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Demonic Toys
Manage episode 439519689 series 98583
If you’re looking for a late-night-cable-horror flick to goof on, Demonic Toys would fit the bill. Otherwise, there are probably better so-bad-they’re-good movies to spend your time with. Craig revisited some nostalgic one-liners from his childhood, while Todd just threw up his hands.
Demonic Toys (1992)
Episode 406, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. Well, today we are doing a movie that you suggested, Craig. I had suggested we do Ghoulies. Just kinda out of the blue, really. But you came back with, Oh man, I wanna do Demonic Toys. Because, uh, you wanted to do something quite silly.
I thought Ghoulies was gonna be silly enough. But, uh, apparently, The bar wasn’t, wasn’t low enough. Before we did
Craig: it, I kind of wanted to have a talk about Ghoulies, because I honestly don’t, I don’t remember Ghoulies that well. What I remember really liking is Ghoulies 2. The one where they’re in like a circus, and I never saw that one.
It’s got our favorite old guy in it. I don’t be able to think of his name. He was in The Blob and House 2. Oh, yes. Royal Dano? Yes, yes. He’s in it. So anyway, I just wanted, before we committed to Ghoulies, I wanted to kind of toss that around. Have a serious conversation. Okay, fair enough.
Todd: Well, we’ll save that for another day.
Now we’re gonna have a very serious conversation about demonic toys, aren’t we? Well, it
Craig: did, it brought that movie to mind. They’re not dissimilar, they’re both little creature movies. And, I didn’t remember much about this movie at all, except for the fact that fact that my sister and I used to watch it when we were kids.
Yeah. And I felt like I, I remembered either liking it or thinking it was funny or, or something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but I thought
Todd: it’d be fun to return to. You would have been in middle school when this was released. It’s a direct to video release. Yeah. And so do you think you rented it?
Maybe copied it or. Maybe you rented it. This feels like something that. It feels like late night. Yeah. I was just going to say like USA up all night. A hundred percent. I was getting Sorority Babes and the Slimeball Bola Rama vibes. Almost anything really by Charles Band around this time kind of has these same vibes.
It’s just, uh, you know, let’s face it, relatively cheap, straight to video schlock. But, you know, they have their charm points, and I certainly enjoyed watching those movies. When there was nothing else to watch late at night, mostly hoping to see some boobs and a little bit of gore too, and something silly.
And, and, this has all of that in it. A bunch of silly stuff, some gore, and a couple boobs, so, uh, I mean they were Not God given, but they were there. Big, yeah. As was the style at the time. Right. Nineties. Oh my God. I’m 100 percent certain I’d never seen this before, but I had heard of it. You know, I figured we were going to get to it eventually.
I am aware that this movie spawned some sequels. And, uh, some crossovers with Dollman. There’s like Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. There’s Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys or something like that. We did Puppet Master earlier and, of course, It’s kind of hard not to compare the two since they are both Charles Band productions.
Yeah, I’m just gonna come right out and say I think Puppet Master is a far better film than this one. They’re both similarly a little far fetched and corny. Similar production value. I don’t know. I think Puppet Master has a higher production value, but it came first. I think They were up to Puppet Master 2 or 3 by the time this movie came out.
Yeah. And those were at least released in the theater, I think, and this one never was,
Craig: so. The security guard in this movie is watching a Puppet Master movie on his TV. Yeah. Little in joke there, right. Yeah, I don’t know, I think Puppet Master probably had a little bit better production value. I know we’ve talked about it, but it’s been a long time, I don’t remember it all that well, but I kind of seem to remember it being at least a little bit scarier.
Yeah.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Then this movie,
Todd: this movie isn’t really scary. Unlike a lot of these, really, it doesn’t make any pretense toward any kind of suspense. I liken it to almost like just a supernatural slasher without the suspense. The characters are, almost all of them are just unlikable, or you just don’t care about them, or they’re just unbelievable because the acting is kind of terrible.
We’re going to talk about it because, you know, we’re nobody. Look, nobody is going to take this movie seriously. Nobody’s probably supposed to take this movie seriously. Now our job here on this podcast, we fairly review horror films where our job is to take this movie seriously somewhat. So we’re going to talk about the good and the bad from a critical perspective, from a movie that probably doesn’t never asked to be reviewed from a critical perspective.
Yeah,
Craig: I, but. That being said you’ve got to take it for what it is like, oh, yeah, that’s what I’m saying This movie doesn’t have aspirations to greatness in any way. Oh, no. No, I think it’s just it’s trying to be fun Yeah, it’s weird. The thing that I found the weirdest about this and we can talk about specific Moments moving forward, but I couldn’t tell if the movie was written for 13 year old boys or by a 13 year old boy, like
Todd: I agree with you all the only thing, if it had been written by 13 year old boys, there would have been more than two boobs in it.
So I would say probably probably for 13 year old boys.
Craig: Yeah, gosh, some of the dialogue, especially wow. Wow,
Todd: the writing, you know, there’s this, there’s this line, right? I mean, there’s movies like this and then there’s movies like, and I just want to keep coming back to it, Chopping Mall. Yeah, and you could almost say Chopping Mall is just as corny and silly, but Chopping Mall has a bit more tongue in cheek.
Not that this movie doesn’t. There’s something about Chopping Mall that is just laughing at itself so much that it’s charming and I didn’t find a lot of charm in this movie. I and I found it Entertaining if you have nothing else to watch, you know, there’s stuff going on. There’s stuff to see it’s not boring.
That’s well, it is a little boring in some parts, but it’s, you know, it’s not as charming as I thought it could have been and should have been. I remember the puppet masters movies being charming maybe because there was a degree of mystique and mystery and, and a bit of lore that was actually rooted in history that, I mean, even though it’s rather silly.
It wasn’t quite as silly and convoluted as the bizarre lore from this one. Oh god, right? I get what you’re saying. You know what I mean? You’re saying I’m having a hard time expressing how I feel about it
Craig: Yeah, I get really hard. It’s not good. Like like you got to go into it It’s a it’s bad. Like it’s a bad movie, but I think it just Manages to reach so bad.
It’s good. Like for sure There are parts of this movie that are really funny that that made me laugh out loud and it’s, it’s so silly and so ridiculous and like you talk about that The backstory of it. It’s so stupid, but
Todd: the backstory does feel like it was written by 13 year olds.
Craig: Oh my God. Well, and the whole thing, I mean, the whole story is so there’s so little to it.
Right. The, the main character is this woman cop. And in the beginning, she’s sitting out in front of this factory with her partner, who is also her romantic partner.
Clip: We were right to move in together. And, now that you mention it, maybe we should get married. Look, I got nothing against marriage. Just that, you know, we should get married when we’re ready to have kids, you know?
Do you want kids? I mean, cause we never really talked about it or anything.
Craig: Yeah,
Clip: sure, someday,
Craig: you know. And she confesses that she’s pregnant. Yay, they’re gonna have a baby, but they’re on a stakeout. And, as soon as
Todd: That was clever. They’re having this, almost like this romantic talk there. It’s funny too, the way it’s shot.
It’s shot over each other’s shoulder, but they’re each looking at the camera in close up when they’re talking to each other. I think Witchboard did this. I can’t remember which other movie we saw that, where I thought that was really But then, you know, they’re embracing, and it’s like, Oh, I’m pregnant, oh, I’m gonna be a father, And it’s like, you shouldn’t have come out here tonight.
And, you know, and she’s like, That’s okay, you got your piece? Yeah, I do too. Alright, let’s do this. That was funny. That was funny.
Craig: And well, and then this car comes racing around the corner and for a second, her partner guy, like pretends that they’re making a deal, like an arms deal or a drug deal. I don’t remember.
It doesn’t matter. But as soon as he says, yeah, now you’re busted. You’re under arrest. The bad guys pull out guns and start shooting and shoot him dead.
That was.
Todd: Yeah, dark and quick, and also the most inept cops you can possibly imagine. He pulls out his gun and says, freeze, while the criminals who are, I don’t know, 12 inches away from him are both holding guns. It’s pretty stupid.
Craig: They have a little shootout, and I, does she shoot one of them? I think she shoots one of them.
It’s such a little shootout.
Todd: She shoots one of them as he’s running away, and then proceeds to kneel down very dramatically over the body. Oh
Clip: my god, no! No!
Craig: But, but not call anybody. No! Cause that would, that would make far too much sense. So instead, she just left him. Yeah, she leaves him there on the ground in an alley.
For dead. And then chases this bad guy with a gun into an old toy factory. Where the rest of the movie takes place. Oh, maddeningly. Okay. And it’s just, like, stacks of boxes and, like, chain link fences. Like,
Todd: it’s cheap. It’s a cheap and boring location. Oh, my God. But this is very typical for these productions.
I mean, you find your one location or your three sets that you can use and just move the boxes around and make it look like a slightly different aisle or whatever, you know? Uh huh. It’s lit like a TV movie. Lots of blues, like, like blues and shadows
Craig: in hallways and stuff. It needs more shadow. It needs more grit.
That’s where I would say that, that, that is somewhat charming to me. These feel like those late night movies. They, like you said, they were, many of them were like this low budget, cheap sets. So I’m kind of getting into it at this point. I made a huge mistake of. Skipping the actual beginning, which is a dream sequence,
Todd: which is
Craig: weird.
Todd: Oh my God, this dream sequence. How convoluted is this movie? They’ve got what could be a dream sequence out of Nightmare on Elm Street visually, except the cheaper version. Cheap, yeah. Very cheap version. It looks like, again, like the high school put it together with their, with their theme. theater flats, but it’s the, the woman, uh, what was her name?
Judith. Sitting in a chair, two boys in front of her who were playing war with cards, you know, the, where you, where you’d flip over a card. The boys are facing each other and then surrounding them are clocks, like tall grandfather clocks, smaller clocks. There’s even a giant pendulum swinging behind her on the wall.
gossamer curtains. Oh god. Oh, they tried
Craig: well and the and like the camera is doing all these angles like it’s it’s not just shooting them straight on it’s like You know tilted 15 degrees or whatever Oh my god, it’s so silly and they’re just sitting and like the whole thing is one is blonde. They’re the same age.
They’re both, I would say, I don’t know, eight, nine, something like that. One is blonde and the other is brunette. And then I don’t remember if this is revealed here. We come back to the stream sequence a couple of times and it’s always the same. Um, but at some point you realize that the dark haired boy also has these, you know, Unnatural eyes like these green kind of demon eyes and he’s also got like claws instead of regular fingernails It’s super heavy handed and they’re playing war but they’re like drawing every time like yeah Or or one wins and then the other wins and then the other wins and then it’s it’s very Kind of even God, it’s like, what could it mean?
What could it be? Well, we’re just going to have to watch and find out. I suppose we’re just going to have to watch and find out now this is part. I’m not sure if I remember. Okay. So they go, there’s a guard in there and stuff. He’s like this fat, this fat guy. And he calls for chicken, which brings the chicken delivery boy eventually.
And that’s it.
Todd: That’s
Craig: everybody. That’s all our people.
