Terror Toons

While their parents are away, blonde teen sisters Cindy (Beverly Lynn) and Candy (Lizzie Borden) will play. Cindy invites a female friend and two guys over for pizza, wine coolers and a game of 'strip Ouija board.' The more childish Candy pops in a 'Terror Toons' DVD (which she received anonymously in the mail…from hell!) and ends up unleashing two of the maniacal lead characters (Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin). The deadly duo then proceeds to kill everyone off in gory, cartoonish ways.

There are a lot of mediocre gore FX (spine ripped out of back, brain surgery, body sawed in half…), mediocre to bad performances and some fun/silly touches (including scenes from the DVD and another set in hell). It's cheesy alright (and the ending is just terrible), but considering the fact it was done on a budget of '2300' dollars and was filmed in 3 days, it's a little more imaginative, colorful and ambitious than you might expect, suggesting the director may do good work with a higher budget.

The Full Moon video release (which received a rather wide circulation at Blockbuster) has cast and crew interviews, outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage at the end.

Yes, "Terror Toons" is no "I Know What You Did Last Summer". In my opinion, the more power to that. Those who made "Terror Toons" were definitely doing a guerrilla thing, regardless of how the movie turned out. A lot of people would probably see this as one of the most inane horror videos out there. They're right, but "Terror Toons" was meant to be this way. It's a goofy cartoon show mixed, in my opinion, very well with the splatter-comedy genre. First of all, the gore FX were extremely bad. If the filmmakers would have been given a huge budget, would they have been a lot more believable? Yes, and, considering many of the z-grade films I've seen that were shot ON FILM, I can honestly tell you that I have seen gore FX a lot worse than those displayed in "Terror Toons". As for the cheap computer animation, I don't think they could have done any better on a bigger budget. In fact, with a bigger budget, the better computer graphics could only have made the film less enjoyable. My reason for saying this is this movie was (to me, anyway) very obviously meant to convey a cartoonish feel. Do you think when Tex Avery did his stuff he worried about how realistic it looked? "Terror Toons" was not meant to wow anyone, I'm sure, but it was ambitious and was done a lot better than it could have been. I understand that part of being a critic is criticizing, but one thing I feel I learned early on is that there is a difference between worthless crap and when someone was at least trying to do something nifty and put their heart into it. In order for one to truly appreciate movies like "Terror Toons", one needs to take into consideration, in addition to this, the simple fact of what they did right. I love "Terror Toons" and found it to be an entertaining surprise. For open-minded cheezy-horror fans, I would recommend this with, at the very least, a nine on a scale of ten.

I just watched Terror Toons, and here's my review of it. The plot is nothing special, of course. In this kind of movie, it's the execution of that plot that makes it worthwhile. So is it worthwhile? Some yes, some no.

The bad stuff: the acting, dialog, and the human characters. None of them are very memorable except for the main characters' mother, who is played by a drag queen[!] and who in one scene complains about her husband getting drunk at a wedding and moonwalking into the cake. That got a small chuckle out of me. Every other person is just dull; played by horrible-to-barely-mediocre actors spouting clumsy, cliched slasher-flick dialog.

The good: the villains, the gore/special effects, and the production design. This is one of the better looking, more ambitious direct-to-video horror quickies I've seen. Dr. Carnage and his monster-monkey assistant Max are appropriately freaky, if not actually scary, and they take great pleasure in creatively carving up the cast of disposable characters with exagerrated cartoon weapons; think Itchy and Scratchy, but live-action. The music/soundtrack accentuates this. It's very inspired by Beetlejuice and goofy sound effects are used as a jarring accompanyment to the murders. The sets are very skewed and funhouse-like, with bright colors and weird props; effective use of lighting creates a scary-funhouse kind of atmosphere.

The bottom line: you've got to see this movie once to experience it, but repeated viewings are not essential, in my opinion. It's an acceptable drive-in-style slasher flick with some minor innovations, nothing more.

WOw, this movie sucks. I rented it knowing it was gonna suck but I had no idea it would be this bad... From the opening scene, you know this is gonna suck. The opening scene is fake, funny, stupid, horrible all at the same time. I find it funny how horrible this film is, yet it is very entertaining. The gore is alright, not all of it looks as fake as it does in the first scene, some of it looks okay. Most of the special effects are bad, but not all of it. Some very fake CGI in here, and the Terror Toons don't look like cartoons. The kills are okay, some of them funny, some of them just...bad. I still find it entertaining, I really enjoy this movie. Must see for any fans of really, really BAD movies!

Terror Toons, starring porn icon Lizzie Borden and Beverly Lynne, has a bad porn feel to it, only without the titillating sex and nudity. And cohesive plot.

Candy and Cindy are sisters left home for the night when their dad and "mom" leave for a wedding. Cindy receives a DVD called Terror Toons, which unleashes supposed cartoon characters Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin.

I'll give Beverly Lynne and Kelly Liu credit, they at least try to do a halfway decent job, but they are let down by their director and the special effects department. Joe Castro doesn't so much film as he just happens to keep a camera in the room as his story unfolds. The special effects would be laughable if they weren't so nauseating...not nauseating in the sense of "ooh, brains" but in the sense of "ooh, special effects goop."

It took one person to come up with the story, and three to come up with the script. What exactly took three people? The tired cartoon characters running through doors in a hallway? The cop who likes donuts? Strip Ouija?

This is a horrible, hateful little movie that will make you wonder about humanity's capacity to come together and put together something so unbelievably awfully. Stay away from it.