907-Hobgoblins

Film Year:  1988

Genre:  Comedy, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy

Director:  Rick Sloane

Starring:  Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs, Kelley Palmer, Billy Frank, Tamara Clatterbuck, Duane Whitiker, Jeffrey Culver

MST Season:  9

The Movie

Comedic low budget sleaze was a hot ticket in the 80's, where you knew your movie probably wouldn't good enough to be taken seriously in whatever genre you're attempting, so you make it with so much of your tongue planted firmly in cheek that you can claim to be a "parody."  This use of the "parody" sign was usually just a mask for lack of budget, time, or, in some cases, talent.  This became the entire business model of Troma Entertainment, while some filmmakers, such as Jim Wynorski, built an entire career on it that continues to this day, where it's more of an excuse for soft core pornography than for any sort of non-naked entertainment value.

Enter Rick Sloane, a young director who got his start making films of this ilk, having films like Blood Theater, The Visitants, and Vice Academy under his belt (the latter would be his signature franchise, spawning five sequels, all directed by Sloane).  Hobgoblins came out at a time when there were a bunch of little humanoid-critter-terrorizing-people movies, such as Gremlins, Critters, Ghoulies, Munchies, Newsies, and whatever.  Sloane puts together a bunch of green puppets and makes one of his own, with his signature crass humor and low budget.

Hobgoblins is the tale of Kevin, a teenager who is taken on as a security guard at a movie studio.  The elder guard, Mr. McCreedy, hides a dark secret.  Many years ago a space ship landed in the lot, which carried several creatures from space called "Hobgoblins," that can make your fantasy come true.  They can also pervert your fantasy into killing you for their own amusement.  McCreedy trapped the Hobgoblins in a vault many years prior and Kevin accidentally unleashes them once again.  It's up to Kevin and his friends to track down the Hobgoblins and return them to the vault.

The film attempts a sort of Monkey's Paw "be careful what you wish for" narrative, but it doesn't quite get there.  The Hobgoblins like to turn people's fantasies against them, but it's rarely in a creative or interesting way.  One character fantasizes about going "all the way" with a phone sex hotline worker, to which she appears of course, then tries to kill him by pushing his car off a cliff.  I mean, I guess that's a play on deadly fantasy, but it's not a huge sell on this idea.  Then there are fantasies that are just inane, such as an army veteran who finally makes it home to his girlfriend and he fantasizes about his superior making him toss grenades in a nightclub?  Okay...sure.  There are other campy horror movies that do this in more creative ways.  Wishmaster for example, which is not a great movie, but does more with the idea than Hobgoblins does.

If Hobgoblins has anything going for it, it's that Rick Sloane keeps telling the story through an absurdist lens.  Everything looks ridiculous.  The actors all act ridiculous.  The costume design is ridiculous.  The Hobgoblin puppets are ridiculous.  Everything is exaggerated to comedic effect.  Whether or not it's "funny" is where Hobgoblins could either succeed or fail.  I think Hobgoblins had been put into the hands of stronger comedic talent, even with the exact same budget and resources, this movie could have been more amusing.  Its jokes are groaners, its delivery is poor, and it seems like its primary laugh is how over the top it is.  That's kind of amusing for a few minutes, but it gets cumbersome if you don't have anything to prop it up.

But there is some sort of "Watching cable at 3 AM" sort of appeal to the movie, where if you were thirteen in the mid-'90s and stumbled upon this dumb thing playing on USA or TNT or whatever and it's playing after some low-rent National Lampoon movie or something, then you might stick with the stupidity you're watching and guffaw "Uhhuhhuh...that van's rocking...huhhuh...they're DOING IT..."  Those who have never lived through times like that will likely be left lost by the movie.

The Episode

"Bobo.  Brain Guy.  Get.....THE movie."

Pearl has been saving a movie.  One for a special rainy day for when Mike and the Bots have really pissed her off.  Mike, Crow, and Servo won't stop jumping on her new couch, which is just enough to send her over the edge.  Opening a toxic container, she pulls out today's little gem.