Todd: Except for the demon, right? The chicken guy, who at first I thought must be his son or related to him. I guess he’s just a good friend. Cause he asked to get him on the phone. He just delivers chicken to him every night. That must be it. And there’s a bunch of dumb bi play with the boy.
Unrealistic dumb bi play with the chicken guy at the chicken shack.
Clip: Mr. Wayne. Mr. Wayne? You got a cigarette in your mouth?
Craig: No. It’s your dick. This is the, this is the writing. This
Todd: is what a 13 year old thinks he could just say to his manager and get away with. Those are the jokes, folks. They don’t get any better than that.
They get worse. It’s chunky chicken? Yeah. And he asks if he wants his chicken extra crispy or chunky and he’s like, You know. Chunky. What would that be? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. That sounds awful. I don’t want to know either. I was like, I was waiting to see it. I thought that was going to be a joke of some kind and I’m kind of glad it wasn’t because I wasn’t sure what that would be.
So you’re right. He drives up and he’s got a hatchback with a giant chicken on top. And that’s apparently what they tootle around town in. The Chicken Mobile. to deliver chicken to people. He pulls in, and you’re right. We’re inside the warehouse, and these are gonna be our people. And what happens is that the woman, in this very long, drawn out, god awful action sequences, is chasing after the bad guys.
And there’s the really, really mean guy. And I don’t remember what Oh, Lincoln.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: He’s the utterly crazy one. And then there’s the one that she’d actually shot, the blonde, the white haired guy. And he is crawling after Lincoln, and Lincoln’s like, Oh, fuck you, man. He kicks him down the stairs. Lincoln’s not having it.
So Lincoln runs upstairs, and this poor guy is just crawling across the floor. And then he bleeds. Yeah. On a glowing spot on the floor that is cut in what we later see is the shape of a pentacle? Star? It’s not even that, it’s just a star. I think it’s, I
Craig: think it’s a pentagram, but There’s no circle. Right, well, yeah, I think there is, cause Later there’s a circle.
Cause the baby draws it. Exactly, that’s what I was gonna say. Cause these bad toys come to life. Does the body, like, disappear? I don’t remember. His body? Yeah, I don’t remember. He bleeds into the floor and then these bad toys come alive. This is hilarious. This is what I love about this movie. These bad toys.
Now, it’s very much in the vein of like Puppet Master or any of, or Ghoulies or even Troll.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Right, right. But these, I love the design of them, but what’s hilarious to me is that they are very clearly just hand puppets. Or just toys that somebody is holding from behind and shaking. Yes.
Todd: Like,
Craig: at their worst.
They very, make minimal, minimal effort to make these things look at all real or alive. Like it’s just a puppet on somebody’s hand or somebody holding a doll around a corner and shaking it as it’s supposed to be talking. And I think it’s kind
Todd: of hilarious. It’s hilarious. And that’s, that’s the thing. Part of the charm of the movie, but except for Baby Oopsy.
Well, there are some, there,
Craig: there are some really tight close ups of like their faces and stuff. But anytime you see them in their entirety in the shot, it looks not great. There are some close ups, like the baby, the bear gets some scary close ups and stuff. Yeah, but what were you gonna say? Sorry to interrupt.
Todd: Well, I was gonna say I appreciated the effort given to Baby Oopsy. Baby Oopsy is a very rudimentary animatronic. It’s almost like a ventriloquist dummy with where just its jaw kind of comes down. But then you can tell there are like two wires somewhere in there that are only there to pull him up into an evil grin.
Which it does almost painstakingly at times. Ugh, and pull, and pull his um, his brow down into a, you know, an angry look. Baby Oopsy is kind of the Chucky wannabe of the group. This, that’s what makes this a little different from Puppet Master. Actually what I really liked and what I thought what kind of Upped Puppet Master’s game just a little bit is the fact that none of those dolls talked.
They were a little mysterious, right? They were all marionettes made out of wood and different things like that. Here, they growl, and they laugh, and they chuckle, and Baby Oopsie has a bunch of lame dialogue. And that Oh my god.
Craig: See, I think it, okay, in terms of actual quality and fear factor, yeah, it takes it way down.
That’s what I meant. In terms of camp and humor, I think it elevates it. Through the roof, yeah. I think that it’s, I, yeah, I think that, Baby Upsy’s the only one that talks. The others vocalize, but they don’t actually talk. But he’s like a wisecrackin foul mouthed baby. And this, aside from the fact that they’ve made its face look ugly, like, no kid would ever want to play with this doll, it really does look just like a generic baby doll.
And so for it to be so foul mouthed When the guard first sees him, the baby goes,
Clip: Hi, you fat fuck. I’m baby oopsie daisy. You lord ass. Will you be my special friend?
Craig: What the hell?
Clip: I can walk. I can talk. I can even shit my pants. Can you shit your pants?
Craig: And when I saw that, I remembered why my sister and I liked it. We thought. That was hilarious. When you were 13. I could walk, I could talk, I could even shit in my pants! Oh my god. I know! It was so funny. And not even the lines are that funny, but just the delivery. The voice coming from this little baby doll.
I still, I laughed out loud when I heard it again. I completely forgot about it.
Todd: Glad that was able to rekindle some childhood memories for you guys. Yeah, well they killed, they killed Jesse and, and that’s pretty gross. I mean, you know, one of them is, uh, Wait, who’s Jesse? Which one’s Jesse? The guy, the, the, with the white hair.
Yeah, Lincoln, Lincoln and Jesse were the, the two people. And Jesse’s the one who falls down, the blood, the toys come to life, and then they kill him. There’s, one of them is, uh, is, um, a jack in the box. I liked this one. Did you? I
Craig: don’t know if I don’t know if this is a hot take. I certainly didn’t read it anywhere else, but I didn’t do a lot of research either.
I was watching this thinking, I wonder if the designers on Krampus were inspired by this movie. Oh, you could hardly not be. Pretty similar. They are. The, uh, the jack o lantern that’s evil. I mean, they even kind of look alike. Yeah, you’re right. The bear, even the baby doll, that angel’s kind of like a baby doll with wings.
True. I mean, all of these things are. Very common childhood, generic childhood toys, too, so
Todd: Yeah, there’s only certain ways you can take it, but
Craig: It could be a coincidence, but I would be a little bit surprised if it wasn’t a complete
Todd: coincidence. Well, what I liked was that the Jack in the Box He would pop out, and he was a, he was a, you know, a nasty looking clown with very sharp fangs and a huge head.
But then, he had a tail to him. He was almost like one end of a snake. And he had a tail to him that was holding a rattle. A literal rattle, like a baby rattle. Eventually, that gets severed. And so we, I mean, you know, the fact that it’s not just confined to this box was kind of cute, actually. I, you know, you expect this thing to be bouncing around inside of a box, but it, it wasn’t, it was like a creature inside the box and, and it’s got big sharp teeth.
And it, it, it, Leaps on this guy and just takes a huge chunks out of his cheek and the bear leaps on this guy And you know actually for a low budget movie. This wasn’t half bad. No, it’s pretty good. The bear like bites his fingers off, right? Yeah, it was I mean look we’re still heads and shoulders above the uninvited With the demon cat.
Remember the demon cat on the boat? That one where this movie wasn’t even trying to be good like that movie was. So uh,
Craig: The blood. Oh. And, and the baby draws the pentagram around that spot in the floor. And then the blood from this dead guy. brings this kid. Now it’s the dark haired kid from the lady’s dream.
But now he talks and he talks in this weird man voice, like this weird, I can’t describe it. It’s it’s like they put it through some kind of, they put it through some kind of filter or something. It’s, It’s odd. It’s, it’s not natural sounding. Thanks
Clip: for
Craig: coming.
Clip: I’ve been sleeping for a long time, waiting for someone just like you to wake me.
We’re going to have a lot of fun here tonight, friend. We’re going to raise hell.
Craig: And then a lot goes on. I don’t even, you know, it’s so ridiculous. The other people, okay, so like, Mark the chicken guy and the guard are in one room, and then Judith and Lincoln, they’ve had a fight and she’s got him handcuffed, but they’re like locked in a storage room or something.
For reasons I
Todd: don’t understand, she decided that once she cornered him in that room, that she was gonna put the cuffs on him and just sit there for a while.
Craig: I think they’re locked in, but I don’t know why, like, I don’t know if the door just closed behind them or what, but they can’t get out, but they make a bunch of noise, And, and then the guard and the other guy come looking for her.
And this is all just the toys, you know, menacing and
Todd: attacking. And at one point after they’ve been menaced by the toys a bit, I think they all kind of end up back in that room. And I guess they’re locked in again because they can’t get out or they don’t think they can get out because of the. The toys out there, and then Lincoln gets that animated 80s electricity all over him and transforms into that boy, Demon, which says some cryptic things to Judith, taunts them some more, and then turns back into Lincoln.
Craig: Yeah, that’s right, Lincoln is possessed, and he says I need your bodies, I need flesh and blood. I don’t remember when it comes, like, I, I know that, you know, the, uh, they kill the guard, the baby kills the guard, and they, like, drag it away, because they have to, it’s very Hellraiser, they have to, like, bleed people on this.
So that the demon can come back fully before he goes into her baby. I don’t know. And, and like the baby is dragging the guards. Like you’re heavy. You Moby dick. The baby’s lines cracked
Todd: me. Yeah. Suddenly it’s like people under the stairs, the vent opens up and this. Kind of disheveled dirty girl comes sliding out of it.
I was watching you. I What’s happening? Well, I’ve been here for a couple days. Oh, you’re a runaway, huh? You could say that All right So now at least we have one more person because there wouldn’t be a high enough. It doesn’t even make sense No, I didn’t even think about it. She’s like, I’ve been
Craig: here a couple days.
The toys are evil bitch. They just woke up They just woke up Yeah I don’t know what
Todd: you’ve been seeing up to this point, but nothing cuz it just
Craig: happened.
Todd: I didn’t understand that either because later In a complete almost non sequitur. There are these three girls Spirits who are riding tricycles with, and they’re wearing old style gas masks on their faces?
But they’re not real, because they disappear. But they’re still scared of them. And the girl sees them and is like, Oh yeah, no, don’t worry, I know they’re not real, I’ve seen them before. So, is this place, when it’s not full on, you know, toys coming to life, is it still just vaguely haunted? Maybe? Ah. We’re not really meant to pick this apart.
Well,
Craig: we get the backstory, but I, I felt like the backstory I don’t remember when we’d get it. Maybe it’s near the very end.
Todd: No, what happens is, somehow Judith gets knocked out. So they’re in a toy factory, or a toy warehouse, or something. While Anne and Mark are crawling around in the vents trying to find their way to the security room, Anne is back there with Lincoln, and Anne sees a dollhouse, and starts staring in the window, and pretty soon she finds herself inside the dollhouse.
And that is when we get the long ass convoluted backstory. And oh boy is it a joy. It’s long! It’s like, it’s like a quarter of the movie length, this backstory. And it needs to be, because it doesn’t make any sense. And he talks so much. This, when he appears, at this point, is he still just appearing to her as the boy?
