Demonic Toys 2

Well hey, there..it’s….a review! It’s been a while and what better way to get things back moving again than with Full Moon’s latest effort, the sequel to the wildly popular Demonic Toys. Granted this is actually the fourth movie involving these lovelies (see: Demonic Toys, Dollman vs Demonic Toys and Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys) this is being dubbed the actual sequel. I read somewhere that Time Warner (of all people) lobbied for this, I guess to make it more attractive to nostalgic viewers who happened to stumble across it on onDemand (where I did not find this, oddly enough).

Anyway.

After a pretty cool opening sequence where we see a pair of glop-covered hands stitching Baby Oopsie Daisy and Jack Attack back together and boxing them up, we open with our female lead, Caitlin (Alli Kinzel),  and Mr. Butterfield (Leslie Jordan) waiting in front of a … very familiar looking … castle. If you think you’ve seen this castle before, it’s because you have. DT2 was filmed at Charles Band’s own personal castle (who can say that?) in Italy, the same site where some Full Moon classics such as Castle Freak were filmed. A motorcade pulls up and out steps….wait..what the fuck? Dr. Lorca (Michael Citriniti) from Hideous?! Mmmk. The good doctor, who has apparently survived the acid bath he received the last time, albeit just a tad scarred, we saw him is joined by his superficial fiance (Elizabeth Bell), his “step-son” David (Lane Compton), their cowboy-hat adorned driver Eric (William Marquart) and Lorca’s spiritual advisor, Lillith (Selene Luna). Eric unloads the aforementioned crate from the back of the vehicle and we learn why Lorca has traveled to the castle. It seems Caitlin has discovered an antique toy that Lorca just has to have in his collection of oddities. Butterworth is there to “document” the transaction..but actually..there’s really no reason for him aside from comic relief and he delivers.

Once inside, we sit through some castle-wandering padding chock full of  the history of the joint. Turns out it was last owned by a baroness who dabbled in the black arts a bit and of course Lillith “feels” the energy in the air and indicates to Lorca that the castle is far from empty. Eventually, they get to the point of why Lorca is there and we meet our newest puppet, Devoletto, who – to the delight of Lorca – actually moves when his box is tapped upon. Caitlin explains that this is probably due to the doll having “springs and mechanisms and stuff” that react magnetically not the obvious explanation that the thing is probably possessed. Lillith, however, is hip to the game and touches the doll, launching her in to a cgi-fueled ‘vision’ proving that there’s something evil going on here. Awesome.

The gang ends up getting “stuck” at the castle after their cars mysteriously disappear (I won’t spoil the reason) and this is where business picks up and I’ll end the somewhat abbreviated recap.

So. If you’ve read other reviews on this movie that are floating around out there then you already know that this has been panned pretty hard in many circles. With that in mind, you’re probably waiting for me, as I often do, to launch in to some ‘wow, this was a total shitfest-esq’ diatribe and … surprise! That’s not going to happen because I actually really enjoyed this movie.

The acting here is surprisingly decent with everyone playing their role to an acceptable level of Full Moonitude and they make the characters enjoyable and easy to follow. I especially liked the flaming gay southern charm Leslie Jordan injects in to the Mr. Butterfield character, it added a light-hearted dimension to the movie that made it all the more fun to watch. I think that actually describes Demonic Toys 2 the best – fun. Even though this was shot for $80k in 5 days, you can tell the cast and staff had fun doing it and put a lot of work in to making a film that would appeal to fans of the DT franchise and Full Moon fans in general.

That’s not to say that this was without some pitfalls though. The special effects (particularly the gore) and puppetry work leave a lot to be desired. Most of the gore is actually digital as is some of the puppet stuff and it is very poorly done. The actual marionette puppet work is pretty bad too. The new doll, Devoletto, displays very little movement  and Jack Attack is too mechanical..even for a jack-in-the-box. Baby Oopsie Daisy is a little more mobile but the mouth work is awful. Frequently she will still be speaking after her mouth has stopped moving and they don’t come close to syncing the voice to her mouth movements a single time. I also didn’t like her voice…it was frequently difficult to understand and over-processed in post production as was Lillith’s voice when she becomes possessed.

All in all though, this was pretty fun to watch and it kept my attention well throughout. If you’re a Full Moon or evil doll movie fan, you should definitely check this out.

**** out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

David DeCoteau directed this and while I’m not a fan of the blatant homo eroticism that is clearly evident in basically every movie he has ever had any thing to do with, I am a fan, in general, of his movies. I had high hopes for this going in and hoped it would be as decent as the shortened version.

