Robert Reborn (GB 2019, directed by Andrew Jones). (Look in the cut price section of video stores for this little gem).
This is one of the last in a series of haunted-killer doll B-Movies conceived by Andrew Jones, starting with Robert from 2015. which was allegedly inspired by a `true story`
It is tempting to frame them as a British answer to the Chucky franchise - with one crucial difference (which we'll come onto). Despite being Cottage industry type flicks they do seem to be motivated by some genuine love for this subgenre - and this makes all the difference.
I have had a soft spot for the haunted doll subgenre ever since seeing The Boy from 2016 (albeit this one is somewhat untypical of this genre as a whole). Another facet that gives this film extra interest is its setting in the Soviet Union of 1951.
In this deadpan black comedy, the KGB have got wind of the fact that there is a mysterious German man - Mr Meyerhold - living in the Soviet Union in a village who has a reputation of being able to produce animate dolls which have lethal tendencies. Naturally, they want to investigate this as it has the potential to create a new type of weapon. To this end they dispatch a female operative to check the guy out - but she is eventually dealt with by the dolls, lead by Robert..
More carnage follows, but the KGB manage to arrest Meyerhold and get him on a plane to Moscow. Big mistake - more killer doll action ensues at 30, 000 feet and the plane gets rerouted to London....
The dolls look impressively ghastly (but not at all like anything that would function as a real `doll`). Robert is a smirking sailor boy with two different colour eyes. He is joined by Cyclops - a woman with one eye in the centre of her head and Kalazhnikov - a boy with two functioning machine guns as arms.
Unlike Chucky, none of them talk (or make any kind of vocal sound) which works well in terms of realism (it may seem silly to talk of `realism` in the context of a demon- doll yarn, but Horror often works best when the more implausible aspects of the main premise are shorn off).
M.r Meyerhold - the aged magician and creator of the dolls makes for a superb pantomime villain, with his cackling and his mellifluous German accent, and you are able to overlook his obvious `old man` make up.
There is a game attempt to get the Soviet Fifties period details right. The location shots do look as if they have been taken in Russia - but the Moscow skyline features some anachronistic modern buildings. It would be easy cavil at other bloopers too. The comedy out-of-a0- box Russian accents really grate after a while. Also the habit the KGB people have of referring to Stalin as `the Tsar` seems to be in error to me. (I know that he would later be referred to as `the Red Tsar` - but to address him as such in his lifetime would have been seen as ideologically incorrect).
Interestingly, there are no heroes in this film: everyone in it is a baddie. In a way, It resembles one of Angela Carter's dark fairy tales, and is quite original really. There is very little gore but also no real scares - but it is pervaded by an effective lugubrious atmosphere like some sort of fever dream. I'd like to see some others in the series.