From Chucky to M3GAN: Inside the creepy world of killer dolls

In 30 years of running the Long Island Doll Hospital, Jan Davis has repaired everything from obscure antiques to modern-day Barbies, mending their dresses, replacing glass eyeballs and sculpting little epoxy toes, she says. Housed in an antique, wood-shingled building on Main  Road in Southold, Davis’ hospital is one of the last of its kind in the tristate area. Customers come from as far away as Connecticut, she says, or live so far that they simply ship their dolls to her.

She’s also accustomed to people walking into her shop, glancing at all the lifeless little bodies on shelves, and walking right back out. Davis, 87, puts the blame on the many horror movies that have been made about creepy dolls — none of which she’s seen. "That turns people off on dolls," she says disapprovingly. "Dolls are very positive. Little girls told their secrets to dolls, they just loved them. They had nothing to do with being afraid."

Nevertheless, dolls have starred in scores of horror films, dating back to the earliest days of cinema. Whether seemingly harmless, like the ventriloquist dummy in 1978’s "Magic," or quite clearly demonic, like the glowering Annabelle in 2013’s "The Conjuring," dolls evoke a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and evil. Recently, the classic creepy-doll trope has gotten a high-tech upgrade: "M3GAN," the 2022 horror hit about a doll with an AI brain, has spawned a sequel, "M3GAN 2.0," which arrives  in theaters June 27.

Whether high-tech or low-, dolls tap into our instinctive fears of the almost-but-not-quite-human, says Paula Uruburu, a professor emerita of film and literature at Hofstra University. "We associate the eyes with the windows of the soul, and yet you look at this soulless thing that also looks like a human," she says. "It’s a real psychological horror."

"The Doll’s Revenge," a 1907 silent movie, might be the earliest known killer-doll film. The three-minute short centers on a tiny dancing doll (played by a real actor) that is dismembered by an ill-tempered boy. To his amazement, however, the doll reassembles herself, limb by limb, then grows to a menacing height. In the film’s bloodless but startling finale, the doll multiplies into two — and together, they eat the boy alive.

For the television generation, Rod Serling’s "The Twilight Zone" probably did the most to give dolls a bad name. The show produced not one but two episodes about ventriloquists taken over by their dummies — 1962’s "The Dummy," starring Cliff Robertson, and 1964’s "Caesar and Me," with Jackie Cooper. Both episodes have echoes of a little-known 1929 psychodrama, "The Great Gabbo," featuring a tormented Erich von Stroheim, and in turn seemed to foreshadow 1978’s "Magic," a horror-thriller with a young Anthony Hopkins.

In each case, a ventriloquist uses his dummy to express overwhelming emotions or act on forbidden impulses. The idea may be connected to the Greek theatrical tradition of finding freedom by donning a mask, according to Amy Gaipa, filmmaking professor at Stony Brook University. "You put on a neutral mask and use your body as expression," Gaipa says. "Dolls are the perfect incorporation of that neutral mask."

'TWILIGHT ZONE' CLASSIC

Between those two "Twilight Zone"  dummy-themed episodes came "Living Doll," a 1963 episode starring a pre-"Kojak" Telly Savalas as Erich Streator, an infertile husband whose stepdaughter brings home a windup talking doll. "My name is Talky Tina," it coos, "and I love you very much." As Streator becomes abusive to his family, the doll inexplicably turns threatening. ("I don’t like you," it warns.) In the end, Talky Tina finds a way to kill him — and take over the household.

"Living Doll" sent chills down the spine of many a baby boomer, especially if they’d ever seen a Chatty Cathy doll, introduced by Mattel just a few years earlier in 1959. There’s a subliminal quality to the episode: Both the real doll and its evil counterpart had the same voice, provided by June Foray (best known as Rocket J. Squirrel from the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons.)

"It’s one of the great episodes," says Marc Scott Zicree, author of "The Twilight Zone Companion" and a writer for film and television. At the time, he adds, talking dolls surely gave some folks the willies just as conversational chatbots do today. "The fear is that these creatures seem human but aren’t. And the fear is that we’ll end up guided by them and be in service to them."

