Hideous! (1997)

• Directed by Charles Band
• Written by Benjamin Carr
• Starring
  • Michael Citriniti
  • Rhonda Griffin
  • Mel Johnson Jr.
  • Jacqueline Lovell
  • Tracie May
• Produced by Charles Band, Kirk Edward Hansen and Vlad Paunescu
• Executive produced by David DeFalco and Michael Feichtner

The late ‘90s were not kind to Charles Band and Full Moon Pictures. Having lost his distribution deal with Paramount, his budgets went spiraling downward, and production moves almost entirely to a succession of Romanian castles and sets. Hideous! was directed by Band himself in the period right before the majority of Full Moon-related output was co-produced with the Kushner-Locke Co., and everything acquired that distinctive flavor of apathy. Yes, it’s a movie about tiny malevolent creatures, but in initial premise if not in ultimate execution, Hideous! puts a novel spin on the central trope of so many Full Moon movies.

As the movie opens, three men in coveralls are engaging in the stinkiest job in the world: using long-handled nets to scoop solid detritus out of a sewage pool. Thanks to the trainee status of two of them, the third, Martin (Andrew Johnston), can regale both them and us with the various items he’s fished out of the sewage, from drugs to body part to wedding rings to fetuses. A mass chooses that moment to get caught in one of the nets; it’s roughly baby-sized, and wrapped in fleshy red tissue to keep the “surprise” for us. Martin immediately takes charge of it as the supervisor, with a “no, no, don’t thank me” demeanor that lets us know he’s up to something, and scurries off to make a phonecall.

“Smell that? Not just sewage, it’s Romanian sewage.”

The recipient of his message is Ms. Yost (Tracie May), proprietor of International Medical Specimens, which trades in “biological oddities” — what used to be called “pickled punks” in the incorrect days of carnival freakshows. Yost doesn’t deal with masses of rubes, though; she caters to an exclusive clientele of wealthy collectors who amass private museums full of unique specimens. She’s currently under contract to give first dibs to Dr. Lorca (Michael Citriniti), a patron with the hair and goatee of a stage magician and a rebuilt castle to match, but figures instead that she can get more money from Napoleon Lazar (Mel Johnson Jr.), who doesn’t have the goatee or the castle but shares Lorca’s perverse, almost physical passion for collecting. (You probably know Johnson best as the mutated taxi driver in Total Recall (1990); this was his first time working with Full Moon, after which he partnered with Charles Band to become the executive producer for Big City Pictures, the “urban”-themed sublabel that Full Moon spawned in the late ‘90s. The partnership lasted for four pictures: Ragdoll (1999), The Horrible Dr. Bones (2000), Killjoy (2000), and The Vault (2000).)

Lorca suspected treachery from Yost, though, so he has suborned her airheaded blonde secretary Elvina (Rhonda Griffin) to tell him when she goes scurrying to Lazar. After Yost has handed the specimen over to Lazar for $650,000 (and we still don’t get to see what makes Lazar gasp in admination), Lorca arranges an ambush that’s probably the most memorable scene in the movie: As Lazar drives the snowy roads to his private lane in the woods, his way is blocked by Lorca’s secretary Sheila (Jacqueline Lovell) in her car. Sheila’s previous appearance in the movie, sitting cross-legged on her desk while Lorca rants and raves, has showcased her unique fashion sense: bare feet, black hot pants, and an open black vest. Now, for the ambush on the snowy roads, she’s shucked the vest entirely, and appears in the wintery outdoors wearing only boots, hot pants, and a gorilla mask. For a period in Full Moon’s history in which the horror-adventure flicks were boringly safe and the nudity was confined to the “Surrender Cinema” line of genre-related softcore, the appearance of Jacqueline Lovell topless in a gorilla mask and brandishing a gun is a throwback to the gonzo exploitation that Band produced in the ‘70s and ‘80s like Fairy TalesSorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O Rama (1978) or (1988).

I’m beginning to love casual Fridays.

Well, Lazar may not have been able to recognize Sheila by her face, but he strongly suspects whom she’s working for, so together with Yost he hires a private investigator named Kantor (Jerry O’Donnell), who has learned all he knows about private eye methods and demeanor from old B-movies — you know the drill: stubble, undone tie, trenchcoat… He even effects a “youse guys” lilt to his speech. It takes him about 30 seconds to zero in on Elvina as the weak link, and from there the four of them — Yost, Lazar, Elvina and Kantor — set out to confront Lorca at his castle.

Lorca, meanwhile, has been fawning over his acquisition with an ardor just this side of the Spice Channel. We finally do get a look at the freak, though in such a way that it feels like Band forgot he had never shot a “big reveal” scene. It looks like a huge baby head with an overinflated cranium, four eyes, two mouths, and four nostrils in a noseless face; beneath the neck are a conglomeration of tenticular appendages. It’s big enough to make you wonder, How was the damned thing birthed? Lorca gives it a place of honor with three other unique human oddities in briny jars, all of which are unique but which share a similar problem of size with the newcomer; how did freaks this huge make it to full term? (You can only make rod puppets so small, I suppose, especially if they’re supposed to be menacing later on.) When Lorca leaves the room, the Big Head’s eyes suddenly open, and CGI tentacles extend to each of the other three jars. The last thing we hear is breaking glass…

Best Gong Show act ever.

When Lazar and his companions arrive, there are accusations and recriminations that degenerate into a dick-measuring contest between Lazar and Lorca. Lorca invites them all to behold the splendor of his collection, but when he takes them into the room with the four human specimens, all they find is broken jars and alcohol all over the floor. Lorca immediately has Sheila seal the castle, with iron plates clanging down over the doors and windows; nobody can leave until his “babies” are returned. But his “babies” are looking after themselves…

That’s the first half of the movie, and it’s the better half. The rest simply becomes yet another iteration of the Puppet Master formula, with a half-dozen people in a confined location with sneaky little buggers that are treated as being far more menacing than their size can sell. These are, after all, supposed to be deformed human babies; they move slowly, they leave slime trails, and they should be as dangerous as an equivalent number of housecats. Treating them as just another Full Moon killer critter crew ignores the icky perversity possible from a quartet of deformed human infants; there is, after all, an unsettling quality to freaks that out-and-out monsters can’t match. (There’s really only one reference them still being babies, and that scene focuses on one freak’s “mammary fixation” so that it’s more about displaying a nipple.)

Gives a new meaning to “homegrown preserves.”

The puppet effects here show exactly where the FX tricks of the normal Full Moon killer toys fall down. One can be forgiving of dolls, puppets, and other toys that still look like toys as they move around; it’s a lot hard to accept the latex and cable creations in Hideous! as being biologically alive instead of just more toys.

However, you have to admire any Benjamin Carr script which isn’t weighed down with a legalistic magic that requires pages of exposition. Jacqueline Lovell’s role here as Sheila is the evil twin of the hippie chicks and bliss ninnies that she normally played for Full Moon through this time period — a “free spirit,” certainly, but darker and more dangerous. And Rhonda Griffin as Elvina plays the airheaded blonde to perfection; I can’t shake the feeling that Lovell was originally intended for the part, but decided she’d rather switch roles on reading the script.

“Candygram.”

I can’t guarantee that the novelty of the first half will build enough momentum for your good will to coast through the lackluster second half, but if you play a drinking game where you take a slug each time you aaaalmost see Jacqueline Lovell’s nipples (no fair chugging during the gorilla scene), you should be buzzed enough not to mind the downhill slope.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 4
• breasts: 3
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Mel Johnson Jr. (Lazar) played “Broca” in two DS9 episodes