Toys Are Not for Children

I love trashy, bad movies but this was too much for me.

I am a big John Waters fan and thought this would be funny. Actually, it is a stab at being psychosexual. Evelyn Kingsley's huge nipples gave me nightmares.

Brace yourself for a profoundly unsettling cinematic experience-this film stands out as one of the most disturbing pieces of art ever created. It delves into the complexities of the human psyche, weaving a storyline filled with darkness and perverse twists that will resonate in your thoughts long after the final credits have rolled. Each frame is meticulously crafted, dripping with an overwhelming sense of foreboding that pulls you into an uncanny world where the line between reality and nightmare blurs and horrors appear in the most unexpected forms.

Approach this film with utmost caution, for it is not a narrative for the timid or faint-hearted. Prepare to confront your deepest fears as you navigate through a labyrinth of psychological terror, where every moment keeps you on edge and makes you question your own perception of reality.

A sexually repressed young woman with an unhealthy attachment to her father can't make a relationship work so she becomes a prostitute.

With a few tweaks here and there, Toys Are Not for Children could pass as an early John Waters movie with its strange themes, odd acting, and low budget filming style, but this one seems to want to be taken a little more seriously, which makes it a far more disturbing, if not somewhat amusing, viewing experience. This won't be one for everyone.

Infrequently lauded, boundary-blasting Grindhouse impresario, Stanley H. 'Two Girls' Brasloff reaches his onanistic apogee in his anti-Sirkian, wonderfully wrong-headed, sadistically squirrelly, promiscuously incestuous, preternaturally potty pot-boiler 'Toys are not for Children' (1972) which arguably remains one of the most sinisterly outrageous grope operas ever conceived to boggle previously thought as 'un-boggle-able' B-Movie minds!

Taking a deliciously degenerated, John Waters approach to sweaty-palmed, morally napalmed family values, Brasloff paints a fascinatingly lurid, stink-fingered portrait of the sin suppurating, salaciously-skewed Godard family. We savour the flavoursome interlude of lusciously ripe young, Jamie Godard (Marcia Forbes) squirming avidly upon the bed suggestively appropriating her childhood plush toy for intimate tasks, perhaps, entirely extra to its original design! Hamming it up with scummy aplomb, the majestically malevolent matriarch Godard (Fran Warren) strides into the bedroom incensed by the sight of daughter, Jamie's breathy exhortations over her absentee father!

This heady 'opening' sordidly telegraphs the transgressive, manifestly strange milieu of gamine, infantile Jamie's troubled, rigorously unconsummated marriage to peachy-keen, handsomely lean Toy Shop co-worker, Charlie (Harlan Cary Poe), and Jamie's singularly misguided quest to locate her long absconded, highly suspect, serially abusive father. Our ingenuous heroine having to endure the profoundly unpleasant, morally repugnant undertakings of her truly venal pimp, Eddie (Luis Arroyo), and suffering additional ignominy at the insensitive hands of her dysfunctional mother/guardian/abuser, Pearl (Evelyn Kingsley).

The technical aspects of Brasloff's twisted drama are quite exemplary, being of a much higher standard than the outre subject matter might suggest. Especially notable is the refined quality of acting, which gives this exquisitely dark and fetishistic tale of starkly forbidden familial love some remarkably heartfelt pathos, demonstratively absent from similarly illicit 42nd Street fare of the period. Fondly recalled, and deservedly so, the evocative opening theme 'Lonely Am I' is an ear-wormingly diggable ditty that belies the film's queasy examination of child abuse and its deleterious effects upon the wholly corrupted lives of all those involved. 'This bracingly adult film is certainly NOT for childish minds!'

Jamie is a mentally stunted adult obsessed with the father whom her mom kicked out when she was a young girl. This movie is insane. it did keep my interest throughout. Those who go into this film, thinking it'll be another 70's-era skin flick are in for a surprise. Nudity is kept to a minimum. This is more of a psychological mind&*%$ If you stick with it, it's a pretty good, creepy b-movie. This movie is coupled with "The Toy Box" on the Something Weird DVD.

My Grade:B

DVD Extras: Art Gallery;2 short subjects ( the Toy Telephone Truck, & the Christmas Eves); Trailers for Toys are not for Children, the Toybox, The Exquisite Cadaver, Tales of the Bizarre, The Single Girls, Ann and Eve, The Depraved, Sextet, The Naked Countess, and Labyrinth of Sex