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Jaime had suggested Dolls, a horror movie that scared her when she was young. And the premise – killer porcelain dolls – is one that easily gives me the willies.

(There was this show when I was little, “Tales from the Dark Side.” It was so scary to me, as a four-year-old, that the credits alone gave me nightmares. In particular was this quick-zoom up to the face of a porcelain doll, who opened her eyes right as the music vamped up. Scared the crap out of me.)

So I had a good feeling that Dolls would push those irrational-fear buttons I look for in horror movies.

It took me ten minutes to realize it was a comedy. It took me 20 (and IMDB) to realize it was horror-comedy by the guy who directed Re-Animator. And only after learning that did I decide to soldier on through another hour of vaudevillian acting, silly special effects, and a plot that went for cutesy fun (something about finding your inner child…or else!) when it had the potential for real scary moments.
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A week after watching, and I’m still trying to figure out just what didn’t work with John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness.

It’s a great idea for a story: an author, equal parts Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, has somehow managed to inflict his horrific imagination upon the world at large. Or maybe it’s all his publisher’s grand hoax. It’s up to insurance investigator Sam Neill to figure out the truth and its consequences.

The problems start with Sam Neill as the cynical investigator. I spent too much of the movie distracted by his occasionally disappearing accent. Sometimes he sounds like his own Australian self, sometimes he sounds like he’s putting on a crap Brooklyn accent, and sometimes it falls in the middle.

It’s a weird distraction not at all helped by his co-star Julie Carmen, who chose exactly the moment my girlfriend woke up from a nap to watch the rest of the movie with me to start acting…well, like a shitty actress who didn’t know what she was doing.
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What separates “The Blob” from the 200-odd movies featured on “Mystery Science Theater”? In two words…quality control.

It’s not a scary movie, it doesn’t have an awesome budget, and in its first half-hour, it tends to meander a bit before getting back to the plot.

The Plot, such as it is: blob attacks old man in the woods, then the doctor who’s treating him, then disappears for a long stretch of movie, while Steve McQueen and the gang go looking for it. Then all of Phoenixville tries their best to kill it, proclaiming the situation hopeless after each attempt.

I always think back to something MST3K’s Tom Servo said regarding movies like this: “To be fair, the producers weren’t really expecting anyone to be watching the movie by this point – everyone was supposed to be making out by now.”
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