This movie is the best movie ever to use the word ventriloquy times. Oh wait, that's the MST3K riff, because there's not anything this movie is the best of, or at. Thank God for the riff, because this movie is absolutely unstomachable.
In the longstanding tradition of shitty movies that deserve to be made a mockery of by any fine citizen who upholds the standards of great moviedom, there stand only those finest pieces of cinematic genius that Mystery Science Theater 3000 aims to plow. Today we have a film that actually had moments of discernible acting: the main male protagonist's secretary actually does a passable job at repartée, in the vein (though not reaching the levels) of His Girl Friday. Otherwise, it sucked. Not as bad as Manos: Hands of Fate, but bad enough.
The story follows a reporter who wants to do a piece on The Great Verelli (probably a spelling error there, but I don't give a lick), who is a ventriloquist and hypnotist, whose show's extraordinary finale sees the dummy get up on his own accord and walk to the edge of the stage and thank the audience for coming. Everyone is enraptured. Except the home viewing audience, of course.
Eventually, we learn that the dummy is "inhabited" by the soul of a former assistant (or something... that was never really clear, big surprise) that was, apparently, hypnotized out of the body and put into the dummy. And the hypnotist's goal is to make another dummy, this time a really fugly female one, so he goes about trying to capture the "soul" of the reporter's girlfriend by putting her under a constant spell.
When I write the above, it actually sounds like the premise of an only-slightly-bad horror movie that makes a lot of money, but this was certainly not the case here.
Movie: 2/10
w/MST3K: 9/10
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