Review of Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993) by Timothy S — 05 Oct 2014

Charles Band seemingly envisioned himself as something of the Roger Corman of the 1990's, and the guy sure made a lot of movies that were on the thrifty side. During his reign over Full Moon, he never made a cheaper movie than "Dollman VS. Demonic Toys", which you can barely even call a movie.

It runs sixty-four minutes, with four minutes of credits at both ends, and in true Corman fashion, a god deal of the rest of this is flashbacks to three others films with plenty of footage to pad out the already flimsy running time. There's honestly about forty minutes of new footage here, and most of that was shot for other films and just not used until now. The title carefully paints the story, which is essentially a finale to a movie that doesn't exist, which explains why they needed all of that padding.

Tim Thomerson's painfully serious performance was meant to be a goof, but it's just not funny. In fact, none of this is any fun at all. The Dollman special effects are shockingly good for a film of such meager means, as the sets are impressive. The problem with the effects lies with the possessed toys, which aren't in the least bit convincing. The giant baby is the only one with any lines or a personality, and he talks in throwaway one-liners that aren't funny either. Half the time you can't understand what he's saying anyway so it doesn't matter much.

And despite the brief run time, the film is quite boring, mostly because you're watching clips from movies you've already seen (in my case anyway) and you didn't ever want to see them again. "Dollman VS. Demonic Toys" is the worst kind of filmmaking, lazy and only existing to make a quick buck. Considering how little money and effort he put into this one, I'm sure Band made a pretty penny on this one. But it sure cost him a lot of integrity.