From 'Annabelle' to Ram Gopal Varma’s 'Phoonk 2': Brief history of scary dolls in movies!

Last week, Annabelle: Creation that is the prequel to the 2014 movie, Annabelle released. It was the fourth movie in the Conjuring series. For the uninitiated, the Annabelle series centers around a creepy doll, which has an evil presence. Now, scary dolls are nothing new when it comes to Hollywood. They have made an entire franchise of a murderous doll in the Chucky series, starting off with the cult Child’s Play, that was released in 1988. It was the movie that made us look twice at any doll, worrying ifits eyes were following you, and the sequels made sure that you would really want to throw out all the dolls in your house and set them on fire!

But did you know there were scary dolls in Bollywood movies as well, the most famous one being Paapi Gudiya. The 1996 movie was a blatant ripoff of Child’s Play and starred Karisma Kapoor in the lead. In the movie, Shakti Kapoor played the spirit who possesses a not-so-creepy doll.

Another movie that comes to mind when it comes to evil dolls is Ram Gopal Varma’s Phoonk 2, when the ghost of Ashwini Kalsekar’s evil witch possesses a doll and begins haunting the family that killed her in the first movie.

But it’s the 1993 Marathi movie, starring the late Laxmikant Berde that was a big hit. It had comic overtones and was a fun watch. The doll, Tatya Vinchu, turned to be one of the most iconic characters in Marathi cinema, while the movie was later dubbed into Hindi as Khilona Bana Khalnayak.