Cuddly Toys operates somewhere between fiction, documentary and exploitation cinema, deliberately blurring the boundaries between staged reality and something that feels much less controlled. For writer-director Kansas Bowling, that uncertainty is rooted in the history of mondo filmmaking—a genre built around presenting sensational material under the guise of observation and education.
Four Time Film School Dropout spoke with Bowling about constructing the film’s hybrid form, the influence of mondo and exploitation cinema, her love of filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, and why she ultimately wants audiences to form their own interpretations of the film.
Four Time Film School Dropout: When you were first crafting the idea for the film, did you already know it was going to take this hybrid form, or did that structure emerge as you were making the film?
Kansas Bowling: That was kind of the intention. I wrote, like, a 60-page script, and the movie is an hour and 42 minutes long. So I knew that there would be documentary and improvised stuff thrown in the middle.
I left myself a lot of room for that. I didn’t know exactly what it would be, but I knew that was the intention going in.
Four Time Film School Dropout: How important was it for you to create that uncertainty where audiences are never completely certain where the line between documentary, fiction and staged reality exists?
Kansas Bowling: Well, that’s the nature of the genre. It is that forgotten kind of mondo genre, and that’s the kind of movie I wanted to make.
I wanted to be as true to the genre as I could be.
Four Time Film School Dropout: What were some of the influences behind creating Professor Kansas and the world surrounding her?
Kansas Bowling: It’s really influenced by the mondo genre and the white-coater films.
Those are already kind of parodies, but this was a parody of that genre because they were all posturing as educational movies as a way to sneak in exploitative elements and present them in an educational fashion.
So it’s a trope of a trope.
Four Time Film School Dropout: Are there any particular films from the mondo or white-coater genres that you’re especially fond of?
Kansas Bowling: I love—I mean, I even love the bad ones because they’re just so funny. I love them all just as historical artifacts.
The best is Faces of Death, though, even though it’s much later, after the peak of the mondo hype. But yeah, they’re beautiful movies. I love them.
Four Time Film School Dropout: Are there particular exploitation or B-movie filmmakers whose work you especially admire?
Kansas Bowling: Oh yeah, a ton.
I grew up really obsessed with the Italian horror filmmakers—Argento and Fulci and Sergio Martino and all those people.
My favorite horror movie is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I love Tobe Hooper.
It’s such a broad question because there are so many filmmakers and artists whose work I really love across all genres.
I also grew up going to the New Beverly Cinema. I’d go ask Jack Hill for his autograph when he came to town and things like that.
Four Time Film School Dropout: The film presents these testimony-style moments alongside much more heightened, stylistic sequences. How did you approach preserving the emotional weight of those moments?
Kansas Bowling: That’s not always on me. I mean, it is in the edit.
You just have to be a very careful editor. Editing is very important.
Four Time Film School Dropout: How did you approach making the film’s social commentary clear without allowing it to become too didactic or overshadow the genre filmmaking and its characters?
Kansas Bowling: I don’t really think the social commentary is clear in it.
Four Time Film School Dropout: What do you ultimately want audiences to take away from the film?
Kansas Bowling: I just hope people are entertained.
If they have any kind of thoughts beyond that, then that’s also cool. I like how people take different things from it and have their own interpretations of the movie.
That’s what’s exciting to me.