Yeah, he says. I can appear in any way I want. And then changes into a demon and then changes into something else. And then finally down to, Oh, like, yeah. The, uh, her husband’s like dead gross body. Yeah. And then back to the boy. But this is the form I like the best.
Craig: Right. He, uh, yeah. He says he needs a body.
He says that animating, okay, so God. I guess it just so happens that today was the day that it’s been 66 years and he was finally had enough energy to animate the toys. And then he tells the back story, which is a whole flashback and is pretty interesting. Awesome. I’m not gonna lie. It shows that it’s like Halloween 1925 and this woman in this dark room is in labor and there’s a bit like a dreamcatcher pentagram hanging behind her.
And that’s how we know it’s evil, by the way. This old woman delivers a demon baby, and it’s like this big
Todd: demon. It looks like a little demon. I loved it. But a slimy demon, like you know, it gave birth, it came out of the birth canal. It’s a little wet, it’s a little slimy. You recognize the woman, right? I wasn’t paying that close attention.
Oh, God. Pat Crawford Brown. Probably, she’s been in a million things. But, I especially remember her as the old stuck up lady in Elvira. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Craig: Oh, yes, yes. I did
Todd: recognize her. You know,
Craig: I don’t
Todd: know if we said this when we were watching that movie. And I don’t know if I knew this when we did that episode.
She started her acting career at 60. I think I knew that. She retired from teaching English and started her acting career and then was in like 200 things before she died. All over television and movies and things like you saw her everywhere. This was actually one of her very first movie roles. Right after Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
She was in a lot of TV.
Craig: I did. I did recognize her. She’s, she’s very familiar. Yeah. Any horror fans, if you saw her, you would recognize her. Yeah, for sure. Though she didn’t just do horror, she did lots of stuff. She did comedy and stuff too. She was just the old lady in a ton of movies. Yeah. Mm hmm. Little old lady, cute.
But anyway, so they’re like, oh, the baby’s dead, I guess we’ll have to try again. But then, it’s Halloween, so some trick or treaters come. And they’re like, the trick or treaters are like, trick or treat! And the doctor’s like, hold on a second. I got something better than candy. And he goes and he wraps up the dead demon baby.
And he’s like, it’s like a seed. You have to plant it or something like that. And then it will
Todd: grow. And they’re like, thanks, sir.
Craig: They run off like they
Todd: understood everything he said.
Craig: Oh my God. It’s so hilarious. Right. And so then they like go out, I don’t know where they go. I think they were
Todd: at a construction site.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. The factory is probably being built or whatever. And. They open it up and they’re like, ah, and they throw it. And I guess that’s just where it stays in a hole. And now 66 years later, he’s back and I don’t, I, I, gosh, there’s so much great, great dialogue in this, but he says something to her.
He says something to her about writing shotgun down the old birth canal. Yeah.
Clip: Even now I’m taking care of your friends in the air conditioning shafts. Yeah. No. Then I’ll come for you. Then we can do the nasty.
Craig: And then we can do the nasty. And he says it multiple times. The nasty. That was the other thing that my sister and I thought was so funny.
Like who says that other than like 11 year old
Todd: boys, Satan, Satan, do the nasty. When Satan refers to sex, he’s gonna say, Do the nasty.
Craig: He keeps saying it. Oh, it’s so funny. He talk he talks about how they’re gonna do the nasty like two or three times. And then we can do the nasty. And then he’s like, but don’t worry then, I’ll, you know, I’ll speed up the pregnancy or whatever and you’ll be a mother by
Todd: Sunrise.
Yeah. So this is, this is the back, this is, this is somehow supposed to explain why we’re here and why all this shit’s going on. God,
Craig: it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s still pretty funny. Okay. So Mark and this mystery girl. Oh, by the way, also from Elvira. Oh, that’s right. She, yes. I, I looked her up too. She was, um, the cute, I don’t know, the cute young girl who, uh, was enamored with, uh, Elvira.
Yeah. It was, yeah. I remember her. She ended her acting career with this movie. I
Todd: wonder
Craig: why. I was going to, yeah, I was going to say she didn’t do. Yeah. Oh my gosh, but yeah, they’re crawling around in the ventilation system for some
Todd: reason? I don’t They’re looking for I don’t understand why they can’t just break the door down or something like that, or break the window.
I don’t know. They can’t get out the door, apparently. Or they think I think what they think is if they go out that door, the toys or the girls are going to attack them. So if they go to the security room, they’ll be safe. So they go down to the security room, but they’re pursued through the ventilation shafts by these toys.
You’ve got to just imagine that these toys can f Including this robot that just rolls around like a tank can somehow roll its way up the wall and into the ventilation shaft, too. And that’s where this movie, I mean, you know, again, it’s just, it’s just silly. This toy can shoot lasers. Mm hmm. And it shoots two lasers at you and you’re dead.
But inside this ventilation shaft where it’s got a straight shot a foot away from this kid somehow it misses him and Then they kind of get out and then they kind of kick it over and kick it away and anyway It’s just it’s hard to take it seriously Like we said, there’s like no suspense here because you can’t really believe anything that’s happening So they fall into the security room The doll and that robot show up at the top of the shaft and look down at them and start shooting at them, missing completely.
Doll, ha ha ha, cackling. At some point, he gets some hairspray that happens to be sitting on Was he using it for his beard or something? I don’t know. Hairspray that’s sitting on the console and his lighter and does a flamethrower action onto those guys. And the doll says,
Craig: Hey, you f ed up my makeup!
Cackling. I was clearly amused because I wrote all these lines down. Yeah,
Todd: I’m glad
Craig: you did. I’m glad
Todd: you did.
Craig: I have a whole list of things that happened, but like, I don’t even remember because they’re so inconsequential. Like, the girl gets killed, she shows, she’s only there for like five minutes. And then she’s dead.
Yeah,
Todd: that shocked me. And the baby kills her in kind of a brutal way. Stabs her in the eyes with her, with it’s Cause they come back, right? I guess they come back. And the baby leaps down on her and it grabs a pen and stabs her in both eyes with the pen and she ends up dead. And then that Jack in the Box thing ends up there and I think it bites her face too.
But then the guy manages to wrestle it away from her and tear off, I think it’s the back part of its limb. I think he blows its head off. Well, eventually he does, yeah. But then it’s crawling around, and then he stomps on it, and all this green goo comes out, and Ugh. The thing I was thinking is, why are they farting around here in the security room?
The minute they came out of that shaft, why didn’t they just open the door and leave? But yeah, so he ends up doing just that. They get a gun. I think the guy in there had a rifle. A double barreled rifle is what he picks up. Nowhere in the rest of this movie is this rifle going to act like a double barreled rifle, where once you shoot two rounds out of it, you’ve got to open it up and put the shells back in.
They can just shoot as much as he wants out of this rifle without loading it. He runs out into the place with all of the boxes, and I guess looking for an exit.
Craig: Yeah, that’s the thing, like, there’s a bunch going on, I don’t know, like, The blonde girl from the Playboy that we didn’t talk about before, The fat guard was looking at a Playboy before, and he showed it to Mark.
Todd: And Mark, like, sniffs the centerfold, that was hilarious. He’s like, what do you think of that? And Mark picks it up, he’s like, Oh yeah, that’s awful.
Craig: What? I don’t, that’s, I don’t wanna, I don’t want him to know.
So she appears to him and strips off her dress, and then nothing else happens. She just disappears or something.
Todd: Yeah, she just disappears. He tells himself they’re not real. And so apparently if you just tell yourself it’s not real, they go away. Until Lincoln pops out. Well, some
Craig: things are and some things aren’t, right?
She’s not real, the blonde girls in the gas masks aren’t real, they can’t hurt you, but the toys certainly are.
Todd: It begs a bunch of questions, like, what are they, what is going on here? This demon, what can it do, what can’t it? Is it just toying with him? Why is it sending these, like, spirits to just mess around?
Like, what, what’s the point? I don’t get it. It’s just probably just demons. They want to play. I guess. That’s what ghosts do. And then, but then Lincoln springs out. Like, he has gotten himself unhandcuffed and, uh, is now downstairs and leaps out at him and he’s gonna blow him away too. But then, in the nick of time, Judith shoots him in the head from behind, and now it’s just the two of them trying to escape the dolls.
Craig: The evil boy who is now sitting on the Yeah, he’s just sitting on the pentagram, and out of nowhere, this little toy soldier comes to life. And you see him come to life, and then he walks away. And then you don’t see him again for a little while. They shoot the baby, but, but then other toys, not just the, cause most of the, like, main bad toys are, have been blown up or something at this point, so other toys start to come to life.
I’m just meaning they start to shake. Right. Um. Mark shoots the robot. There’s a whole sequence. And then they start shooting, like. Yeah. There’s a whole thing of them shooting the toys, and, but then, the bear, I guess, the It’s still alive and grows to full size. And at this point is a man in a bear suit chasing Mark around, which I really, really
Todd: enjoy.
That was a good day. I like that bit a lot. First is chasing Judith and then it’s chasing Mark. It’s, it’s really fun. Well, and then they end up trapped in a room or one of them does. I can’t remember who it is. It must be Mark. No, it’s Judith because what does she do? She says a prayer or something. I don’t remember how she met.
Oh. The soldier opens the door. And by the way, that soldier? Best special effects in the whole movie. It was stop motion and it was smooth as hell stop motion. It looks good. Yeah, really good. I could not believe that amount of money and time was put into this movie. It’s nowhere else but in this stop motion character.
It almost feels like a different crew worked on that, which is probably true. That thing opens the door, so we know that it’s friendly. But then, she gets out, and then the bear starts running after Mark, because there’s a confrontation, right, at the pentagram, where the devil kid is there. And he’s telling them, you’re, you’re, nothing’s gonna happen, you know, you’re too late.
And that, I think, is when he tells her that he’s going to possess the child and her body, correct? Okay,
Craig: wait, all right. The dead boyfriend. Shows up again. Oh yeah. And he’s all disgusting and like, he like, tears his own eyes out
Todd: or something? Yeah, yeah, she was about to get out. Yeah, she runs toward the exit.
And he steps in front of her and says, You know I only have eyes for you. Oh my god. And while she just stands there and screams, he pulls his eyes out and that causes her to faint.
Craig: Right, and so then he drags her to the pentagram and ties her up, and Mark is leaving, but he hears her crying out for help.
And so, the bear chases him away. Yeah. It’s at this point that the kid turns into a man sized, like a tall, lean, man sized demon. Almost like a Halloween costume demon, but better. Like with actual makeup and prosthetics, not just A mask, but, but it’s horns and really kind of, yeah, and he says, first I’m going to crawl on top of you and do the nasty, then I’ll be inside your womb, I’ll eat the soul of your baby,
Todd: and then I’ll crawl into its shell of its body, and then I will speed up the birth.
The camera’s on. Ugh.
Craig: It
Todd: goes
Craig: on for a long time. Doesn’t he talk forever?
Todd: He gets very detailed about it. Like, you know, we need to know exactly how this process is going to, is going to work from step one to step 20 because he tells us in very clinical fashion. It’s
Craig: really long. And then he licks her. Then he’s laying on top of her and licking her, like licking her face.
