Paranoid Schizo-Pin-ia

As some of you who read this may already know – when I was a young girl I had a fear of dolls in the dark. I say in the dark because during the day they had no affect on me, but at night with the moonlight from my second story window glowing in, those little faces took and entirely different and menacing look. They would seem to evolve before my very eyes into little deformed demon babies as I peeped out from underneath my covers.

My Manitou had mentioned a movie called Pin (1988) in a previous blog. When I read about the movie it sounded very interesting since it was about a manikin that possibly at times may have been in the dark, and that had potential to be creepy in my book.

Well let me tell you that after watching this it definitely was creepy. But not for the reason entirely of the manikin whose name happens to be Pin. It is more for the psychological aspect of it.

I don’t want to give a lot of the movie away because I think this is a must see for anyone who enjoys a thriller of the psychotic kind. The main character Leon played by a young David Hewlett does one of the most superb acting jobs of lunacy that I’ve seen. And his sister Ursula played by Cynthia Preston does quite well as the sister who has unconditional love for her brother no matter how much of a nut he is.

Pin is a medical anatomically correct dummy with transparent skin,

and is kept in a doctor’s (played superbly by Terry O'Quinn) office.

The dummy speaks to the doctor and his children. But of course this only occurs whenever the father is there (via ventriloquism). He teaches the children valuable lessons about life, love and sex. He even teaches the nurse a thing or two about it when she has the opportunity to be alone in the office…or ummm she teaches herself depending on how you look at it…yikes!

As the children grow older Leon is becoming very close to the dummy and starts having conversations on his own, while Ursula always knew the dummy had no ability to think or talk she went on into teenage hood in the normal fashion while her brother took an entirely different avenue.

The parent’s die in a car wreck and the young adults are left to live on their own. Leon has become quite the lunatic and Pin has been moved into the house and things get quite creepy with Ursula trying to maintain the peace inside, and her normal life outside while trying to hide what’s going on, because despite Leon being completely off his rocker, she still loves him.

Leon transcends into full-blown paranoid schizophrenic while we get to be entertained by it. And like I said earlier, David Hewlett plays this part of falling deeply into insanity absolutely perfect.

And so, if you dig movies that don’t have a lot of gore for your eyes, but are disturbing to your brain, then this movie would be worth your while indeed.

Signed,

Filthy Regan

 

Originally Posted on September 1, 2010