Dollhouse (Studio A) Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  3/18/2004

The Little Details

Running Time: 115 min.

Production Date: 6 / 16 / 2003

Director: Andrew Blake

Cast: Dahlia Grey, Jacqueline, Celeste, Nika, Rachel Rotten, Monica Mendez, Jade, and Rob Rotten

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: I haven’t watched an Andrew Blake movie in a long time. I’m curious about this one.

Initial Reaction: There’s some very hot and sexy scenes here, but sadly there’s a few in between that drag the feature down a bit.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody wishing the pages on their centerfold layouts could come to life

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody wanting actual sex

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: As usual with Andrew Blake, the technical aspects are very artistic. There’s almost no audio from the performers, with 99% of the audio being music. The video is very nicely shot, and presented in glorious anamorphic widescreen, but often grainy to give the appearance of film. The light also varies and there’s a few other effects used to alter the look of the video. It normally works well and is a bit part of the mood created by Andrew Blake.

Music: The music dominates the audio almost completely. It varies from scene to scene and normally does a very nice job of helping with the mood of the scene.

Menus: The menus are extremely simple. The main menu has a still photo and lets you choose between the feature and a scene listing. The chapter index lets you choose a scene based on a series of titles and chapter numbers. As simple as it is, for some reason this worked for me. Maybe it’s because it still feels artistic, which goes right along with Blake’s feel.

The Feature

Dollhouse collects twenty seven (yes, 27) sequences from the eye of Andrew Blake. As usual, there’s no plot to the scenes, and most of them look like magazine centerfolds brought to life. They vary in location and feel, but all keep roughly the same style.

The closest anything comes to holding the scenes together is Jacqueline. She often has a very short sequence between scenes just to break them apart. She never shows any emotion, and normally appears to be almost like a mannequin, which seems to be part of where Dollhouse got its name. Although this works in theory, in reality it really flopped for me. There was absolutely nothing erotic about her for me, and the only thing that made me happy about her sequences were that they were very short.

The other sequences are much better, and show some nice creativity. There’s a few soft and romantic themes here, but many of them have a darker feel. You get things like domination with a pair of scissors between Jade and Dahlia, or Dahlia dancing for a few women as they gamble. Rachel Rotten and Rob Rotten team up for the only heterosexual scene in the movie, and even fuck a while before he pops on her bald beaver. Things even get a little wild with Jade and a Geisha girl sushi type of a scene or a pair of girls fighting over some raw meat, while Dahlia and Celeste keep things a bit more normal with a smoking fetish scene that was easily one of my favorites in the entire movie (with the other smoking scenes coming in close behind).

The creativity is much of what makes Dollhouse work for me. Yes, Jacqueline’s sequences acted like an anchor around the neck of all of the other scenes, the doll aspect of the feature got in the way as well. There’s often three girls in a scene, but one just lays there. I know this is a bit artistic, but most of the time they interfered with the scenes for me. I was drawn to them because they were there and I wanted for them to get into the action. That said, I was able to put it out of my mind a bit by the time the movie had gone on a while and the other scenes are very well done. I love the visuals in the scenes as well as how Blake was able to push some of the limits of adult entertainment while still keeping the sex amazingly strong. I was fairly shocked with some of the scenes here, yet sexually they’re quite tame. I don’t think I’d call most of it sex, but the action in Dollhouse is for the most part, very well done.

Dollhouse is definitely not for everybody. As with the rest of Andrew Blake’s work it’s extremely artistic and at times I want to say a tad pretentious. That said, it’s normally very well done as well. There’s a few aspects about Dollhouse which didn’t work for me as well as most of Blake’s work, but most of it did. Dollhouse is definitely not for everybody, and some things about it make me think it might not even be for some Andrew Blake fans, but I do know that most of it worked for me.

The Extra Stuff

Seven featurettes, lasting a total of sixty nine minutes are included on the B-Side of the DVD. Normally I break these down scene by scene, but in this case I’m not going to because I really don’t have a clue as to who the girls are in each segment and because they all have a very similar feel. The sequences are basically all teases, some of which are solo extremely soft masturbations while others involve a few girls. There isn’t much of anything for penetration, but they’re all filmed very artistically. Yes, although these are bonus sequences, they’re still given the artistic care that you’d expect from Andrew Blake. They’re all presented in anamorphic widescreen, rather than cheapening things for the extras by going non-anamorophic, and the music is just what you’d expect from Blake. They’re all slow and drawn out, but if you want the slow and sensual, centerfoldish style of Blake you’ll probably be very happy with them.

There’s also a half hour behind the scenes featurette on the B-side of the DVD. You get to see a little screwing around on the set, but most of the feature shows the scenes being shot. It even includes footage of a deleted scene with Dahlia where she does a little swimming in a pool, part of which is included during the closing credits. It’s an okay behind the scenes featurette. It starts off nice, and does identify many of the performers, but just seemed to go on a long time due to the very long takes of scenes being shot. I guess this is good if you want to see how the action went without Blake’s artistic takes, but I normally watch these featurettes to get a feel for the performers as people. There wasn’t a lot of that here, and although there’s plenty of eye candy it wasn’t enough to take me through the featurette.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: All girl, tease, group, toys, masturbation, spanking, feet, and smoking

Raincoat Factor: If you need actual sex, very low. If you beautiful women moving around works for you, then very high

Condom Usage: None needed

The Bottom Line:

Currently, most Studio A DVDs can be found online for between $20 and $28. If you’re a fan of Andrew Blake’s style, this one will probably be well worth the money. There were a few scenes which let me down here, but the technical aspects were as excellent as always and there’s over an hour and a half of extra footage to really make this an excellent release.

Note to Studio A: It’s great to see you putting so much effort into your DVDs! Now if only you could get back some of your titles like House of Dreams and Secrets!

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight