Full Moon Fright Box Vol 1: Umbrella Entertainment Collector's Edition

I was a video store kid growing up. I lived in a small town, population roughly 7,000, and my mom managed the local video store. When I think about growing up, I think about wandering those aisles, peering up at the VHS cover art for all the tapes—especially the horror movies, the scary covers that haunted my dreams.

My mom was responsible for inventory and managing how many tapes to order of each specific movie. Studios would send her screener tapes and based on the press material she was provided with, and how good the movie was, she had an idea of how many tapes to order. One of the loosest studios with screener tapes was Full Moon, back when they were still under Paramount. God, I must’ve seen every Full Moon movie from 1990-1994 twice over. I loved those movies. I loved the Videozone featurettes at the end of every tape that showed an inside look at the film’s production, and they even had previews to upcoming movies. I’ll always remember the Videozone featurette after Subspecies II, starring Denice Duff, and she took her job so professionally, for such a gooey, gory horror movie. I just adored all of it.

Umbrella Entertainment’s Blu-ray box set, Full Moon Fright Box digs into producer/filmmaker Charles Band’s theme of smaller heroes and villains, with Dollman, Demonic Toys, Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys and the decades-later sequel Demonic Toys 2.

First up is Dollman, directed by Albert Pyun which, for my money, is difficult to dislike. Pyun wasn’t exactly know for high-art type filmmaking, but he was a very talented craftsman when it came to low-budget productions. Dollman, in which the ever-reliable Tim Thomerson plays the Dirty Harry-esque Brick Bardo, takes the wise-cracking tough guy and shrinks him down to about 13 inches to do battle against vindictive drug dealers. On Bardo’s home planet, he’s the baddest ass there is. After pursuing a bad guy in outer space, both he and his nemesis and shrunken down and transported to Inner-City Anywhere, USA 1990s, he’s a small fish in a large, dangerous pond.

Dollman is about a thousand times better than it has any reason to be. The direction is solid, the effects are great and the performances are oddly good. Tim Thomerson is always great, and is utilized wonderfully in the Trancers movies. Jackie Earle Haley, long before his big comeback, puts in a fun performance as a sociopathic drug dealer. But Kamala Lopez, the woman who’s helping Bardo, is giving it her all, and she’s incredible.

Up next is the equally-fun Demonic Toys, a simple story (written by none other than David S. Goyer) about evil toys that come to life through a demonic force and wreak havoc on the people unlucky enough to be trapped inside with them. Officer Judith Gray (Tracy Scoggins) is staking out some criminals, which ends in a bloody shootout with her partner (and father of her unborn child) being killed in the line of duty. One of the thugs is hit in the belly and seeks refuge inside a large warehouse. Wounded and gutshot, like a horror version of Reservoir Dogs, his blood seeps into the ground and awakens a demonic force which possesses some children’s toys, to do its murderous bidding.

Judith, a delivery food driver and a teenage runaway, must now team up together if they’re going to survive the horror of these demonic toys. Bloody, gory, goofy, funny and genuinely tense at times, Demonic Toys is just good old-fashioned fun. Director Peter Manoogian is a veteran of low-budget cinema and knows how to keep the action going before the audience has time to process the absurdity of the story. As long as something is always happening and breakneck speed, we never have time to question it.

Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys is, in my humblest of opinions, an unfairly maligned title in this set. The consensus is that it’s not very good, that it’s a lot of reused footage from previous entries with the thinnest of stories as an excuse to patchwork it all together and create a threeway crossover event between Full Moon’s Dollman, Demonic Toys and Bad Channels. And, sure, maybe it is, but for Full Moon’s attempt at an Avengers-like story, it’s a lot of fun.

Bardo (Dollman), Judith (Demonic Toys) and Nurse Ginger (Bad Channels, a shrunken-down-by-aliens woman from a film not included in this set), team up to battle against those damned demonic toys, once and for all. Seeing Dollman and Ginger go up against the toys, which required giant sets, and for the toys to be reconstructed at something like 20x their normal size, is a lot of fun. And here’s the plus… it’s only an hour long! With the assembly of the dream team, introduction of the threat and final battle, you never have time to get bored. And what can I say? The effects are great. Charles Band, usually known for his role as producer and studio head, directed this time around and everyone involved is clearly having such a great time.

Finally, there’s Demonic Toys 2, from 2010, a long way away from the early 90s Full Moon that created Dollman, Demonic Toys and Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys. Unlike the previous three films, Demonic Toys 2 isn’t shot on film, it’s shot on video. Everything about Demonic Toys 2 is worse than its predecessors. The acting is worse. The story is barely, and I mean BARELY coherent. The special effects are lazy and half-assed. The movie itself feels embarrassed to exist.

I can’t necessarily blame Full Moon for what ended up happening to them, but I hate this era of Full Moon, where the films hide behind this cloak of irony, as if being in on the joke is somehow better than just making a bad movie. Full Moon in its heyday would take a small budget and do wonders with it. The Full Moon of Demonic Toys 2 intentionally makes trash so that it can’t be accused of failing, when it never even tried in the first place. It’s just a waste, a depressing slog. A waste of a great castle filming location (the same one used for Castle Freak) and a waste of the late, great Leslie Jordan.

Still, I’m not gonna let Demonic Toys 2 drag down the overall score, when you’ve got three perfectly good features included in the set. If anything, it’s nice to have as a comparison, so you can see the difference between a studio that wants more than anything to entertain an audience, and a studio that’s gone through a rough transitionary change, as the industry itself has shifted, and has stopped caring.

