a primal root  review

You know, there’s no clear definition for what Trash Cinema is exactly. It’s always in the eye of the beholder. To me, Trash Cinema can be one of three things. 1) A movie that is so astonishingly bad it ascends to a level of extreme enjoyment on the viewers behalf. (ex. Troll 2, Samurai Cop, Malibu High, etc.) 2) A high budget, high concept film whose final product ends up being a complete piece of shit that’s laughably bad and fun to watch (ex. Queen of the Damned, Highlander 2, Twilight, etc.) and then there’s Trash Cinema of the Third Kind. The films made with a micro budget, and exploitative, politically incorrect, rude, crude, filled to the brim with blood, breasts and beasts. Films that refuse to censor their fucked up visions and provides those of us with hearts of garbage all the uncivilized and depraved kicks we so deeply crave . This third kind of Trash Cinema has become scarce. Especially at your neutered, spineless local googaplex which offers us nothing but  mindless, million dollar, brain meltingly useless pop culture turd smears which do nothing more than recycle the same old shit whether it’s a remake of a beloved franchise or an adaptation of a Hasbro toy line.

Lucky for us, there are sickos still out there cranking out the over the top Trash Cinema Gold despite there being not a single chance in Hell of their work ever being played in a theater next to one showing the latest High School Musical installment. Honestly, this is like a badge of honor. True Trash Cinema Legends such as Herschell Gordon Lewis, Lloyd Kaufman, & Russ Meyer (among countless others) have always operated and created their own distinct brands of Trash Cinema far outside the pop culture mainstream all the while influencing and mutating that same pop culture it from the outside in. These true legends of Trash changed the game forever and they did it without shame, without compromise and without apology. In their wake they have created generation after generation of sick sleaze hounds like myself admiring and craving all things nasty and loathsome. We’ve begun to take matters into our own hands and have begun creating the films that lovingly take us back to the filthy, warped movies that shaped our young lives.

Which brings us to Black Devil Doll. An off the wall, shoe string budget horror, exploitation, comedy bastard amalgam paying homage to an era when filmmakers knew just how fucked up their audience was and were eager to deliver the goods and splatter the results all over the screen. Ah, the good old days.

Written and produced by the loveable visionary behind Brawlin’ Broads Mitch Mayes (http://brawlinbroads.com/main.htm) and Shawn Lewis, the man behind Rotten Cotton (http://www.rottencotton.com/) Black Devil Doll has been hyped for what feels like forever in horror rags, conventions and message boards. Believe it or not the film was produced back in 2007 and gradually gained cult status through a steady does of midnight screenings and festival showings over the years.

Now the wait is finally over for us Trash Collectors because Black Devil Doll is now out on DVD for all of us to watch and marvel at. It’s being sold as a killer black puppet movie chock full of freakishly ample bare breasts, but in all actuality it’s a story of a lonely, young woman with a gigantic rack and the love she has for a mass-murdering, rape happy ventriloquist’s dummy she is foolish enough to fall in love with. This flick’s a heart breaker.

Ah, young love.

Our movie begins with the execution of a 60’s era black power revolutionary, Mubia Abul-Jama, for the rape and murder of 15 white women. He is strapped into he electric chair, a salad bowl is placed on his head, he utters his final words, “I like to eat white butt!” and is deep fried into the after life. Meanwhile, a voluptuous bored young woman by the name of Heather (Heather Murphy) decides to waste some time on the Ouija board, and wouldn’t you know it, she manages to summon the spirit of the recently executed Mubia who shoots out of the Ouija board and into a Ventriloquist dummy that happens to be chilling on the couch. Mubia’s spirit is so strong he turn the dummy black, grows it an enourmous afro, whale sized dick and even changes the dummies clothes!

Heather isn’t too freaked out by this turn of events and over the course of a casual conversation with the now possessed Black Devil Doll Heather ends up seduced and falling hopelessly in love with the guy. Before you know it Mubia has his wooden head plopped between Heather’s legs and proclaiming such pillow talk as “Damn, baby, this some tasty ass pussy! Reminds me of my Momma’s fried chicken!” Such a sweet talker, how could she resist falling in love?

