• Produced and directed by “Robert Talbot” (Charles Band)
• Written by Benjamin Carr
• Starring
  • Ashley Cafagna
  • Tim Redwine
  • Daniel Hartley
  • Michael Dennis
  • Caroline Ambrose
• Executive produced by Peter Locke, Donald Kushner, Bobby Young, and Michael Feightner

You know, there comes a point at which Charles Band’s returning focus on dolls and toys coming to life crosses the line from idiosyncratic interest to unhealthy obsession. I’m not saying it’s on a level with the urge to cleanse the Earth of sinners by fire, or the compulsion to take revenge for your mother’s infidelity and abandonment on random prostitutes, but still. I can only imagine how fascinating it would be to be a fly on the wall at Band’s appointments with his therapist. (Hey, there’s the next Full Moon franchise! Charles Band: On the Couch.)

This time out, the toy critters in question are the supporting puppet characters on Cap’n Mike’s Mystery Monsters!, a top-rated kids’ show. Tommy (Tim Redwine) is the new cast member, culled from an open casting call publicity stunt, replacing a former youngster whose career had just hit the puberty skids. Tommy finds out very quickly that the illusion of television doesn’t match the reality: Jimmy (Daniel Hartley), the other boy co-star, is wound tighter than a drum because of his own impeding adolescence; Susie (Ashley Cafagna) is never a cellphone call away from her therapist; and star Captain Mike (Michael Dennis) is an ornery and prickly old cuss — and not in that endearing, grandfatherly way, either. (As usual, I don’t know whether to attribute unspoken themes to screenwriter or director, but there is a definite strain of cynicism toward show business running all through the movie. It could be pseudonymous director Band being surprisingly forthright about the jaded and cutthroat world he’s chosen to inhabit; on the other hand, it could be screenwriter Carr venting about all of the crap he’s been forced to churn out to pay the rent.)

Cap’n Mike always wanted to be a pirate.

But what captures Tommy’s interest most is the Mystery Monsters themselves — Esmerelda (the ditzy one), Blop (the gaseous one), and Squigee (the smarter one with horns). He’s sure they’re puppets, but Tommy never sees any strings, wires, or puppeteers, and Cap’n Mike makes very clear to Tommy on his first day the dire consequences of messing with, snooping around, or touching the Mystery Monsters.

Meanwhile, in another dimension, Mara, Queen of the Bottomless Pit (Caroline Ambrose) is shown something disturbing by her chief executioner and all-around lackey, Groon (Sam Zeller): Her scaly minions, missing lo these thirty years, are on a terrestrial television show! It’s time to make the mystical journey to Earth and retrieve her stolen slaves – and deal with the thief that took them!

Back on Earth, Tommy is having a hard time keeping his curiosity in check. His dressing room adjoins Cap’n Mike’s, and when he hears more voices through the walls than should come from a single occupant, he pen-knifes a hole in the wall and sees Mike and the monsters playing poker and smoking. Then with a magic word, Mike zaps them all back into their magical box.

“You call this a script? Who wrote it, Benjamin Carr?”

Tommy runs to Susie with “the truth” about the Mystery Monsters, but she naturally thinks he’s crazy and offers her therapist’s phone number. So now he’s got double motivation: curiosity, and that defensive drive that shouts, “Crazy? You think I’m crazy?! I’ll show you! I’ll show you all!!” Okay, maybe he doesn’t get as mad-scientist as that, but it’s only a matter of degree, I tell you.

Now, as you have surely concluded by now, this is all fairly standard. Hell, it’s solidly in a well-worn rut. All that’s missing is a heartless capitalist developer for it to touch all the bases of hackneyed kidvid plotting. So it will come as a welcome diversion when the movie’s sole touch of creativity takes center stage for about half an hour: Mara and Groon show up in a black limo, well-heeled and groomed, and ready to take over the production company to get at the monsters. Queen Mara can’t go around with Groon calling her “Queen” all the time, so she chooses the local title that best approximates her station: “Executive Producer.” They work their way past the security guard and secretary into the office of the the show’s executive producer, Mr. Hildebrandt (J.W. Perra), with Groon translating show-business and legalese into pseudo-medieval despotic equivalents. Again, you get the feeling that Benjamin Carr was working through some issues here; there’s an enthusiasm to all of the parallels between showbiz hierarchies and bloodthirsty tyrants that’s usually absent from his scripts. (“Cast and crew” are “possessions and chattel”? Yeah, there’s no axe to grind there…)

Conan the MBA.

Alas, that part cannot last forever, and we have to get back to the main plot, such as it is: Tommy enlists Susie and sneaks into Mike’s dressing room to open the box, whereupon he becomes the monsters’ master (pseudo-genie rules, you know). The monsters sense Mara’s presence with fear, so Tommy agrees to help them stay away from her, and the good news is that Mara and Groon can only stay in our dimension for two days total, with a lapse of several decades before they’ll be able to cross over again. The bad news is that the monster want to regain their long-lost freedom, and the only way to do that is to destroy the box, and the only one who can do that is Mara.

Actually I misspoke; the real bad news is that this movie keeps making me look at the damned puppets, and I like them less every time I see them. Other toy related Band productions (like Dolls, and the Puppet Master series… and Demonic Toys… and BloodDolls… and Ragdoll… and… and… and…) usually have one thing in their favor: the murderous critters are supposed to look like toys and puppets. Here, the monsters are supposed to look like super-realistic puppets who are believably revealed to be living creatures. But both the puppeteering and the puppets themselves are inferior by a full order of magnitude to those earlier killer toys. Want a movie that will make you long for the competence of Demonic Toys? This is your answer. The sole exception is Squigee; a prop puppet is used for over-the-shoulder and background shots, and then an actor in full-head makeup is used for closeups. Unfortunately, that only accentuates the lousy articulation of the other two. (I’d love to identify the actor behind Squigee and the voices of the other two – heck, I’d also like to know how to spell “Squigee” correctly — but none of the talent involved with the monsters is credited. By their own choice, as likely as not.)

Squigee. He’s the smart one.

In between long stretches of Band counterproductively pointing the camera at the puppets — ooh! They look even faker than they did before! — the plot proceeds to its inevitable conclusion, in which three dimwitted kids manage to outsmart an ironfisted despot and a professional torturer with surprising ease. In fact, by the end, the script feels like it’s just given up and rolls to the credits under its own inertia. Once Carr got the digs against show business out of his system, I guess his interest flagged.

If the movie seems too long for you at 81 minutes including credits, you might be interested to know that Blockbuster distributes a trimmed-down version on its own house label, clocking in at a svelte 55 minutes. Of course, I can tell without looking that what gets cut is my favorite part, the Hollywood sniping.

Anna Nicole Smith is practically begging for an intervention.

Which really makes you wonder, who exactly was Band aiming this movie at? The main storyline is too threadbare for any but the youngest elementary school children, but the entire middle section of witticisms and cynicisms at Hollywood’s expense are going to be incomprehensible to them. Seems to me that the only people who would really appreciate it are those who know Band’s oeuvre and Carr’s output, who can see the irony of a man like Charles Band showing the base venality of so many behind the scenes…

Oh, dear lord – the target audience for this movie is ME.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  Sam Zeller (Groon) played “Ch’Targh” in the DS9 episode “Sons and Daughters”