Hideous!

Here is the thing. You have to enjoy cheesy horror movies. To be delighted by the bizarre also helps. Hideous! is a weird movie involving collectable biological oddities preserved (mostly) in formaldehyde, a girl band in a cage rocking out, and a mutant born of noxious waste hell-bent on getting revenge or eating people or something. A quirky movie that entertained me to no end just by it's amusing oddness. The topless bandit didn't hurt either. If you like Full Moon Pictures, you will probably like this one. If the Puppet Master or Subspecies movies didn't do anything for you, then you should probably skip it. But, if you are ready to take a leap of faith and/or have a backup video at the ready, get a copy and set back on the couch for a bizarre evening.

Ok, with a title like HIDEOUS! you know right off-the-bat that the

filmmakers weren't out to win any Oscars with this offering.

Surprisingly though, what director Charles Band and his co-horts

at Full Moon Pictures do accomplish is a much better B-movie

than one might expect.



The plot is simple yet completely deranged: a "biological oddities

broker", Belinda Yost (Tracy May), and her two, wealthy, high-profile

collector clients, Napolean Lazar (Mel Johnson Jr.) and Dr. Lorca

(Michael Citriniti), square off against one another over a deformed

specimen found at a local sewer filtration plant. One has his half- naked, gorilla-mask wearing assistant Sheila (Jaqueline Lovell)

steal it while the other hires a P.I., Det. Kantor (Gerard O' Donnell)

to track it down. Everyone winds up in a strange, Transylvanian

castlesque mansion fighting one another until, lo-and-behold,

monsters come to life and all hell breaks loose!



Granted the story isn't great, or barely even good, but the film does

manage to shine in a few areas. The cinematography, despite

what is obviously constructed on a reduced budget, is top-notch.

The film is also well-directed, given the poor material with which it

contends. Well paced and shot. And some of the portrayals and

acting/actors are much better than what one might encounter in

similar features and situations; on one end, fine performances are

given by Lovell (who is very easy on the eyes, I might add), May and

O'Donnell (O'Donnell should be making "real" pictures), but then

we have to contend with over-indulgent, ham from Citriniti,

Johnson Jr. and Rhonda Griffin. It comes out even I suppose.



But the most disappointing aspect of HIDEOUS! by far has to be

the creature effects. They are just plain awful. The deformed

monstrosities look more like skinned Muppets, yet with 50 times

less articulation. They can barely move, mutter incessantly, run

around oozing goo and bring the possibilities of the picture down

quite considerably. And the "sex-scene" is too unbelievably stupid

to describe, but is a must-see! Yes, HIDEOUS! is meant to have a

comic undertone for certain, but chances are the viewer won't be

laughing "with" the makers of this ugly nugget.



5/10. This all could have been avoided if they'd used

Tupperware...

"Hideous" is the most professional Full Moon film on the surface. Its beautifully shot, very well-cast and makes use of an epic and atmospheric locale. But unfortunately it features one of the driest, most predictable and uneventful scripts. Charles Band directs in his usual cheapo style with loads of longwinded, faux-intellectual dialogue, sloooooow scenes where nothing happens and loads of stale or over-the-top acting. The incredible production value of this film should've been given to a Puppet Master film. Puppet Master 3 shows what a good budget can do for a Full Moon movie, but that film also succeeded because had Band his hands off artistically.

This is a decent watch if you want to see great low-budget cinematography or a 1940s style "old dark house" story redone in the 1990s. But its not entertaining enough or weird enough for the average audience.

This is not a real review, it should be understood more as a collection of impressions on the film.

At the basis of this film there is clearly a great desire to make a light comedy with hideous out-of-this-world creatures that create quite a bit of disgust, but in any case it is a comedy and therefore makes you laugh in many parts, especially due to the absolute absurdity of the majority of the scenes which are exaggerated on purpose to generate hilarity in the viewer. So as a horror it is completely to be thrown away but as a comedy it is really cute and entertaining and therefore in my opinion it is a bit underrated, that is, its rating is too low because even if the film is not a masterpiece it still deserves something just to be entertained and funny .

Laughable, dull, overly dramatic script. Flat, one dimensional characters. The most unrealistic dialogue. People don't really talk this...imbecile! Elvina--I know she is supposed to be a dim witted blonde, but she is bad actress and cannot even act stupid. The Castle looked very good, but it is just a prop, at least the outside. Why this needed to be filmed in Romania, I will never know. The best part about this movie was putting a very attractive woman in a gorilla mask, and having her walk around in the snow topless in booty shorts w/ a gun--That is classic.

3 out of 10