And then the toy soldier shows up and. The demon freaks out. He jumps off of her and goes, you know, that’s impossible. And then it cuts back to outside where Mark kills the giant bear with the car. And then for no good reason, blows the car up. Oh my God. Why did he? Shoots the gas tank. I, I, for no reason, just so that they could have an explosion.
That’s exactly why he did it. My God. Oh. And the soldier then cuts. Judith Free, and then turns into the blonde kid from her dream. Um, but he’s still in a soldier’s outfit. And then these two kids, the demon turns back into the smaller kid, and these two kids just wrassle. They just have a play fight. For a while.
Just a play fight. It is so funny. It’s hilarious, but then it’s like, is it like flashing back and forth between that and like the dream? Like they’re playing war in the dream.
Todd: The demon kid throws down a king of clubs and then the other kid throws down ace of hearts and that beats him. No. And at that point he has kicked him over onto the sword, which the demon writhes for a little while and then completely dissolves and vanishes.
And then the kid faces the mother, and for her benefit and all of our benefit, goes into great detail about what just happened.
Craig: I started writing it down. Okay, so here’s how far I got. He starts out saying, It’s okay now, Mom. We won. I’m your son. The demon’s gone back to hell. But then it goes on for like another minute and a half.
Todd: Yes, we explained as if we didn’t get it by now. I was, I’m your son. We played war, blah, blah, blah. I turned into a soldier. Like, yeah, we saw that.
Craig: It’s okay. Yeah. Play it, please play it in its entirety because I couldn’t believe, like, I was just watching it and it just kept going on and on and I couldn’t believe it.
I thought it was so
Todd: funny. It felt like this was written for like the lowest common denominator. And, and maybe at some point they were like, you know what? This movie, like, no one’s gonna understand this shit unless we just literally lay it all out. He went a little overboard. You know what? The writer of this movie is David S.
Goyer. The guy is a great writer. This was, like, only the third screenplay he ever did. But not only did he go on, he went on to do Dark City, one of my favorite movies. Dark City, you remember that one? He wrote Blade. He wrote all three Blades, and Batman Begins.
Craig: Oh, yeah. The
Todd: Dark Knight. Wrote the screenplay for Man of Steel.
So this guy, I mean, he cut his teeth on this thing, but he definitely learned a lot between 1992 and 1998.
Craig: Yeah, I just feel like it’s, it’s, it’s a sign of the time. Like, you know, this is just, they’re cranking out these movies. They’re cranking out these scripts. They’re not,
Todd: yeah,
Craig: this was an assignment for money.
They’re exactly like a Corman production and they’re, they’re not spending a lot of time on rewrites and, you know, here you go, shoot it, let’s get it, let’s get it out here and that’s fine. Yeah. Okay. So the, the, the. The boy turns back into the toy soldier. I don’t know. I feel like there’s Mark and the woman reunite and she says something stupid.
I don’t remember what it was. And then the kid, like, does the guy say something like, who’s that about the kid or about the toy soldier? He said, like, she’s holding the toy soldier. He’s like, what’s that? And she’s like, it’s my son or something.
She explains it again. Oh, it’s hilarious. And yeah, so then the toy soldier waves goodbye to them and disappears. Wow. That’s the end. Wow. I don’t know. Like when I started watching it yesterday, I was watching the first half hour or so and I’m like, Oh God, this is bad. Now I feel bad for recommending it.
Cause I, you know, Todd’s not going to like it. It’s so stupid. And then the further I got into it. And your nostalgia kicked in. The sillier it got. Your nostalgia kicked in. Well, I just started to appreciate it more. Look, I enjoy the silliness. And that’s what I told you. I said, I, this week, I want to do something that I know is stupid and silly.
I want it to just be goofy and fun to talk about. And I think it was. It’s not one of the best worst movies we’ve seen. No, sadly. But I still think that there are parts of it That are pretty darn funny, and it’s, it’s relatively short, it’s under an hour and a half. Yeah. Again, like you said, back, back in our day when we were kids, our, our Options were relatively limited in terms of what we could watch at any given moment.
So, if this happened to be on, we might be drawn to it because there was really nothing else. Now, people have everything at their fingertips. So, I don’t know how people would really stumble across it, but I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I think it’s funny.
Todd: Yeah, there’s really no place for a movie like this nowadays.
Like, you know, because like you said, it’s a product of its time. Mm hmm. It was created mostly for, for the video market or to sell on cable and be entertaining as well. And, you know, we just did, we just did a whole series of Roger Corman films and gushed over that guy and, and, and how he has a whole great body of work devoted to that kind of thing.
Charles Band has always been kind of the low rent Roger Corman, I think, but Still, there’s been a lot of entertaining stuff and this certainly falls under that category and it’s entertaining. We did the seed people, the seed people came out. It was either this year or the year after also by the same director, Peter Mnookin, and I would put that in the same category, except I thought seed people.
Was way more fun than this one. It was even wackier, but it was also a little more expansive. Like it took place in multiple locations and had a few more characters in it. And had a little more of a quote unquote down to earth concept as much as, you know, you could be with mutant alien seeds that sprout on the planet.
Craig: I only have the vaguest recollection of that. You don’t remember? I vaguely, I vaguely remember. I feel like I remember a giant. of a door at somebody. You don’t remember
Todd: the giant seed plant like opening up and like splooging all over the
Craig: guy walking outside? I vaguely remember. I texted you about 10 hours ago.
I assume you didn’t get it. Um, it was about, The sequel to this movie last night when I was watching this I was watching it on a free streaming service to be but it’s streaming free in a lot of places and you know when you’re watching a streaming service if you just You know, whatever you’re watching is over something else will come on and What came on right after this was doll man versus the demonic toys and you watched it I watched the whole thing because it’s, it’s, well, first it’s only an hour long.
Oh, and it is, if you think this movie is wacky, oh my God. In fact, I would almost say just watch the sequel. It is. Wild, wild. It’s only an hour long. And part of the reason that it’s wild is because it’s technically a sequel to three different movies. It’s a sequel to this. It’s a sequel to doll man, and it’s a sequel to another, one of these like Charles band movies.
And of course you’ve got the demonic toys and Judith comes back. But then you’ve got Dollman, who, Oh my God. The funny thing is, the movie, the movie is only an hour long, and a big chunk of that is huge recaps of all three movies. I see. But the recaps of the other two, Dollman, Dude. I wasn’t, I’m not sure if I didn’t catch it.
I think, I think he comes from a different planet. Like this dystopian planet where his arch nemesis is just like a head on a flying saucer that flies around.
Todd: It’s out there. I started to watch Dollman a long time ago and I think I might have turned it off about twenty minutes in and said I’m not drunk enough.
To continue watching this movie. It looks bad. Yeah, like
Craig: I think he gets shrunk or I don’t know Maybe he comes to earth and he’s just small because he’s an alien I don’t know, but he’s tall that’s why they call him doll man because he’s only a foot tall Okay, so then the third movie I don’t remember what it was called but in it for some reason There’s a one foot tall nurse.
Why is she one foot tall? I don’t know. Why is she still a nurse, even though she’s one foot tall and like, she just lives on her kitchen counter, but she still wears a nurse’s uniform. I don’t know.
Todd: Don’t worry about it.
Craig: One of the fun parts was getting the recaps of all three of these movies because I felt like oh I don’t have to watch that now I just got to see all of the good parts like they just showed me all of the best part great idea and and then they intertwine, you know There is a plot to this movie like the cop lady from demonic toys and doll man and the nurse All work together to fight the demonic toys.
And at first, like, I, if you don’t want to hear spoilers, turn it off now, but who cares, at some point Judith gets killed. And so, which I thought was crazy. Cause this is only supposed to be a year after demonic toys. I’m like, she just had a baby. She shouldn’t be putting herself in these situations, but once she’s killed, it’s just the doll man and the one foot tall nurse against the demonic toys.
So now. The demonic, they’re all the same size. Yes. They do a lot of forced perspective, but there are also full human size versions of all of the demonic interesting. And the plot is crazy. And in this one, baby oopsie needs to. Have sex with the one foot tall nurse. He’s gonna do the nasty with her to bring the master back.
Lots of talk about doing the nasty. Doing the nasty, they talk about it some more. Oh my gosh. The movie is bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. And it’s only an hour long. Maybe just watch that.
Todd: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I, yeah, I wouldn’t I can’t really recommend this movie unless you just want to watch an up all night movie.
You know, that’s exactly what this is. And, you know, I would be laying on my sofa, I would have had some snack or something like that, tucked under the covers, and probably fallen asleep by the time the movie was over. But, trying to stay up for Ronda Shearer to pop in every now and then, and Cracker jokes.
That’s what it is. You want to hear
Craig: one more sad thing?
Todd: Oh, no.
Craig: Guess what came on after?
Todd: Dollman versus demonic toys. Puppet master versus demonic toys. And you had nothing better to do.
Craig: It was re it was getting really late, but I did watch the first half of it. It is. Awful. It is awful. It is literally a made for tv Christmas special about the demonic toys in Puppet Master. I’m not kidding.
Christmas makes sense. They’re toys.
Todd: It stars Corey Feldman. What? We’re talking about the older, more depressing Corey Feldman.
Craig: Oh, it’s really bad. Yeah, I think this came out in 2003, and they have him playing like a mad scientist, but the only thing that they do is they take gray stage makeup and spike his hair up with it, and, and put black framed glasses on him, and he’s kind of this mad scientist kind of character.
The acting throughout is terrible. The production quality is awful. The redesigns of the demonic toys are so stupid and bad. Oh boy. I couldn’t watch the whole thing. I had to turn it off. I felt bad for Corey
Todd: Feldman. There’s a point, right, where it’s like, ugh, if you’re gonna make some schlock, at least put some effort into it, right?
Like, don’t phone it all in, or else it’s just sad.
Craig: Well, I think that they were, it seemed that this one was being presented as a joke. Like, we’re just goofing on this, like, we’re, this isn’t meant to be anything serious, but it just, it felt cheap and
Todd: lazy. That’s what I mean, though, is, no matter what, even if it’s a joke, like, make it a fun joke, you know, don’t make it a lame and sad.
Don’t watch that one. Stick with, so your recommendation. To go on the record, is watch Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. And then we don’t even have to do it on the show now, do we? We can say we’ve more or less covered it. I feel like you just covered it, just then. Pretty much. Two for one, folks. What a special week it is for you.
Well, thank you so much for joining us here on Two Guys in a Chainsaw. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. You can find us online just by googling Two Guys in a Chainsaw podcast. Let us know if you’ve seen any of these movies and which one is your favorite. Make a case for the Christmas special if you want.
You can also find our Patreon at patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast. Throw five bucks there every month. That’ll get you backstage. You’ll be able to put in requests for wonderful movies like this. We have a lot of chatter going on in the back. We have Special mini sows that we put up there, mini reviews that are written, interviews, uh, Chris for Pike Book Club, uh, check that out, and we hope to see you there as well.
