Demonic Toys

A rubber-monster werewolf busts through a cardboard door, while a stop-motion toy soldier (dressed curiously like a nutcracker, except without the hinged jaw) helps a female cop who is crawling across the floor in shock. It's a mostly tight actioner with some good special effects, albeit dated by today's standards.

To back up: Demonic Toys is a straight-to-video horror comedy about a woman cop and her partner (who becomes an eyeless zombie, but I probably shouldn't give that away), one of whom becomes the vessel for a demon that wants to come back to the world from the place where he's been imprisoned, underground, beneath a toy factory. The toys come to life, including a clown with twisty tentacle arms that strangles and bites, and a foul-talking "baby" that has a sort of rotted face. Three little ghost girls on tricycles seem somewhat borrowed from The Shining.

There's an excessive amount of profanity, and a cool opening scene where the tilted camera moves through a surrealistic little room with a bunch of grandfather clocks with swinging pendulums, and two little boys playing cards, one of whom is possessed by a very adult-talking demon.

The movie kicks off like any other crime actioner of the era—two undercover cops, including Kate (Tracy Scoggins), the one pregnant with the demon (or something), botching a weapons sale from a couple of thuggish hoods (Barry Lynch and Michael Russo). Somehow, they all get trapped in the demonic toy factory, but Kate's partner Matt (Michael Weston) gets killed, and a fried chicken delivery guy, Mark Wayne (Bentley Mitchum), gets thrown into the mix, along with a morbidly obese security guard, Charneski (Pete Schrum). There's a nice amount of bloody good special effects here and there, but the really good stuff is kind of covered up by extreme close-ups (go figure), and the average viewer may well wonder why a movie called Demonic Toys seems to feature such a scant selection of them.

What the film does have is a devilish Devil who decides he's going to rape the female cop so he can impregnate her with himself, Mia Farrow style. But before that, he wanders around in the form of a little boy with a dubbed, creepy adult demon voice. I don't have much more to say here, as the film is a little thin on nuanced intellectual aspects to be analyzed. And I don't think whatever subtext may be present here is really all that relevant. (In fact, one doesn't strike me as being apparent.)

The movie has something of a slapdash, haphazard feel.

Is it fun? Sure. Is it a cinematic milestone? Do you even have to ask?

The final thing I’ll say is that the toys do have some pretty cool comic book villain names, like "Jack Attack" and "Baby Oopsy Daisy." I think that’s fairly amusing, although I only found out about it because of Wikipedia, that unimpeachable and always 100 percent accurate, not to mention COMPLETELY unbiased source.

Okay, there might be some sarcasm there. I've been known to toy with my readers (all two of them). Little devil that I am.

This film comes from an era when you could rent movies like this in a plastic cartridge from a store packed with similar dreck. It’s not trying to be anything more than it is, and that's exactly what makes it so amusing. Demonic Toys is a trashy, entertaining ride filled with cheesy effects, over-the-top performances, and an abundance of absurdity. While it may not hold up as a groundbreaking cinematic work, it captures the spirit of its time—just a little bit sleazy, a whole lot of fun, and completely unapologetic about it. If you're in the mood for a wild, retro romp through '90s horror comedy, Demonic Toys delivers in its own bizarre, no-frills way.

Directed by Peter Manoogian. Written by David S. Goyer. Produced by Charles Band.

Demonic Toys

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My book: Cult Films and Midnight Movies: From High Art to Low Trash Volume 1.

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