Pin (1988)

Dir: Sandor Stern

Perhaps not strictly a horror film but certainly marketed as one ("Designed to disturb! A bone chiller!" screams the video box!), "Pin" is weird and unsettling enough for me to believe it warrants inclusion here. It's a low-key Canadian movie about a boy, his sister and his, uh, anatomically correct dummy. The dummy (whose name is Pin) is initially used as a ventriloquist act by the children's doctor father to teach them about the facts of life at an early age. However, when both parents die in a car accident, the boy finds himself forming an unhealthy attachment to the dummy that leads inevitably to murder and madness! "Pin", in spite of its subtlety, is a unsettling experience that resonates long after the final, devastating frames. It deals in uncomfortable subject matter with a straight face and a sympathetic, clever screenplay. In an era of horror where screaming topless girls and wisecracking rubber-faced demons were almost mandatory, a film as genuinely disturbing and eerie as "Pin" was quite a rare find. Sadly, it still is, but if you can rescue a copy from a VHS bargain bin somewhere, I'd certainly recommend the purchase. ***