Rod Blackhurst makes his feature directorial debut with a film that hearkens back to the pulpy horror movies from 1970s which found new life on video store shelves in the 1980s. “Dolly” transports us back to the grindhouse with its noticeably low budget, gritty aesthetic, and unflinching graphic violence. At the same time we see flashes of the same artistic merit that made Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” stand out from its contemporaries.

Now I don’t want to get too carried away. “Dolly” isn’t up there with Hooper’s seminal horror classic and I don’t think it’s trying to be. Instead Blackhurst (who also co-wrote the script with Brandon Weavil) embraces his clear inspiration and deep affection for genre films by both paying homage and adding his own deranged flavor. The result is an effectively chilling and delightfully twisted horror throwback that has just the kind of kick genre fans will relish.

Blackhurst and Weavil break their story into seven or so chapters with such titles as Mother, Daughter, Home, Reunion, etc. While it’s hardly significant or even necessary, the chapter structure strangely fits well and adds to the story’s macabre tone. As for the small cast of characters, we meet Macy (Fabianne Therese) and her boyfriend Chase (Seann William Scott) as they’re dropping off his daughter before heading out for a hike in the mountains. But it’s no normal couple’s getaway. Chase plans to ask Macy to marry him. Little does he know, Macy isn’t sure she’s ready to be a wife or a step-mother.

After taking a nature trail through the forest, Chase and Macy arrive at his favorite overlook. But before he can pop the question, Chase breaks his own rule and leaves the trail to investigate the eerie sound of music from a toy radio. When Chase doesn’t return, Macy goes looking for him. But instead she encounters a hulking non-verbal mother figure named Dolly (played by American pro wrestler Max the Impaler) who knocks Macy unconscious and carries her to an old house deep in the woods.

Macy eventually wakes up to find herself in a disturbing situation. She’s in an upstairs nursery, wearing baby girl clothes and awkwardly lying in an oversized bassinet. Just as Macy comes to her senses and begins looking for a way out, Dolly bursts in. She’s an imposing figure, wearing a tattered dress and a crude Porcelain doll head, who wants to raise Macy as her child. It’s a twisted scenario made even more unsettling with the revelation that Macy is the latest of many who have brutally suffered and died by the bloodstained hands of this unhinged ‘mother’.

Much like Hooper’s classic, things only get more depraved and bizarre the longer we stay in the house. Dolly’s delusion starts with pacifiers and baby bottles before devolving into something dramatically more shocking. And her warped motherly instincts are routinely interrupted by unstable fits of self-loathing rage. It makes the unstable Dolly even more terrifying. Meanwhile Therese, channeling her very best Marilyn Burns, shows Macy’s indomitable will to live which fuels her fight for survival, setting up several killer throwdowns with her captor.

“Dolly” was filmed over the course of 19 days on location in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lovingly shot on Super 16mm, the lo-fi visual style alone has a transportive effect. It shrewdly calls back to the many similar films that paved its way. But it also plays a big part in capturing and sustaining the mood and atmosphere Blackhurst is going for. Equally essential is the assortment of crafty camera techniques he and DP Justin Derry employ including tilt shots, tracking shots, high angles, wide angles, intense close-ups, even a classic iris shot.

“Dolly” flaunts a premise that is as outrageous as it is creepy. It’s not for the squeamish, especially as the horror progressively turns more grisly. Yet there is a darkly comical undercurrent that Blackhurst knowingly embraces. Even with the hints of pitch-black humor, it’s easy to be unnerved by Dolly’s merciless psychosis, her grimy blood-splattered home, and some gnarly practical effects that have no shortage of blood and gore. These things alone meld into something wildly satisfying. But it’s the distinct throwback style that makes this catnip for genre junkies like me.

VERDICT – 4 STARS