he twists it about, it flashes when it catches and reflects the lights. 

We cut to Vorelli's backroom where Magda is laying naked under blanket on chaise lounge sleeping. In the Domestic cut she is completely covered by that blanket. We see her turn over on her side, with her back now to the doorway. We cut to Hugo slipping across the main dressing room towards the door to the back room.

In the International cut Magda is again laying naked on the chaise lounge but here we see one of her exposed nipples above the blanket. 

It goes Noirsville when we see the door behind Magda open and Hugo walks in brandishing the knife and coming at Magda.

Noirsville

For a film that supposedly cost just the equivalent of $75,000, it holds together very well. All the players are quite believable, the cinematography is nicely stylistic and the music fits well. 6.5-7 /10.