“Pop goes the weasel!”

Justin’s rating: Toy catalogues had none of these things back in the ’90s

Justin’s review: Decades before the MCU began weaving together an expensive tapestry of films into a shared world, Full Moon was blowing minds by doing the same thing with not two but three of its original properties. In 1993, Charles Band’s studio took a trio of its quirky B-movies and decided to mash them together for a wild 64-minute crossover known as Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.

With barely an hour runtime, we’ve got to get right to the action. Dollman’s Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson) is hitchhiking across country — tough when you’re a foot tall — to visit Bad Channels’ Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), who got shrunk down to fun size during that movie and needs some cheering up.

The unlikely pint-sized pair get enlisted by Demonic Toys’ Judith (Tracy Scoggins) to help her squash the evil playthings that have taken over a warehouse. The toys have a lazer-shooting robot, a cackling jack-in-the-box, a foul-mouthed talking baby doll, and a military action figure with a grudge against humanity.

Honestly, the worst part of the film is the nonstop nasty chatter by Baby Oopsie, who’s always trying to get a rise out of the humans. It’s just a little too much at times.

Written by David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, The Dark Knight), Dollman vs. Demonic Toys isn’t concerned with anything other than having a good time with a crazy crossover. There are some great plus-sized sets (think Honey I Shrunk the Kids) to make Brick and Ginger look tiny, and the homicidal toys are just as creepy as they were in Child’s Play and Small Soldiers.

Alas, Brick and Ginger don’t have a lot of time to form a rapport here as our tiny power couple. Thomerson does the same growly “I wear sunglasses at night” anti-hero bit that served him well through the Trancers series, and Behr is just there to be his eye candy.

It’s also hard to escape the fact that Full Moon cheaped out with a half-movie here — shorter if you take out the several “flashbacks” to the other movies that fed into this. And that’s a shame, because this one hour is kind of terrific if you’re a lover of cheesy genre B-movies. Plus, it gives fans of all three of the aforementioned films a semi-sequel to each.*

The real attraction here are the sets and scaling, allowing us to believe that we’ve got a couple of people the same size as all of these murder-toys. Full Moon put in some real effort here to create something you simply don’t see every day, and it was a blast to watch Brick take on some foes his size with his super-powered handgun.

With a film this short and snappy, what do you have to lose? This might even be a good entry point to the Full Moon universe if you’ve ever been curious about what these nutty people created in their dream factories.

*This would be the end of the road for both Dollman and Bad Channels, but Demonic Toys came back in the 2000s for another crossover (with the Puppet Master series) and a full sequel.

Intermission!

• It’s hard to hitchhike when you’re a foot tall
• This is the longest opening credit sequence for a move that’s an hour long
• Transients love talking to random objects at great length
• “You’re done officer!” “Not yet.”
• Songs by Quiet Riot. Come on feel the noise!
• The toys have the power to make bodies and blood disappear?
• “You’re letting the toys win!” is not the compelling argument that you think it is
• Why’s Nurse Ginger stuck on a kitchen counter? And where’d she get all the outfits?
• Stop motion spider! “Exterminator’s here. Don’t worry, you’re not dreaming.”
• “Nightmares come in all sizes.”
• The reporter is not a good actor in the least
• Well, you just murdered a security guard, that’s not going to look good on your resume
• You went into action in high heels?
• They gave a dead baby to trick or treaters to bury?
• Using a remote controlled truck to pull Dollman’s arms out of his socket