"One man's trash is another man's lover..."
--Wolf Pac, Death Becomes Her

Call me old fashioned, but I simply don't "get" necrophilia. Maybe it's my preference for my lovers to be warm and reactive (which puts me a step above many fraternity brothers), or the fact that I don't think I've ever been so distraught over a loss that I've beat cheeks to their grave to dig them up. Of course, I don't get foot fetishists either, so maybe it's just me.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding...it's a corpse for chrissakes! Eww eww eww!

Despite my disgust over that type of act (I mean, c'mon people), I have a special place in my heart for movies that explore sexual relations with the pulse-challenged. From sick shit like Beyond The Darkness (review here) to sicker shit like Jorg Buttgereit's Nekromantik series (part 2 reviewed here), there's nothing quite like a movie with plenty of corpse-humping to make me squirm in my seat with revulsion.

Even creepier than the necro-sex, in my opinion, are the more "homey" scenes in these films: the corpse and their lover engaging in normal, everyday activities with one another. Something about someone snuggling up to watch television with a very ripe cadaver just churns my guts. It's just plain eerie.

So imagine my pleasure/pain (sometimes it truly is indivisible) when I popped in Mondo Macabro's release of Living Doll, and found not a single scene of sexual intercourse between Howard (Mark Jax) and his post-mortem princess Christine. Sure, there are a few scene of suggested hay-tumbles, but for the most part, Howard's love for Christine is disturbingly innocent and G-Rated. Ladies and gentlemen, Howard is not insane with lust...he's just insane.

Not that I can really blame him: his life is full of misery and loneliness. His boss is a prick, his landladies are clucking old hens, and even his coworker Jesse basically wants him around only to play wingman on his skirt-chasing escapades (apparently, the ladies love morticians) in dive bars. The only person who's nice to him is Christine, whom he dubs "Ms. Gardenia" after the flower shop she works at in the hospital. He takes surreptitious photos of her which he virtually wallpapers his slummy apartment in, and greets her every morning to nervously interact with her before prepping cadavers for the day. After seeing her get smacked around by her asshole boyfriend (do nice girls have any other kind?), he is dismayed when the next morning, he discovers Christine on the slab with a broken neck. Of course, this snaps the slender thread that his sanity is hanging by, and he does what any lovesick man would do: he drives out to the cemetery to dig her up, bring her home and...

...build one of the most functional relationships I've ever seen, living or dead. I'm being serious! They never fight, he brings her gifts, dresses her in beautiful clothes (well, beautiful for 1990 anyway), cooks her dinner...he is the man he wanted to be for her when she was alive, and he finally has his wish. Yes, Living Doll shows us the warm, fuzzy side of necrophilia.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a horror flick if this was how the movie would play out: parallel to the decay of Christine's body is the decay of Howard's mind. Even as she's rotting away on his couch (and towards the end of the movie, she's looking pretty damn ripe), Howard still sees her as an angelic beauty, smiling sweetly at his every act of kindness. This culminates when Christine "asks" Howard to kill her boyfriend, who survived the accident that killed her. Howard, being completely batshit insane, reluctantly agrees to her request.

Grab a bun and throw a burger on the grill, because this movie's one thick slab of cheese to bite into. The acting is pretty hammy by almost all involved, the music flip-flops between Cinemax-grade soft porn jazz and a honky-tonk theme song (yes this movie has its own theme song...and it's the goofiest since Alice Cooper's "The Man Behind The Mask"), and the dialogue is almost unbearably hokey. However, despite these shortcomings, Living Doll makes up for it in overall feel...simply put, it's ridiculously well-executed in its pacing and mood. The special effects, by Paul Catling (the guy responsible for the original Hellraiser's effects), are absolutely amazing, showing Christine's rapid degeneration into a grey-black pile of mush with sickening realism. The tension is pretty effective as well, as the audience nervously anticipating just when Howard's nosey landladies are going to stumble upon Christine, who is causing a rat problem in the apartment. Speaking of landladies, one of them is played by none other than the always-vampish Eartha Kitt, who adds a smokey spark to the proceedings. Hey, for an old lady, she's got it going on!

Mondo Macabro, as usual, also's got it going on in the presentation department. While the print used was rather damaged (there were tears and holes in almost every frame), the colors were bold and accurate. Directors Peter Litten and George Douglas use color to almost Argento effect in certain scenes, and MM made sure that it looked good. Sound was very clear, with the mono mix still sounding rather full and rich. Now, let's get to the real meat of the DVD...the extras. Once again, Mondo Macabro hits one right out of the park in this area. We've got interviews with Mark Jax and writer Paul Hart-Wilden, a few documentaries and featurettes, a huge still gallery, the original trailer, and a little short by the name of Horrorshow.

Horrorshow ends up being completely fascinating for its origins: a virtually plotless, dreamlike film meant to sell investors on not only the script for Living Doll, but for Hart-Wilden's skills as a director. While it's most certainly not a high-quality movie, it ends up being pretty damn interesting. There's blood, nightmares, and phallic things in bags with a taste for people meat. It comes across like one of those snobby film-student shorts that use heavy-handed allegory in lieu of solid narrative. Don't understand it? No, you just don't "get" it, man. However, as far as demo reels go, it's good stuff.

Much like the previous volume in MM's Dick Randall Collection, The French Sex Murders (review here), or any of their releases, Living Doll is one hell of an overseas weirdie worthy of a spot on your shelf.

Plus, those red cases just look so damn cool.