Movies
Do You Remember ‘The Dummy’? Creepy Short Film Aired on TV in the 1980s
Six years before Child’s Play, we met The Dummy.
Creepy dolls became a staple of horror cinema in the wake of Chucky’s debut on the scene, but back in the early 1980s, that fear hadn’t yet been exploited by the genre. One of the earliest killer doll flicks came in the form of student filmmaker Louis La Volpe’s 1982 short film The Dummy, which some of you ’80s kids probably have at least vague memories of.
The seven-minute short film, considered by some to be the inspiration for Child’s Play, centered on a woman trapped in her apartment with a creepy ventriloquist dummy who intended on killing her, and it was a staple of networks like HBO, Showtime, and USA throughout the ’80s. The short would often play during the commercial breaks of horror movies and also shows like “Night Flight,” “Saturday Nightmares,” and “Up All Night,” scarring the childhoods of young horror lovers who had no idea what they were in store for.
Said one YouTube commenter:
Holy shit. I can’t believe I came across this. I remember seeing this on USA, when it was still channel 14. I was really little & it creeped me out, bad. Parts of it stuck in my memory, kind of like that episode of The Twilight Zone, with the thing on the wing of the plane. Same creepiness.
Turn off the lights and enjoy this retro Halloween treat!
In addition to Leigh Whannell’s upcoming Universal Monsters movie Wolf Man, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel) has also joined the cast of Weapons, THR has announced tonight.
Weapons is the new horror movie from New Line Cinema and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), with Julia Garner joining the previously announced Josh Brolin (Dune 2).
The upcoming Weapons is from writer/director Zach Cregger, who will also produce alongside his Barbarian producing team: Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures. Vertigo’s Miri Yoon also produces.
The Hollywood Reporter teases, “Plot details for Weapons are being kept holstered but it is described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger was a founding member and writer for the New York comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which he started while attending The School of Visual Arts. The award-winning group’s self-titled sketch comedy show ran for five seasons on IFC-TV and Fuse. He was also a series regular on Jimmy Fallon’s NBC series “Guys with Kids” and the TBS hit series “Wrecked,” and was featured in a recurring role on the NBC series “About a Boy.”
Weapons will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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