Throughout the early to mid-’90s, Full Moon Features was dominating the booming home video market, establishing several film franchises. They were finding their biggest successes with their Puppet Master, Subspecies, and Trancers series, and they had Paramount Pictures’ backing. Full Moon was releasing several direct-to-video fantasy, sci-fi, and horror films with the hope of creating more franchises. In addition to bringing talent from the days of Empire Pictures, Full Moon also had plenty of young, fresh talent. One such person was writer David Goyer, who went onto writing the Blade and Dark Knight trilogies among other blockbusters. Then there’s filmmaker Peter Manoogian, who started at Empire directing films like The Dungeonmaster, Eliminators, Enemy Territory, and Arena. After the fall of Empire, Manoogian moved onto Full Moon and worked with Goyer to work on their first project. That project became the 1992 killer toy movie, Demonic Toys.
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Officers Judith Gray (Tracy Scoggins) and Matt Cable (Jeff Weston) are staging a fake arms deal to catch two dealers. Unfortunately, things go south when the dealers, Lincoln (Michael Russo) and Hesse (Barry Lynch) figure out this is a setup. Matt shoots Heese, Lincoln kills Matt, and they make their way to a nearby toy store with Judith in pursuit. Judith manages to catch Lincoln, while Heese stumbles through the store bleeding out, which brings the toys to life. Amongst the toys are Baby Oopsy Daisy, Grizzley Teddy, Jack Attack, and Mr. Static, who brutally murder Heese. Meanwhile, the oblivious security guard Charneski (Pete Schrum) orders his usual chicken dinner from his friend Mark Wayne (Bentley Mitchum). Soon, Judith and Lincoln join the others, the toys kill Charneski, and Anne (Ellen Dunning), a teen runaway, joins them. As the toys continue hunting them, their true motives are soon revealed.
Demonic Toys is prime Full Moon goodness, full of fun characters, plenty of blood, dark humor, and tiny puppets. The first thing to spotlight is Tracy Scoggins, who gives a really good performance and is having a good time. It helps that Tracy Scoggins is a huge horror and sci-fi fan who wanted to do this kind of film. Bentley Mitchum does go into overacting territory later on, almost going for something similar to Bill Paxton in Aliens. The rest of the cast does the best they can, but the other real stars are the toys themselves. Designed by the late great John Carl Buechler, each toy has a very distinct personality and they look great. There’s even a great moment where the teddy bear goes from a puppet to a guy in a full suit. While the film is occasionally scary, it’s more so funny in a dark way.
Though not quite as prolific as the Puppet Master series, Demonic Toys still had life following the first film. There were two spin-offs, Dollman vs Demonic Toys and Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, and even a sequel in 2010. Manoogian went on to directing Seedpeople, The Midas Touch, and DevilDolls, while Goyer wrote Arcade and the first spin-off. Demonic Toys is perfect for anyone looking for a fun cheesy horror film to watch, and it goes by quickly. There are going to be plenty who say this movie is stupid, but they’re not the right audience for this. That said, it’s probably good there weren’t too many films that ended up going down in quality over time. Still, this is a fun horror-comedy that’s perfect fodder for an all-night horror movie marathon, especially for B-movie fans. Overall, Demonic Toys is another example of how entertaining Full Moon movies can be.
Buy Demonic Toys from Full Moon’s website: https://bit.ly/2Mv2XXE
