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!
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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