THE PERSONAL TAKE: JEFFREY DOLLMER
Author's Disclosure: I'm friends with Mark Savage, the director of Jeffrey Dollmer, so it wouldn't be fair for me to present this piece as an unbiased review. Instead, please consider this an essay that reflects on his new film in a personalized manner outside the usual film critique.
Making films is a dialogue: between the director and their collaborators, between the filmmakers and the audience, and also between the filmmakers and the business. No matter how independent-minded you are, you’re at the mercy of the distribution vehicles that actually put the films in front of prospective viewers. They do the releasing and the monetizing, so at some level, you’ve got to figure out how to meet them halfway to get out there, get known, and make room for your own work.
What inspired this reverie? A movie about a doll possessed by a serial killer, of course. But not just any serial-killer-doll movie. This one was made by a friend, Mark Savage. I’ve covered a number of his films at Schlockmania and crossed paths with him along the way. Our interactions have given me a look over the shoulder into the realities of making independent genre fare.
His work has taken an interesting turn in the last few years. He’s still making unusual variants on the expected genres and nursing a handful of personal projects at any given time, but he’s also done a little journeyman work on the side to keep his name fresh in commercial terms.
For instance, 2024 saw the release of his self-generated assassin tale Kill Craft, but it also saw him helming 12 To Midnight, a werewolf/cop movie hybrid featuring the salable direct-to-video name, Bronson lookalike Robert Bronzi. He’s taken it a step further now by directing Jeffrey Dollmer, the first in a proposed series of “twisted serial killer universe” films produced by Jeff Miller, the same schlock impresario who gave us Popeye The Slayer Man.
The plot of Jeffrey Dollmer is as luridly campy as the title suggests: the infamous serial killer fused his spirit with a doll before going to prison and a few decades later, it’s thrown out of a police evidence morgue and revived when a dumpster diver bleeds on it. In short order, the pint-sized psychopath sneaks his way into a modeling shoot where everyone is too involved with ambition and cattiness to know they have a murderous toy in their ranks. Cue a sizable body count and plenty of dishy dialogue.
So what does a devoted filmmaker and walking encyclopedia of horror/exploitation cinema like Mark Savage do when confronted with this kind of gig? He gets into the spirit of it. It may be the kind of thing critics and even plenty of genre fans will sneer at… but it’s also a chance to make a movie so he throws everything he’s got at it.
He didn’t have to go this hard but he piles on montages, sleek camera moves, split-screens, and some Italian horror-influenced primary color lighting. He never condescends to the work or slacks off, so the results are consistently better than you’d expect: the performances are appropriately playful, it looks atmospheric despite its tongue-in-cheek approach, and it moves along with energy and a nice sense of narrative economy.
In short, if you’re going to watch a new quickie of the campy/sleazy variety, bypass the usual throwaways and watch something like this. It’s nice to see someone who loves making films knock out one of these. You might even say it gives crass commercialism a good name.