Monsters - Holly's House

 

Marilyn Jones was in a previous episode of "Tales from the Darkside", so she had a connection to a Richard Rubinstein executively-produced show. In this episode of "Molly's House", Jones portrays a robotic engineer, inventor, and remote control / voice artist on a kid's show called Holly's House. She is in a romantic relationship with "Mike the Mailman", Lenny (Perry Lang; also a "Tales from the Darkside" alum), who endures cake to the face when the Cabbage Patch Kid Robot, Holly, doesn't like him. Yep, Holly, the robot, "comes to life", perhaps AI run amok. Jones' Kathy is trying to figure out why Holly is "misbehaving", often shown tinkering away off-camera on the robot, hoping to fix the "glitch". Meanwhile, Kathy tells Lenny she's pregnant, and he proposes marriage. Lenny's agent seems to think he's got a soap commercial coming, and he's happy when Kathy tells him she plans to quit the show to have the child with him. Holly isn't happy with that AT ALL. Eventually, Holly gets Lenny on the set in the dark, with a pair of scissors and some Valentine's mail, stabbing the poor guy multiple times. Prior to this, during a taped show, Holly acted out like a diva having a tantrum, letting the director (Neil Smith) have it regarding "the bird" (Pamela Dean Kelly) and mailman stealing "her" spotlight. They think Kathy is the one acting out since her arm controls had been responsible for Holly's movement.

Theodore Gurshuny (the director of "Silent Night, Bloody Night" and formerly married to Mary Woronov) was behind both the story and direction of the episode and Michael J Anderson (of Twin Peaks fame) is inside the Holly costume. The giant Holly Doll Robot, I think, will creep some folks right the fuck out. In the dark when she stabs Lenny with the scissors, I think that was effective and eerie, but I'm not one of those who gets the chills from dolls. Still that was a big costume, so I'm sure some might find Holly scary. Her tantrum amused me, but the budget of this show really shows. We do actually get one scene outside, and it looks like the set was located in downtown LA. But, just like "Tales from the Darkside", the episode was shot pretty much in one location...on the stage of Holly's House, in a dressing room, or in rooms off-stage. The prison at the end with Kathy holding her baby just didn't work for me, personally. Seeing Kathy unleash on the doll's head with a hammer, smashing her to bits, was quite a response to losing Kenny. 2/5