Quite a few episodes of The Twilight Zone have found themselves frequently referenced throughout the decades since they first aired. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “Time Enough at Last,” “Eye of the Beholder,” they all apply. But there was one episode that outright gave birth to a subgenre of horror: the killer doll movie. At the very least it popularized it, setting a new high benchmark for just how frightening a small, seemingly inanimate object can be. The episode is, of course, “Living Doll,” the story of the sweet-looking little Talky Tina. To be fair to Tina, she is sweet, as long as you don’t treat her or her favorite human, Christie, poorly.
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What makes this episode so wonderful? And how long was it before filmmakers tried to replicate its success? Let’s find out.
The Importance of “Living Doll”
“Living Doll” works so well because we do not see this doll running around with a knife in her hand. We just hear her threats, which gradually build in intensity. In fact, the one life she takes is more of an accident than an outright homicide, but we know just as well as Talky Tina does that it was her intervention that made this death possible.
Furthermore, the episode is as much about a stepfather struggling to adapt to his new role as it is about said stepfather feeling threatened by a doll. That latter part is critical, of course, as we are consistently guessing whether he is losing his sanity or whether what we’re seeing play out is genuine, but that push and pull wouldn’t play as well were we not engrossed by the protagonist’s larger struggle.
This is one of those The Twilight Zone episodes that manages to be fairly frightening front to back. Its build is perfect, the almost blandly innocent look of the doll couldn’t have been more well selected, and June Foray’s vocal work as Talky Tina is spot-on, expertly merging a soft tone with an undercurrent of sinister presence.
It’s not surprising this episode has retained a place in so many people’s minds since its debut on November 1, 1963. It was the direct inspiration for a 1992 “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons, an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and an episode of Johnny Bravo.
But its bigger influences can be found on the big screen. While Toy Story 4‘s Gabby Gabby was directly inspired by Talky Tina, the even more substantial result of the episode’s power was Chucky of the Child’s Play franchise. That franchise’s creator, Don Mancini, has confirmed that this Twilight Zone was, in fact, a key inspiration for the little knife-wielding jerk voiced by Brad Dourif.
And were it not for Child’s Play, we wouldn’t have any of the other killer doll movies that were released in the wake of Chucky’s success, such as Dolly Dearest, Dolls, Demonic Toys, Puppet Master and, later, M3GAN, The Boy, and Dead Silence. “Living Doll” was a massively important episode of The Twilight Zone, and it works to this day.
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