'TRILOGY OF TERROR': A CULT CLASSIC

Another famous television doll comes from 1975’s "Trilogy of Terror," a made-for-TV anthology movie directed by Dan Curtis (creator of the vampire soap "Dark Shadows") and based on three stories by Richard Matheson. In the final segment, "Amelia," Karen Black plays a woman who purchases a tiny Zuni aboriginal doll that suddenly comes alive and chases her around her apartment. Absurd as it sounds, the segment caught critics by surprise (The Boston Globe called Black’s performance a "tour-de-force"), left a mark on a whole new generation of TV watchers and became a cult classic. (Uruburu, the Hofstra professor, is such a fan of the movie that she owns a replica of the Zuni doll. "Nothing bad’s happened yet," she says.)

In 1982, Tobe Hooper’s "Poltergeist" featured a memorable clown doll that comes alive and tries to choke a terrified little boy in his bedroom. Some 40 years later, even young-skewing pop-culture websites salute Hooper’s clown as one of the most terrifying in cinema. "Sorry, Pennywise," read the headline for a 2023 essay at Collider, referencing "It," "But This is Horror’s Scariest Clown."

Because dolls are part of nearly every child’s life, "they’re associated with innocence," Gaipa explains. "Conversely, in a horror film, it’s broken innocence. It’s the representation of something demonic. And because they are vessels, the supernatural can possess them at will."

THEN THERE'S CHUCKY

Chucky, the doll from 1988’s "Child’s Play," may be the most famous example of this genre. Possessed by the spirit of a serial killer (Brad Dourif, of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest"), Chucky is given to a little boy as a gift but soon engages in mayhem and murder. Critics praised the film’s over-the-top humor — at one point, Chucky uses an electroshock device to kill a psychiatrist — and audiences also seemed to get into the spirit. "Child’s Play" became a $44 million hit and spawned an eight-film franchise (including "Bride of Chucky" and "Seed of Chucky").

"Chucky is so interesting because there’s not a lot of male dolls" in horror movies, says Mary Beth McAndrews, editor-in-chief of the horror site Dread Central. Even today, "boys aren’t allowed to play with dolls, so the dolls we’re seeing in movies are a reflection of that." (Another rare example is "The Boy," a 2016 film in which an American nanny is hired by a British couple to care for their "son," a life-size doll.)

AND DON'T FORGET ANNABELLE

Annabelle, the doll at the center of "The Conjuring" who later spawned her own franchise, has a backstory not too dissimilar to Chucky’s: Her haunting begins when she’s held tight by a serial killer who dies by suicide. Technically, though, Annabelle is possessed by a demon who was summoned in a satanic ritual by a Manson-like cult. Inspired by an allegedly haunted Raggedy Ann doll owned by Ed and Lorraine Warren (the paranormal investigators famous for their involvement with the alleged Amityville hauntings), Annabelle is unusually still for a creepy doll: It’s rarely if ever seen moving.

Dolls are "only as creepy as the filmmaking elements that capture them — the shadows, the lighting, the visual language, the shot size," Gaipa says. "If you take away all the production, it’s really just a doll on a chair."

'M3GAN': STATE-OF-THE ART KILLER DOLL

The eponymous doll of "M3GAN" was highly active thanks to a combination of digital effects, an animatronic puppet and a preteen body double, Amie Donald. (Donald, not yet 12 at the time, helped choreograph M3GAN’s sassy-yet-sinister dance routine that became a TikTok sensation.) In the movie, a robotics expert creates a tweenage doll — powered by AI — to befriend an orphaned girl. As the girl becomes obsessively attached to the doll and vice versa, M3GAN begins acting out on her new feelings of jealously and possessiveness.

"This couldn’t exist in any other time but now," McAndrews says of the movie, but she adds that it’s also built on a very old idea. "I think no matter what year or era of horror, it’s so easy to do a haunted doll. The doll is already so spooky, and then you can just make it move or do crazy things."

Zicree sees "M3GAN" as picking up where "The Twilight Zone" left off. "The dynamic is very similar," he notes. "In ‘M3GAN,’ there’s this extremely sweet doll that’s actually malevolent. The parent is trying to take the doll away and the little girl doesn’t want it taken away." In both cases, he says, a lifeless object somehow acquires life — and gets the upper hand.

"It’s the whole idea of the malevolent presence in the house," Zicree adds. "It’s not human, and it’s not friendly — and it’s in our living space."