This little intro marks Hobgoblins in a special class, a movie so bad that even the Mads note it as possibly being too nefarious for even their purposes.  This puts Hobgoblins in that exclusive bracket with Castle of Fu Manchu and "Manos" The Hands of Fate, bringing fierce expectations.  Fu Manchu was borderline nonsensical, while Manos was startlingly amateurish to the point that it made the viewer uneasy that they were watching it (if only because that movie comes off like watching it is like watching the cursed video tape from The Ring).  Is Hobgoblins worthy of such depiction?  Personally, I've seen enough movies like Hobgoblins to know it's not unique, but if this type of filmmaking were new to you, then perhaps this bizarre little rabbit hole of filmmaking stupidity will seem startling.  Is Hobgoblins a "fine" example of this type of film?  Probably not.  If anything there is less creativity with its low resources than other examples of this type of cheap genre picture.  Still, unlike Invasion of the Neptune Men, I don't fully think the reputation of being a brutal movie in this instance is unwarranted.  I imagine for most, this is one of the most painful films that has ever been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

A good portion of the riff features Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo cowering in fear of the movie, though that seems to be mostly a gag used to fill out the opening credits of the film, which is a fairly generic green-lettering-against-a-black-backdrop-while-playing-ominous-music affair.  Crow and Servo try to leave the theater in tears, and it's up to Mike to drag them back into the theater.  He isn't going to watch this movie alone, dammit!  When it comes to the actual movie, Hobgoblins is a comedy, which is tricky to comment on.  One thing they latch onto in the film is that very few people in this movie act like real people (everyone is a cartoon character to some extent), so even if they're comedic they're easy to make fun of.  They take each character's defining personality trait (Kevin's a whiner, Daphne's a slut, ect.) emphasize them in ways that are much funnier than what the movie has to offer.  Old Man McCreedy gets quite a bit of the funniest ribbing, which portray him as more of a senile old man ("Oh, why did Hoover lose!").

But the riffing highlight is a musical number during the Club Scum sequence, where the band called the Fontanelles is playing a song called Kiss Kicker 99, but the entire presentation of it is so incoherent and the lyrics are so nonsense anyway (I've looked them up and yeesh) that there is really nothing else for Mike and the Bots to do except project onto it.  And believe me, the riffs make this song much better than it actually is, like a section where they cover it like they're singing out the menu to the bar.  They also try to figure out what the title lyrics are to the song (to be fair, the band is switching back and forth between "Kiss Kicker" and "Boot Licker," so it's easy to get lost in what they're singing).  They go back and forth between such amusing possibilities like "Kid Snickers" or "Iced Chicken" before finally settling on the idea that they're actually singing "Fish Picker."

In addition to Mike and the Bots jumping on Pearl's couch, the host segments are highlighted by a delightful segment where Mike and his cybernetic companions try to escape from having to watch the end of the movie, by replacing themselves with cardboard cutouts and pre-recorded dialogue ("Boy...this sure is a bad movie, won't you?").  This tricks Pearl momentarily until they break down.  Wonderful sketch.  The other sketches don't impress me as much.  I understand Crow's documentary on Women being a jab at urban legend documentaries, but it's just such a strange idea that doesn't really serve a purpose.  The Hobgoblins Hotline probably had potential, but I don't think Bobo's call was quite the payoff it deserved.  The opener and closers are more amusing.  While I think the "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" sketch is a bit weird, there are some good laughs there.  And I like Servo's turn as the Terminator at the end.

How bad Hobgoblins actually is tends to be a bit hyperbolic, but for a select certain group of viewers, this movie will undoubtedly one of the worst things they've ever been subjected to, so I'll give it a pass.  One think I will agree on is that the anguished terror that Mike and the Bots have for this movie helps propel Hobgoblins into an episode that is very funny, and it makes the episode better than it probably would have been without it.  I don't think this episode is Manos-level memorable, but it's a solid and reliable episode to pop in to make you laugh like a goon.

Good

The DVD

Hobgoblins made our fantasies come to life when Rhino released it as a part of their Volume 8 collection.  Audio and video were both pretty good, but there were no bonus features.

Shout Factory re-released the Volume 8 set under their own label many years later, with a transfer that was virtually identical.  However this edition included an eighteen minute featurette called Hobgoblins Revisited, which was originally released on the Hobgoblins blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.  This is mostly an interview with writer/director Rick Sloane, who discusses his idea for the film and the production of it.  Sloane even leads a camera crew around filming locations for the movie.  Sloane also clears the air about the film's use on the series, in which he was previously rumored to have personally requested the film's use on the show.  It turns out that it was a half-truth, as he was licensing his Vice Academy films for the USA network at the time, while the company also owned the Sci-Fi Channel, which was airing MST.  Someone made a request to Sloane as to whether he had any sci-fi/horror movies in his filmography that they could use on the show, and he offered them a few to choose from.  He assumed they would have wanted a different film called The Visitants, but it turned out the people at Best Brains Inc. were much more interested in Hobgoblins.  He claims he enjoyed the episode, but believes the "Interview with Rick Sloane" that closed it was "a little mean."

This disc also includes a trailer to the film.