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| Images courtesy of New World Pictures |
Canadian writer-director-producer Sandor Stern is probably
best known for his screenwriting work on the 1979 haunted house thriller The
Amityville Horror when he isn’t fully involved in television work including
but not limited to directing Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes and a
number of other straight to video films.
Though much of the rest of his career is comprised of television work,
the Canadian filmmaker rarely if ever has directed any standalone theatrical
features of particular note…except for one.
Sometime in 1988, Stern picked up Andrew Neiderman’s 1981
American gothic horror novel Pin in one of the queasier psychosexual
ventriloquist doll thrillers ever realized onscreen. The story of a damaged childhood involving brother-sister
siblings Leon and Ursula who reside in their parents’ swanky mansion funded by their
dad Dr. Linden (Terry O’Quinn of The Stepfather infamy) and commandeered
by their domineering hovering mother, the children find solace in an
anatomically correct talking medical dummy in his office named Pin (a body-horror
riff on Pinocchio?) their father uses to teach them about the human form. Friendless and shielded, Leon spots his
father’s nurse pleasuring herself with the doll and from that day on develops a
specific hatred for voluptuous women.
Fast forward to the children having matured to teenage years
with Leon now played by David Hewlett and Cynthia Preston in the role of Ursula,
it is fair to say whatever dysfunctionality and maladjustment resides within
Leon is boiling over into full blown sociopathy as Dr. Linden catches the youth
engaged in mercurial conversations with Pin and decides to hide the doll
from his troubled son. Soon however,
their parents get into a mysterious car accident perhaps related to Pin somehow
and not long after retrieving said doll from the scene of the accident, Leon
begins outfitting the transparent “talking” human doll with his now late father’s
clothing and covers the doll with latex skin and a wig. All the while, as his sister Ursula matures
and begins dating other men, a psychosexual incestuous obsession begins to grow
within the increasingly mad and dangerous Leon.
Deceptively simple, nuanced, uncanny and icky, Pin is
one of the best Canadian doll horror oriented films of the 1980s few if any
horror fans have heard of. Given a
theatrical release in Canada followed by a straight-to-video release in the
United States, the film produced by Infinity Pool production company
Telefilm Canada and released thru New World Pictures is a strangely perfect
little horror gem that finds all the right moments of creeping malaise building
up to an unexpected denouement that’s startling and nerve wracking.
Visually speaking The Barbarian Invasions cinematographer
Guy Dufaux’s camerawork here is tightly wound up in close ups and soft
lighting, particularly in nighttime scenes where the titular Pin seemingly
animates itself to life glowing in blue light.
The synthesized electronic keyboard score by Radioactive Dreams composer
Peter Manning Robinson is fine though the obvious sonic component in sending
shivers down the listener’s spine is simply when Pin itself speaks. Much of the film’s queasy energies stem from
not just the doll itself which gradually starts to look more and more like the
grandparent concluding The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the asexual kind
of Douglas Rain or Mercedes McCambridge voicework that comes off as icily
menacing.
Speaking of menacing, there is much to be said about
accomplished Guillermo Del Toro favorite actor David Hewlett who has the figure
of an Eric Freeman type from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 but an
actual aura of threatening psychosexual behavior. An actor in both the Friday the 13th
television series as well as eventual Scanners II: The New Order star,
the film completely rests on his shoulders as he navigates the film deeper and
deeper into discomforting aberrant sexual obsession. Playing off of this maniac is The Brain and
Jack Ryan character actress Cynthia Preston who more or less represents
the audience spectator’s point of view and in one of the film’s most unsettling
scenes she brings her boyfriend over to break the ice over Leon and Pin which
prompts Leon to read a twisted rapey portion of his poetry. Terry O’Quinn as Dr. Linden needs no
introduction having cemented himself as a horror icon with The Stepfather but
here he takes a backseat to Hewlett’s madness.
A cult favorite that touches on fears of adolescence and morality
conjured up by Pinocchio which is an obvious influence, fears of the
so-called ‘killer doll’ movie and largely grounded by a squirm inducing central
performance Brimstone & Treacle’s slithery invader would be proud
of, Pin is something of a low budget Canadian horror flick whose chess
pieces fall into all the right places.
Not going too far or being too light on the viewer’s comfort zones while
creating a threatening aura of unease throughout, Pin also has the
virtue of keeping the viewer tap dancing between explanations for the
film. Is it purely psychological or is
there something genuinely supernatural going on? That constant uncertainty and tractor-beam
like obsession exhibited by the film’s main character Leon coalesces into among
the tensest moods of malaise sustained for long periods of time in recent
memory. Few creepy doll movies get their
plasticine talons as far under the skin as this.
--Andrew Kotwicki
