Teenage Space Vampires/Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga (1999)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment/Moonbeam Entertainment

RUNTIME: 86 mins

FORMAT: Full Moon Streaming

PLOT: Bill, a dorky high school student and avid horror movie fan, witnesses a UFO flying over his town. When the ship lands the next day, Bill and a team from SETI discover that the alien is a strange vampire creature who wants to cast the Earth into darkness so that he and his people can colonize it for themselves.

REVIEW: I got anxious while waiting for Asylum's newest release, Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series, to arrive in the mail so to help pass the time until then, I signed up for Full Moon Streaming - an online streaming service for the full catalog of Full Moon Entertainment movies, both old classics in addition to brand new stuff, and everything in between.

Now, I do plan to get back to my Puppet Master series rewatch here shortly, but I was really in the mood this evening for something I hadn't ever seen before, so I went to Full Moon's Moonbeam subsection (their side-company for 80's and 90's family friendly-aimed movies such as Prehysteria, Pet Shop, and the Josh Kirby: Time Warrior saga – none of which are actually up on the site yet, but were among my favorites of theirs while growing up) and came across a nifty-sounding little diddy that I had never even heard of before, the awesomely-titled Teenage Space Vampires, or the even cheesier (and obvious Twilight cash-grab) renaming it's been given in recent DVD re-releases, Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga! I figured this would be the perfect kind of movie to watch for the first time and do a review on.

The first thing you have to realize, is that this is indeed a family-friendly 'horror' movie, so there's no swearing or gore of any kind, and there's no other kinds of questionable content in that regard, if you're a parent wondering if this movie is ok for your child to watch. With that said, there are indeed a few scenes that children might find a bit creepy or scary so you may want to watch it with them if they're sensitive to those kinds of things. For example, there's a scene that consist of the Turned football players and cheerleaders (among which are a couple of main characters) vamping out mid-game to cause a feeding frenzy and chow down on the other team and the spectators in the stands, or in one scene in particular that reminded me of The Lost Boys we have a group of teens around a campfire at night that get ambushed by a gang of the vampires. In addition to those, we also have a couple scenes that take place in dark underground mines that deal with a nest of vampires lurking in the shadows and led by the Master Vampire that looks far more monstrous than the rest of his minions, so as I said, if your child is sensitive to that kind of stuff, than maybe this isn't the movie for them after all, at least not without you watching it with them to remind them that it is just a movie.

However, in terms of the horror aspect, that's really all there is. Most of the vampire effects are extremely goofy-looking and made worse by the extremely-bad glowing CGI eyes and overly-large and overly-obvious fake rubber teeth. Honestly, everything from the special effects to some of the acting to the production values are all what you would expect from a mid-90s Direct-to-Video low budget children's movie. Actually, anybody that grew up with the Goosebumps TV show already knows what to expect from this in that regard as it pretty much plays out, complete with the all-around general cheesiness expected of such, of the average 22-minute Goosebumps episode, but spread out for feature-length.

 

Making the acting come across as even worse than it probably initially was, is some distractingly-bad ADR dubbing. It's not present in every scene, but the ones that it is, it really takes you out of the moment as it's delivered in such an incredibly dull and boring way, which is usually in complete contrast with how the character looks as they're saying it. That issue aside though, there is still some decent acting to be found, mostly via Robin Dunn (Species 3, The Skulls 2, Cruel Intentions 2) as the main character of the movie and the always-beautiful Lindy Booth (Wrong Turn, Dawn of the Dead remake, Kick Ass 2) as his older cheerleader sister. The one truly honest-to-god great actor though, that I actually always enjoyed when he was on-screen, was the mostly-unknown James Kee as the leader of the SETI team that comes out to investigate the mysterious going-ons in the town.

I suppose I should step back a bit and explain a little of the plot. The movie starts with a bang (literally) as Robin Dunn's character is woken up in the middle of the night by some mysterious explosion that also set off car alarms in the area and drives the dogs bonkers. Even though his character doesn't look or even really act like it during the movie, we're told he's a dweeb and dork that gets picked on a lot, which only intensifies when he comes across a spaceship in a neighbor's back property – a spaceship that is guarded by several stone gargoyles that seem to be alive (a totally pointless addition as they never even once do anything other than turn their heads to look around). Of course nobody believes him except his goofy best friend, and it isn't long until he starts noticing that his neighbors and classmates are all, one-by-one, starting to act strange and differently. That's when a research team from SETI arrives in town, having noticed the mysterious falling object and wanting to investigate it. They team up with Robin Dunn's character to get to the bottom of things and eventually discover that the town has been invaded and partly-taken over by vampires, which are actually an alien race. They're in this specific town to locate an ancient mystical amulet that when used in the proper ritual can harvest the energy from the sun and moon and plunge the entire Earth into a total never-ending darkness – a vampire's wet dream.

The plot of the movie actually isn't half-bad. At first it seemed a bit sloppily written, seeing as how we see plenty of vampires out during the day thus making the entire evil plan pointless, but they actually explain that away fairly well, as those are only vampire fledglings and aren’t yet full alien vampires, so they don't quite have all their strengths but also don't quite have all their weaknesses yet either. Where the movie kind of comes undone is the above-mentioned bad effects, terrible ADR dubbing, the unbelievability that the main character is a picked-on dweeb (seriously, the guy is taller and more buff than half the 'jocks' in the movie are) and just all around general cheap feel of everything (again, think a feature-length Goosebumps episode on the same budget of the average Goosebumps episode). Luckily the movie is saved a bit by decent to good acting from the core main characters (even if a lot of the dialog they have to work with is pretty terrible), a well-made monster suit for the Master Vampire, and a pretty fun overall plot. It also seems that director/writer Martin Wood has perfected his talents since his time doing this movie, seeing as how he has since gone on to be a main writer and director on such Canadian TV shows as Sanctuary, Andromeda, Primeval: New World, and the various Stargate shows.

