To say professor Percy Corly (Robert Wood, She-Devils on Wheels) knows nothing about women is an understatement: “Could it be,” he asks himself, “that girls are better than textbooks?”
Eff yes they are. Well, the sexy ones, at least.
In the harmless How to Make a Doll, one of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ more obscure pictures, the 32-year-old Corly lives with his henpecking mother (Elizabeth Davis, The Gruesome Twosome) who looks not unlike Cruella De Vil and pesters her son about the opposite sex to the point where he snaps, “I’m not queer, y’know!”
There’s hope for Corly’s virginity yet, when colleague Dr. West (Jim Vance, Scream Baby Scream) shows him his latest invention: a supercomputer that sometimes makes fart noises and speaks with a stereotypical Asian accent. Oh, but it also spits out hot-to-trot honeys in swimwear. For Corly, it’s a blonde in an orange bikini complete with camel toe; for West, a brunette made of “acres of warm, bouncing flesh.”
Much making out ensues, but Doll proceeds no further than first base. Perhaps that’s because Lewis’ precursor to John Hughes’ Weird Science suggests that such a machine would not be all it’s cracked up to be. That’s bullshit, Herschell — I still want one. —Rod Lott