“Black Devil Doll” : Bask In The Unrepentant Filth

"Black Devil Doll" Movie Poster

Oh, my. “Filmed In Negroscope.” “Rated ‘X’ by an All-White Jury.” “‘He’s a Muthafuckin’ Puppet!” “If You Think You’re Ready for Him — Think Again, Bitch!” The taglines here make it perfectly clear that there’s something to offend every sensibility in this 2008- lensed, low-budget (apparently it was shot for around $10,000), essentially straight-to-DVD (although it has gotten some limited horror convention and midnight-movie circuit theatrical play over the past year or so) shockfest (or should that be schlockfest?). Let’s briefly consult what’s on offer here against our handy checklist of  black puppet exploitation movie debauchery:

Gratuitous and often pointless nudity? Check. Oceans of cheap-looking blood? Check. Deliberate racially insensitive dialogue in abundance? Check. Purposefully OTT stereotyping? Check. Necrophilic rape? Check. Lewd bathroom “humor,” including fart sounds? Check. Foot-long puppet schlong? Check. Copious amounts of puppet jizz, including a facial? Check. Puppet rug munching? Check. Puppet ass munching? Check. Puppet diarrhea? Check.

Yup, it’s all there.

Black militant Mubia Abul-Jama (hmm, that name sounds familiar) is sentenced to die in the electric chair at midnight for raping and murdering 15 white women. As the clock ticks down on his life,across town bored and busty party-girl Heather (played by Heather Murphy) is fooling around at home with her ouija board. When old sparky kicks into action, Mubia’s soul (or whatever) is quickly zapped straight down to hell, but the power of the “mystifying oracle” vacuums (or, again, whatever) him back up into the real world and transmits his essence out of the board and into Heather’s Howdy Doody-type doll, instantly transforming the bow-tied, freckled white puppet into a militant Black Panther-type foot soldier in America’s unofficial race war (voiced by the movie’s director, Jonathan Lewis), and he’s only got one thing on his mind : Caucasian poontang.

He's a lover ---

Soon —as in within five minutes — Heather is unable to resist the Black Devil Doll’s “charms,” and he’s sliding her the wooden salami morning, noon, and night. However, our guy (err, our puppet) is not a one-woman kind of “man,” and in fairly short order he’s demanding that she bring some of her girlfriends around for him to — ummm — meet (okay, for him to rape and kill — and not necessarily in that order — if you want to be technical about things). She somewhat hesitantly obliges his request — I mean, she doesn’t really want to, but that puppet-lovin’ is just so good that she can’t say no.

He's a killer ---

Anyway, while her ex, a wanna-be white rapper who lives at home with his grandma and goes by the handle of “White-T” pines after her, Heather burns up the phone lines, gets a few of her uniformly slutty friends (played by Christine Svendsen, Erika Branich, Precious Cox, and the — ummm — generously, and pneumatically, enhanced Natasha Talonz, all of whom have to be at least a decade older than the characters they’re portraying, and none of whom are , sorry to be so blunt, all that especially attractive) to come on over to her house for a weekend of movies, wine coolers, and girl talk. When the Black Devil Doll sends Heather a little (or not so little, as the case may be), secret signal, though, it’s time for her to head on out to McDonald’s for about six or eight hours so he can get down to business.

He's a voyeur ---

Once she clears out, the girls all find convenient reasons to strip down to either next to nothing or just plain nothing (one has to shower, one has to bathe, one has to work on her tan, one has to sleep, one has to — yes — take a dump), and they don’t get dressed again for the entire duration (that duration being 72 minutes in total) of the film, because Mubia goes on a rampage and rapes and murders them all (again, not necessarily in that order — in fact, it’s usually the reverse).

When Heather gets home and sees what’s become of her friends, though, she blows a gasket (apparently she only thought Mubia-doll was going to rape them and was, you know, okay with that, but the killing thing is a bit much for her), rips off her shirt for no reason, and blows him (back ) to hell with her gun. Oh, and somewhere in the midst of all the other debauchery, our pint-sized (except where it counts) wooden revolutionary does a bunch of coke, and “White-T” crashes the “party” and our sex-crazed puppet murders and mounts him, too.

He's a cokehead ---

So, that’s the “plot.” The performances are as amateurish and unprofessional as you’d expect, the gore effects are beyond cheap (but at least they’re not CGI), and the dialogue is abominable and  brain-meltingly wretched (again, as you’d expect). In other words,  the sleaze is so thick you can cut it with a knife here, folks.

Loosely (very loosely) based on the late Chester Turner’s shot-on-video 1983 underground mini-sensation “Black Devil Doll From Hell,” the Lewis Brothers (producer and co-writer Shawn and director Jonathan, respectively) have certainly “crafted” a deliberately politically and morally incorrect piece of modern-day exploitation garbage here, and it’s entirely appropriate that it’s released on a video label called Lowest Common Denominator Films, since that’s exactly the level this thing is operating on. Not that I mean that as a criticism, because I most assuredly don’t. As stated at the beginning, this is movie’s “mission statement,” if it were pretentious enough to have one, would be to piss off everyone all the time. In that respect, then, it can only be considered an unqualified success.

The DVD package is pretty nice on the whole, with a “making-of” featurette, a short selection of animated BDD cartoons, a trailer, a fairly comprehensive set of liner notes, a poster,  and a feature-length commentary from Jonathan Lewis voiced “in-character” as the Mumia-doll. Fun stuff all around.

He's a muthafuckin' puppet!

Needless to say, “Black Devil Doll” isn’t for everyone. Hell, in a rational and sane world, it wouldn’t be for anyone. But in the hopelessly fucked-up world we do actually live in, I have to admit that it had me laughing my ass off.