by ·Comments Off on Curse of Chucky (2013, Don Mancini)

A respectable and effective back-to-basics story, cutting itself free from the previous sequels by simply setting a new Chucky loose in a house full of new victims, then belatedly explaining how the various movies tie together.

Delivery of a mysterious doll, screaming ensues, and gramma is dead and the doll forgotten. Wheelchair single mom Mika (Fiona “daughter of Brad” Dourif) is joined by her horrible sister (“Mother Mortis” of the Insidious series) and her husband (a Hallmark Christmas movie actor) and the local priest (Adolfo Martinez of sci-fi rip-off The Terminators) so we’ll have more people to kill off. The priest suffers a car-accident decapitation, the babysitter is electrocuted via laptop and horrible sister is stabbed in the face. Husband thinks Mika did all this, until Chucky smashes his face with an axe. Mike decapitates the doll but that’s ineffective, and he wheelchairs her through the second-floor railing. While she’s bleeding out he explains that he was close with her late mom, and she’s the one who called the cops leading to the toy store chase at the beginning of part one. Now that we’ve established continuity we can have late-movie cameos by Jenny Tilly and the original Andy, all still alive at the end as Mika is shipped to the hospital for the criminally insane.

by ·Comments Off on Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993, Charles Band)

“Full Moon Entertainment Presents”

1993 was the year of Puppet Master 4, Remote (IMDB: “my best advice is to skip it”), Mandroid (from the writer of Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain), Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight (sequel to Mandroid), Arcade (with Seth Green, “a virtual reality game begins taking over the minds of teenagers”), dinosaur flick Prehysteria, Robot Wars (Robot Jox sequel starring Barbara Crampton) and Subspecies 2.

Dollman and the nurse… can you tell how tiny they are?

Another guy is breaking into the toy warehouse from Demonic Toys? New security guard (Phil Fondacaro, the troll in Troll) doesn’t notice this guy just wandering in and dying on the floor, then the toys are back in town – plus an army guy and minus the teddy bear I think, taking the Puppet Master approach of adding and removing evil toys on a whim.

I like the new PTSD-GI-Joe doll:

Weirdly power-hungry dwarf security guard:

Elsewhere, tiny Dollman finds a hot tiny girl who “got shrunk by aliens” – I don’t remember this happening. Turns out this is a crossover between Dollman, Demonic Toys, and something called Bad Channels (“in space, no one is safe from rock ‘n’ roll”). How do I know? Because Dollman vs. Demonic Toys – only a one-hour movie – spends as much time as possible running flashbacks from its three predecessors.

Can Dollman, shrunken Nurse Jude and Demonic Toys survivor Tracy Scoggins keep the Toys from taking over? Yes, easily. Dollman shoots them with his little gun and they explode. Sorry for the total lack of suspense. Before that, the Toys are warping prostitutes into another dimension in order to summon their master (the Puppet Master?), and the final showdown involves the Baby toy trying to rape the shrunken nurse. Directed by madman Charles Band himself and written by Tarantino friend Craig Hamann, both of whom should stay away from children.

by ·Comments Off on Demonic Toys (1992, Peter Manoogian)

“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

FM made this between Puppet Masters 3 and 4, and the year after Dollman, now fully invested in Puppets, Dolls and Toys, dreaming of franchise crossovers to come.

“Screenplay by David S. Goyer”

Goyer later wrote The Puppet Masters (no relation!), the Blade movies (arguably his peak) and the latest Batman movies.

“Directed by Peter Manoogian”

Manoogian isn’t a made-up alias for Charles Band, but a guy who worked on The Howling, Trancers and Ghoulies.

Opens with POV shot of a demonic-toy and grandfather-clock-filled dream sequence, and I’m afraid the budget might be spent already. Then undercover cop Jude (Tracy Scoggins of Toy Soldiers, no relation to demonic toys, and Watchers II, which was a remake, not a sequel to Watchers) is explaining her dreams to scruffy boyfriend/partner Matt (Jeff Celentano of American Ninja 2: The Confrontation), and enter the Goyer trademark dialogue: “You got your piece? Then let’s dance.” While Matt is clumsily arresting arms dealers, he’s killed and an enraged Jude (I keep typing “Dude” by mistake) follows them into – where else? – a conveniently unlocked warehouse. As an injured criminal stumbles into a toy company, I’m checking to see how long ago Child’s Play came out, oh, was it four years before this?

Chicken Boy:

Hold up, movie is getting too action-packed this early on, so suddenly we’re asked to care about a rebel chicken delivery guy named Mark, played by Bentley “grandson of Robert” Mitchum, who also starred in hits like Nice Guys Finish Dead and Real Men Don’t Eat Gummi Bears. He is friends with the gross security guard (Pete Schrum, Santa Claus in Trancers) at the conveniently unlocked toy warehouse. After long periods of time without any toys, demonic or otherwise, finally the injured baddie (possibly Barry Lynch of The Call of Cthulhu) is killed, followed soon enough by the security guard, and we’re off. If the guard worked here for years, how come tonight the demonic toys kill him? It’s something to do with Jude the cop, her pregnancy and/or dreams. An actual kid with glowing eyes (Daniel Cerny, who’d go on to star in Children of the Corn 3 before getting involved with a movie called Bitch Slap) explains all this but I was barely listening, just caught the line “we feed off your fear” and reminisced about Ghostbusters 2.

Trick-or-treating flashback:

Intense surviving baddie (longtime stuntman Michael Russo of The Toxic Avenger and Death Wish 4) and Jude have their “you killed my partner/boyfriend” standoff extended, the chicken delivery guy helps out, and in a moment of Cube-like genius, a dirty-haired girl drops in from the air ducts. More top-notch dialogue: “I played the old houdini act on your lady friend back there, chicken boy.” Flashback to 1925 in which some lady gives a stillborn demon baby to trick or treaters. Homeless girl dies, as does the demonic jester toy, but the talking baby gets away. Did I dream it or was there some decent stop-motion for a second?

Isn’t that Bob Stoeckle of Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh?

What of the toys? Baby Oopsydaisy speaks, which was a bad move. The jester, with its long coiled tail with a rattle at the end that I only now realized was supposed to resemble a rattlesnake, and the sharp-toothed teddy bear aren’t bad, and there’s a robot tank that you don’t see too often. As opposed to most Puppet Master murders, demonic toys are slow, painful, and take teamwork. A single Puppet is a killing machine. I think it’s clear who’s going to win when these groups face off.

Jester, jack-in-the-box, whatever:

The movie is foul and stupid, and I hated watching it, and afterwards vowed to not watch any more bad movies on purpose, but writing it up days later is kinda fun, so maybe I’ll just limit to one shitty Full Moon direct-to-video possessed-toy flick per Shocktober.