So.

Our movie opens with 4 friends headed to an ominous looking castle (in Romania, no less) with the sad duty of attending the funeral of their compatriot.  Add to that, these friends have not seen each other in several years and are also all involved, in some way, in paranormal research. Hm. This sounds, largely, really familiar.

The group of pals is lead by Kristof f and is rounded out by another guy and two realtively attractive females. In short – basically the same cast outline of every Full Moon movie that came out in the late 90′s-early 00′s.  Also in the mix are Kristoff’s bitter rival, Bill and his two friends who lurk around, mostly outside the castle, bent on making Kristoff out to be the total chode he is and getting some sort of revenge for making a fool out of Bill in the past. In short – these guys are going to get waxed pretty quickly.

As it turns out, the castle the funeral viewing is taking place in is also the exact location of an old prison who’s inhabitants were treated less than nicely and are rumored to still haunt the building, wiping anyone who stands in their way off the face of the earth. Then, in the “gotcha” moment of the movie, it turns out the friend who’s funeral they are attending isn’t really dead so hoo-ha, giggles and chuckles. Kristoff really pulled a fast one over on them.

This is where we are introduced to the actual plot of the movie. It seems Kristoff’s dad, a trash-rag publisher, is holding a contest. The baddies (referred to as ‘The Executioners’) who supposedly haunt the castle posess something called the ‘Talon Key’ which opens a cursed cell in the jail. Kristoff’s goal is to prove to dear old dad that the paranormal crap is, in fact, true by finding the Talon Key. The one who finds it wins…*drum roll* (in Dr. Evil voice) one..million..dollars. Clearly about 10 times as much as it cost to make this movie. Maybe CB will just rent the money like they do in all of those rap videos that are floating around these days. Then again, maybe they won’t ever really mention it again.

Most of the rest of the movie is comprised by the mostly boring and uncaptivating characters wandering around the castle/funeral home/prison/whatever searching for the key. Also along the way, The Executioners show up and start wiping out characters unceremoniously starting with the aforementioned Bill and crew (the ones who are out to get Kristoff). Speaking of The Executioners, they are kinna neat but their costumes are terrible. They look like they were purchased at the Cappel’s after-Halloween clearance sale and bear a strong resemblance to Dr. Doom of Spider Man fame. To me any way. Regardless, I still like them and I like the way they take out  the characters.  They remind me a lot of the zombie types in Dead and Rotting and apparently influenced the same killing method used in total crapfest Petrified.

You can choose to watch from this point if you want to find out what happens (and be let down).

As I feared, the full length (if you want to call it that, clocking in at around 70 minutes) of this movie was actually inferior to the shortened version found on Horrific. The amount of padding, in the form of aimless wandering throughout the castle with very little substansive dialouge in-between, really kills the movie. At least in the short version a lot of this is thankfully taken  out and the movie cuts to the chase.

The acting in Prison Of The Dead is, like most Full Moon Pictures “efforts” from this time frame,  terrible and this  movie actually jacks it up a couple of notches and can be filed under “inexcusably awful”. None of the characters are interesting in the slightest and I found myself not caring about them, or what they were doing, at all. I was looking forward to each of them getting 86′ed and  *spoiler kinna* was disappointed with the end result in this category.

The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it is basically the exact same as all of the other Full Moon movies from this era. Just change out the character names and stick them in the same over-used Romanian castle and you’ve got Prison Of The Dead. This was utterly boring and pretty much pointless. If it had been any longer than 70 minutes I may have fallen completely asleep as I did find myself dozing off while watching this at 4 or 5pm with the blinds open on a sunny day.

I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have enjoyed the other Full Moon flicks from earlier on this decade and even then, you’d still have to be a total glutton for punishment for watching this. If you really want to see it, I’d suggest getting the Horrific DVD from Amazon or at your local Blockbuster/Hollywood Video. At least then you will get a couple of other Full Moon flicks (namely edited versions of The Killer Eye and Totem) to kill some time with as well.

*1/2 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Wow, what a gigantic pain in the ass this was to get a hold of. While VHS is great for some and sometimes gives older movies that “old school” feel, I was bound and determined to find a working DVD copy of Cryptz. I purchased this no less than 3 times on DVD and received it via both Blockbuster and Netflix and every copy was a dud. The movie froze about 25 minutes in with no recourse and taking measures to pull, if you will, the movie from the disc returned the same result.