Die-hard horror hounds and just adults in general may scoff at this one and roll their eyes during most of it, and I honestly can't blame them because there's not much in this one for that demographic, but for young boys and girls looking to dabble into some family-friendly horror, Teenage Space Vampires, aka Darkness: The Teen Space Vampire Saga is a pretty decent hour and a half, and it's low budget and cheesiness may also help lighten the mood for them a bit when it comes to the few darker, scarier scenes that some kids may find a little troubling.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Puppet Master (1989)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Full Moon Entertainment

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: Andre Toulon, a puppet maker, discovers an ancient Egyptian potion and uses it to bring his creations to life but than kills himself in his hotel room before the Nazis can force him to give up his secrets. Decades later, psychics visiting the now-abandoned hotel tune into the existence of the monstrous marionettes and set off to discover the secrets that the hotel holds.

Review: Having recently obtained Puppet Master X: Axis Rising and in preparation of watching that entry for the first time, I've started my re-watch of the complete Puppet Master series, where I plan on doing up a review of each one. I actually wanted to have some of these done sooner but, as anybody who lives in Canada will already know, we here in Newfoundland have been going through quite a 'not a crisis' (as our political leaders would like us to believe, despite the opposite being true) which included week-long power outages, little to no heat, rotating blackouts, devastating snowstorms, and just all around one of the worst winters on record for us. Suffice to say having unreliable to no power made it difficult to get much watched or reviewed, but it's been a whole 12 hours now with power (a huge feat for this last week), so I squeezed this one in.

Now obviously this is the infamous and classic first movie in Puppet Master series, and one of few Full Moon movies to get a theatrical release.

And to be 100% honest, this is nowhere near my favorite in the series. Sure, it's better then some of the other ones by a long shot (Puppet Master Legacy, I'm looking at you...), and for such a low budget movie from the 1980's, the stop motion of the puppets is amazing (more on that below), but overall I just wasn't too impressed by the freshman effort in this long-lasting horror series.

To start, absolutely nobody in this movie is likable and therefore there's no character to latch onto and care about, so you just don't care about anything that's happening when they're front and center, which is the majority of the time. To make matters worse, it certainly doesn't help that the acting is so wooden and stiff, it's not even in the so-bad-its-laughable arena, it's just in the not-enjoyable-to-spend-time-with-these-people arena, which adds further disdain onto already-unlikable characters. I also didn't care for the fact that everyone was pretty hardcore psychic to totally unrealistic levels - there was just no need for that addition as it didn't really bring anything to the table other than a couple weird dream-like scenes, and it completely removed that feeling that most horror movies strive for to make it feel like what's going on in the movie could happen to anybody, including you. With that door shut, it removes the majority of the fear factor. I would have been fine with one character, maybe two, having that characteristic, but not every single one.

But if you can manage to overlook those things, there is indeed an enjoyable movie waiting for you. Perfect? Very far from it, obviously, but still enjoyable. For starters, the musical score on display in this movie and (even more specifically) the main theme itself is hauntingly beautiful and is sure to stick around in your head for a very long time after you've already finished watching. How this theme hasn't gone down in history alongside the Halloween theme and Psycho theme as one of the Greats is beyond me. In addition, the evil living puppets themselves are the other main catch to this movie and are without a doubt the single best excuse to watch the movie and sit through all that other crap I complained about above, because these fellas make it all worth it: They look good, they move realistically and, as mentioned at the start, the stop motion effects used to bring them to life are nothing short of fantastic work that you'd be hard pressed to find a finer example of even this day in age. It helps give them all all their own unique personalities, and even though none of the puppets even speak they still manage to have more character within them than any of the humans do.

While the majority of the fear factor is missing from this movie due to the unrealistic addition to the human characters, what little bit remains totally belongs to these little evil puppets when they're stalking or killing someone. The problem is, they so often take second-stage, hell, even third-stage at parts, to everything else going on in the movie, that it at times it tends to go very long stretches in between their appearances and its easy to forget they're even in the movie; you tend to find yourself getting bored, and its during those moments that the stuff complained about in the first couple paragraphs of this review come in the strongest.

Luckily, while the movie may not be as scary or creepy as it should be, it does do all the other classic 80's horror movie tropes very well – inventive death scenes, lots of blood and icky gore, gratuitous nudity, sex scenes, and of course sex scenes with gratuitous nudity that lead to inventive death scenes filled with lots of blood and icky gore. So there's still plenty of stuff here for horror hounds to get their fix with. I also really liked the setting of an empty closed hotel, and really liked how they juxtaposed the intro where the hotel was still open and doing great business with present (ish) day where it's empty and abandoned. It was a great contrast to attempt (and slightly succeed) at giving the setting itself a really uneasy atmosphere, and even though I didn't enjoy spending the runtime of the movie with this cast of characters, I did enjoy spending the runtime at this location quite a bit.

Add on top of that the quirky killer puppets and fun death scenes, and while Puppet Master may not be a knock-em-outta-the-park-winner, nor even the best this series has to offer, it's still a must-see for any fan of the genre and one I don't mind re-watching from time to time when I'm in the right mood for it.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: The Gingerdead Man seeks revenge against Sarah Leigh for causing him to live his life in the body of a gingerbread man. Her only hope is to team up with Larnell who has problems of his own in the form of an evil magical talking bong named Eebee.

REVIEW: I already have reviews posted for Gingerdead Man, Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust, and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver so you can go check those reviews out for my thoughts on each of those and that trilogy as a whole. As for the Evil Bong trilogy, I always meant to have reviews posted of those before I got around to doing a review of this Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong crossover 'epic', but I was sent the screener far sooner then I was expecting, so the Evil Bongs got pushed to the back burner for now. Still, I'll let you all know, briefly, what my basic thoughts were on them right here, so you understand where I'm coming from when I review this Part 4 in each respective series.

I love both Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong. They are the perfect movies for modern Full Moon – they only need a small group of so-so actors, minimal sets to build/rent out, doesn't require much (if any) special effects, and it's all wrapped up in a really nice short runtime. I'm the furthest thing from a stoner, and I'm not particularly a fan of most stoner comedies outside of the Harold and Kumar trilogy and the first Friday flick, so it's a bit of an enigma to me as to why the Evil Bong movies turned out to be one of my favorite modern Full Moon movies yet. With that said, I really didn't care for Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong much at all. It's not that it did anything differently than the first two movies, but that was kind of my issue with it - It was just the same song and dance we've seen for three movies now, with the added addition of a muddled confusing ending that still has me wondering exactly how they defeated the Alien Bong because it wasn't really clear. But whatever, for the most part, a couple entries aside, I'm actually a decent fan of both the Gingerdead Man series as well as the Evil Bong series, so it goes without saying that I was especially excited for this Vs mash-up.