The best thing you can do for us is just, uh, write us a review on your favorite, uh, podcast listening service, like Apple Podcasts. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
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If you’re looking for a late-night-cable-horror flick to goof on, Demonic Toys would fit the bill. Otherwise, there are probably better so-bad-they’re-good movies to spend your time with. Craig revisited some nostalgic one-liners from his childhood, while Todd just threw up his hands.
Demonic Toys (1992)
Episode 406, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. Well, today we are doing a movie that you suggested, Craig. I had suggested we do Ghoulies. Just kinda out of the blue, really. But you came back with, Oh man, I wanna do Demonic Toys. Because, uh, you wanted to do something quite silly.
I thought Ghoulies was gonna be silly enough. But, uh, apparently, The bar wasn’t, wasn’t low enough. Before we did
Craig: it, I kind of wanted to have a talk about Ghoulies, because I honestly don’t, I don’t remember Ghoulies that well. What I remember really liking is Ghoulies 2. The one where they’re in like a circus, and I never saw that one.
It’s got our favorite old guy in it. I don’t be able to think of his name. He was in The Blob and House 2. Oh, yes. Royal Dano? Yes, yes. He’s in it. So anyway, I just wanted, before we committed to Ghoulies, I wanted to kind of toss that around. Have a serious conversation. Okay, fair enough.
Todd: Well, we’ll save that for another day.
Now we’re gonna have a very serious conversation about demonic toys, aren’t we? Well, it
Craig: did, it brought that movie to mind. They’re not dissimilar, they’re both little creature movies. And, I didn’t remember much about this movie at all, except for the fact that fact that my sister and I used to watch it when we were kids.
Yeah. And I felt like I, I remembered either liking it or thinking it was funny or, or something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but I thought
Todd: it’d be fun to return to. You would have been in middle school when this was released. It’s a direct to video release. Yeah. And so do you think you rented it?
Maybe copied it or. Maybe you rented it. This feels like something that. It feels like late night. Yeah. I was just going to say like USA up all night. A hundred percent. I was getting Sorority Babes and the Slimeball Bola Rama vibes. Almost anything really by Charles Band around this time kind of has these same vibes.
It’s just, uh, you know, let’s face it, relatively cheap, straight to video schlock. But, you know, they have their charm points, and I certainly enjoyed watching those movies. When there was nothing else to watch late at night, mostly hoping to see some boobs and a little bit of gore too, and something silly.
And, and, this has all of that in it. A bunch of silly stuff, some gore, and a couple boobs, so, uh, I mean they were Not God given, but they were there. Big, yeah. As was the style at the time. Right. Nineties. Oh my God. I’m 100 percent certain I’d never seen this before, but I had heard of it. You know, I figured we were going to get to it eventually.
I am aware that this movie spawned some sequels. And, uh, some crossovers with Dollman. There’s like Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. There’s Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys or something like that. We did Puppet Master earlier and, of course, It’s kind of hard not to compare the two since they are both Charles Band productions.
Yeah, I’m just gonna come right out and say I think Puppet Master is a far better film than this one. They’re both similarly a little far fetched and corny. Similar production value. I don’t know. I think Puppet Master has a higher production value, but it came first. I think They were up to Puppet Master 2 or 3 by the time this movie came out.
Yeah. And those were at least released in the theater, I think, and this one never was,
Craig: so. The security guard in this movie is watching a Puppet Master movie on his TV. Yeah. Little in joke there, right. Yeah, I don’t know, I think Puppet Master probably had a little bit better production value. I know we’ve talked about it, but it’s been a long time, I don’t remember it all that well, but I kind of seem to remember it being at least a little bit scarier.
Yeah.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Then this movie,
Todd: this movie isn’t really scary. Unlike a lot of these, really, it doesn’t make any pretense toward any kind of suspense. I liken it to almost like just a supernatural slasher without the suspense. The characters are, almost all of them are just unlikable, or you just don’t care about them, or they’re just unbelievable because the acting is kind of terrible.
We’re going to talk about it because, you know, we’re nobody. Look, nobody is going to take this movie seriously. Nobody’s probably supposed to take this movie seriously. Now our job here on this podcast, we fairly review horror films where our job is to take this movie seriously somewhat. So we’re going to talk about the good and the bad from a critical perspective, from a movie that probably doesn’t never asked to be reviewed from a critical perspective.
Yeah,
Craig: I, but. That being said you’ve got to take it for what it is like, oh, yeah, that’s what I’m saying This movie doesn’t have aspirations to greatness in any way. Oh, no. No, I think it’s just it’s trying to be fun Yeah, it’s weird. The thing that I found the weirdest about this and we can talk about specific Moments moving forward, but I couldn’t tell if the movie was written for 13 year old boys or by a 13 year old boy, like
Todd: I agree with you all the only thing, if it had been written by 13 year old boys, there would have been more than two boobs in it.
So I would say probably probably for 13 year old boys.
Craig: Yeah, gosh, some of the dialogue, especially wow. Wow,
Todd: the writing, you know, there’s this, there’s this line, right? I mean, there’s movies like this and then there’s movies like, and I just want to keep coming back to it, Chopping Mall. Yeah, and you could almost say Chopping Mall is just as corny and silly, but Chopping Mall has a bit more tongue in cheek.
Not that this movie doesn’t. There’s something about Chopping Mall that is just laughing at itself so much that it’s charming and I didn’t find a lot of charm in this movie. I and I found it Entertaining if you have nothing else to watch, you know, there’s stuff going on. There’s stuff to see it’s not boring.
That’s well, it is a little boring in some parts, but it’s, you know, it’s not as charming as I thought it could have been and should have been. I remember the puppet masters movies being charming maybe because there was a degree of mystique and mystery and, and a bit of lore that was actually rooted in history that, I mean, even though it’s rather silly.
It wasn’t quite as silly and convoluted as the bizarre lore from this one. Oh god, right? I get what you’re saying. You know what I mean? You’re saying I’m having a hard time expressing how I feel about it
Craig: Yeah, I get really hard. It’s not good. Like like you got to go into it It’s a it’s bad. Like it’s a bad movie, but I think it just Manages to reach so bad.
It’s good. Like for sure There are parts of this movie that are really funny that that made me laugh out loud and it’s, it’s so silly and so ridiculous and like you talk about that The backstory of it. It’s so stupid, but
Todd: the backstory does feel like it was written by 13 year olds.
Craig: Oh my God. Well, and the whole thing, I mean, the whole story is so there’s so little to it.
Right. The, the main character is this woman cop. And in the beginning, she’s sitting out in front of this factory with her partner, who is also her romantic partner.
Clip: We were right to move in together. And, now that you mention it, maybe we should get married. Look, I got nothing against marriage. Just that, you know, we should get married when we’re ready to have kids, you know?
Do you want kids? I mean, cause we never really talked about it or anything.
Craig: Yeah,
Clip: sure, someday,
Craig: you know. And she confesses that she’s pregnant. Yay, they’re gonna have a baby, but they’re on a stakeout. And, as soon as
Todd: That was clever. They’re having this, almost like this romantic talk there. It’s funny too, the way it’s shot.
It’s shot over each other’s shoulder, but they’re each looking at the camera in close up when they’re talking to each other. I think Witchboard did this. I can’t remember which other movie we saw that, where I thought that was really But then, you know, they’re embracing, and it’s like, Oh, I’m pregnant, oh, I’m gonna be a father, And it’s like, you shouldn’t have come out here tonight.
And, you know, and she’s like, That’s okay, you got your piece? Yeah, I do too. Alright, let’s do this. That was funny. That was funny.
Craig: And well, and then this car comes racing around the corner and for a second, her partner guy, like pretends that they’re making a deal, like an arms deal or a drug deal. I don’t remember.
It doesn’t matter. But as soon as he says, yeah, now you’re busted. You’re under arrest. The bad guys pull out guns and start shooting and shoot him dead.
That was.
Todd: Yeah, dark and quick, and also the most inept cops you can possibly imagine. He pulls out his gun and says, freeze, while the criminals who are, I don’t know, 12 inches away from him are both holding guns. It’s pretty stupid.
Craig: They have a little shootout, and I, does she shoot one of them? I think she shoots one of them.
It’s such a little shootout.
Todd: She shoots one of them as he’s running away, and then proceeds to kneel down very dramatically over the body. Oh
Clip: my god, no! No!
Craig: But, but not call anybody. No! Cause that would, that would make far too much sense. So instead, she just left him. Yeah, she leaves him there on the ground in an alley.
For dead. And then chases this bad guy with a gun into an old toy factory. Where the rest of the movie takes place. Oh, maddeningly. Okay. And it’s just, like, stacks of boxes and, like, chain link fences. Like,
Todd: it’s cheap. It’s a cheap and boring location. Oh, my God. But this is very typical for these productions.
I mean, you find your one location or your three sets that you can use and just move the boxes around and make it look like a slightly different aisle or whatever, you know? Uh huh. It’s lit like a TV movie. Lots of blues, like, like blues and shadows
Craig: in hallways and stuff. It needs more shadow. It needs more grit.
That’s where I would say that, that, that is somewhat charming to me. These feel like those late night movies. They, like you said, they were, many of them were like this low budget, cheap sets. So I’m kind of getting into it at this point. I made a huge mistake of. Skipping the actual beginning, which is a dream sequence,
Todd: which is
Craig: weird.
Todd: Oh my God, this dream sequence. How convoluted is this movie? They’ve got what could be a dream sequence out of Nightmare on Elm Street visually, except the cheaper version. Cheap, yeah. Very cheap version. It looks like, again, like the high school put it together with their, with their theme. theater flats, but it’s the, the woman, uh, what was her name?
Judith. Sitting in a chair, two boys in front of her who were playing war with cards, you know, the, where you, where you’d flip over a card. The boys are facing each other and then surrounding them are clocks, like tall grandfather clocks, smaller clocks. There’s even a giant pendulum swinging behind her on the wall.
gossamer curtains. Oh god. Oh, they tried
Craig: well and the and like the camera is doing all these angles like it’s it’s not just shooting them straight on it’s like You know tilted 15 degrees or whatever Oh my god, it’s so silly and they’re just sitting and like the whole thing is one is blonde. They’re the same age.
They’re both, I would say, I don’t know, eight, nine, something like that. One is blonde and the other is brunette. And then I don’t remember if this is revealed here. We come back to the stream sequence a couple of times and it’s always the same. Um, but at some point you realize that the dark haired boy also has these, you know, Unnatural eyes like these green kind of demon eyes and he’s also got like claws instead of regular fingernails It’s super heavy handed and they’re playing war but they’re like drawing every time like yeah Or or one wins and then the other wins and then the other wins and then it’s it’s very Kind of even God, it’s like, what could it mean?
What could it be? Well, we’re just going to have to watch and find out. I suppose we’re just going to have to watch and find out now this is part. I’m not sure if I remember. Okay. So they go, there’s a guard in there and stuff. He’s like this fat, this fat guy. And he calls for chicken, which brings the chicken delivery boy eventually.
And that’s it.
Todd: That’s
Craig: everybody. That’s all our people.
