#36 Hobgoblins (Wes)

Hobgoblins

It was bad movie time and for once I was actually looking forward to watching our movie. After Pumaman (see here), the Hobgoblins episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is definitely one of my most watched, so it was an exciting prospect to watch the movie without the riffing. Was it as fun to watch without Mike and the bots? Or was I in for more pain and anguish than I expected?

The world’s oldest security guard, Mr. McCreedy (Jeffery Culver), works in an old film studio, that for some reason has a locked room which contains several hobgoblins. These hobgoblins can make a person’s fantasies come true, and then kill them using these fantasies, and after a trainee security guard is killed in the room whilst having the fantasy of being the universes worst rock star, Dennis is forced to find another recruit. He employs Kevin (Tom Bartlett) who seems to think that guarding a film lot will impress his girlfriend Amy (Paige Sullivan). She however seems embarrassed that he can’t beat her friend Daphne’s (Kelley Palmer) army cadet boyfriend Nick (Billy Frank) in a rake fight! (Seriously. A fight with rakes). Kevin doesn’t fare much better at work either, as on his second day on the job he accidentally releases the hobgoblins into the world. By some amazing co-incidence they go straight to Kevin’s house and start to make his friends fantasies come true. Amy becomes a stripper, Nick a commando and phone sex-line obsessed Kyle (Steven Boggs) gets a girlfriend. Will their fantasies consume them? Will Kyle at least get laid before he dies? Will Mr Mcready find out who the missed call was from at the beginning of the movie?

When you see that a films director is also its writer, producer, editor and cinematographer you can usually assume that unless that person is very talented then it’s usually a really bad idea. The sort of bad idea that if a similar situation was to occur with someone who had a much bigger budget, it could easily end up with the creation of cinema’s most hated character and the tarnishing of one of Hollywood’s most beloved trilogies. To be fair to Rick Sloane, he does seem to have realised how much of a mess he made of Hobgoblins (unlike some other directors) and actually submitted the movie to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 himself though.

Hobgoblins was released in a time when using small puppets in horror movies was kind of popular. Obviously Gremlins being the most well known and popular, but around the same time there was also Critters, Ghoulies, Munchies, Puppet Master and Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist. However the puppets in Hobgoblins are so badly done they even make Zelda look like a real person.

At one point in the movie, the Hobgoblins are perched (stuck down with gaffer tape at best) precariously on a golf buggy, wobbling so much that they just look like oversized dashboard ornaments that are in are a very real danger of falling over, and this is where you really get to see how bad they are as puppets. Rather than the beautifully crafted Gremlins or Crites, the hobgoblins are so bad they make Elmer from Brain Damage look as though he was made in the Jim Henson Workshop. I’ve seen more convincing puppets worn on the fingers of five year olds.

The humans in this movie are if anything even less convincing than the hobgoblins. At this point in the list, I expect the level of acting to be as bad as someone with a hangover calling in sick to work, but the acting in this is sticks out as being particularly bad. If you’ve watched Troll 2 (see here), with its strange idea of using people auditioning to be extras as actors, then this reminded me of that. The cast lack talent, but they do have the enthusiasm of those who can’t quite understand how they got there, but will do their best no matter how incompetent they are. They’re like the middle management of the acting world.

 

The least convincing moment in all of this though, is the pointless, and unbelievably lame rake fight scene between Kevin and Nick. It’s less of a fight, than a game of Pattycake, played with a couple of rakes (with added synth effects added just out of time to the actual clash of wood). It’s so overly long and pointless it brings to mind the fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David in They Live, but without either the fun or fight choreography that made that scene hugely enjoyable. In fact it’s so bad it actually makes the fight scene between Captain Kirk and the alien Gorn in the Star Trek episode "Arena" look exciting and well choreographed.

The story makes less sense than the Americans quarantine policy in 28 Weeks Later (a feat that seemed impossible). There are these supposedly extremely dangerous creatures in a warehouse, that’s guarded by a security guard so old and inept he was probably the person who didn’t put a grate over the thermal exhaust ports on the original Death Star (which would also explain how he ended in his dead end job). All he has to do is keep one door and one metal cage locked, and make sure that nobody else working alongside him has access to the keys, and then there would be no monster breakouts. Instead he seems to think that not letting his young co-workers know that the vault exists, let alone that they shouldn’t ever open the doors, is a good idea. Hasn’t this man ever heard of curiosity? Why not just tell them that there are barrels of toxic waste behind the door and that opening it could lead to them getting some form of erectile dysfunction? I’m pretty sure that would be an excellent way of not having them open the door.

Also the hobgoblins seem to be focused on killing a few horny teenagers, that they miss the opportunity to actually cause any real havoc. Why don’t they attempt to make the fantasies of the bikers, punks and other patrons of Club Scum (where Amy goes to strip) come true? Surely someone in that whole crowd wants to do something more than get laid, or be a Poundstore Rambo? I’m not saying that these are bad things to dream about, but the hobgoblins really seem to have been set loose in America’s least ambitious city.

So as I said, before watching this I very familiar with this movie, and even without the MST3K crew it’s definitely in the so bad it’s good category.  Like Troll 2 and Plan 9 From Outer Space (see here) this movie is much maligned, but like them, its faults make it a hugely entertaining and charming movie. Hobgoblins is definitely a movie that I would recommend to any bad movie lover. So stop being a snobgoblin, open your mind and give it a watch!