The best way for me to do this review is to divide it up into sections. First I'll start with the Gingerdead Man portion of the movie. Finally, after two unconnected sequels, it was great to have Robin Sydney back as Sarah. For those who remember, she played the original heroine in the first movie and I've been very vocal about having her back for the sequels, which never happened, so I'm thrilled to announce she returns to this movie, playing her original character of Sarah, having finally after all these years began to cope with and move on from the events that happened in the first movie, and she has opened her own little bakery now, of which she is obviously the boss of. For fans of this character, this section of the movie was the perfect 'Where is she now' catch-up, and she is a stronger person (and by association, a stronger character) than she was in the first movie, no longer being timid or taking crap from anyone. This comes to a head in what is my absolute favorite scene of the movie, where her character from Gingerdead Man meets her polar opposite character from the Evil Bong series (see, she was also in those movies but playing a totally different character) and the two of them (both still played by Robin Sydney) get into quite the fight.

The Gingerdead Man himself once again looks slightly different then any previous incarnation but seems to be the closest to how he was portrayed in the first movie (in terms of looks, voice, and attitude) as he tracks down Robin Sydney's character to finish what he began all those years ago. While he still has a few funny one-liners, he's much more subdued this go-around then he was in either Gingerdead Man 2 or 3, and he's very much out for revenge and isn't taking any side tours. He's also back to being basic yet brutal in his killings – no distractingly inventive deaths like in the second movie or dull boring ones like in the third where he mostly just used a gun. Just like in the first movie, he just grabs the nearest knife or axe and goes to town on his victims, spraying the blood as much as he can in each case. Sadly, there's only three of those deaths and two of them happen in quick succession in the same scene so there's not really much of that. Low number of deaths aside, this portion of the movie was actually exactly what I was looking for in a Gingerdead Man sequel and I really wish the movie focused more on this stuff, or that it was its own stand-alone Gingerdead Man sequel because over all, it actually makes up such a tiny bit of the movie. You see, despite the title, this was actually much more of an Evil Bong sequel that happens to have a couple characters from Gingerdead Man in it then an even mix of the two franchises.

Unfortunately, even though the Evil Bong portion of the movie is what makes up the majority of it, it's also the weakest portion. One of the only characters that returns from the Evil Bong series is John Patrick Jordan as lead stoner Larnell who, admittedly, is just not nearly as cool or fun without the rest of his gang there with him. The Evil Bong movies are very much an ensemble piece and without the rest of said ensemble, you're just left with this giant gaping hole that feels like something is missing. In this entry Larnell has opened his own weed and weed memorabilia shop and the worst offender with this part of the movie is that they could have had at least one of his pals around but instead they replace them with a new character that's not nearly as funny as the people making this movie thought he was. Personally I just found him eye-rollingly annoying. It also doesn't help that not only is this the weakest part of the movie, but it also makes up the bulk of it as well, spending a good 25-30 minutes on just these two characters trying to get the shop ready for business and opening the doors for the first few quirky customers. We spent all of 5-10 minutes on catching up with the Gingerdead Man stuff and then over half the movie on just this?It felt terribly uneven.

The Evil Bong herself barely even makes an appearance during this stuff. It's not until the other returning Evil Bong character, the always-causing-trouble Delivery Man/Priest/Traveling Salesman Rabbit shows up and, of course, accidentally frees the Evil Bong from where Larnell had her hidden away and it's not until this part that the movie even begins to start picking up it's pace and by that point it's only 15-20 minutes from the end.

Now for the crossover portion of the movie. Larnell learns of the new bakery opening up nearby and goes to check it out, hoping to talk the owner (which is Robin Sydney's character) into a joint-business venture seeing as how his business gives people the munchies and hers cures the munchies. They hit it off pretty well and I have to admit that those two characters actually have really good chemistry together. He brings her back to his shop to show her what it's all about (at which point the stalking Gingerdead Man kills the other two bakery workers and then follows them to the weed store), and it's here that he reveals himself to them by killing Larnell's annoying new sidekick and they end up having to smoke from the Evil Bong in order to enter the mystical Bong World of the previous movies to escape the Gingerdead Man and he, of course, follows them in. During this part there's a nice cameo by King Bong and the Poontang tribe of the second Evil Bong movie, and even a really funny Superman spoof as Gingerdead Man gets caught in these whirling rings and the three Prisoner Pastries from the intro of Gingerdead Man 3 show up to judge him.

Unfortunately, this is also the portion where the movie continues to fall even further. All that strength and growth we saw in Robin Sydney's character earlier is totally gone as she's regulated to essentially just following Larnell around and doing what he says, rarely (if at all) coming into her Own and taking the lead. Also, you know that epic showdown between the Gingerdead Man and the Evil Bong that the title and advertising of this movie promises? Yeah, don't hold your breath because it never happens. Hell, they don't even interact at all except for one short scene where the Gngerdead Man finds out his would-be victims smoked from the Evil Bong and escaped from him into the Bong World so he then has to go smoke from her to follow them in. That is literally it for their interactions together. No fight, no showdown, not even any heated argument. Oh and don't expect a climax or any sort of proper ending either because there's nothing like that here. The big 'climax' consists of the two main characters escaping from the Bong World and the Gingerdead Man deciding to stay in there, and that's it. They walk off into the sunset together, leaving the Evil Bong behind and back out in the open of his store and not even trying to get rid of it or hide it or anything. They escape from her and then just walk away laughing while the Gingerdead Man decides to stay inside of her and smoke weed. That's it for the 'big climax'.

I really wanted to like this movie as I'm a fan of both series', and of the characters from them. And while I loved seeing Robin Sydney back again and I loved most everything from the Gingerdead Man portion of the movie, I hated that she was regulated to just following Larnell around all movie, and it also didn't help that the stuff I liked made up such a small amount of time in the movie. The Evil Bong portion was way overlong and drawn out, missing most of the characters that made those movies fun to watch to begin with, and then the actual Vs part was just a joke that didn't even come close to living up to the promise that the title of the movie and it's advertising gave, leaving things off on a very quick and sudden end without any sort of proper built-up climax. And speaking of broken promises, on Full Moon's Facebook page they said that Gary Busey would be returning to voice the Gingerdead Man in this movie, but he doesn't. Granted the guy who does is the closest to sound like him out of all the other Gingerdead Man voice actors, but point is it indeed is not Gary Busy like we were led to believe.

