Terror Toons

I just watched Terror Toons, and here's my review of it. The plot is nothing special, of course. In this kind of movie, it's the execution of that plot that makes it worthwhile. So is it worthwhile? Some yes, some no.

The bad stuff: the acting, dialog, and the human characters. None of them are very memorable except for the main characters' mother, who is played by a drag queen[!] and who in one scene complains about her husband getting drunk at a wedding and moonwalking into the cake. That got a small chuckle out of me. Every other person is just dull; played by horrible-to-barely-mediocre actors spouting clumsy, cliched slasher-flick dialog.

The good: the villains, the gore/special effects, and the production design. This is one of the better looking, more ambitious direct-to-video horror quickies I've seen. Dr. Carnage and his monster-monkey assistant Max are appropriately freaky, if not actually scary, and they take great pleasure in creatively carving up the cast of disposable characters with exagerrated cartoon weapons; think Itchy and Scratchy, but live-action. The music/soundtrack accentuates this. It's very inspired by Beetlejuice and goofy sound effects are used as a jarring accompanyment to the murders. The sets are very skewed and funhouse-like, with bright colors and weird props; effective use of lighting creates a scary-funhouse kind of atmosphere.

The bottom line: you've got to see this movie once to experience it, but repeated viewings are not essential, in my opinion. It's an acceptable drive-in-style slasher flick with some minor innovations, nothing more.

I seem to have had the exact opposite reaction to the movie. I knew that I wasn't renting "Schindler's List" when I picked it up, and the movie didn't disappoint. While there are plenty of rough edges to the movie, it was inventive enough for me to keep my hands off the scan button and watch it. People looking for a little no-brainer diversion might want to check it out.

This movie is horrible. Not only is it not worth your time to sit and watch it, it is torture to watch. My brother was watching it and I happened to be in the same room while he was watching it and there is one word I would use to describe this movie: TRASH! The acting is terrible, the script is crap, the special effects are non existent. This is not even a movie, it's a waste of a tape, it's a sad excuse for something to be considered a so called movie. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT WATCH THIS, IT'S NOT WORTH IT! The only way I would suggest watching this is if you would like to torture yourself, if you would like to torture yourself then by all means watch this movie. I don't even think anyone who was high could appreciate this movie, in fact I think this movie might drive people to get high. Well anyway if your looking for a good movie to rent at the video store rent anything other than this, believe me you'll be sorry if you rent this.

While their parents are away, blonde teen sisters Cindy (Beverly Lynn) and Candy (Lizzie Borden) will play. Cindy invites a female friend and two guys over for pizza, wine coolers and a game of 'strip Ouija board.' The more childish Candy pops in a 'Terror Toons' DVD (which she received anonymously in the mail…from hell!) and ends up unleashing two of the maniacal lead characters (Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin). The deadly duo then proceeds to kill everyone off in gory, cartoonish ways.

There are a lot of mediocre gore FX (spine ripped out of back, brain surgery, body sawed in half…), mediocre to bad performances and some fun/silly touches (including scenes from the DVD and another set in hell). It's cheesy alright (and the ending is just terrible), but considering the fact it was done on a budget of '2300' dollars and was filmed in 3 days, it's a little more imaginative, colorful and ambitious than you might expect, suggesting the director may do good work with a higher budget.

The Full Moon video release (which received a rather wide circulation at Blockbuster) has cast and crew interviews, outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage at the end.

While perusing the racks of my local Blockbuster, my friends and I were set on "Adaptation," the intelligent movie with Nick Cage. But then I saw "Terror Toons" on the shelf and we just had to get it, being in a silly mood.

The film (or video, I should say, since the movie is actually shot on video, NOT on film), which was shot in three days on a budget of $2300, was entertaining, if anything. The actors, who were quite obviously porn stars attempting to make a legitimate movie, were pretty awful; the special effects were creative, although visually unappealing and unnecessarily gory; the storyline...well...we'll just say the storyline is centered around cartoon characters who murder people. But with their acting skills, they deserve to be murdered.

Special cameos by the Devil create some weird morality issues, but by the time you get to the end, you'll be laughing too hard to pay attention.

If you're looking for a serious horror flick, then this one (which looks as though it was shot in someone's basement) is not what you're looking for. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is a comedy.