The other day I figured I would visit my local Hollywood Video store and low-and-behold, they had a copy of Cryptz. I expected the same result as the previous discs when I got home but, believe it or not, it worked! So woooo!

As for the actual movie, I didn’t have many high hopes for it but read along.

The basic idea behind this (Fuck you, I’m) Danny (Motherfucking) Draven produced and directed Shadow Entertainment/Big City Pictures (re: Killjoy 1 and ..ugh.. 2, The Horrible Dr. Bones, The Vault, etc) installment circles around three “rappers” (who never actually rap) by the names of Tymez Skwared (Mr. Main Character Power), Fuzzy Down (aka Tardy Downz) and Likirish (who does a great low-budget Chris Tucker, down to the voice and all) on their search for that sweet pootenanny and the troubles it eventually brings them. Just a side note -  I’m sure I spelled the characters’ names wrong and honestly, I don’t care. I’m too lazy to IMDB it and they all had ridiculously stupid spellings to begin with, so butchering the spellings is not doing them  an injustice by any stretch of the imagination. Way to go, Draven.

One day while discussing their future rap careers, which apparently involves not rapping at all, an attractive woman walks by and after coming at her with several extremely bad pick up lines, they discover she works somewhere called “Cryptz”. She refuses to disclose the location of this clearly fine establishment and gives ol’ Tymez a pinch on the cheek and keeps moving.

Intrigued, Tymez calls our resident “creepy motherfucker”, Truck, to see if he knows where they can find this Cryptz joint and therein, this “fine honey”. Truck doesn’t know where its at but does warn them that it’s no good and to duct tape Tymez down to the bed before sunset. Of course our 3 fellows think this is some sort of joke and of course as soon as the sun sets, they’re off, at Tymez urging, sceeching around the city eventually finding the club.

Once inside, we’re treated to shots of the fine decor which is, according to the credits, some dude involved in the movie’s “place”. We’re also the happy recipients of a girl doing an admittedly fantastic pole dance routine to a horrible trance tune that literally goes on for about 15 minutes off-and-on.

Our boys soon find out that pole dances by flat chested women isn’t the only thing going on in “Cryptz” and, in fact, it is infested by evil vampire “bitches” hell bent on taking over the world.

I won’t spoil the rest for you.

While I hate Danny Draven much in the fashion that I would hate having my nuts unceremoniously stuffed in to a Salad Shooter ™, I must say that Cryptz was pretty good. It took after the first Killjoy flick in that there is some comedy to be had here along with a healthy dose of oozing, cheap gore. The acting is on par with the other Big City flicks (i.e – terrible) and the soundtrack is awful too. Production value is early 00′s Full Moon par for the course and the DVD does feature a few trailers as well as a making of (which I was too frightened to watch).

I’d recommend checking this out. I’m not happy about giving Danny Draven positive points for anything but he did a pretty good job with this and put together a terribly bad, yet fun movie.

***1/2 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Netherworld

Buy Netherworld : Amazon

Just from reading the synopsis on the DVD, you can tell Netherworld isn’t going to be your average Full Moon flick..and it isn’t. Far from it. Written by Full Moon staple David Schmoeller (As Billy Chicago), Netherworld is definitely a very unique movie.

We open with a young gentleman with the early 90′s curl-let riding on a fishin (not “fishing”) boat and arriving at a massive structure of columns and giant concrete lions. Snazzy. Our friend, let’s call him…oh..Corey (how 90′s of you, Mr. Schmoeller) is met by a man, Beauregard Yates, Esquire,  in a sky blue suit and black leather fingerless gloves. YES. The guy is really reminiscent of Mr. Mascaro from Blood Dolls if you’ve been following along with this shit. Anyway, Masca…Mr. Yates carts Corey off to a giant southern estate that belonged to his father.

See, Corey’s father – Mr. Thornton – was massively rich but was also totally unknown to Corey as ol daddy did the stash’n'dash with  his old lady. Nice guy. Corey makes some illconceived attempts to get information about what his dad was like, but has no luck.

During this sequence we also meet Diane, a “smokin hot” 16 or 17 year old who ends up being a sort-of love interest for Corey. Somewhat offensive, but I’ll go with it. Diane’s overbearing and over protective mother, who is the caretaker of the Thornton estate is also introduced. We also notice that there are a literal shit ton (and that’s a technical term, kids) of birds around..and they seem to get a lot of focus. Mmmk.