I actually would have preferred it if the Gingerdead Man stuff was in a movie by itself and then extended to feature length, as that would have actually made a really good Gingerdead Man 4 worthy of the first movie, but sadly it's totally underused and forgotten about in this so-called crossover movie that's really just an Evil Bong 4 in disguise that happens to have a couple Gingerdead Man characters in it, that also manages to leave out most of the fun Evil Bong characters as well. Add to that a muddled and weak ending, no actual confrontation between the two title characters, and way too much time spent on just the weed store's opening, and what you're left with is, unfortunately, a very far cry from the epic crossover that I was hoping it would be.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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Unlucky Charms (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Full Moon Entertainment

Runtime: 67 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: Five girls compete for a chance to model diva Deedee DeVille's fashion line, but they're soon competing for their lives against four mythical beings, led by the mischievous leprechaun, Farr Darrig.

Review: Full Moon, while I grew up watching and loving their more classic B-Movies, it's no secret at all that the current incarnation of the company has turned in, well, just outright shitty stuff, more often then not for the last decade or more. Yes, there have been some nice diamonds in the rough (The first Gingerdead Man, Zombies vs Strippers, the Evil Bong trilogy...hell, even the second Gingerdead Man, while I'm not a big fan of, was still way better then some of the other shit Full Moon has strung out in recent years), but for the most part their movies these days are boring, sad excuses to make low budget porno, or just all around hard to sit through even though they're only about an hour long. At first I was kind of excited to sit down and give a chance to Unlucky Charms and review it, because I always love me some good killer leprechaun action, but then I read what it was actually about and thought to myself that this was, yet again, just another excuse for Full Moon to make another low budget porno in disguise (the dreadful Killer Eye movies, anyone?).

In this latest offering from Full Moon Entertainment, a group of scantily clad lingerie models all meet at a remote mansion in the middle of nowhere, covered in video cameras, in order to partake in a model-themed reality show competition. It's not long before one of them ends up unleashing an ancient leprechaun and his various creepy-looking monster pals, who then go around causing mayhem and mischief. While Unlucky Charms does indeed have some of that soft-core porno stuff that I hate from most of Full Moon's more recent flicks, it's scaled down a lot from what you would expect (it's really only the one scene here), which considering the type of characters that make up the movie and how little they wear during most of it, is pretty impressive. It also helps that the one scene of it leads directly into some of that monster mayhem, so for once it actually, sort of, has a reason to be in the movie.

What I was disappointed with though, is that the monsters weren’t really the evil characters of the movie but were actually nice and were just being controlled by an evil person using strong black magic to bind them. See, I personally hate it when movies do stuff like that, after spending all the lead-up time during the production advertising these magical monsters as being evil, it almost feels like a cop-out when they turn out to be kind and gentle and it's just a regular human that's really the evil person of the movie. Hell, even the cover art for the movie would lead you to believe that the leprechaun and his pals were evil and the antagonists here, but that's simply just another case of misleading cover art. And while I won't reveal which character is behind it all, the movie doesn't really try to hide it either, pretty much revealing the identity around the 20-minute mark of this just-barely-an-hour long movie.

And even though the movie is only an hour long, it actually takes forever to really get moving. Sure, we cut to the magical monsters roaming the house from time to time, but they don't really do a whole lot until the last 10 minutes, which is pretty much on-par with Full Moon's current style of movie-making. It was also disappointing that the death scenes were all bland, boring, and unimaginative. I was hoping for some really good, funny, and inventive death scenes along the likes of the Wishmaster movies or the classic Leprechaun series, but all we get are the monsters shooting magic beams from their hands or eyes and the person vaporizes. That's it.

Unlike most other recent Full Moon movies though, a good portion of the acting here is surprisingly good. Even more surprising when you consider that most everyone is an Unknown (a couple ex-Disney stars grown up that haven’t gone on to do much, a minor character from The Walking Dead, and a handful of Playboy Playmates). Only real big name of note here is Charlie O'Connell (2-Headed Shark Attack, Devil's Prey, Sliders). We here at Watching Full Movie Online Free always love the O'Connell brothers and he does not disappoint, playing a sleazy producer for this model-themed reality game show, looking more to get his dick wet then he is anything else. Him aside, everyone else is actually a lot of fun to watch as well, even though many are not likable in the slightest, the actors ham it up enough that you can't help but find this cast of characters entertaining, be it cat fighting and bitching at one another, teaming up to find missing friends, taking on harsh criticism from the producers, or just standing around and showing off their assets in, well, more-then-revealing 'clothes'. While not a whole lot happens until toward the end, there's still rarely a dull moment thanks to how entertaining these characters are and how well their actors portray that, in the hammiest, cheesiest, campiest ways possible.

And it's not just the human characters either. The monster group is just as interesting to watch, be it the horny one-eyed cyclops, the withering old witch, her creepy-faced little scream-loving pet thing, or the gentle-hearted leprechaun himself, they all hate being forced to kill these people and long for the days of ancient history when their magic was used solely for good, by people who understood how to use it properly. There was actually a surprisingly high amount of genuine emotion portrayed by the movie in it's opening and closing bookend scenes dealing with that, and it's an attention to mature subtext that I don't know if I've ever seen Full Moon pull off before, or even attempt to. In lesser hands those scenes would have failed, but Nathan Phillips as the leprechaun character not only shines, he is outright phenomenal in the role, owning every scene he is in and totally deserving of being an A-list actor, in far better movies then B-Movies such as this or Wolf Creek.

With Full Moon next making a Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong movie (hopefully it can redeem the Gingerdead Man franchise after that terrible third movie), I can easily see them down the line making a Killjoy vs Unlucky Charms movie. Just think about it: One is pure evil and the other on the side of good, both have magical powers and both have their own team of fellow monstrous misfits. Seeing as how Killjoy started off terrible but each movie got better and better and even better still as they went along, and this movie was actually pretty decent itself, a crossover movie between the two should work out to be Full Moon's best effort to date, if it keeps following that path. 

