Living Doll was the last in an unrelated trilogy of British horror films made by legendary exploitation movie producer Dick Randall. Its bedfellows being Edmund Purdom's ode to Santa Claus abuse, Don't Open Till Christmas (1983/5) and Slaughter High (85) the only slasher movie in which a person is killed by drinking beer, it was also Randall's final work for the cinema (he died in 1996). Unfortunately Living Doll is the ugly duckling of this eccentric batch, but at least the lead actor didn't commit suicide this time around. Living Doll tells the tale of Howard, a medical student hopelessly obsessed with pretty lass Katie Orgill, but when the said girl appears dead on the slab, a grief stricken Howard takes her corpse back to his crummy bed-sit. While captured in the spirit of romance, he fails to notice his true love is quickly becoming a rotting corpse, at least he does until the movies weak denouncement. Like Slaughter High, Living Doll is a British film that goes to great lengths to convince its an American one, mainly by having a cardboard cut-out of the New York skyline as a prop and a days worth of shooting from the real deal. Presumably the film is meant to take place in the little known English quarter of New York! Living Doll falls inbetween being too lightweight to live up to its gristly potential, while being too adult to carry a `romantic horror comedy' tag. The lack-lustre script was apparently jazzed up by Randall but to little avail. To say that Randall's tried and tested exploitation movie approach locks horns with the films aspirations towards that droll mainstay of the British film industry, the romantic comedy is like saying that Four Weddings and a Funeral isn't Love Me Deadly. Whats left is diluted Randall sleaze with moments of bonesaw gore, rotting corpse effects and the casting of tabloid bust model Orgill who gives her worth by appearing as the world's most topless corpse. Amidst sly moments of humour, namely the (Sir) Cliff Richard connotations of the title (the end credits serves up a cover version) and a frankly bizarre cameo by Eartha Kitt. Still at a time when the words `Dodo' and `British Horror Movie' seem synonymous, it would be nice to say Living Doll is more of a heavy hitter. Unfortunately its not, and certainly fails to provide a decent epitaph to Randall's wild and outrageous thirty year career. Dust off your copies of The Wild World of Jayne Mansfield, Pieces, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks or The Bogeyman and the French Murders and remember him that way.