Black Devil Doll & Heather have a heart to heart.

Not long after the Black Devil Doll and Heather become an item BDD breaks it to Heather than he can’t be happy with just one woman. Like a dog he must piss in another person’s yard from time to time. He asks Heather if she can “dig it” and she nods her head in approval as tears stream down her face. Heather agrees to invite over her girlfriends, get them liquored up and let the Black Devil Doll have his way with them while she makes herself scarce. Where will she go? “McDonald’s os some shit!” Black Devil Doll suggests.

Heather's pals hard at work washing their car.

Heather’s friends show up with a case of wine coolers and spend about five minutes worth of running time washing their car in Heather’s driveway immediately upon arrival as Black Devil Doll watches from inside. One of them even buffs the front windshield with her boobs proving silicone has the same affect as Rain-X.

Boobs. For that streak free shine every time.

Once their car is nice and sparkling clean and the Black Devil Doll has jizzed all over the living room window the girls all huddle inside making squeaky noises and showing off their tits (many of which are of the disturbingly fake variety) before playing a dull game of Twister. Black Devil Doll signals Heather to get the fuck out of there. Once Heather departs the remaining girls decide to bathe themselves or go topless sunbathing out in the back yard. This gives Black Devil Doll plenty of opportunities to go murder and rape some “white bitches.”

Killing off some "White Bitches."

And he sure enough does. He bashes some heads in with a baseball bat, slits a throat, electrocutes another, etc. The violence is Blood Feast, 2,000 Maniacs level crud which adds to the cartoonish zaniness on hand. As graphic as it all is it’s so over the top and crappily staged you end up simply giggling at the goofiness of it all.

Heather filled with rage and Big Macs!

Heather comes home to find all her friends naked, raped, and butchered on the Twister tarp. Heather is understandably pissed off by this. Black Devil Doll tries to sweet talk her but this time he’s gone too far! Heather rips open her shirt in a frenzy, grabs her roscoe and unloads a thousand round clip into the puppet she loved.

Hell hath no fury...

In a movie like Black Devil Doll there’s no real subtext or any need to look further into what’s one screen. It’s simple exploitative sleaze. And it’s incredibly juvenile at that. Many of the piss, shit and cum gags are more face palmingly stupid than shocking or outrageous. These are the kind of ideas you and your friends came up with in high school when you were drinking a case of beer and watching a marathon of Troma movies on your old beat up VCR. There’s nothing ground breaking to be found in Black Devil Doll but what can be found here is a whole lot of stupid, disgusting, 6th grade level fun. This is a bad, bad, trashy film but it’s not trying to be anything else. And with a title like Black Devil Doll you know EXACTLY what you’re getting yourself into.

Black Devil Doll endorses Salad Tossing.

Where the movie excels is in the post production department. This movie could easily have been just slapped together as an assembly of just one scene right after another but instead editors Jonathan Lewis and John Osteen managed to add some great visual touches including split screens, collages, and some very cool transitions to make this film look like it cost far more than it actually did. Their editing skills added a lot of style and, dare I say, class to the nasty proceedings. It looks like it could actually be a lost piece of 70’s era grindhouse cinema.

Black Devil Doll carries on the fine Trash Cinema tradition of bingeing on a constant flow of bizarre films, digesting it all, and purging the mixture of all the influences that stuck with you into a glorious piece of  cinema that pays homage to the glorious days of 42nd Street sleaze and Drive-In exploitation grandiose. It’s a love letter to a long lost era of fun, terrible films that were made for those of us with our minds firmly stuck in the gutter. Black Devil Doll lives at the very bottom of the dumpster licking up all the rancid drippings and residue left behind by it’s fore fathers of Trash Cinema. And I cannot thank them enough for sticking to their guns and delivering the grotesque goods.

Stay Trashy!

-The Primal Root