IMDb Bottom 100 Review – Number 55 Hobgoblins

It's back to square one with this one, folks. A cheap knock off version of a popular film, featuring abysmal acting, shitty props and no direction at all is the Bottom 100 stable we know and love. This is a poor man's version of Gremlins, and the costume/set design in here gives Troll 2 a run for it's money as far as making the viewed kick and scream in anguish. Everything blows about this movie and I hated it viciously. Yes! It's good to know that I'm not completely loopy for enjoying one of these movies. Please, if you could spare a moment, join with me in absolutely loathing the shit out of...

This fucking guy. Right out of boot camp in the stupidest campest vehicle and flier shades. Good god. 

Hobgoblins (1988)

This movie gold old fashioned sucks. There are literally no redeeming qualities about this movie. Nothing that makes me go “this wasn't a complete waste of time”. It really completely was. It was kind of like the time I stepped on a nail only I didn't have some angry nurse give me a tetanus shot after this movie ended. I just sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating ways of restoring my lost brain cells. I decided to wait a few days in writing this review, so perhaps some of the details in the movie would have faded from my mind, because putting words to my feelings immediately following the viewing of Hobgoblins could've proved absolutely dire. It was boring and I was irritated at people making stuff like that thinking it was in any way good. I haven't had that particular feeling since... hmm well I guess Troll 2 (I know right. That fucking movie haunts me to this day) was the first and best example of people making a movie thinking it was super amazing, when really it was anything but. But alas I'm veering off path here. Let's take a look at the super simple plot to this piece of shit.

I'll just show one picture of these fucking puppets. It's that bad. I don't want to ruin your lives too.

Basically this is an 'aliens crash on earth and wreak havoc' story. But it's more intricate than just that, amazingly enough. A concept The Horror of Party Beach utterly failed to grasp, so Hobgoblins' got that going for it which is nice. Apparently they crashed on the lot of some company, and the guard there locked them up in a vault on the lot. He later claims to have worked there for 30 years indicating that he stayed working there because he had to make sure the aliens didn't get out. So right then and there we are expected to believe, that they have been locked up in a vault for 30 years without anybody but that guard finding out or ever questioning the vault or its contents? Alright. That's not easy but alright. The deal with the aliens here is, that they induce hallucinations in people, making them believe they are in their wildest fantasy. The unfortunate outcome of this is, that the victim dies. Horribly. The old guard claims he doesn't know if the aliens do this to hurt us or if they aren't aware of the negative impact. I don't know if the same question has been posed to the makers of Hobgoblins. It's something to think about.

Maynard! Bring out the fucking gimp! Yes, it's a pop culture reference. Deal with it. 

Lo and behold the aliens escape because the main character whose name is of absolutely no significance, is just hired and leaves the vault door open after specifically being told that's the one fucking thing he can't do. The aliens bail, and because nothing else would make sense here, they go straight to this main character's house, where his 3 idiotic friends and one of said friend's new boyfriend are hanging out. Before this dude is hired as a security guard for an undisclosed company of unspecified character, he hangs out with these friends, one of which is his girlfriend. For some reason she is all up in his grill about being badass. She is supposed to be repressed and prudish I think, and her girlfriend is a skank, so there is a dynamic there. The skank dates an army dude. I say army dude but his stint in the armed forces apparently meant just finishing boot camp. He's already looking like Rambo. Much like real life. Main character and Army dude gets into a fight, that Army dude wins easily due to superior combat training. Main guy's girlfriend talks mad shit. I'm unable to comprehend what the hell this is supposed to mean. It's a subplot that barely makes sense. The last friend of the bunch is a lonely nerdish type dude who keeps calling sex lines. So there's that. The aliens escape, go to Main dude's house, and hilarity does not ensue. Not even close. A chase around town does, however, and it culminates with a big scene in a local night club including a full music track from, what is no doubt, some moronic friend of the director whose shitty band really wanted the exposure playing a song in this clandestine movie would potentially provide. I hope they didn't pay him for product placement.

Old Guy and Main Guy (TM) talking serious. It's a man's life in night time security guarding, let me tell you. 