While out for a jaunt one day with Diane, Corey runs in to a crazy guy named Bijou who tries to coax Corey in to going to a place called Tonk’s Place – a rough and rumble redneck bar just across the lake from the estate with the promise that he (Bijou) will tell him about his old man.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention – Corey gets his father’s last wishes documentation and it basically says “Lookee here boy, bring me back to life”. Nice. Corey becomes obsessed with this task and that convinces him, furthermore, to check out Tonk’s place where he is, eventually, introduced to Delores who is another a bird nut and also is the answer woman on how to bring Corey’s daddy back to life. Delores is some sort of super hooker that lures men in to her lair, only to steal their souls and place them in the bodies of birds. The birds are big time here. Five alarm weirdness call.

Our first meeting with Delores also results in a not-too-nice gentleman getting his eyes gouged *in* and eventually his head crushed by concrete hand. More weirdness, but whatever. The hand floats and flies around – ala The Tall Man’s spheres – when summoned for duty.

I’m sure I missed some key plot points, but that’s what you get when you have the short term memory of a retarded tit mouse.

With all that crap out of the way, I really really really liked this movie. The filming quality is good (good ol 35mm) and really shows a distinct difference in what Full Moon was capable of during their relationship with Paramount. I’m not sure what happened, although I’d guess it was due to a faux pau from Mr. Band, but it is nonetheless really unfortunate that the relationship couldn’t continue.

The music is also good here, being done by one of the guys from Bon Jovi (Hu-WAAAAHHHHHHH!) and also features a couple of performances from Edgar Winter. Good shot on that one.

The acting here is solid and on point and while the script (as always) could’ve used a little work, it still carries out nice and smooth and keeps you interested in the movie. Shocking.

The DVD itself is another high point. It’s chock full of a ton of extras including a 26 minute long marathon Videozone.

This has become one of my favorite Full Moon flicks and if you haven’t already seen it, it comes highly (standard “hehe”) recommended from me.

**** 1/2 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Totem
Buy Totem on Amazon

Totem holds a special place with me as it, along with Jigsaw, was one of the first Full Moon movies I ever watched. So, I may be a little easier on this movie than most other reviews have been..or as I should be for that matter.You’re going to have to cut me some slack here as the first time I saw this was back in 2003ish and I watched it again about two weeks ago. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, then you know that my short term (and long term for that matter) memory isn’t the hottest so I may mix up the order of some shit. You’ll get the general idea though.

Totem follows the long-standing low budget horror movie tactic of keeping everything contained to one or two locations/sets and in this case it works pretty well with the script and action. Basically, 6 Full Moon stereotype young folks are mysteriously  drop what they are doing and summoned to  go to a cabin somewhere in the middle of east boo-foo. You’ve got your standard good guy, jocky type, high school girl, bitchy girl, smart girl and mysterious fellow who is supposed to be American Indian but looks more …. definitely not Native American.

Obviously, they have all tried to jet from this shit shack but have had no luck as it seems to be surrounded by some magic force field. Our last lady to arrive decides that she’s busting up out of there and begins taking off down a hill and in to the woods. She makes it further than any of the others, so naturally they all follow her. They end up in a cemetary of sorts with its centerpiece being a pretty cool looking totem pole. None of them have any idea what its for other than that it looks old. Of course everyone also looks to their “native american” friend who has no idea what it is…probably because he’s not native american. Whatever.

Business starts to pick up when the one of the girls goes to take a teedle in the outhouse but doesn’t come back for quite a while. Our good guy goes out to find her and soon comes back “covered” (ie slightly spattered) in blood holding the girl, who is clearly deceased. To liven things up a little bit, homeboy has no idea what happened – just that she is dead. Awesome. Time passes (ie – padding) and the girl comes back to life all zombie-like mumbling some shit and everyone is confused and frightened. The clear answer here is to not just toss her zombie corpse outside, but to chain her down to the table they had placed her on and see what shakes out. Pure genius.

Eventually they find a book that contains some information on what’s going on and essentially they are stuck in a spell-driven mystical universe where there are to be 3 executioners and 3 victims. Once the cycle is complete the Totem can come back to life and I dunno.. take over the world or something with its neverending evil.

Once others start biting it, the 3 Totem “monsters” (read: puppets) start showing up and things remain kind of boring. I would also like to note that the first Totem who shows up plops down out of the sky on to the cabin’s floor and you can clearly see the puppet rods. It’s like they weren’t even trying – at all. For a lot of folks, this is a major turn off..for me it’s typical Full Moon at its finest and I personally took it with a grain of salt.

