Toys Are Not For Children (1972)

"Sleazy But Serious Psychodrama"

There's some awful wallpaper, horrific fashions, and lashings of Brylcreem in TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN, an off-kilter mixture of serious drama and whacked-out exploitation that's being released in a new 2K restoration by Arrow Films.

Horrible wallpaper!

Twenty year old Jamie (Marcia Forbes) is obsessed by the toys her long-absent father keeps sending her for her birthday, all of which have led to an obsession with the missing man himself. So caught up in this perverse fantasy world is she that she's unable to consummate her marriage to strapping work colleague Charlie (Harlan Cary Poe). 

More horrible wallpaper!

Instead, Jamie is only able to find sexual gratification by becoming a prostitute and indulging in her Daddy fixation with older customers who can get their 'Daughter' fix. Eventually everything leads to a grim climax where the only escape is into extreme psychotic catatonia. 

Brylcreem!

A very odd film indeed, and one of only two made by director Stanley H Brasloff, TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN came out at a time when exploitation movies were becoming packed with softcore nudity and hardcore violence. This film contains very little of either, preferring instead to concentrate on Jamie's problem and how it affects her and those around her. Consequently, anyone hoping for a sleazetastic blood-splattered version of Elia Kazan's 1956 BABY DOLL is going to find TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN all rather plodding. It's aspirations are higher than either its budget or expertise, with a couple of the performances an inch away from Andy Milligan or John Waters-style hysteria, so much so that I found myself wishing this film had been a little crazier. 

Toys plus bedspread!

Arrow's package offers some excellent extras. It's always a delight to have Stephen Thrower enlighten us about some of cinema's more dark and obscure corners and here he spends 25 minutes talking about director Stanley H Bresloff's career. 'Dirty Dolls: Femininity, Perversion & Play' is a very good 23 minute video essay from Alexandra Heller-Nichols that, amongst other things, draws interesting comparisons between TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN and Todd Haynes' 2015 movie CAROL. It also introduced me to the jaw-dropping phenomenon of the 'Baby Burlesque' cinema of the early 1930s which I think I can safely give a wide berth to. Add in a commentary track from Kat Ellinger and Heather Drain, a trailer and the original 45 rpm vinyl of the film's theme song transferred here as an especially bizarre extra, and you've got the ultimate package for a very obscure and peculiar film indeed. 

Stanley H Brasloff's TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN is out from Arrow Films on Blu-ray on Monday 7th October 2019