Todd: Except for the demon, right? The chicken guy, who at first I thought must be his son or related to him. I guess he’s just a good friend. Cause he asked to get him on the phone. He just delivers chicken to him every night. That must be it. And there’s a bunch of dumb bi play with the boy.
Unrealistic dumb bi play with the chicken guy at the chicken shack.
Clip: Mr. Wayne. Mr. Wayne? You got a cigarette in your mouth?
Craig: No. It’s your dick. This is the, this is the writing. This
Todd: is what a 13 year old thinks he could just say to his manager and get away with. Those are the jokes, folks. They don’t get any better than that.
They get worse. It’s chunky chicken? Yeah. And he asks if he wants his chicken extra crispy or chunky and he’s like, You know. Chunky. What would that be? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. That sounds awful. I don’t want to know either. I was like, I was waiting to see it. I thought that was going to be a joke of some kind and I’m kind of glad it wasn’t because I wasn’t sure what that would be.
So you’re right. He drives up and he’s got a hatchback with a giant chicken on top. And that’s apparently what they tootle around town in. The Chicken Mobile. to deliver chicken to people. He pulls in, and you’re right. We’re inside the warehouse, and these are gonna be our people. And what happens is that the woman, in this very long, drawn out, god awful action sequences, is chasing after the bad guys.
And there’s the really, really mean guy. And I don’t remember what Oh, Lincoln.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: He’s the utterly crazy one. And then there’s the one that she’d actually shot, the blonde, the white haired guy. And he is crawling after Lincoln, and Lincoln’s like, Oh, fuck you, man. He kicks him down the stairs. Lincoln’s not having it.
So Lincoln runs upstairs, and this poor guy is just crawling across the floor. And then he bleeds. Yeah. On a glowing spot on the floor that is cut in what we later see is the shape of a pentacle? Star? It’s not even that, it’s just a star. I think it’s, I
Craig: think it’s a pentagram, but There’s no circle. Right, well, yeah, I think there is, cause Later there’s a circle.
Cause the baby draws it. Exactly, that’s what I was gonna say. Cause these bad toys come to life. Does the body, like, disappear? I don’t remember. His body? Yeah, I don’t remember. He bleeds into the floor and then these bad toys come alive. This is hilarious. This is what I love about this movie. These bad toys.
Now, it’s very much in the vein of like Puppet Master or any of, or Ghoulies or even Troll.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Right, right. But these, I love the design of them, but what’s hilarious to me is that they are very clearly just hand puppets. Or just toys that somebody is holding from behind and shaking. Yes.
Todd: Like,
Craig: at their worst.
They very, make minimal, minimal effort to make these things look at all real or alive. Like it’s just a puppet on somebody’s hand or somebody holding a doll around a corner and shaking it as it’s supposed to be talking. And I think it’s kind
Todd: of hilarious. It’s hilarious. And that’s, that’s the thing. Part of the charm of the movie, but except for Baby Oopsy.
Well, there are some, there,
Craig: there are some really tight close ups of like their faces and stuff. But anytime you see them in their entirety in the shot, it looks not great. There are some close ups, like the baby, the bear gets some scary close ups and stuff. Yeah, but what were you gonna say? Sorry to interrupt.
Todd: Well, I was gonna say I appreciated the effort given to Baby Oopsy. Baby Oopsy is a very rudimentary animatronic. It’s almost like a ventriloquist dummy with where just its jaw kind of comes down. But then you can tell there are like two wires somewhere in there that are only there to pull him up into an evil grin.
Which it does almost painstakingly at times. Ugh, and pull, and pull his um, his brow down into a, you know, an angry look. Baby Oopsy is kind of the Chucky wannabe of the group. This, that’s what makes this a little different from Puppet Master. Actually what I really liked and what I thought what kind of Upped Puppet Master’s game just a little bit is the fact that none of those dolls talked.
They were a little mysterious, right? They were all marionettes made out of wood and different things like that. Here, they growl, and they laugh, and they chuckle, and Baby Oopsie has a bunch of lame dialogue. And that Oh my god.
Craig: See, I think it, okay, in terms of actual quality and fear factor, yeah, it takes it way down.
That’s what I meant. In terms of camp and humor, I think it elevates it. Through the roof, yeah. I think that it’s, I, yeah, I think that, Baby Upsy’s the only one that talks. The others vocalize, but they don’t actually talk. But he’s like a wisecrackin foul mouthed baby. And this, aside from the fact that they’ve made its face look ugly, like, no kid would ever want to play with this doll, it really does look just like a generic baby doll.
And so for it to be so foul mouthed When the guard first sees him, the baby goes,
Clip: Hi, you fat fuck. I’m baby oopsie daisy. You lord ass. Will you be my special friend?
Craig: What the hell?
Clip: I can walk. I can talk. I can even shit my pants. Can you shit your pants?
Craig: And when I saw that, I remembered why my sister and I liked it. We thought. That was hilarious. When you were 13. I could walk, I could talk, I could even shit in my pants! Oh my god. I know! It was so funny. And not even the lines are that funny, but just the delivery. The voice coming from this little baby doll.
I still, I laughed out loud when I heard it again. I completely forgot about it.
Todd: Glad that was able to rekindle some childhood memories for you guys. Yeah, well they killed, they killed Jesse and, and that’s pretty gross. I mean, you know, one of them is, uh, Wait, who’s Jesse? Which one’s Jesse? The guy, the, the, with the white hair.
Yeah, Lincoln, Lincoln and Jesse were the, the two people. And Jesse’s the one who falls down, the blood, the toys come to life, and then they kill him. There’s, one of them is, uh, is, um, a jack in the box. I liked this one. Did you? I
Craig: don’t know if I don’t know if this is a hot take. I certainly didn’t read it anywhere else, but I didn’t do a lot of research either.
I was watching this thinking, I wonder if the designers on Krampus were inspired by this movie. Oh, you could hardly not be. Pretty similar. They are. The, uh, the jack o lantern that’s evil. I mean, they even kind of look alike. Yeah, you’re right. The bear, even the baby doll, that angel’s kind of like a baby doll with wings.
True. I mean, all of these things are. Very common childhood, generic childhood toys, too, so
Todd: Yeah, there’s only certain ways you can take it, but
Craig: It could be a coincidence, but I would be a little bit surprised if it wasn’t a complete
Todd: coincidence. Well, what I liked was that the Jack in the Box He would pop out, and he was a, he was a, you know, a nasty looking clown with very sharp fangs and a huge head.
But then, he had a tail to him. He was almost like one end of a snake. And he had a tail to him that was holding a rattle. A literal rattle, like a baby rattle. Eventually, that gets severed. And so we, I mean, you know, the fact that it’s not just confined to this box was kind of cute, actually. I, you know, you expect this thing to be bouncing around inside of a box, but it, it wasn’t, it was like a creature inside the box and, and it’s got big sharp teeth.
And it, it, it, Leaps on this guy and just takes a huge chunks out of his cheek and the bear leaps on this guy And you know actually for a low budget movie. This wasn’t half bad. No, it’s pretty good. The bear like bites his fingers off, right? Yeah, it was I mean look we’re still heads and shoulders above the uninvited With the demon cat.
Remember the demon cat on the boat? That one where this movie wasn’t even trying to be good like that movie was. So uh,
Craig: The blood. Oh. And, and the baby draws the pentagram around that spot in the floor. And then the blood from this dead guy. brings this kid. Now it’s the dark haired kid from the lady’s dream.
But now he talks and he talks in this weird man voice, like this weird, I can’t describe it. It’s it’s like they put it through some kind of, they put it through some kind of filter or something. It’s, It’s odd. It’s, it’s not natural sounding. Thanks
Clip: for
Craig: coming.
Clip: I’ve been sleeping for a long time, waiting for someone just like you to wake me.
We’re going to have a lot of fun here tonight, friend. We’re going to raise hell.
Craig: And then a lot goes on. I don’t even, you know, it’s so ridiculous. The other people, okay, so like, Mark the chicken guy and the guard are in one room, and then Judith and Lincoln, they’ve had a fight and she’s got him handcuffed, but they’re like locked in a storage room or something.
For reasons I
Todd: don’t understand, she decided that once she cornered him in that room, that she was gonna put the cuffs on him and just sit there for a while.
Craig: I think they’re locked in, but I don’t know why, like, I don’t know if the door just closed behind them or what, but they can’t get out, but they make a bunch of noise, And, and then the guard and the other guy come looking for her.
And this is all just the toys, you know, menacing and
Todd: attacking. And at one point after they’ve been menaced by the toys a bit, I think they all kind of end up back in that room. And I guess they’re locked in again because they can’t get out or they don’t think they can get out because of the. The toys out there, and then Lincoln gets that animated 80s electricity all over him and transforms into that boy, Demon, which says some cryptic things to Judith, taunts them some more, and then turns back into Lincoln.
Craig: Yeah, that’s right, Lincoln is possessed, and he says I need your bodies, I need flesh and blood. I don’t remember when it comes, like, I, I know that, you know, the, uh, they kill the guard, the baby kills the guard, and they, like, drag it away, because they have to, it’s very Hellraiser, they have to, like, bleed people on this.
So that the demon can come back fully before he goes into her baby. I don’t know. And, and like the baby is dragging the guards. Like you’re heavy. You Moby dick. The baby’s lines cracked
Todd: me. Yeah. Suddenly it’s like people under the stairs, the vent opens up and this. Kind of disheveled dirty girl comes sliding out of it.
I was watching you. I What’s happening? Well, I’ve been here for a couple days. Oh, you’re a runaway, huh? You could say that All right So now at least we have one more person because there wouldn’t be a high enough. It doesn’t even make sense No, I didn’t even think about it. She’s like, I’ve been
Craig: here a couple days.
The toys are evil bitch. They just woke up They just woke up Yeah I don’t know what
Todd: you’ve been seeing up to this point, but nothing cuz it just
Craig: happened.
Todd: I didn’t understand that either because later In a complete almost non sequitur. There are these three girls Spirits who are riding tricycles with, and they’re wearing old style gas masks on their faces?
But they’re not real, because they disappear. But they’re still scared of them. And the girl sees them and is like, Oh yeah, no, don’t worry, I know they’re not real, I’ve seen them before. So, is this place, when it’s not full on, you know, toys coming to life, is it still just vaguely haunted? Maybe? Ah. We’re not really meant to pick this apart.
Well,
Craig: we get the backstory, but I, I felt like the backstory I don’t remember when we’d get it. Maybe it’s near the very end.
Todd: No, what happens is, somehow Judith gets knocked out. So they’re in a toy factory, or a toy warehouse, or something. While Anne and Mark are crawling around in the vents trying to find their way to the security room, Anne is back there with Lincoln, and Anne sees a dollhouse, and starts staring in the window, and pretty soon she finds herself inside the dollhouse.
And that is when we get the long ass convoluted backstory. And oh boy is it a joy. It’s long! It’s like, it’s like a quarter of the movie length, this backstory. And it needs to be, because it doesn’t make any sense. And he talks so much. This, when he appears, at this point, is he still just appearing to her as the boy?
