Thursday, November 11, 2021

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #12: DOLLMAN VS. THE DEMONIC TOYS (1993) **


(Streamed via Dark Matter TV)

Before we got Freddy vs. Jason, there was… uh… Dollman vs. the Demonic Toys!  

The Demonic Toys are resurrected by the blood of a bum and it’s up to detective Judith Gray (Tracy Scoggins) to stop them.  Meanwhile, the pint-sized cop Brick Bardo AKA:  Dollman (Tim Thomerson) is busy romancing Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), a woman who was shrunk down to his size by aliens (as previously seen in Bad Channels).  After some initial grumbling, Judith finally convinces Dollman to help her bust the demonic toys once and for all and send them back to Hell.

As with the original Dollman, Thomerson’s gruff performance is the best thing about the movie.  He gets some good hardboiled narration, and his world-weariness is amusing, even if it doesn’t translate into actual laughs.  Scoggins is good too as the sexy cop who speaks with a sultry, raspy voice.  Full Moon staple Phil Fondacaro is also around as a security guard who is forced to do the Toys’ bidding.

While the Dollman stuff is mostly adequate, the scenes that revolve around the Demonic Toys are downright painful at times.  It doesn’t help that the foulmouthed “Baby Oopsie-Daisy” (voiced by Frank Welker, Fred from Scooby-Doo) is annoying as Hell and the prolonged sequence where he tries to rape Ginger is unpleasant.

Written by former Tarantino associate Craig Hamman (who would later go on to make Boogie Boy), Dollman vs. the Demonic Toys isn’t good, exactly, but it’s only an hour long, so at least it’s short.  Thank God for small miracles.  (No pun intended.)  Heck, it’s even shorter if you don’t count the long opening title sequence and all the flashbacks to Demonic Toys, Dollman, and Bad Channels.  In fact, there’s only a half-hour or so of new footage altogether.  Although it’s cheap and crass, I can at least say this for director Charles Band:  He was doing multi-franchise crossovers long before Marvel made it popular.  

AKA:  Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.

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