Sex Dolls of Horror

Watching Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo the other week left me pondering the extent to which sex dolls have featured in horror films.  Look, don't judge me - it's been a long lockdown and the mind constantly seeks new avenues of enquiry.  Anyway, in the aforementioned Spasmo they feature quite prominently, with various abused sex dolls (hanged from trees, tied to tress and stabbed etc) turning up throughout the film.  (Although, it turns out that they aren't central to the main plot, acting more as a red herring).  Then, of course, there's the fat guy in his underpants being stalked around his house as he carries a deflated sex doll over his arm in Strip Nude For Your Killer.  But are there any instances in exploitation films of possessed and murderous sex dolls?  I mean, it would seem an obvious sort of suspense sequence to have a guy start 'getting to work' on one when it suddenly comes to life and suffocates him mid vinegar stroke.  Ever since I first saw an advert for the things in an illicit porn magazine my friends and I were looking at in our early teens, I've thought them to be bloody creepy looking, particularly their faces with those mouths in a constant expression of surprise.  Actually, to be absolutely honest, the very first time I encountered an ad for sex dolls, there was no photograph accompanying it, just a line drawing giving the impression that what you were getting was a life sized anatomically correct and realistic woman.  Which, to a kid in his early teens attending a single sex school, seemed like a brilliant idea - why go through all the awkwardness and complications of meeting a real girl who might, or more probably might not, have sex with you, when you could simply buy a realistic substitute?

Later in the magazine, of course, there were photographic ads for other sex dolls, which left me greatly disappointed - the idea of shagging a vaguely woman-shaped beach inflatable held little allure.  But, to get back to the point - have they featured as monsters in any exploitation flicks?  After all, they are inherently creepy looking and could provide the basis for some decent shock sequences.  You could have them floating silently through windows to surprise victims, for instance, or slowly looming up from behind sofas as they inflate.  I know that the argument against them would be that they are too easily despatched - one small prick, so to speak, or a lit cigarette and they're gone.  But Hell, if they were  supernaturally possessed, then would that be a problem?  Perhaps a science fiction approach might be better.  I always thought that they missed a trick in Dr Who when the Autons, basically any plastic product acting as a vessel for the alien Nestene Intelligence, didn't manifest themselves as sex dolls - or even other sex toys.  One of my scariest TV experiences as a child was those shop dummies coming to life, crashing through a shop window and killing all those people in a bus queue.  (In Salisbury, there were a row of busy bus stops on Blue Boar Row, directly in front of the plate glass windows of Style and Gerrish, later Debenhams - for months after that Dr Who story I wouldn't turn my back on the dummies in that window display when I was waiting for the 57 bus there with my mother).  That and the plastic daffodil that tried to suffocate Katy Manning.  Imagine if those had been sex dolls or an alien possessed dildo trying to choke someone?  OK, maybe that's a scenario for the more adult-orientated Dr Who spin-off Torchwood, but my point stands: possessed sex toys and especially blow up sex dolls, represent an untouched potential goldmine for horror films.