announcing the murderous doll showdown
there can only be one supremely upsetting uncanny possessed winner
welcome to this week’s special edition horror with henri, where we’ll be hosting a murderous doll throwdown showdown.
i’m your host, henri, coming to you live from the murderous doll convention. big eyed, bloodied porcelain faces are gathering in throngs to see the 20th and 21st centuries’ best and brightest—the dolls who have captured the hearts of horror fans worldwide.
you won’t like them, they’ll haunt you in your sleep, they’ll stab you in the back, and they’ll offer paragraphs of rambling pseudo-creative substack fodder!
so, without further ado, i’ll introduce our contestants, you can place your bets, and we’ll find out who’s the creepiest horror doll of all time.
Annabelle: Introduced in James Wan’s 2013 smash hit The Conjuring, and based off a real (allegedly-haunted) Raggedy Ann doll, Annabelle was pretty much the only scary thing about the first Conjuring movie. With her Wendys-esque braids and menacing smile, she makes you wonder why on earth someone would give her to a child.
Chucky (and Tiffany): Chucky, the Child’s Play franchise darling, is probably the most recognizable of all of the haunted dolls horror has to offer. He’s really not that scary, but his body count is high, and he answers that lingering question “what happens if I gave my really creepy-looking doll a big knife?” His human-then-doll girlfriend, Tiffany, is a similarly conniving figure.
Billy the Saw Puppet: Billy the Saw Puppet has been memed into oblivion at this point, but he’s still disconcertingly creepy—the thick, dry black hair, the rosy cheeks, the rounded chin, and the fact that his voice is way too low.
M3GAN: M3GAN’s brutal, yes, and well-dressed, yes, and sassy, yes. She’s not exactly scary like a possessed doll or a ventriloquist dummy, but she’s cunning. You should be scared of her. Will she win this? No. But is she fighting Chucky and Tiffany for the queer icon doll edition award? Absolutely.
Billy the Ventriloquist Dummy: The battle of the ventriloquist dummies, arguably the creepiest doll subgenre, begins with our friend Billy, from 2007’s Dead Silence. Billy’s murderous, kind of possessed, and devastatingly creepy. Very traditional black suit and roving eyes. (I was terrified of this DVD cover when I was a kid. I’d see it in our local grocery store.)
Hugo the Ventriloquist Dummy : Hugo’s one of the original killer dummies. He appears in the 1945 film Dead of Night, where he terrorizes his ventriloquist owner, Maxwell Frere.
Fats the Ventriloquist Dummy: Fats follows in Hugo’s footsteps, in a twisted game of “is it the doll who’s evil or is it the ventriloquist” in the 1978 film Magic. Despite the movie’s twists and turns, we’re calling Fats evil. He’s creepy, if nothing else.
Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy: Even though Slappy the ventriloquist dummy of Goosebumps fame, originally appeared in the 1993 book Night of the Living Dummy, he’s been in Goosebumps television and films since 1995. Slappy’s at the center of so much lore, but it’s agreed that he can become animated through a series of words and his intentions are generally mischievous and murderous.
Why are dolls such delightfully creepy horror fodder?
The Annabelle movie intro contends that dolls have been used for religious rituals for centuries—but it’s not their proximity to these rituals that makes them uniquely terrifying.
One of the main contentions is that dolls tap into the “uncanny valley” of things that aren’t quite right. They look human, but not exactly; they’re smiling, but they don’t have actual intentions to line up with those facial expressions.
I recognize that validity of this argument, but I don’t love it. It feels so clinical and removed from the visceral experience of seeing a cracked doll somewhere you shouldn’t.
Its eyes are wide, its dress is a little yellowed, its ribbons are frayed, and it’s smiling when it really shouldn’t be. It’s old and dilapidated. It should probably be frowning at this point.
Some things are just creepy. Dolls are just creepy.
Ventriloquist dummies are particularly terrifying. If we do buy the theory that dolls are creepy because of their proximity to humans, of course ventriloquist dummies are the scariest—they’ve got almost human voices. They steal human voices sometimes, they interact with people and people’s lives in a way dolls shouldn’t be able to.
Anyways. Take your bets and let’s pit the dolls against each other.
Let’s take the ventriloquist dummies first.
Slappy (Goosebumps) and Billy (Dead Silence) are definitely our frontrunners for scariest in this category.
Slappy isn’t absolutely dead terrifying, though. We’re going to go with Billy for this subcategory, though, for the following reasons: He’s sentient/possessed, but acts of what’s seemingly his own accord. He’s fairly ruthless. He doesn’t talk much, but he does stare, very eerily. He has the classic Hugo/Fats look: Black suit, slicked hair, menacing vibe.
So who are we pitting Billy against? Anabelle, Chucky, Billy (Saw), or M3GAN?
M3GAN will kill you, without a doubt. But does she scare you? Does she make your blood run cold?
Not really. She’s not all bad.
Billy (Saw) annoys me. His voice is too low and his movies are too scary for me personally. I like a nice high-pitched doll, or a quiet and very very haunted doll. Like it passes you behind you in the shadowy hallway and you panic.
Okay, so Annabelle or Chucky?
I know I’m supposed to say Chucky.
But we’re going with Anabelle.
And in the Billy vs. Annabelle showdown, we’re going to go with Annabelle too.
The sheer combination of ominous expression, campiness, and creepy backstory (in both the lore and in real life) make Annabelle our overall winner.
She’s absolutely the most haunted doll on our list.
Follow along with my movie watching on my Letterboxd!
Agree? Disagree? Did I miss any distressing dolls?
As always, thank you to new and old subscribers alike for reading :) Your support means the world.
If you have suggestions for what I should cover in the next couple weeks, feel free to email me at henrimagdalen@substack.com, or dm my instagram at @horrorwithhenri
I know my role is as a spooky movie averse boi, but child Ian was terrified of ventriloquist dolls the most after seeing of all things the polar express. I’ll stick with spooky ballet dolls thank you very much.