Maybe though there should be an Unlucky Charms 2 first, just to better establish these fun characters, because if there's one thing this movie did, it was make me want to spend more time with this little leprechaun and his friends. 

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Killjoy Goes To Hell (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: This time Killjoy is being accused in a court of Hell of not being evil, since he let one of his victims (Sandie from Killjoy 3) get away, and Killjoy must rely on his only chance of proving how evil he really is... get Sandie into Hell as his witness.

REVIEW: After watching the first dreadful Killjoy movie, I never would have thought that it would get a sequel, much less three of them. But 12 years later here we are with Killjoy 4 about to be released, and the fine folks at Full Moon have sent an early screener copy my way.

Killjoy Goes To Hell actually has what I feel is the most interesting plot of the entire series thus far – Killjoy is on trial in Hell for not being evil enough, due to getting defeated at the end of the previous movie. Alongside that, there's a second plot of Sandy, the lone survivor of that movie, now in a psychiatric ward, unable to stop laughing due to how the previous movie ended. That is, until Killjoy sends his three minions up, also returning from Killjoy 3, to break her out of the ward and drag her down to Hell in order testify as to how evil he really is.

This movie also marks the first time in the series that one entry is a direct continuation and sequel to the events of the previous entry, seeing as how the events of this movie happen in direct response to the events of the previous movie, in addition to bringing the main female lead back as well. In addition to her, Killjoy's three evil clown entourage from the previous movie are also back. They were a strong addition to Killjoy 3 and I think they're not only a welcomed addition to this one as well, but they actually have more to do and have more screentime in this entry, making me love them all the more. Even Killjoy himself is played by the same guy who has so-expertly played him in every movie from Killjoy 2 on, and by this point the role seems to be second nature for him, making Killjoy the funniest he's been in the entire series. Actually, this overall entry is filled with much more humor and laugh riots then any previous entry, and luckily the majority of those jokes (be it visual, dialog, or just comedic timing) are all hits instead of misses, so if you're looking for a wacky crazy-funny Full Moon movie for a drinking party viewing, I would say this is the one to go to.

Really, the only negative I can think of for this entry, is lack of kills. The one thing the series has always been good with, even in the dreadful first entry, was really nice, inventive death scenes. Sadly, since Killjoy spends the majority of the movie on trial in Hell there's hardly any kill scenes here and when we do get them, it's not until toward the end, which kind of confuses me since the only reason anyone would be watching a Killer Demon Clown movie would more then likely be for the death scenes, especially considering how good the previous entries were with those.

Luckily though, the movie keeps the laughs coming hard and frequent enough that you don't even really stop to think about the fact that nobody's been killed yet, until someone actually finally does get killed, and by that point it's almost the end of the movie anyway so you're not left to really ponder it for very long.

This overall series is quite an enigma to me – it started off as the absolute crappiest of the crap yet somehow each entry just keeps getting better and better then the one before, topping out at a near-perfect low budget horror/comedy, which gives me hope that Killjoy 5 will be a perfect 10-star B-Movie if/when it comes around. Make it happen, Full Moon - I have faith in you.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Killjoy's Revenge (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 76 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: The demon clown Killjoy is resurrected once again, but this time he is trapped in his own realm. Using a magic mirror, he lures four unsuspecting college students into his realm where he can have his macabre fun.

REVIEW: Killjoy 3 (renamed a couple years after-the-fact as Killjoy's Revenge) surprisingly turned out to be much better then the two previous movies, and came across as much more professionally-made. This is more along the lines of what Full Moon is known for (which granted, I suppose isn't saying much, but it's a huge compliment after watching the last two pieces of shit in this series). It's a movie like Killjoy 3 that I can come home from a long hard day at work, crack open a beer, and just put on to veg out to and have a bit of fun with.

There's some great, inventive, gory kill scenes, good characterization, actual decent acting, and the best part is that apart from keeping the look of the Demon Clown from Part 2 (which design-wise looked different, albeit it better, then it did in the first movie), this one completely ignores the second movie and is more of a direct sequel to the first movie, bringing back the rules and magical powers of Killjoy and the ways that he operates that had been established in the first movie but was  ignored in the second. There's even a nice little unexpected nod to the events of the first movie.

This one even brings in three other demonic clowns under the command of Killjoy, which helps make this movie a bit more fresh from the previous two and were a great source of extra comedy. If it wasn't for the connections to the first movie that this pulls out in some twists, I'd almost say just skip both Killjoy 1 and 2 and start with this one. Then again, unless you suffer through those two, you may not have the appreciation for this one that I do.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil (2002)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 77 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: En-route to a run-down shelter they are set to renovate as community service, a group of juvenile delinquents and the two chaperones accompanying them run into a minor setback when their bus breaks down on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. When trying to find a phone, one of the teens is shot and the group finds shelter with a voodoo priestess. While trying to use voodoo to save their friend, two of the teens accidentally unleash the evil spirit known as Killjoy.

REVIEW: Much like with the first movie, Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil also appears to have been filmed on a home video camera, with the video and audio that you would expect to come from such. Also like with the first movie, It takes way too long before anything happens in regards to the title character showing up (over halfway through the movie in this instance), and even after he shows up they completely disregard what was established about his character in the previous movie, and the things he can do, powers-wise. Gone is the warping in and out of his demon-created mind-bendy dimension - this time around he's just another generic teen slasher that could easily be replaced by Jason or Michael if it wasn't for the constant one-liner attempts.

However, despite the lack of continuity with the first movie, this one is actually slightly better. To start, there's actually some semblance of a coherent plot this time, in a setting that actually has the potential to be creepy (lost in the middle of a forest during the night), with characters that we actually get to have some characterization for and can kind of get behind, despite being teen trouble-makers in Juvi. And even though it's a different actor for the demon clown this time, the guy who plays him is still really good, if not better then the guy in the first. Actually, he's one of the few decent actors in this.

Overall, while this one is better then the first movie, it only is by just a smidgeon, as while it improves in some areas (plot and characters) it also takes a step back in others (I preferred how the first movie handled the character of Killjoy more then I did this one, giving him more interesting things to do other then just be a generic teen slasher). Still, at least it's a step in the right direction, and I've still got another of these things to go through, so just maybe that will continue the trend started here.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Killjoy (2000)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 72 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: After they murder a fellow teenager, a group of inner city high school students run afoul of everyone's worst nightmare: a killer demon clown summoned for vengeance. Killjoy the Clown kills bad guys and the innocent alike, and only Jada, a gifted student, can stop the killer in its grease painted tracks.