Yeah, he says. I can appear in any way I want. And then changes into a demon and then changes into something else. And then finally down to, Oh, like, yeah. The, uh, her husband’s like dead gross body. Yeah. And then back to the boy. But this is the form I like the best.
Craig: Right. He, uh, yeah. He says he needs a body.
He says that animating, okay, so God. I guess it just so happens that today was the day that it’s been 66 years and he was finally had enough energy to animate the toys. And then he tells the back story, which is a whole flashback and is pretty interesting. Awesome. I’m not gonna lie. It shows that it’s like Halloween 1925 and this woman in this dark room is in labor and there’s a bit like a dreamcatcher pentagram hanging behind her.
And that’s how we know it’s evil, by the way. This old woman delivers a demon baby, and it’s like this big
Todd: demon. It looks like a little demon. I loved it. But a slimy demon, like you know, it gave birth, it came out of the birth canal. It’s a little wet, it’s a little slimy. You recognize the woman, right? I wasn’t paying that close attention.
Oh, God. Pat Crawford Brown. Probably, she’s been in a million things. But, I especially remember her as the old stuck up lady in Elvira. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Craig: Oh, yes, yes. I did
Todd: recognize her. You know,
Craig: I don’t
Todd: know if we said this when we were watching that movie. And I don’t know if I knew this when we did that episode.
She started her acting career at 60. I think I knew that. She retired from teaching English and started her acting career and then was in like 200 things before she died. All over television and movies and things like you saw her everywhere. This was actually one of her very first movie roles. Right after Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
She was in a lot of TV.
Craig: I did. I did recognize her. She’s, she’s very familiar. Yeah. Any horror fans, if you saw her, you would recognize her. Yeah, for sure. Though she didn’t just do horror, she did lots of stuff. She did comedy and stuff too. She was just the old lady in a ton of movies. Yeah. Mm hmm. Little old lady, cute.
But anyway, so they’re like, oh, the baby’s dead, I guess we’ll have to try again. But then, it’s Halloween, so some trick or treaters come. And they’re like, the trick or treaters are like, trick or treat! And the doctor’s like, hold on a second. I got something better than candy. And he goes and he wraps up the dead demon baby.
And he’s like, it’s like a seed. You have to plant it or something like that. And then it will
Todd: grow. And they’re like, thanks, sir.
Craig: They run off like they
Todd: understood everything he said.
Craig: Oh my God. It’s so hilarious. Right. And so then they like go out, I don’t know where they go. I think they were
Todd: at a construction site.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. The factory is probably being built or whatever. And. They open it up and they’re like, ah, and they throw it. And I guess that’s just where it stays in a hole. And now 66 years later, he’s back and I don’t, I, I, gosh, there’s so much great, great dialogue in this, but he says something to her.
He says something to her about writing shotgun down the old birth canal. Yeah.
Clip: Even now I’m taking care of your friends in the air conditioning shafts. Yeah. No. Then I’ll come for you. Then we can do the nasty.
Craig: And then we can do the nasty. And he says it multiple times. The nasty. That was the other thing that my sister and I thought was so funny.
Like who says that other than like 11 year old
Todd: boys, Satan, Satan, do the nasty. When Satan refers to sex, he’s gonna say, Do the nasty.
Craig: He keeps saying it. Oh, it’s so funny. He talk he talks about how they’re gonna do the nasty like two or three times. And then we can do the nasty. And then he’s like, but don’t worry then, I’ll, you know, I’ll speed up the pregnancy or whatever and you’ll be a mother by
Todd: Sunrise.
Yeah. So this is, this is the back, this is, this is somehow supposed to explain why we’re here and why all this shit’s going on. God,
Craig: it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s still pretty funny. Okay. So Mark and this mystery girl. Oh, by the way, also from Elvira. Oh, that’s right. She, yes. I, I looked her up too. She was, um, the cute, I don’t know, the cute young girl who, uh, was enamored with, uh, Elvira.
Yeah. It was, yeah. I remember her. She ended her acting career with this movie. I
Todd: wonder
Craig: why. I was going to, yeah, I was going to say she didn’t do. Yeah. Oh my gosh, but yeah, they’re crawling around in the ventilation system for some
Todd: reason? I don’t They’re looking for I don’t understand why they can’t just break the door down or something like that, or break the window.
I don’t know. They can’t get out the door, apparently. Or they think I think what they think is if they go out that door, the toys or the girls are going to attack them. So if they go to the security room, they’ll be safe. So they go down to the security room, but they’re pursued through the ventilation shafts by these toys.
You’ve got to just imagine that these toys can f Including this robot that just rolls around like a tank can somehow roll its way up the wall and into the ventilation shaft, too. And that’s where this movie, I mean, you know, again, it’s just, it’s just silly. This toy can shoot lasers. Mm hmm. And it shoots two lasers at you and you’re dead.
But inside this ventilation shaft where it’s got a straight shot a foot away from this kid somehow it misses him and Then they kind of get out and then they kind of kick it over and kick it away and anyway It’s just it’s hard to take it seriously Like we said, there’s like no suspense here because you can’t really believe anything that’s happening So they fall into the security room The doll and that robot show up at the top of the shaft and look down at them and start shooting at them, missing completely.
Doll, ha ha ha, cackling. At some point, he gets some hairspray that happens to be sitting on Was he using it for his beard or something? I don’t know. Hairspray that’s sitting on the console and his lighter and does a flamethrower action onto those guys. And the doll says,
Craig: Hey, you f ed up my makeup!
Cackling. I was clearly amused because I wrote all these lines down. Yeah,
Todd: I’m glad
Craig: you did. I’m glad
Todd: you did.
Craig: I have a whole list of things that happened, but like, I don’t even remember because they’re so inconsequential. Like, the girl gets killed, she shows, she’s only there for like five minutes. And then she’s dead.
Yeah,
Todd: that shocked me. And the baby kills her in kind of a brutal way. Stabs her in the eyes with her, with it’s Cause they come back, right? I guess they come back. And the baby leaps down on her and it grabs a pen and stabs her in both eyes with the pen and she ends up dead. And then that Jack in the Box thing ends up there and I think it bites her face too.
But then the guy manages to wrestle it away from her and tear off, I think it’s the back part of its limb. I think he blows its head off. Well, eventually he does, yeah. But then it’s crawling around, and then he stomps on it, and all this green goo comes out, and Ugh. The thing I was thinking is, why are they farting around here in the security room?
The minute they came out of that shaft, why didn’t they just open the door and leave? But yeah, so he ends up doing just that. They get a gun. I think the guy in there had a rifle. A double barreled rifle is what he picks up. Nowhere in the rest of this movie is this rifle going to act like a double barreled rifle, where once you shoot two rounds out of it, you’ve got to open it up and put the shells back in.
They can just shoot as much as he wants out of this rifle without loading it. He runs out into the place with all of the boxes, and I guess looking for an exit.
Craig: Yeah, that’s the thing, like, there’s a bunch going on, I don’t know, like, The blonde girl from the Playboy that we didn’t talk about before, The fat guard was looking at a Playboy before, and he showed it to Mark.
Todd: And Mark, like, sniffs the centerfold, that was hilarious. He’s like, what do you think of that? And Mark picks it up, he’s like, Oh yeah, that’s awful.
Craig: What? I don’t, that’s, I don’t wanna, I don’t want him to know.
So she appears to him and strips off her dress, and then nothing else happens. She just disappears or something.
Todd: Yeah, she just disappears. He tells himself they’re not real. And so apparently if you just tell yourself it’s not real, they go away. Until Lincoln pops out. Well, some
Craig: things are and some things aren’t, right?
She’s not real, the blonde girls in the gas masks aren’t real, they can’t hurt you, but the toys certainly are.
Todd: It begs a bunch of questions, like, what are they, what is going on here? This demon, what can it do, what can’t it? Is it just toying with him? Why is it sending these, like, spirits to just mess around?
Like, what, what’s the point? I don’t get it. It’s just probably just demons. They want to play. I guess. That’s what ghosts do. And then, but then Lincoln springs out. Like, he has gotten himself unhandcuffed and, uh, is now downstairs and leaps out at him and he’s gonna blow him away too. But then, in the nick of time, Judith shoots him in the head from behind, and now it’s just the two of them trying to escape the dolls.
Craig: The evil boy who is now sitting on the Yeah, he’s just sitting on the pentagram, and out of nowhere, this little toy soldier comes to life. And you see him come to life, and then he walks away. And then you don’t see him again for a little while. They shoot the baby, but, but then other toys, not just the, cause most of the, like, main bad toys are, have been blown up or something at this point, so other toys start to come to life.
I’m just meaning they start to shake. Right. Um. Mark shoots the robot. There’s a whole sequence. And then they start shooting, like. Yeah. There’s a whole thing of them shooting the toys, and, but then, the bear, I guess, the It’s still alive and grows to full size. And at this point is a man in a bear suit chasing Mark around, which I really, really
Todd: enjoy.
That was a good day. I like that bit a lot. First is chasing Judith and then it’s chasing Mark. It’s, it’s really fun. Well, and then they end up trapped in a room or one of them does. I can’t remember who it is. It must be Mark. No, it’s Judith because what does she do? She says a prayer or something. I don’t remember how she met.
Oh. The soldier opens the door. And by the way, that soldier? Best special effects in the whole movie. It was stop motion and it was smooth as hell stop motion. It looks good. Yeah, really good. I could not believe that amount of money and time was put into this movie. It’s nowhere else but in this stop motion character.
It almost feels like a different crew worked on that, which is probably true. That thing opens the door, so we know that it’s friendly. But then, she gets out, and then the bear starts running after Mark, because there’s a confrontation, right, at the pentagram, where the devil kid is there. And he’s telling them, you’re, you’re, nothing’s gonna happen, you know, you’re too late.
And that, I think, is when he tells her that he’s going to possess the child and her body, correct? Okay,
Craig: wait, all right. The dead boyfriend. Shows up again. Oh yeah. And he’s all disgusting and like, he like, tears his own eyes out
Todd: or something? Yeah, yeah, she was about to get out. Yeah, she runs toward the exit.
And he steps in front of her and says, You know I only have eyes for you. Oh my god. And while she just stands there and screams, he pulls his eyes out and that causes her to faint.
Craig: Right, and so then he drags her to the pentagram and ties her up, and Mark is leaving, but he hears her crying out for help.
And so, the bear chases him away. Yeah. It’s at this point that the kid turns into a man sized, like a tall, lean, man sized demon. Almost like a Halloween costume demon, but better. Like with actual makeup and prosthetics, not just A mask, but, but it’s horns and really kind of, yeah, and he says, first I’m going to crawl on top of you and do the nasty, then I’ll be inside your womb, I’ll eat the soul of your baby,
Todd: and then I’ll crawl into its shell of its body, and then I will speed up the birth.
The camera’s on. Ugh.
Craig: It
Todd: goes
Craig: on for a long time. Doesn’t he talk forever?
Todd: He gets very detailed about it. Like, you know, we need to know exactly how this process is going to, is going to work from step one to step 20 because he tells us in very clinical fashion. It’s
Craig: really long. And then he licks her. Then he’s laying on top of her and licking her, like licking her face.
