Terror Toons

While perusing the racks of my local Blockbuster, my friends and I were set on "Adaptation," the intelligent movie with Nick Cage. But then I saw "Terror Toons" on the shelf and we just had to get it, being in a silly mood.

The film (or video, I should say, since the movie is actually shot on video, NOT on film), which was shot in three days on a budget of $2300, was entertaining, if anything. The actors, who were quite obviously porn stars attempting to make a legitimate movie, were pretty awful; the special effects were creative, although visually unappealing and unnecessarily gory; the storyline...well...we'll just say the storyline is centered around cartoon characters who murder people. But with their acting skills, they deserve to be murdered.

Special cameos by the Devil create some weird morality issues, but by the time you get to the end, you'll be laughing too hard to pay attention.

If you're looking for a serious horror flick, then this one (which looks as though it was shot in someone's basement) is not what you're looking for. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is a comedy.

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.

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.

Unbearable. I don't even know where to begin on this other than saying that this was, by far, the worst movie I personally have ever seen.

For one, it was obvious that Candy was supposed to be around the age of 7 or 8, but was played by a porn star of about 25. What made this even worse was the fact that the camera shot on her obviously fake breasts was too long to even allow the viewer to even consider her being under the age of 10.

The rest of the cast, characters probably set around the age of anywhere from 17 - 19, should either be preparing for their first cooperate job or an early pre-metapause.

Before I even watched the film, I watched the trailer for Terror Toons, behind the scenes of Terror Toons and Interviews with the cast and crew.

From the trailer, I was disappointed the minute the cartoonish villains made their appearance. I had seen the case to this 'movie' in my local Blockbuster and from reading the information I imagined the 'house party' being a large group of 15 or more people being terrorized by creatures the size of your standard puppet. When I saw the life-sized insult to horror that was Doctor Carnage and Max Assassin and the four person party I was shocked at how wrong I was.

During the interviews with the actors and crew members, I could come to the conclusion that this movie would be filth. When interviewing the actor who played Eddie on what his most memorable scene was for him he couldn't even remember the two monsters who not only terrorized the four-some of 'teens' but the viewers as well. Then when the actress who played Amy was asked what she thought when she was told the movie would be shot in 3 days (God Save Us!) she said 'I'm not very good at memorizing lines and saying them so I was shocked!' all I could think was, 'So, she's basically telling us she's a terrible actress then?' And you don't know how right I was.

And, what was up with the random animated animals just popping up from the corner of the screen through out the movie? Not to mention the super hero! My god and what was with the ending?

I think that the house, though very cool, only added to the monstrosity of the movie. The vibrantly colored walls, covered in flames or stars, just made it look like a cheap movie that was shot to serve as a movie a character would watch in a major budget movie.

The only thing that was even remotely amusing about his movie was the mother of the two girls played by a man in drag.

From start to finish, this so called film was filled with bad acting, bad directing, bad writing and all around just a bad movie. At one point in the movie I was hoping that Max Assassin and Doctor Carnage would break into a mad, 'comedic' way and do away with me.

I let four weeks and four trips to Blockbuster go by before I decided on renting this movie and wish I would have forgotten all about it.

I can sum up everything wrong with this movie in one simple phrase. 'There were only two things wrong with this movie… The camera lens was off and the sound was on'

Having said all of this I am going to allow myself to be an immensely huge walking contradiction. Despite Terror Toons', and it REALLY was a terror, horrid EVERYTHING, if I do see that my local Blockbuster does have a copy of Terror Toons: The Sick And Silly Show (the highly unanticipated sequel) I just might rent it. I do believe that people can learn from their mistakes and not hire porn stars or 30 year olds to play teenagers in a horror movie.

Though the movie did do a number on my mind and eyes (God, I hope I can forget about this movie someday) I think it did even more of a number on the actors and crew members even more. Just think… these poor people with have to live with the fact that this movie is on the resumes… forever.

2/10 --- The drag queen really saved them on this one.

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.