That's pretty much the plot, or lack there of. There is one subplot that I could mention, where the sex line dude's sex line woman becomes real through hallucinations induced from the aliens. The guy is over the top happy, and doesn't see all the tell tale signs that shit just isn't OK. Not even when the hallucination wants to push his car off a cliff. With him in it. Ah la vie c'est l'amour, ain't that right kids? You're god damn right it is. Main guy saves in in the nick of time, so that's good. At the night club mayhem breaks out and there are explosions everywhere because army dude's commander turns up. They start literally dropping hand grenades left and right. Also army guy wears a bullet belt that appears to be for an mg42 but he is only equipped with a small submachinegun. So that makes no sense. Surprise. He jumps on a grenade at one point and miraculously makes it out alive. The prudish girl has turned skanky, because that's her wildest fantasy apparently and the aliens are more than happy to accommodate. Eventually, through some of the most stupid and lame fighting scenes with something that could hardly even pass as a puppet, the aliens are killed off and peace breaks out.

Rake fight in the yard for literally zero reason. I remember choreographing fight sequences with a friend when I was 10 years old because we loved action movies. We did a better job at 10 than these guys. 

It's all just so fucking stupid. Like head shakingly groin punchingly stupid. Nothing works. Nothing. The aliens are the shittiest imitation of Gremlins since sliced bread. Gremlins is an institution. This shit belongs in an institution. But alas, fair enough. We imitate what we see. This whole blog is an analogy on the fall of man and subsequent rise of the machines. You know, where they enslave mankind and make us carry out menial tasks every day for sport. So this movie is a rip off of Gremlins. 30 years these aliens were locked up in that vault, apparently without need for sustenance or fresh air. And also just biding their time, unable to work their hallucinatory magic through the vault door. The old security guard, having spent fucking 30 years there knows a thing or two and claims they must be round back up before morning or 'it's all over'. It's that simple, folks. It's all over unless... So main guy has his work cut out for him. Thankfully he, and his moronic friends, get shit handled and there is a happy ending involved. Happy in the context of the movie at least. For me, the only slightly happy moment was when the credits rolled and I knew my life had reached yet another low point. It's funny how you often think you've reached a point from whence things can only go up, and then a few weeks later you reach that same point yet again. But that's a bedtime story for my therapist another day. Moving on.

Sense made in this picture: Less than zero. It's not in any way alright. I'm not alright. This isn't alright. 

I was watching this piece of absolute filth expecting very little and gettng less. However, one thing happened that did make me sit up, finger raised and eyebrow cocked casually charming. Because in the midst of this inferno of mediocrity, a familiar face hit my cornea like an angry 1950s working class drunken husband; The guy who played the bouncer Roadrash looked like somebody I had seen before. But where? My mind was spinning faster than the inventor of celluloid would in his grave if he knew his invention was instrumental in making Hobgoblins a reality, and in the end all that heavy thinking bore fruit. It was Maynard. The sadist closet homosexual rapist pawn shop owner that gets a katana to the chest in Pulp Fiction. Oh spoiler alert by the way. He dies in Pulp Fiction. Anyway, that was him. He was in this, some 6 years before not reaching any real level of fame from appearing in one of the modern cinema's masterpieces. Trust old Quentin Tarantino to pick out a dude who wasn't even slightly well known but had appeared in shitty movies. I bet QT saw Hobgoblins when working his movie rental store job and loved it. That seems like something Quentin would do. I guess I'll have to differ from him on this one. I hated it. But then, I'm no connoisseur.

Prude is appalled at the topic of conversation here. Moments later she urges her boyfriend to get his ass kicked for fun. I don't know what this is about. 

Like I mentioned earlier, this movie stunk to high heavens. I know revealing the conclusion in the introduction of a review isn't orthodox really, but I've never played by the book. I'm like the Dr. House of indie movie reviewing in a way. In the same way this blog is an analogy on the demise of man and the rise of machines. My guess is most people involved in this production were people who happened to wander past the production and were given a piece of paper with handwritten lines on it. The story is so lame, even Rosie O'Donnell would've found it bland and non-denominational. The acting made me think of a bunch of mentally challenged teenagers trying to hump a doorknob. And the puppets. Oh god the puppets. I couldn't even with those. I literally died watching this movie. Generally I'm the kind of dude that doesn't really care. “Behold, the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and thou shalt see that it is barren” is a sentence sequence I have uttered more than once in my life. But this movie robbed me of my indifference. I could not not care. I hated it that much. Just awful. In fact, I'm going to stop typing more now, because I feel myself grow cranky from re-living this nightmare, and I have a oboe recital later on I have to keep my head clear for, or I'll have to repeat my third year again. Until next time, children. Stay in school. 

Ze Vault! A small cage door inside the massive vault door and a cage outside too. All left perfectly ajar because surely these safety measures are just there for shits and giggles.