And then the toy soldier shows up and. The demon freaks out. He jumps off of her and goes, you know, that’s impossible. And then it cuts back to outside where Mark kills the giant bear with the car. And then for no good reason, blows the car up. Oh my God. Why did he? Shoots the gas tank. I, I, for no reason, just so that they could have an explosion.
That’s exactly why he did it. My God. Oh. And the soldier then cuts. Judith Free, and then turns into the blonde kid from her dream. Um, but he’s still in a soldier’s outfit. And then these two kids, the demon turns back into the smaller kid, and these two kids just wrassle. They just have a play fight. For a while.
Just a play fight. It is so funny. It’s hilarious, but then it’s like, is it like flashing back and forth between that and like the dream? Like they’re playing war in the dream.
Todd: The demon kid throws down a king of clubs and then the other kid throws down ace of hearts and that beats him. No. And at that point he has kicked him over onto the sword, which the demon writhes for a little while and then completely dissolves and vanishes.
And then the kid faces the mother, and for her benefit and all of our benefit, goes into great detail about what just happened.
Craig: I started writing it down. Okay, so here’s how far I got. He starts out saying, It’s okay now, Mom. We won. I’m your son. The demon’s gone back to hell. But then it goes on for like another minute and a half.
Todd: Yes, we explained as if we didn’t get it by now. I was, I’m your son. We played war, blah, blah, blah. I turned into a soldier. Like, yeah, we saw that.
Craig: It’s okay. Yeah. Play it, please play it in its entirety because I couldn’t believe, like, I was just watching it and it just kept going on and on and I couldn’t believe it.
I thought it was so
Todd: funny. It felt like this was written for like the lowest common denominator. And, and maybe at some point they were like, you know what? This movie, like, no one’s gonna understand this shit unless we just literally lay it all out. He went a little overboard. You know what? The writer of this movie is David S.
Goyer. The guy is a great writer. This was, like, only the third screenplay he ever did. But not only did he go on, he went on to do Dark City, one of my favorite movies. Dark City, you remember that one? He wrote Blade. He wrote all three Blades, and Batman Begins.
Craig: Oh, yeah. The
Todd: Dark Knight. Wrote the screenplay for Man of Steel.
So this guy, I mean, he cut his teeth on this thing, but he definitely learned a lot between 1992 and 1998.
Craig: Yeah, I just feel like it’s, it’s, it’s a sign of the time. Like, you know, this is just, they’re cranking out these movies. They’re cranking out these scripts. They’re not,
Todd: yeah,
Craig: this was an assignment for money.
They’re exactly like a Corman production and they’re, they’re not spending a lot of time on rewrites and, you know, here you go, shoot it, let’s get it, let’s get it out here and that’s fine. Yeah. Okay. So the, the, the. The boy turns back into the toy soldier. I don’t know. I feel like there’s Mark and the woman reunite and she says something stupid.
I don’t remember what it was. And then the kid, like, does the guy say something like, who’s that about the kid or about the toy soldier? He said, like, she’s holding the toy soldier. He’s like, what’s that? And she’s like, it’s my son or something.
She explains it again. Oh, it’s hilarious. And yeah, so then the toy soldier waves goodbye to them and disappears. Wow. That’s the end. Wow. I don’t know. Like when I started watching it yesterday, I was watching the first half hour or so and I’m like, Oh God, this is bad. Now I feel bad for recommending it.
Cause I, you know, Todd’s not going to like it. It’s so stupid. And then the further I got into it. And your nostalgia kicked in. The sillier it got. Your nostalgia kicked in. Well, I just started to appreciate it more. Look, I enjoy the silliness. And that’s what I told you. I said, I, this week, I want to do something that I know is stupid and silly.
I want it to just be goofy and fun to talk about. And I think it was. It’s not one of the best worst movies we’ve seen. No, sadly. But I still think that there are parts of it That are pretty darn funny, and it’s, it’s relatively short, it’s under an hour and a half. Yeah. Again, like you said, back, back in our day when we were kids, our, our Options were relatively limited in terms of what we could watch at any given moment.
So, if this happened to be on, we might be drawn to it because there was really nothing else. Now, people have everything at their fingertips. So, I don’t know how people would really stumble across it, but I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I think it’s funny.
Todd: Yeah, there’s really no place for a movie like this nowadays.
Like, you know, because like you said, it’s a product of its time. Mm hmm. It was created mostly for, for the video market or to sell on cable and be entertaining as well. And, you know, we just did, we just did a whole series of Roger Corman films and gushed over that guy and, and, and how he has a whole great body of work devoted to that kind of thing.
Charles Band has always been kind of the low rent Roger Corman, I think, but Still, there’s been a lot of entertaining stuff and this certainly falls under that category and it’s entertaining. We did the seed people, the seed people came out. It was either this year or the year after also by the same director, Peter Mnookin, and I would put that in the same category, except I thought seed people.
Was way more fun than this one. It was even wackier, but it was also a little more expansive. Like it took place in multiple locations and had a few more characters in it. And had a little more of a quote unquote down to earth concept as much as, you know, you could be with mutant alien seeds that sprout on the planet.
Craig: I only have the vaguest recollection of that. You don’t remember? I vaguely, I vaguely remember. I feel like I remember a giant. of a door at somebody. You don’t remember
Todd: the giant seed plant like opening up and like splooging all over the
Craig: guy walking outside? I vaguely remember. I texted you about 10 hours ago.
I assume you didn’t get it. Um, it was about, The sequel to this movie last night when I was watching this I was watching it on a free streaming service to be but it’s streaming free in a lot of places and you know when you’re watching a streaming service if you just You know, whatever you’re watching is over something else will come on and What came on right after this was doll man versus the demonic toys and you watched it I watched the whole thing because it’s, it’s, well, first it’s only an hour long.
Oh, and it is, if you think this movie is wacky, oh my God. In fact, I would almost say just watch the sequel. It is. Wild, wild. It’s only an hour long. And part of the reason that it’s wild is because it’s technically a sequel to three different movies. It’s a sequel to this. It’s a sequel to doll man, and it’s a sequel to another, one of these like Charles band movies.
And of course you’ve got the demonic toys and Judith comes back. But then you’ve got Dollman, who, Oh my God. The funny thing is, the movie, the movie is only an hour long, and a big chunk of that is huge recaps of all three movies. I see. But the recaps of the other two, Dollman, Dude. I wasn’t, I’m not sure if I didn’t catch it.
I think, I think he comes from a different planet. Like this dystopian planet where his arch nemesis is just like a head on a flying saucer that flies around.
Todd: It’s out there. I started to watch Dollman a long time ago and I think I might have turned it off about twenty minutes in and said I’m not drunk enough.
To continue watching this movie. It looks bad. Yeah, like
Craig: I think he gets shrunk or I don’t know Maybe he comes to earth and he’s just small because he’s an alien I don’t know, but he’s tall that’s why they call him doll man because he’s only a foot tall Okay, so then the third movie I don’t remember what it was called but in it for some reason There’s a one foot tall nurse.
Why is she one foot tall? I don’t know. Why is she still a nurse, even though she’s one foot tall and like, she just lives on her kitchen counter, but she still wears a nurse’s uniform. I don’t know.
Todd: Don’t worry about it.
Craig: One of the fun parts was getting the recaps of all three of these movies because I felt like oh I don’t have to watch that now I just got to see all of the good parts like they just showed me all of the best part great idea and and then they intertwine, you know There is a plot to this movie like the cop lady from demonic toys and doll man and the nurse All work together to fight the demonic toys.
And at first, like, I, if you don’t want to hear spoilers, turn it off now, but who cares, at some point Judith gets killed. And so, which I thought was crazy. Cause this is only supposed to be a year after demonic toys. I’m like, she just had a baby. She shouldn’t be putting herself in these situations, but once she’s killed, it’s just the doll man and the one foot tall nurse against the demonic toys.
So now. The demonic, they’re all the same size. Yes. They do a lot of forced perspective, but there are also full human size versions of all of the demonic interesting. And the plot is crazy. And in this one, baby oopsie needs to. Have sex with the one foot tall nurse. He’s gonna do the nasty with her to bring the master back.
Lots of talk about doing the nasty. Doing the nasty, they talk about it some more. Oh my gosh. The movie is bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. And it’s only an hour long. Maybe just watch that.
Todd: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I, yeah, I wouldn’t I can’t really recommend this movie unless you just want to watch an up all night movie.
You know, that’s exactly what this is. And, you know, I would be laying on my sofa, I would have had some snack or something like that, tucked under the covers, and probably fallen asleep by the time the movie was over. But, trying to stay up for Ronda Shearer to pop in every now and then, and Cracker jokes.
That’s what it is. You want to hear
Craig: one more sad thing?
Todd: Oh, no.
Craig: Guess what came on after?
Todd: Dollman versus demonic toys. Puppet master versus demonic toys. And you had nothing better to do.
Craig: It was re it was getting really late, but I did watch the first half of it. It is. Awful. It is awful. It is literally a made for tv Christmas special about the demonic toys in Puppet Master. I’m not kidding.
Christmas makes sense. They’re toys.
Todd: It stars Corey Feldman. What? We’re talking about the older, more depressing Corey Feldman.
Craig: Oh, it’s really bad. Yeah, I think this came out in 2003, and they have him playing like a mad scientist, but the only thing that they do is they take gray stage makeup and spike his hair up with it, and, and put black framed glasses on him, and he’s kind of this mad scientist kind of character.
The acting throughout is terrible. The production quality is awful. The redesigns of the demonic toys are so stupid and bad. Oh boy. I couldn’t watch the whole thing. I had to turn it off. I felt bad for Corey
Todd: Feldman. There’s a point, right, where it’s like, ugh, if you’re gonna make some schlock, at least put some effort into it, right?
Like, don’t phone it all in, or else it’s just sad.
Craig: Well, I think that they were, it seemed that this one was being presented as a joke. Like, we’re just goofing on this, like, we’re, this isn’t meant to be anything serious, but it just, it felt cheap and
Todd: lazy. That’s what I mean, though, is, no matter what, even if it’s a joke, like, make it a fun joke, you know, don’t make it a lame and sad.
Don’t watch that one. Stick with, so your recommendation. To go on the record, is watch Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. And then we don’t even have to do it on the show now, do we? We can say we’ve more or less covered it. I feel like you just covered it, just then. Pretty much. Two for one, folks. What a special week it is for you.
Well, thank you so much for joining us here on Two Guys in a Chainsaw. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. You can find us online just by googling Two Guys in a Chainsaw podcast. Let us know if you’ve seen any of these movies and which one is your favorite. Make a case for the Christmas special if you want.
You can also find our Patreon at patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast. Throw five bucks there every month. That’ll get you backstage. You’ll be able to put in requests for wonderful movies like this. We have a lot of chatter going on in the back. We have Special mini sows that we put up there, mini reviews that are written, interviews, uh, Chris for Pike Book Club, uh, check that out, and we hope to see you there as well.
The best thing you can do for us is just, uh, write us a review on your favorite, uh, podcast listening service, like Apple Podcasts. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
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