If you want to find out what happens from there then you’ll have to buy or rent the movie, silly. I’m not giving this shit away for free and I’m sure FM can use the bucks from your DVD purchase or rental.

Alright, so I didn’t go easy on this, but in reality it was still a really fun movie for me to watch. A lot of folks say its extremely boring and while I can see how it would appear that way, it still held my interest and I have a pretty short attention span so I guess that counts for something.

I do have one gripe, the DVD for this is terrible. I popped it in the ol’ Sony and up comes a terrible hot-pink screen with two options – “trailer” and “play movie”. They definitely could have put a *lot* more effort in to this but hey..shit happens sometimes and we don’t always get what we want.

All in all, Totem was a good time and I give it the nod.

*** out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

- First and foremost, I’m not sure who or what is being delivered from evil in this movie..strike one.
- Secondly, Killjoy doesn’t even show up in the movie until a good 45 minutes in…strike two.
- And for the final strike, this entire movie makes absolutely no sense..at all.

I’d also like to add on that Killjoy is played by an entirely different person (Trent Haaga), which is a dealbreaker in and of itself as the original KJ was awesome and went a long way in making Killjoy as great as it was.

As a whole, this was an total and complete waste of my time and, quite honestly, Full Moon should be embarrassed to have their name on this. There are not enough fluffy nuggets in the world, and believe me – I tried hard – to make this even remotely enjoyable.  I didn’t bother watching the “Making Of” portion on the disc because I don’t think I can stomach watching the people who made this trainwreck talking about how awesome the movie is.

Looking forward, I’m really concerned about Killjoy 3, which is supposed to be coming out later in 2009. Based on the teaser picture, Trent Haaga is back and that’s enough right there to make me not purchase or rent the movie.  Bad bad bad bad.

0 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Videozone

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whoa boy, next on the ol’ agenda is Vampire Journals. I’ve definitely been looking forward to watching this based on the good reviews I’ve seen across the internet and I must say I was kind of let down.

First we are introduced to our main characters, Zachary (the ‘good’ vampire), Ash (the ‘bad’ vampire) and concert pianist (I’ll admit I just wanted to type pianist) Sofia. Ash becomes enamored with Sofia and wants to bring her on-board and in to his growing army of vampires, more appropriately..to be his mate and right-hand woman.

Of course this doesn’t sit well with other lady vampires in his crew and we face some extremely boring confrontations as a result of that inbetween a lot of padding, pointless dialouge and more padding.

That’s the problem with Vampire Journals. It doesn’t do a whole lot of anything except slowly plod along through a script that seems like a Subspecies reject. Given that the whole Subspecies deal kind of  went down hill after Subspecies 3, you can imagine what we’re dealing with here.

Zachary has several chances to take Ash out and actually falls into Ash’s trap at one point and is held captive within his lair. The ending here is extremely anti-climactic and kinna sudden (as a lot of FM flicks seem to go down). It left a bad taste in my mouth.

I didn’t necessarily dislike the movie, but it certainly won’t find its place as one of my favorites or even something that I would watch again. With that said….

**1/2 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!

Killjoy is a masterpiece and a perfect example of what Full Moon was doing right during the ‘Features’ time period. Full of  horrible one-liners, acting done clearly under the influence of massive amounts of herb and that lovely reckless abandon Full Moon threw into movies at that time and you get Killjoy. A great flick that I highly (hehe) recommend you check out with an open mind. Be ready to laugh in total disbelief that someone would actually make a movie as truly horrible as Killjoy is.

Watching the Behind The Scenes featurette (which you must do first as with all Full Moon flicks), you’d think you were getting ready to watch the film of the fucking century. All of the actors do the self-masturbatory one-man reacharound praising their cohorts and folks responsible for the movie. You know they have to be kidding..noone could take a movie like this seriously.

You can read about the plot in-depth elsewhere.. basically all you need to know is a nerd gets popped for hitting on a gang-lord’s girl. Shortly before this, he prays to a doll, aka Killjoy, to help him level some revenge against the thug and his cohorts. This ends up working after he’s dead and Killjoy then brings on a reign of terror, wiping out the bad dudes in short order. So that should end things right?

Wrong.

Killjoy then goes after the “good” guys..I guess since they had 45 minutes left of movie to blow.

I’ll leave it there, but to say it gets completely ridiculous is an understatement.

