I kindly enlightened him on the fact that if Alfred Hitchcock had not pushed the edge and created that movie that frightened the world, well then he (fat video store guy) wouldn't be able to sit down and enjoy his favourite "horror" movies (which I could only presume consisted of such classics as "The Fog (remake), Freddy vs. Jason and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake)"). Don't get me wrong, the last 2 movies are great, but far from original, evolutional or classic. Anyways, he then proceeded to retort with, "Naw, dawg. They'd still be around yo!". I decided it'd be more productive talking to a wall after this reply and I just walked away. *Shakes head* A spoilt generation of inattentive, unintelligent, seen-it-all morons (apologies for the stereotyping, I know it's not ALL of them).

The premise of the story is fashioned in the style of an urban legend. In which an old famous ventriloquist from the 40s (or there abouts) called Mary Shaw is aspiring to create the "perfect doll", she already has 100's made and uses them at all her shows. But she uses one doll in particular more than the most, this doll's name is Billy (the doll on the cover). In one scene it shows a young boy, Michael Ashen, in the audience stating he can see her lips moving as she does her show. This makes Billy the doll almost act upon his own consciousness in pure blind anger and Mary Shaw only manages to restrain the doll. The boy goes missing just days later & believing Mary Shaw is responsible, the townspeople naturally hunt down & murder her, cutting her tongue out just for good measure. Her last wishes were to have her body turned into a ventriloquist puppet in death and to be buried with her many dolls in a cute (spooky) little gravesite in the woods that is very "Pet Semetary" style. As you can see it's already got the old reliable revenge story to explain the villains killings, although this is simple and recycled, it works and the movie makes up for it with it's originality in almost every other department.

This is where the movie gets good and the spooky starts to pick up. In one particular scene one of the heroes recalls back to when he was just a child & living with his father (the mortuary owner - yay! my daddy makes dead people look happy!) within the mortuary. One night during a lightning storm he sneaks down into the basement where he's always been told not to go. He's heard that Mary Shaw is down there, lying in an open casket, THE Mary Shaw, freshly prepared for her burial. He'd be crazy NOT to go check her out right? He climbs up onto the side of the table where the open coffin lies, dammit, all he can see is her hands & body. He leans further, but the weight of his body pulls the table over and the body comes tumbling out onto him and the floor. Her face is still covered in darkness as he backs away, when suddenly the lightning cracks and reveals her face. Her mouth has been cut out sectional in a square shape to move like a ventriloquist dummy and her skin looks preserved but still dead, with glazed eyes rotting inside a hardened glue type shell. The lightning cracks again and there she still lies, staring deathly at this frightened boy until it goes dark. Again the lightning cracks, but this time the body is gone, he looks around frantically but he can't see her, it goes dark again. The lightning crashes again, he looks up to his left and she's standing up right hold her arms out at him, rigid like a fuckin doll with a demonic fucking sneer on her face, all her joints separated from her body so they move like that of a dolls. I dunno, that whole fuckin scene just scares the shit out of me. Call me a bitch, but it movies like this and The Shining that have no real gore but so much fucking mood and create the sense of REAL fear and isolation from salvation. Fuck I love it haha!