REVIEW: I've always been a fan of movies made by Full Moon. Sure, their classic stuff is leaps and bounds better then anything they put out this day in age, but there are still some entertaining gems in the modern mix (The Gingerdead Man, Puppet Master 9: Axis of Evil, Zombies vs Strippers). However, Killjoy is not one of them.

Hands down, this one of the worst movies Full Moon has ever made. The idea is pretty good (a killer vengeance demon in the form of a creepy clown hunts down members of a street gang responsible for a kid's murder), but it's utterly destroyed by a boring plot that takes far too long to go anywhere, filled with the worst actors imaginable, music that never fits with the scene its playing in, and the most horrid, lazy, CGI effects ever to grace TV screens. It also doesn't help that the video and audio quality is equal to that of a home movie you're likely to find buried in your closet.

Really, the only stuff to like here are some of the deaths are kind of fun and a bit imaginative, the actor that plays the clown is actually pretty good and you can tell he's having a blast playing the role, and (as mentioned above) the idea behind the movie is really rather cool. Unfortunitly, none of those things can even come close to saving this one, and it just ended up being a huge chore to sit through.

I know that Full Moon is known for low budget, but Killjoy is extremely micro-budget, even for them.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Zombies vs Strippers (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
 

  
COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 75 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: The Tough Titty is a strip club that's seen better days, but tonight it's gonna see a whole lot worse. Spider has been losing money on his business for years, but now it's finally getting the traffic he's always wanted... unfortunately, most of his patrons are undead. With a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus, strippers Vanilla, Bambi, and Sugar deal with the disaster the way only a stripper can.

REVIEW: You don't wad in the B-Movie pool for any good length of time without coming across Full Moon Entertainment. Even if you don't know their name, chances are you know about at least some of their titles; titles such as Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, Dollman, Dollman vs Demonic Toys, Trancers, Subspecies, Robot Wars, The Evil Bong, The Gingerdead Man, Killer Eye, and even some child-friendly titles like Prehysteria, Pet Shop, and the 6-movie Josh Kirby serial. Granted, classic Full Moon titles from the 80's and 90's are easily their best, with their more recent stuff being of far-lower caliber, however that's not to say there's nothing good to find here. Sure, more often then not their titles disappoint these days (Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong were decent, but Evil Bong 3: Wrath of Bong was a let down. And while Gingerdead Man was really good, each of the sequels got significantly worse then the entry that came before. And Killer Eye was really just a porno in disguise so I never even bothered with Killer Eye 2: Halloween Haunt), but when you stumble upon one of their true gems this day in age, all that just makes it all the more sweeter.

When they first announced this movie my gut reaction was another soft-core porno in disguise and I had zero interest in following through with watching this one, but then when the trailer came out, it actually looked pretty entertaining and I decided I'd give it a shot. Shortly after that, Full Moon offered to send me a Screener copy of Zombies vs Strippers for early review and since I've been trying to break into the Screeners Game lately, I pretty much said 'Sure, what the heck'. I figured worse came to worse, and the movie was a total dud, at least Full Moon's recent movies have incredibly short runtimes (an hour and 10 minutes normally, and that's including overly-long opening and ending credits, so really just an hour of actual movie-time), so at most I'd only be wasting an hour of my time on it. Well, when the ending credits rolled on this one, it certainly wasn't of the high fun caliber as The Gingerdead Man or The Evil Bong, but it wasn't quite too terrible either. Nothing I'd probably ever rewatch, but a good enough hour-long time waster that never did reach that softcore porn level that I was initially fearful of (though came close a time or two, but that's for later in the review).

Just like the sun rises every morning and sets every night, the movie opened up on an overly-long opening credits sequence (done in an almost-disturbing Rob Zombie-esque kind of style) that ran for well over 3 minutes, and that any sane person would start to skip past after the first 60 seconds. After that, we get introduced to our main lead, the sketchy strip club owner as he's arriving to work for the night at his seedy club, The Tough Titty. One of the things I loved most about this movie (at least in the first half, where it was applicable), is the entire zombie apocalypse is going on in the background of the movie in subtle little news channel broadcasts and radio reports playing in the background, but this guy is just not paying attention to any of it because he's too wound up and stressed out over his strip club running out of business, and having to deal with incompetent and trouble-making employees. Much like in movies like Shaun of the Dead, he's just so self-absorbed in doing his regular day-after-day bullshit job that he's not paying any bit of attention to the world ending around him just outside of this strip joint. Adding to his problems is the fact that the very few amount of business that they are getting (by way of only two men in the entire place), doesn't seem to be enjoying the girls on-show at all, leading him to blame the strippers for not being good enough. Of course as the viewers of the movie (and as the workers of this club will find out soon enough), we can already tell just by how these 'people' are acting and looking, that they're actually already zombies and they're kind of just...sitting there, groaning and mumbling ('Hmm. Dead crowd tonight' as one of the strippers hilariously worded it).

After just a tad bit too long of establishing these characters, the zombie patrons get kicked out as if they were street bums, and the sketchy manager decides to shut the club down early, since it's their final night before selling the building and he figures he'll let them all celebrate instead. Before they get to do that however, people start coming in to get out of the chaos of the zombie apocalypse outside, thus jump-starting business all over again and giving them their most profitable night all year – that is, until the zombie hordes get attracted by all the noise and music and find their way into the strip club as well, and it soon becomes the job of these tough-as-nails wise-cracking Strippers, and a temporary team-up with a biker gang led by a hilarious poetic 'The End is Nigh' kind of badass, to save everyone and fight off the zombie apocalypse that has spilled into their little slice of real estate.

And fight they do. Granted, the first half did slow to a crawl for a little bit, but just as I started to find myself bored, the second half of the movie kicked it into high gear and never let up until the credits started rolling. There are two things in the title of this movie, and it delivers all the way on both of them: This had all sorts of gory kick ass zombie-killing action, and not just by way of guns – this came complete with awesome make-shift weapons as well, such as one stripper taping her Stiletto shoe to a rod and using it as a hammer, and one really-old man zombie having his head explode because he can't take the death metal music that was playing over the radio system. But don't worry, it's not just the Strippers that get good kills in either, oh no, the zombies get some great stuff to do here as well, such as biting off fingers, ripping into stomachs, ripping someone's face off, and all sorts of various bites, scratches, and gougings. There was tons of blood and gore to be seen here, which surprised me quite a bit with how well done it all was (including the zombie make-up). Full Moon didn't give this movie its usual 25-cent CGI treatment, but instead opted to go with really well-done practical effects, and the movie came through a lot stronger because of that choice, so kudos on whoever came to that decision. There was even this one nightmare-inducing 'Big Boss' kind of zombie they had to go up against, that was some kind of weird pig-faced clown from a children's TV show-turned zombie, and the make-up work on that guy was astounding.  Nightmares for Jeff tonight!

As for the second part of this movie's title...well...It goes without saying that there is quite a lot of good eye candy and tons of toplessness. Most of the girls look smoking hot as it is (especially the main female lead), but I don't think the movie goes more then five minutes at any given time without throwing some nudity out for us. Hell, when one of the strippers gets lunged at by a zombie and she steps back to get away from it, it still manages to grab hold of her bra and rip it off. She then proceeds to spend the next ten minutes topless, until she finds a stripper nun costume...only to later have the front ripped off of that, leaving her breasts exposed for the rest of the movie. And that's just one of many examples I could use, not to mention any of the numerous actual stripping and dancing scenes themselves, with one particular pole dance scene coming towards the end that totally stole the movie.

Now the main problem I had with this movie, is it's clear that it wanted you to root for these characters, however that's pretty hard to do when every single person in the entire movie is assholish, sketchy, grimy, and totally unlikable. Not a single person in this movie is worth rooting for because these are all people that I would want to have die if a situation like this ever happened. Hell, I probably wouldn't even stick around with them long enough to see them die. It's also part of the reason why I'm not such a fan of the first half of the movie, since it was spending all that time building up these characters, when really, I didn't find myself caring about them at all, so it just made me more antsy for the zombie stuff to finally start. My other issue is, while it was nowhere near the soft-core porno that Killer Eye was, there was a tad bit too much sex going on. I mean, don't get me wrong – as a straight male I do love seeing hot girl sex scenes in movies, but like with everything else, it's best in moderation and not with such an over-abundance of it. Now here, thankfully, they were all pretty quick scenes and mostly done with some kind of comedic element at play with them so it wasn't too grating, but they did keep going back to that well just a tad bit much, in my opinion.

While the movie doesn't have much re-watch value behind it, it is a pretty fun way to pass a quick hour some stormy evening with a few beer, for a one-time watch. At the very least, it has some decent actors, excellent practical effects, inventive deaths, lots of blood, tons of toplessness, some hilarious sequences (including a Michael Jackson zombie moment), and an ending that may surprise some people as to who survives and who doesn't.

Not the best movie I've watched this week, but certainly Full Moon's best movie in a long time. It hits DVD in just a few weeks on July 10th, so if you're a Full Moon fan, or just a fan of either zombies or strippers in general, then I say pick this one up and give it a watch.


6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 70 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: The Gingerdead Man breaks out of Pastry Prison and travels back in time to 1976 to carry out an epic disco killing spree.

REVIEW: I loved the first movie in this series despite a few issues I had with it, but I really didn't care much for Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust. So when Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver one was announced, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it. In the end though, I landed on 'excitement' because after all -  it's about A KILLER COOKIE, and that alone will be enough to get my money – Every. Single. Time. Unfortunately Full Moon and Charles Band know that, and no longer bother to put much more effort into these then that basic premise. Much like with the second movie, all the right ingredients were present to make this a B-Movie Legend, but it was all mixed together incorrectly and what we ended up getting was just a sloppy mess of a movie and the weakest in the series thus far.

This one starts off  interesting enough: We don't really get a backstory on this deadly cookie, but we can assume that much like his previous two 'brothers', he probably went on a rampage somewhere and got caught, because as the movie begins we get to see a hilarious Silence of the Lambs parody scene that reveals this Gingerdead Man is already locked away in a prison. But not just any prison – a prison for re-animated objects! Golden idea right there! Other 'criminals' in his cell block include a fowl-mouthed French baguette, a promiscuous raspberry pie, a stoned batch of Jamaican brownies, and a dirty-minded cream puff. So far so good, if you ask me.

Unfortunately, just like with the second movie and its Tiny Terrors characters, these new murderous baked goods are only in the movie for not even two minutes. Upon seeing them, I was really hoping that the creators learned from the second movie and would give these guys a decent-sized role – perhaps having them escape with the Gingerdead Man and make him be the ringleader of a gang of killer food – but nope. Once again, they have no impact on the movie whatsoever and are only on the screen for a minute or two, leading to another wasted opportunity. It's made even all the worse by the fact that those new characters actually looked really good design-wise, so it's clear they spent a good portion of the budget on them, and you would think that if they did that then they would have made it actually worth it and keep the characters around longer.

Because of that total misuse of the budget, the Gingerdead Man himself gets the short end of the budget stick and looks absolutely horrid. By far the worst that the puppet has looked in the entire series. Sure, the one in the second movie was a step down from the one in the first, but this one is like an entire ladder down from both of those. And not just in terms of how well it looks as it moves around and does its thing (made even worse still by the overuse of horrible CGI), but also in the basic design as well. At least the one in the second movie still resembled the design of the first, but this one doesn't even come close to looking like the other two. I know, I know my logic behind the different design that I used in my review for Gingerdead Man 2 could still be applied here – It is a different cookie after all, and thus, as a cookie, it was designed differently. But still, is it really that hard to duplicate the puppet prop used in the first movie? Or better yet – just use the exact same prop! To add insult to injury, they also used yet another voice actor for the character (this time the director of the movie lent his voice 'talents' for the character), and just like with the prop itself, he's the worst Gingerdead Man voice in the entire series, not even trying to sound like how the character sounded or talked in the previous two movies. As big of a step down as everything regarding the character of the Gingerdead Man was in the second movie from the first movie, this one is the same step down but from the second movie. Just pure unnecessary laziness led to the atrocity that is this movie's Gingerdead Man character.