As of late, in the past couple of years, Full Moon has gotten back on track. I was a big fan of both The Primevals and Subspecies V, two features that harken back to their golden era and show a lot of love for the craft of storytelling. It does my heart good to see the studio of my childhood regain its footing and rediscover its love of movies.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray Box Set

The packaging on Umbrella’s collector’s edition of the Full Moon Fright Box is staggering. The rigid case features new artwork from Johny 'Smoov Design' Bekavac. Bekavac also created the art for each individual film’s removable slipcover, and each film’s standard case also contains original poster artwork from its original release. There are two A3 reversible posters featuring other movies within Full Moon’s filmography, four miniature cardboard poster stand up counter displays, and finally a 48-page book with behind-the-scenes, experiences and art with articles by John Harrison and Guy Davis.

All four films-- Dollman, Demonic Toys, Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys and Demonic Toys 2—are presented in 1080p high-definition video. The first three were shot on 35mm film, and I’m not sure what kind of restoration process went into them, but they look incredible. I don’t think I’ve seen any of these films on any other format outside of VHS until now. I didn’t see any previous DVD or Blu-ray releases, so I went straight from 1990s home video to… well, WOW! I wasn’t able to ascertain if these were restored from their original negatives or from an interpositive, but since they’re not being presented in 4K, it doesn’t make a tremendous difference. I don’t think the 4K/HDR treatment would be appropriate for these kinds of movies anyway because they weren’t made with a theatrical experience in mind, they were made to be watched on a TV, at a home, with some microwaved popcorn in a wooden bowl next to you.

The first three films, from Dollman to Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys look very similar in overall video quality. Details are nice and sharp, colors are richly defined, awash in a fine layer of film grain. Like I said, I’m not sure what process was used to create these transfers, but occasionally, on all three of these films, some mild distortion is seen. In a few instances, the frame seems to wobble and warp momentarily and then goes back to normal. This didn’t effect my overall score, just something I wanted to point out in case any other views happen upon it.

Demonic Toys 2 looks the least good. It was shot on video, cheaply lit and is just north of “professionally made”. It looks approximately like a porno, minus any sex. Like the main features, I won’t let its lackluster end-result drag down the stellar work on the other three films.

Dollman, Demonic Toys, Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys all come equipped with two audio mixes: DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo. On all three films, I recommend just sticking with the classic 2.0 stereo mix. The stereo mix is strongly detailed in musical cues and special effects, with a strong emphasis on dialogue clarity. The 5.1 mixes are fine, in their way, but are front-heavy presentations with only the occasional sound effect or ambient audio making its way to the rears, aside from the musical score, which does get mixed in to the surround speakers. There’s just not a tremendous difference between the two, and my vote is to go for the original mixes, as these were made for home television sets, circa 1990, so that’s where they do their best work.

Demonic Toys 2 only comes equipped with the one mix in DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo. I know I haven’t had many nice things to say about Demonic Toys 2, but the audio mix is solidly fine. It has an annoying musical score that never, ever lets up for a single minute, and sound effects sound weak and neutered (gunshots sound like a box of snappers you’d buy it a fair), but it gets the job done. Dialogue is crisp and audible and it’s free of any technical errors. It sounds significantly more professional than its visual counterpart looks.

Full Moon Fright Box from Umbrella Entertainment is packed with special features. Each disc contains audio commentary (some discs contain multiple commentaries), an interview with Charles Band about the film’s production history, classic Videozone featurette and more!

Dollman

• Audio Commentary – Author and Full Moon Historian Nat Brehmer
• Charles Band on Dollman (HD 7:03)
• Full Moon University (HD 18:02) – The Videozone Story
• Dollman Videozone Episode (HD 7:43)
• Tim Thomerson and Charles Band Vidcast July 2013 (HD 5:45)
• Lost Pulse Pounders 1998 Promo (SD 1:23)
• Trailer
• Full Moon Fright Box Trailers

Demonic Toys

• Alternate Director’s Cut (HD 1:23:00) – Extended cut of the film with longer, more explicit gore; runs about 23 seconds longer
• Audio Commentary – Author and Full Moon Historian Nat Brehmer
• Audio Commentary – Screenwriter and Actress Ali Chappell, and Film Critic Jay Clarke
• Charles Band on Demonic Toys (HD 8:07)
• Build-a-Scare (HD 4:58) – Creature sculptor Jeff Farley on Demonic Toys
• Demonic Toys Videozone Episode (HD 7:39)
• Trailer
• Full Moon Fright Box Trailers

Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys

• Audio Commentary – Author and Full Moon Historian Nat Brehmer
• Audio Commentary – Screenwriter and Actress Ali Chappell
• Audio Commentary – Charles Band and Tim Thomerson
• Charles Band on Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys (HD 6:25)
• Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys Videozone Episode (HD 8:30)
• Uncut Footage From the Set (SD 3:15:40)
• Trailer
• Full Moon Fright Box Trailers

Demonic Toys 2

• Audio Commentary – Author and Full Moon Historian Nat Brehmer
• Charles Band on Demonic Toys 2 (HD 6:25)
• Trailer
• Full Moon Fright Box Trailers

For any fan of Full Moon Entertainment or kid who grew up in a video store, Umbrella’s Full Moon Fright Box delivers in just about every way. The movies themselves are low-budget gems, showcasing an array of creativity and fun. The Blu-rays boast terrific audio and video stats, so you’ll be able to see these movies with a crystal clarity you might never have seen before. The packaging and the supplemental materials are beyond reproach. There is one treasure after another in this set, in a seemingly endless supply of surprises. Full Moon Fright Box from Umbrella Entertainment is Highly Recommended.
Click to order