popcorninhell Perhaps a more appropriate title for this AIP (American Independent Productions) cheapy would be Evil Toon. After all, for all its advertised zaniness, the movie really only has one cartoon villain which is really only seen a handful of times. Consequently, most of the film is populated by the familiar crop of has-beens and a lead foursome of ladies probably hand-picked from the sticky pages of Penthouse Magazine.The setup is simple; a group of teenage girls are hired as a cleaning crew and are forced to spend the night in an old house with a bad reputation. While there, they unleash an evil spirit that manifests itself as an incredulous wolf cartoon. It promptly possesses, seduces, and slays the occupants of the house leaving only the conspicuously virginal Megan (Gabrielle) and a mysterious man named Gideon (Carradine) to solve the curse.Giving a film of this caliber a terrible review would be like swatting flies with a sledgehammer. Director Fred Olen Ray has had a long and, to be honest, quite prolific career making micro-budget horror and sci-fi movies, as well as softcore T&A flicks for the golden-age of Skinamax. Shot with a budget of a mere $140,000, Evil Toons doesn't exactly have the bar set all that high.Thus if one were to overlook the films various faults you may just find a patch of things worth recommending. The plot doesn't drudge along but rather bounces through all the familiar story beats i.e. beginning, middle and end. That may sound like a dig until you consider some horror movies today don't even accomplish this. Additionally the acting is what can be best described as pornstar bad. Our pod of hot coeds clearly have no prior knowledge of how to use a broom; let along the ability to ferret out their motivations within a scene based on the script. Yet there's something endearing about the entire process; think watching a middle school play only with gratuitous amounts of nudity. It can be fun, if and only if you decide to pre-game before the movie.Otherwise you're looking at a light spoof on haunted houses that is both light on the horror and light on the laughs. Fred Olen Ray was rumored to have approached famed king of pop cinema Roger Corman about this script. Corman turned him down because the budget request was too low given the amount of special-effects needed. Ray shot it anyway, and made a tidy profit banking on the name recognition of the women; staples of Penthouse and Vivid Entertainment. Frankly I would have sprung for at least one bankable star. And no in 1992 that bankable star was not David Carradine.

ShootingShark Four women are staying the weekend in a spooky house they've been hired to clean, but before long one of them has been possessed by a demon unwittingly brought to life and embarks on a murderous rampage.I really like this movie. It's cheap, it's stupid, it doesn't really make sense and it has a bunch of young women taking their tops off every five minutes. It does have some bad points too, but it's a lot of fun and that's what counts. Mostly I like it because of the cast; Gabrielle as the wide-eyed ingenue and Stone as the sexpot pixie toon demon vampiress are both wonderful and hilarious in equal measures. Stone really eats up the screen and has a deliciously naughty delivery, licking Gabrielle's blood and observing, "Tangy ! But not too tart ... "; I wish she'd made more movies. As well as that we have old pros Carradine and Miller, both playing it straight, bless their cotton socks, and cult favourite Bauer in a black teddy. The plot is some mumbo-jumbo about a haunted book, soul-shrouds and a cursed researcher of arcane arts called Gideon Fisk (great name), but is diverting enough to cover the film's charming budgetary limitations. There's also a great title sequence by Bret Mixon and a jaunty keyboard score by Chuck Cirino that keeps everything moving along, whilst the film keeps coming up with engagingly goofy scenes like the one where Stone tries to open the wine bottle. In the late eighties/early nineties there were a lot of these agreeable tongue-in-cheek no-budget horror comedies, well made by the likes of Ray, David DeCoteau and particularly Jim Wynorksi. This is one of Ray's best, but a lot of them are great fun, for example Bad Girls From Mars or Dinosaur Island. Flesh fans should note that both Stone and Nix are adult-movie stars; Nix (whose real name is Stacy Mitnick) under the screen-name Barbara Dare.

Bogframe Face it, Evil Toons was never conceived as Oscar material. It's a deftly crafted spoof on every B & C horror movie made in the last 50 years. You have your typical Blonde, Brunette & Redhead with their brainy friend (she's the one with the glasses, natch) bimbos who get a job cleaning out an old house. They find an evil object, release a nasty spirit and get killed off in ways that reflect who they are. Then your cameo (David Carridine) comes in and tells the surviving (smart) one how to repair the damage, and everything comes up roses. Looked at it this way, you have a quickie shoot transformed into a masterful spoof. I loved it, you will to, if you don't take it too seriously!

scout777 Yeah, it's a B-Movie and yeah there wasn't a WHOLE lot of animation done like in "Cool World" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". But the whole point of the movie was to see T and A and THAT'S what the movie did good on. REALLY fine young girls getting naked! Kool beans :)