THE DOLLMAN TOYBOX: DOLLMAN X DEMONIC TOYS COLLECTION
****
Directed by Albert Pyun, Peter Manoogian, Charles Band, William Butler.
Starring Tim Thomerson, Jackie Earle Hayley, Tracy Scoggins.
Horror/Comedy, USA, Certificate 18.
Released on Limited Edition Blu-ray box set by 101 Films on 6th October
Full Moon Features are a studio whose output horror fans either love or hate, so a box set featuring no less than eight of their movies will either be a must-have purchase to indulge and explore, or another nice looking box featuring questionable content, depending on individual tastes. In this case, however, 101 Films have put together a splendid collector’s set that, even if some of the movies inside aren’t up to snuff, presents its content in a way that will be pleasing to those not totally enamoured by the studio and its output.
Probably best known for its PUPPET MASTER movies, Full Moon embraced all sorts of pocket-sized character-based tomfoolery away from Toulon and his army of wooden warriors, with 1991’s DOLLMAN being one of the most notable. Starring Tim Thomerson as tough cop Brick Bardo, DOLLMAN sees Bardo in pursuit of his arch enemy Sprug (Frank Collison) - who is just a floating head - across the galaxy, but when they arrive on Earth they have been shrunk, with Bardo now only 13 inches high.
Also starring future Freddy Krueger, Jackie Earle Hayley as a brutal gang leader, DOLLMAN is terrific B-movie entertainment, ambitious in its plot but pulling it off on a budget that wouldn’t cover the catering costs on most Hollywood sci-fi movie sets. The same could also be said of the second headliner in this set, 1992’s DEMONIC TOYS.
Cop Judith Gray (Tracy Scoggins) corners a villain in a toy warehouse after her partner - and father of her unborn baby - is shot and killed. Turns out the warehouse is a portal for a demon who wants to be reborn in a human body - you can guess where this is going - but in the meantime it has enough power to bring the toys to life in order to claim souls.
Following on in the same tradition as PUPPET MASTER, DEMONIC TOYS could justifiably claim to be one of Full Moon’s most accomplished movies and is certainly a highlight of this box set. As with all the movies here, it is short, direct and an absolute hoot as people are brutally killed in as gory a manner as the budget allowed, and the acting isn’t too shoddy either. Most importantly, though, this is the movie that sets up the rest of the content in the box set.
The inevitable crossover of DOLLMAN VS. DEMONIC TOYS followed in 1993, bringing Tim Thomerson’s Brick Bardo into battle with the iconic Jack-in-the-Box and Baby Oopsy Daisy toys. Along for the ride is Tracy Scoggins as Judith Gray (who is still a cop and whose baby is never mentioned, despite it being said that this is set a year after DEMONIC TOYS, but who comes to these movies wanting continuity?) and Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr) from Full Moon’s BAD CHANNELS (who is also tiny and a perfect love interest for Bardo), so this is really a three-way crossover.
However, don’t get your hopes up as DOLLMAN VS. DEMONIC TOYS is something of a let-down, being only an hour long, mostly made up of flashback footage from the previous movies.
Next in the set is DEMONIC TOYS 2 from 2010, and the most notable difference here is that most of the practical gore is gone and replaced with terrible CGI. Nevertheless, the plot is quite fun as a group of people searching for weird artefacts come to a castle in Italy and unwittingly unleash the titular toys.
From an acting and effects viewpoint DEMONIC TOYS 2 is terrible and the 80-or-so minute runtime does feel padded out, but the castle setting - which was the same castle used in Stuart Gordon’s CASTLE FREAK and was owned by Full Moon head honcho Charles Band - is effective and the INDIANA JONES-esque plot is (just about) enough to keep it watchable.
Baby Oopsy Daisy - or BABY OOPSIE, as it was known going forward - not only got its own movie in 1991 but ended up with a trilogy, featuring one of Full Moon’s greatest human characters in Sybil Pittman (Libbie Higgins), a doll-obsessed woman who hosts her own doll-based web series but is mercilessly bullied in her everyday life by her domineering stepmother, her boss and local thugs.
One day, Sybil is mysteriously sent the individual parts of Baby Oopsie, the murderous doll from DEMONIC TOYS, and sets about putting them together, unleashing a powerful force that can help her with her troubles, but also sets about causing the kind of mayhem that gets Libbie noticed by the police. BABY OOPSIE 2: MURDER DOLLS and BABY OOPSIE 3: BURN BABY BURN followed, making one continuous story, and despite the usual budgetary and talent limitations all three movies are worth checking out for Full Moon enthusiasts, especially the second one, which is hilarious.
In 2023 we got DEMONIC TOYS: JACK-ATTACK, which gave the iconic Jack-in-the-Box his own spin-off and also boasted some decent (for the budget) practical gore effects, which automatically makes this movie better than DEMONIC TOYS 2. Featuring a plot about a mute girl in a foster home who is gifted the evil toy, there is more than a whiff of CHILD’S PLAY about this movie, but it is a fun ride featuring some gloopy kills and hints at a possible sequel that could open things up like the BABY OOPSIE movies did.
All in all, it is a mixed bag when it comes to the quality of the movies, with DOLLMAN, DEMONIC TOYS, DEMONIC TOYS: JACK-ATTACK and the BABY OOPSIE trilogy being the best of the bunch, but anyone not familiar with FULL MOON Features and their low budget aesthetic would still be wise to tread carefully. Each movie comes with its own special features, including archival VIDEOZONE featurettes and new interviews with Charles Band, composer Richard Band and collaborator William Butler, plus the box also includes the DOLLMAN KILLS THE FULL MOON UNIVERSE comic series in one perfect-bound volume, which is a nice bonus for fans.
A proper collector’s item for the hardcore, THE DOLLMAN TOYBOX is an excellent package of movies that, whilst none of them being top-drawer horror classics, will delight fans of Full Moon Features’ output by looking gorgeous with newly commissioned artwork, and it is always handy having these movies in one box (although 2004s PUPPET MASTER VS. DEMONIC TOYS is noticeable by its absence), but its appeal to more casual viewers will be extremely limited, much like the set itself.
Chris Ward