One of the movie's few saving graces is its amazingly campy plot. I mentioned a Silence of the Lambs parody scene up above, and that comes into play when an FBI agent by the name of Clarissa Darling visits this Hannibal Lector-esque version of the Gingerdead Man, complete with an excellent Hannibal/Clarice dialog exchange. However, the Gingerdead Man ends up breaking free of his confines during a prison riot and gets lost, ending up in a science laboratory that's currently experimenting with time travel. Of course he ends up setting the machine off and getting sent back in time to 1976, right in the middle of a disco-on-rollerskates competition (“Of all the shithead decades to get stranded in!” he so hilariously notes).

The rest of the movie is made up of two main stories, just like the second movie was – On the one side, we have the Gingerdead Man going around and killing all sorts of sex-crazed drugged-out, disco-loving teens while uttering hilarious one-liners, and luckily this time he had a bit more of an impact on the overall movie then he did in the second movie (where it was largely unimportant to anything else going on). On the other side, we have the human story which thankfully is more interesting then the one from Gingerdead Man 2 as well. We have the owner of the arena trying to raise money in multiple different ways to keep the roller disco arena from getting shut down. Some of these ways include a bake sale, a beauty pageant, the previously-mentioned roller disco competition, as well as a car wash by young hot girls in tight bikinis (which is something all B-Movies should strive to find a way to include). She's not the main focus though; the main character of this movie is her shy socially-awkward teenage niece by the name of Cherry Wright, whom seems to be the only person in the building that even notices that there's a killer cookie running around (and of course nobody believes her). Silence of the Lambs isn't the only movie this one spoofs, seeing as how, just like in Stephen King's Carrie, after Cherry gets a make-over so that she can try to win the title of Roller Boogie Queen, the social teenage Bitch Queen devises a plan with the end result of – yes, you guessed it – dropping a bucket of pig's blood all over Cherry. And JUST LIKE in Carrie, it turns out Cherry also has strong telekinetic powers when she shows displays of strong emotion, which comes into play quite a few times – the best of which is during an entertaining show-down between her and the Gingerdead Man, which results in a mass electrocution death of almost everyone in the building.

This movie takes everything that the first two movies did, and then multiplies it all by about 10. You loved the cheesy one-liners? This movie has one being spurted out almost every 30-60 seconds. You like to embrace the campiness of the other movies? Well then, hold onto your hat because you haven’t seen anything yet. This one openly showers in the cheese like never before, which is made quite obvious with all the blatant movie spoofs throughout (I noticed Silence of the Lambs, Carrie, Candyman, Psycho, Hellraiser, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and Porky's). While this worked to a degree, it did reach a point where it was just too much and too over the top. I never thought I'd ever think of the first Gingerdead Man movie as being subdued and low-key with the cheese, but after seeing this one that's the only way to think back on the first. Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver takes everything you love about the series and cranks it all up even higher, which works both for and against it, depending on the scene. I kid you not, this movie involves a scene where two little kids return from time-traveling throughout history to bring Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Lizzy Borden, and Charles Manson to 1976 to team up with the heroes and fight the Gingerdead Man, and then have them dance and celebrate their victory with the heroes – WTF!? That ending doesn't even make any sense, nor does it even try to make sense other then to throw in yet another random and unnecessary movie spoof. Sadly, this entry felt quite like one of those horrid 'Insert Genre Title here' Movie spoof movies more often then not, and that's never a good thing seeing as how those are some of the worst movies to ever grace the entire history of our planet.

Even ignoring the maximum overload of camp and spoofing, the fun cheese and hilarious one-liners can't make up for all the other aspects that they just totally did wrong or botched. Alongside the previously-mentioned horrible Gingerdead Man prop and effects, and the lack of good use of the new pastry characters, this entry also has pretty bad acting. Not like the first movie had excellent actors, but the acting chops on display in both the previous entry and this one makes the first movie look like The Godfather in comparison. There's bad acting, and then there's distractingly bad acting.

Another distractingly-bad step down for this entry is the special effects. Not only is the Gingerdead Man himself of far lesser quality this time around, but so are the kills. This movie is overloaded with unneeded CGI, both in making the Gingerdead Man move around but also with almost every single kill. The previous two movies needed no CGI at all to get the job done, and they were better off for it. Here, it just ruins what would otherwise be some excellent kill scenes. There is some great stuff like a group of bikini-clad beauties being sprayed with acid and having their skin and bones melt into a pile of goo, a nailgun used like a tommy gun on three people in the middle of having a threesome, a head cleaved in two, plenty of headshots, and the previously-mentioned mass electrocution scene. But almost all of the awesome kills are completely ruined by the 25-cent paycheck that the computer animator must have received for his work on this.

The final nail in the coffin for me however, is the total misuse of Robin Sydney. Ever since the first movie, I've been hoping to see the original lead character, as played by Robin Sydney, make a return. The second movie never touched on her, but when I saw her name in the opening credits of this one, I got excited – especially when we find out about those kids traveling through time to collect people to fight the homicidal cookie, I figured 'Hey now, that's an excellent way to bring Robin Sydney back!' but unfortunately, that's not how she returns. Actually while the actress returns, her character does not. As it turns out, she only has a cameo that lasts just a few seconds, playing another completely different character – again, WTF!? Those two kids even go to the future to grab someone who has dealt with this pastry before...but not her; They get Clarissa Darling from the opening scene of this movie instead! Talk about yet another missed opportunity! They even had the actress on-set so I can't even fathom why they didn't use her as her previous character in that scene instead of the Clarissa Darling character! That payoff alone would have almost saved the movie for me.

In regards to some aspects, this one improved somewhat over the previous movie but unfortunately it does far more things wrong then it does right, resulting in a very frustratingly uneven movie that should have been, and could have been, the best in the trilogy. After two disappointing sequels, I really just want to throw in the towel and say that if they continue on with this series, then I'm done with it...

...Sadly, as it turns out I'm very easy to entertain, and the very idea of a killer cookie is all it takes to keep me coming back time after time, no matter how disappointing each continuing entry turns out, and so because of that, if Gingerdead Man 4 ever gets made then I'll be the first (and probably only) person at the video store that day to buy my copy.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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