After their partnership with Paramount Pictures ended, Full Moon Features was financially precarious, solely relying on Kushner-Locke. It was in the late 90s that Full Moon took advantage of the burgeoning internet to announce their future titles. Some of the titles featured that got made included The Creeps, Shrieker, Subspecies 4, Puppet Master 6, and Blood Dolls. One of the other features mentioned wouldn’t be funded by Kushner-Locke but by producers David DeFalco and Michael Fiechtner. Shot on location in Bucharest over two weeks in February 1997, Charles Band directed while Benjamin Carr wrote the script. Carr previously wrote Head of the Family, starring Jacqueline Lovell and Michael Citriniti, a.k.a. J. W. Perra, who returned here. Another notable cast member was Mel Johnson Jr., who later partnered with Charles Band to form Alchemy/Big City Pictures. After a brief filming period, Charles Band’s Hideous! was released in August 1997.
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Synopsis
A group of sewage workers finds a strange embryo and sell it to the International Medical Specimens corporation. Headed by Ms. Belinda Yost (Tracie May-Wagner), she sells it to eccentric collector Napoleon Lazar (Mel Johnson Jr.) for $650,000. Word gets out to rival collector Dr. Lorca (Michael Citriniti), who has his assistant Sheila (Jacqueline Lovell) steal it. After the embryo is stolen, Lazar hires Detective Leonard Kantor (Jerry O’Donnell) to help him return it from Lorca. Along with Yost and her secretary, Elvina Shaw (Rhonda Griffin), Lazar and Kantor go to Lorca’s castle to confront him. While there, they see Lorca’s four other strange creatures, who break free and wander the castle. Soon, our hapless victims are picked off individually as Lorca and Lazar fight over ownership of the medical oddities. Who will survive against these deformed, depraved, and devious creatures and escape the castle?
Review
In some ways, Hideous! is almost a throwback to the Empire Pictures classic Ghoulies, both in story and visuals. Both are about people going to an isolated area and are systematically picked off by tiny creatures. Also, both movies have a similar lo-tech feel to the effects, which makes sense, given who handled the effects. Mark Rappaport, the film’s special effects supervisor, previously worked under John Carl Buechler on Demonic Toys. Admittedly, there is some questionable CGI, and the puppets aren’t the most complex, but they work for this movie. They’re not in the film very much, but the creatures are fun to watch when they are. Filming in a Bucharest castle adds much production value to the movie and helps it stand out. Say what you will about Full Moon using Romania, but it helped make their films look more expensive.
For the most part, the cast plays their roles as campy as possible without going too overboard. Mel Johnson Jr. is one of the biggest highlights, and his back-and-forths with the rest of the cast are entertaining. Michael Citriniti is an excellent rival for Johnson, and Tracie May-Wagner is fun as the stuck-up rich bitch. Jacqueline Lovell is another highlight as Dr. Lorca’s sexy and devious assistant, spending her screen time with her cleavage exposed. She and Johnson easily have the movie’s most memorable scene, where she robs him while topless in a gorilla mask. Even in context, the sequence comes out of nowhere and is never brought up again, which makes it more bizarre. At under 90 minutes, the movie goes by pretty quickly and doesn’t have too many slow scenes. Overall, Hideous! isn’t one of Full Moon’s best, but it’s a decent creature feature.
Buy Hideous! on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3lNafv0.
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