I can’t stress enough how great this movie is and if you are a true Full Moon fan, you owe it to yourself to at least rent this/snap it up on Netflix. I’ll get around to reviewing Killjoy 2 next – which made me want to slam my face through a plate glass window covered with duct-taped strips of thumbtacks and rabid mice.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

[trailer/videozone unavailable]

Buy Cut Throat On Amazon

Review

I’ll start this by saying that Cut Throat has absolutely nothing new to offer or even something worthwhile to bring to the table. If you have seen any of the Scream films or I Know What You Did Last Summer then you have already watched a considerably more polished, passable version of Cut Throat and quite honestly, you can give your ‘Back’ button a well-earned workout and just skip this entire review.

If you haven’t seen the aforementioned movies – a) Where the fuck have you been since the mid 90′s?! b)Cut Throat probably isn’t your best bet for breaking you into the Scream-o-Mania genre. Perhaps you are just a glutton for punishment and poorly written reviews, in which case – continue.

Clearly this was a cheap attempt at cashing in on the Scream trend. It’s no wonder reviews for this outside of Amazon and IMDB are scarce, Cut Throat is an utter waste of time and a ginormous (I just invented a word) piece of crap. Even the fine folks over at Cold Fusion Video wouldn’t give Cut Throat the time of day.

I’ve completely sold you on this, haven’t I?

Let’s continue.

I’m not going to give this any more time than it’s worth, so I’ll run through the plot real quick-like (and I mean real quick) and interject some of my world-renown sarcasm and asshole comments and that will be that.

Cut Throat takes us through the filming of a low-budget horror movie, in which there are all your standard characters. The asshole director, the ever bigger asshole producer, the “but guyyyyyyyyyyyyys” writer and a cast of actors and actresses that run the gamut of “Fuck this.” (you’ve got the right idea) to “Come on guys, we have to make this happen”. Eventually, everyone involved starts going down one-by-one courtesy of an on-set killer whose identity is obvious from about 20 minutes in.

That’s that.

Cut Throat does a lot of things wrong – namely everything. The only redeeming quality is the A/V work which, by previously set standard, is pretty decent.

Bottom line – this is a total waste of time, energy and the all important dollar. If you have an itch to blow 4 or so dollars, then you – yes you – can own a copy of this miserable excuse for a movie. I can’t comment on the DVD features as, like an idiot, I actually spent more grabbing this on VHS than I would have getting a copy of the actual disc. I must have been extremely intoxicated.

What the hell was Charlie thinking?

That is a rhetorical question.

0 out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.

VideoZone Part One

Click here to view the embedded video.

VideoZone Part Two

Click here to view the embedded video.

Buy Sideshow on Amazon

Review

Sideshow is another in a seemingly endless string of Full Moon movies produced earlier this decade. I believe, at one point, I remember Charles Band stating that during that time they had a total of 70+ movies that would be released that year. My, how times have changed it seems.

Anyway.

The basic plot of Sideshow consists of a group of college students, who look way past college age, who set out to visit a traveling sideshow which is visiting their area. Of course most of the students are pretty skeptical of the show itself, especially the ‘freaks’ that supposedly comprise the main attraction.

As the movie moves along, they each end up getting ‘what they deserve’ as foretold by a fortune teller and are turned into freaks themselves via a weird tube-like device that seems like it would be better suited in an episode of Dr. Who than a ‘horror movie’.

Sideshow has a few things going for it that help it to stand out slightly from the pack of Full Moon movies from this time. Namely Phil Fondacaro. Yep, Full Moon’s token little man takes center stage here and really carries the movie. He really takes on the role of a huckster carny type and holds the film together in spots where others from this time would have completely fallen apart.

Another thing on the plus-side is the make up and effects. They are, in a word, outstanding. Given the budget this was likely made with and the limited locations used to film it, I would guess the majority of the cash was spent in the effects department and it shows. The characters are all extremely well done for a Full Moon flick and in watching the VideoZone, it is evident the crew responsible put heaps of care and close detail into the characters.

The acting here is on par with Full Moon standards and, aside from Fondacaro, noone really stands out and they are all equally cheesy and mediocre. The direction is standard-fare as well and in the AV department again, par for the course.

The DVD itself also scores additional points for having some different trailers as well as a decent VideoZone installment.

I definitely enjoyed Sideshow and would recommend it to Full Moon fans. It hasn’t seemed to get a lot of attention around the net from neither the casual viewer or Full Moon fanatics alike which is unfortunate because it certainly out-does other efforts from earlier this decade.

*** out of 5.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts