Possibly NSFW.

I have watched a lot of B-horror movies. I've even watched some C, some D, some F, even a few Z's in my time. Some are so bad they're good, but some are just bad. Than, every once in awhile, you come across a movie so bad it's almost surreal. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Terror Toons...



I often tell people that I would've grown up relatively normal, if not for two things. One, I heard the word "penis-breath" while watching E.T. And two, when I was a kid, my parents would frequently take me to Blockbuster, and I would walk up and down the horror movie aisle, where our local Blockbuster had stacked rack upon rack of gory, campy, B-and-lower-grade horror movies. Now, not all of them were B-grade, some were classics, but among the standard copies of Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween there were lesser known pieces like The Gingerdead Man, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and, of course, Terror Toons.

Now, at the time, my parents wouldn't let me rent those movies. That still didn't keep me from gazing at the garish covers, reading the plot summaries on the back, and wondering what depravities lay inside the video cassette.

Now that I'm older, oftentimes, I'll find myself confronted with one of these movies. Sadly, the local Blockbuster doesn't stock most them anymore (I think bad horror movies was a 90's trend and the market just isn't there), which sucks because I remember they had the entire Silent Night, Deadly Night series, and I've heard number 5 is spectacularly, hilariously bad (though incredibly hard to find, with reason). Yet, I still manage to find these things, memories come flooding back, and I usually end up watching them. So, Terror Toons...

For those who have watched as many cheap horror movies as I have, you've probably come across the company that has made Terror Toons (and other Z-grade wonders), "Brain Damage Films". Pity the man who came up with that company name, because anyone who talks about any of their films usually begins with some below-the-belt cheap shots that play off of the company name. Don't feel too sorry, however, because he kind of deserves it. Any company known for making horror movies as notoriously low budget as Terror Toons kind of deserves to be mocked in the most juvenile ways.

Enough background, let's jump right into this movie, and see why the name "Brain Damage Films" is such an apt name for the company ( ).

So the movie begins with...



Uh, some balding, middle aged punk-rocker in a leather jacket. Who stands in front of a backdrop made out of what appears to be garbage bags, attempting his best "I'm a BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD MAAAAAAAAAAAN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" voice as he practically reads off the back of the DVD case. Yeah. I would've laughed hysterically if I didn't feel so bad for the guy. He reminds me of William Shatner, if William Shatner went through a particularly vicious bout of punk rock mid-life crisis. Every horrible low-grade horror has that "moment of truth" when you facepalm and you know this movie is going to be a special kind of bad. This is that moment. And we're barely even a minute in.

I guess this wasn't really the movie, so much as an intro, alright, let's see the beginning...



So the movie starts with what is either supposed to be a fully grown man with the mind of a 5-year old, or a fully grown man playing a 5-year old in the movie. This becomes a pretty common theme later on, which adds a disturbingly surreal element to the movie that I'm not sure is on purpose or not. I'm assuming these are adult actors playing kids, because I assume they weren't exactly able to find real life children to be in the movie. Especially if they sent Punk Rock Shatner to go get the kids, which leads to some truly horrifying images of that guy chasing kids around the playground, asking suspicious mothers if he can take them back to his house to be in a movie. Anyway, he's strapped to a table, and the charming man standing above him is none other than the brilliantly named "Dr. Carnage". Dr. Carnage is a cartoon Doctor from the "cartoon dimension", and I'm guessing that's where we are now.

This scene really serves no purpose other than to introduce us to Dr. Carnage, the movies visual style, and to show us the real horrorshow acts of cartoon-hi jinx inspired ultraviolence the good Doctor can get into. So, this isn't really the beginning of the story either. It's just another introduction. But let me take this time to point out said "visual style"...



Which loosely translates to - "editing and visual effects created in MS Paint. With clip art. Lots of clip art."

So anyway, Dr. Carnage kills the man-child by cutting him open and pulling his spinal cord and skull out through his stomach. Which would be awesome in a schlocky, Mortal Kombat kind of way. If the special effects didn't cost them only a nickel. Want a gory blood bath that amuses in its over-the-top bad taste? No. You can not haz.

Two minutes of credits roll, which look like the opening to a 60's era childrens show, which may have been the point, but who cares, the movie is starting!

...

again.

Haha, wow. I think I need to see this movie now. Preferably with friends.

Our tale opens with this shot, accompanied with the sound of a little girl singing "Rubber Duckie". As you begin to think we're about to be greeted with stock innocent little sister character, the camera pans back to reveal the whole bathroom and...



Oh, sweet Jesus.



Uhhhhhyyyyeeeeeeeeah. Remember what I said about the guy in the beginning, about how age confusion plays a big role in this movie. This pretty much demonstrates this theme perfectly.



I used the term "surreal" a couple times in describing this movie before, and this whole age confusion thing is one of the key elements of this. Just take this character for example. During this entire scene, my dick was in this weird place between "schwing" and "OH MY GAWD DO NOT WANT!". I have a feeling this movie is demonstrating what a pedophile sees every time he looks at an 8-year old girl, and I feel dirty.

Than we meet "Candy's" mom and...



My. Eddie Izzard's sure gotten... frumpy.

This movie isn't just low budget. This movie is like what happens when a group of Middle School students are assigned a video project in which they have to play all the parts. Only these Middle School students are grown adults. And I have a feeling, instead of getting a "A", all they'll be getting is a trip to the Guidance Counselor.

Anyway, the parents are going out of town. What a surprise. Leaving young Candy in the care of her older sister...



... who is supposed to be a teenager in High School, judging by the way she and her friend talk about boys and sneaking booze from their parents. Sweet Jesus, I'm against typecasting and all that, but is anyone in this movie played by anyone who even remotely physically resembles their character?

Anyway, back to the plot. Little-big-girl Candy gets a cartoon DVD in the mail. After being confronted by her sister and her sisters friend (in the picture above) about how she's "a little too old to watch cartoons" (you have no idea, movie) and playing up the whole playful, big sister picking on little sister thing, Candy goes upstairs and calmly watches...







Oh. My. God.

And she's not even the least bit fazed by any of it. She's not delighted, but she's not upset either. She just kind of, calmly watches, zonked out. If I was the rather large-breasted little girl that she was supposed to be, I would've jumped up and hid behind the bed, this thing would've scared the bejeezus out of me. Hell, that scene in the beginning of The Goofy Movie when Goofy's son turns into a giant version of his dad scared me when I was little. Crappy MS Paint effects and all, this would've disturbed me.

Moar revuu later.

Mr. Doobie what the fuck did I just watch.

I don't know what to do besides echo the above with my jaw hanging flabbergasted-ly on its hinges.

Cont.

So anyway, than the, WAAAAITAFUCKINMINUTE!



...

Y'know, this reminds me of another bad horror movie I watched once. It was appropriately titled The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made and the entire reason I won't review it here is because I think that one was meant to be mind-bogglingly bad. Anyway...



Cardboard axe. To the head. Being held by the victim. I'm not sure which is worse. Cardboard prop, or shitty bluescreen effect. Anyway, let us continue our journey forward!

Anyway, it is at this point that, you guessed it, the terror toons Dr. Carnage and his assistant Max Assassin (who for some reason is a big purple gorilla, I don't know what the name Max Assassin has to do with a giant purple gorilla, but than, I don't know why an 8-year old girl has melon-sized tits either) come out of their home in the TV cartoon dimension and attack.

Y'know, in retrospect, little Candy shouldn't have been surprised. The credits of the Terror Toons DVD she got does say stuff like, "produced by Sey Ton" and "directed by Bee Zel Bubb". Wow. You'd think the Prince of Darkness would be able to afford a bit more subtlety.

I'll have you know I got 50 minutes into this shit before I finally couldn't take anymore. The fact that you've made it through, I believe, this entire thing amazes me.

Oh, hey, this was advertised on that vampire lesbian pron my mom bought me in Canada called "The Vampire Sisters". I wanted to watch this.

...it couldn't have been worse than the Vampire Sisters.

Before I continue this review, let me tell you something I learned yesterday from a friend. If you watch the credits, you'll find that the character of Candy is played by an actress named "Lizzie Borden". Well, apparently, Lizzie Borden is a porn actress. This isn't really important, it just adds a whole new level of to this already troubling performance.

Anyway. The Terror Toon Twins come out of the TV and attack.

Meanwhile, Candy's older sister and her friend have done what all teenage girls in horror-movie land do when their parents are away on a vague overnight trip. They invite boys over. I'll have to be honest, this part of the movie is pretty hard to review, because it's pretty damn boring. One thing I do know is that these "teenagers" must be missing at least half of their frontal lobe, because... well... just look at the way they act. Part of the reason this part is so boring is because these pointless scenes are really drawn out. Any time something happens it takes these characters an awkwardly long time to react to it.

I mean, look at these expressions...



The guy on the rights' face just screams, "My childhood diet consisted of saltine crackers smothered in lead-based paint". Their dialogue is awkward and stilted, it's like watching an entire room of bad Christopher Walken impersonators. Or like they all recently had strokes, but I digress.

When the boys come over, the kids all have trouble deciding what kind of craaheyheyyyyyzy and wild teenage hi-jinks they want to get into. DILEMMA!

The boys want to play, what else, strip poker, while the girls want to play with the Ouija board. So, they settle on a compromise. Strip Ouija. Which actually sounds like it might be fun, I might just suggest we play it at my next family reunion. As if things couldn't get any more boring, this begins a far-too-long, pointless, strip Ouija montage. If you're thinking to yourself, "But Mr. Doobie! This is a game that has both naked people, and communication with angry, undead spirits! How can it be boring?" Just watch the scene, if you're not banging your head against the nearest wall by the time it's done, you need to put down the knitting needles and take up sky-diving or BMX biking or something, because you definately need more excitement in your life.

Fuggit, I'm skipping ahead...

It is than that Candy's older sister hear what sounds like screaming and the sound of an obese trucker jacking off coming from her sisters bedroom. Rightfully concerned, she goes up to check on her sister, only to find Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin with their hands inside Candy!



Literally. In case you haven't noticed from the lines painted on either side of her mouth, something suspicious is going on here. And no, they haven't turned Candy into Alice Cooper. They've ripped out her spine, stuck their hands up her back, and are using her as a ventriloquist dummy. I wish I could say this is the first time I've seen this kind of thing happen in a horror movie, but it's not.

Dummy Candy tells her sister everything is fine, and her sister goes back downstairs. Why don't Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin just kill her? Why all the subtlety? I... well... it's...

There is no real logical explanation. All I can assume is that Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin's torture goes beyond the fourth wall. They don't want to just torment the people in the movie with them, they want to torture the audience watching the movie as well, by forcing them to watch more of the "DURP" clubs inane games.

Once the sister gets back downstairs, her friends are trying to convince her to take off her shirt and URRRRRRRRRGHICANTTAKIT. SKIP.



Yay. A pointless character. Maybe something will happen.

This is, I guess, supposed to be one of Candy's friends come to play with her. He comes in, is generally boring and uninteresting, and than gets his head cut off by Dr. Carnage.

That's two people dead, and in horror movie world, that only means it's going to escalate from here. Let's just hope there's no more inane...

But Doobie! How could you skip such riveting dialogue as:

"I'll be right over, Jennifer!"

Amy: "Who's Jennifer?" *vapid, what-a-guy-he-is smile*

"Oh, haha, I know you're Amy, I was just messing with you."

"Rick, you stinker!"

And how could you skip the ouija board specifically telling them which articles of clothing to take off. Never mind that this scene is like 8 minutes long, all told, there's a bit where the video editors learn a new trick. Black-haired-guy's pants slide up and down on his legs to the beat of the weird, techno porno song!

Yes. Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin are... dancing. Poorly. What reason? I dunno. It takes up time I guess. Like the majority of scenes in this movie. What are our precious young teenagers reaction to this asshattery?



"Yay! Strange men in Halloween masks breaking into my house is hilarious!"

And because all these teenagers sniff glue, this laughing is uncomfortably long, and lasts until...



"I say, it appears as if I have gotten my internal organs all over your new rug! Do try and forgive me!"

I guess the laughter was magical or something. Oh well, dead guy #3.

I would also point out, this scene is also needlessly stretched out, with our stroke patient protagonists taking about an eternity to get done screaming about it.

The mayhem begins...



"OH NO! WE'RE TRAPPED IN A SHITTY BLUE SCREEN EFFECT! WHATSOEVER WILL WE DO!?!?!?"

Anyway, the girls leave the last standing boy behind because he threw up, and apparently, after watching their friend cough up his bowels, that is one of the most disgusting things they've ever seen and they just can't take it. And because they need to go check on Candy. Once they get up to Candy's room, they find that a Police Officer from the cartoon dimension has come out of the TV. He tells them all about how he's hunting Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin, hands them an over-sized cartoon gun, and tells them that if they see Dr. Carnage or Max Assassin, they should shoot to kill. Than he leaves and proceeds to do nothing constructive for the rest of his time in the movie. Than he gets blown up.

Hooray for pointless characters.



Meanwhile, the remaining boy has been kidnapped by Dr. Carnage for one of the Doc's gruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuesome experrrrrrrrrrrrrrimennnnnnnts. He cuts open the guys head and tickles his brain.

...

Yeah, that's about it. For the rest of the movie he stares dumbly off into space and hallucinates clip-art. It only manages to be a minor step down from the mental and emotional capacities his character possessed before the lobotomy.

The Doctor and Max Assassin kidnap Candy's sister, tie her up next to Lobotomized Boy and force her to watch as they do a magic show that consists of them pulling Lobotomy Boy's brain out of a hat, and sawing the other girl in half. There's not much else to say, other than, like the dance scene, this scene is gimmicky and goes on entirely too long.

Than Candy's sister gets sucked down an MS Paint vortex of doom into Hell. No I don't know why. But there she meets the creator of the Terror Toons DVD, the Devil. Surprised? If you were, you were probably an actor in the movie, weren't you?

Anyway, Satan is...



Creepy, but not in the way you would think the Prince of Darkness would be. He kind of looks like one of that creepy uncle that you'd only see at family reunions. Y'know, the one that would keep giving you these weird, sidelong glances, and you would wonder what was going through their mind, and hope it wasn't something having to do with molesting you?

So what does the devil do? Well... nothing. He just kind of aimlessly monologues and meanders and acts like a diva and never really says anything important or meaningful. God the Devil is boring. It's ridiculous and sad in a way very similar to Punk Rock Shatner was in the beginning. Oh, and he wants to broadcast Terror Toons to a mass audience to spread the word of evil and destruction all around because he wants to leave his "handprints" on history. Because, apparently, being the biggest boogie man in one of the most enduring and popular religions in the world isn't leaving a big enough "handprint". He also reveals that anything is possible in the cartoon dimension, and that in the cartoon world, you can be anything you want.

Candy's sister decides, at this point, that if she can be anything she wants, FUCK YOU I'M A SUPERHERO!



You'd think Satan would've thought this rather obvious plot twist through.

So she begins to taunt him schoolyard style ("C'mon!", "Let's go!") and Satan returns by going into another uneventful, meandering monologue that makes eternal damnation and ancestral curses that stretch for thousands of years sound boring. Than he decides, "lololololol jk. G2g." and disappears in a crappy MS Paint fire effect.

What a little bitch.

So Candy's sister flies out of the cartoon world, and heroic music starts to play as she... takes the DVD out of the DVD player. HEROICALLY!!!



Long story short, she triumphantly flies around via a bad blue-screen effect, finds Max and Dr. Carnage has one of the most awkward and slow fight scenes ever caught on film and...





Our villains are dead. At the risk of sounding redundant, the head-crushing of Max Assassin is also awkwardly long, as most of it is 60 seconds of her grinding his face into the pavement to the accompaniment of many farting sounds.

And, of course...



Dr. Carnage's skull is filled with more clip-art. Yay.

So, the parents come home from their vague overnight stay (I think they went to a wedding) to find their house in shambles, everyone is either dead, lobotomized, our cradling their dead sister in the corner, dressed in a pink superhero costume and giggling insanely. Typical nobody wins ending. The end.

movie wrote:

Meanwhile at the neighbor's house!

Wait. What? There's more?

*Sigh*. Well, I guess since this movie had three beginnings, that means it must have multiple endings.

We see a little boy come out of his house, check the mail, and guess what he finds there?



A copy of the Terror Toons DVD, great. His eyes turn into big, crappy MS Paint effects, he yells "DADDY DADDY! HARBLEGARBLE!" and runs back inside.

Credits. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

CONCLUSION!!!!

This has got to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. If not the worst.

Now, whenever I say that, I'm usually exaggerating, and so, the real question is, is this movie really that bad?

Uh. Yes. It really is.

This movie isn't just bad, it's fucking weird, but not in a good way. Trust me, I like a lot of weird and surreal movies, like Tommy, Eraserhead, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, while in those movies the weirdness added to the movies, and were part of what made the movie interesting and awesome, this movies weirdness only distracts from the movie, and most of the weirdness probably results more from the movies lack of budget (big-titted Candy and the MS Paint effects) than from anything the makers were doing on purpose.

The plot is thin verging on non-existant. The pacing is fucking horrible. The acting is fucking horrible. The dialogue is fucking horrible. The camera work is often atrocious. And the "special effects" are the most hilariously bad part of the entire spectacle. The only characters that look like they're having any fun are Max Assassin and Dr. Carnage. But than, it's hard not to look like you're taking maniacal fun in a role when you're wearing this...



The entire movie.

This movie is a catastrophe not just because they fail to do anything right, but because they go above and beyond and do everything so fucking wrong that you have to wonder what went through everybody's heads when they saw the final product. Were they happy with what they had accomplished? I don't think I'll ever know. But if you're looking for something to watch and make fun of on a boring night with friends, than Terror Toons is the movie spectacular for you.

You know, I sat through this whole damn movie, I just kept saying to myself "Okay it can't get worse than X" over and over... Really I should have figured out the third time that not only could it get worse, it would get worse.

The big problems in no particular order:

Amy is trying to fight off Max Assassin with empty glass bottles to no avail. And even though she is cornered by this psychotic Grape Ape wanna-be, she is fucking smiling.

What was the point of introducing Candy's friend if you were only going to cut his head off with safety scissors a minute later?

That cartoon world cop died in the damn cartoon, how did he come out to chase after Doctor Carnage and Max Assassin? Speaking of, why bother bringing him out only to give Cindy a gun that never gets used, and then be blown up by a bad "hurr cops love donuts" joke?!

Why did Cindy not just bash the stupid DVD machine when she first got there? No instead she just goes on flipping switches that she can clearly see are actually increasing production until she gets ambushed by Max Assassin.

Why did the parents leave with the rule "No friends over" while Cindy had a fucking friend over?

They misspelled Ouija. When I saw that board I expected to see MS Paint Wegee come in from the side and turn Doctor Carnage and Max Assassin into more minions in his Wegee army. (Old meme is old, I know but still.)

Why did the Devil pussy the hell out? Seriously he makes it clear that it would have taken absolutely no effort to stop Cindy, and yet he just vanishes in flame essentially saying "Nah, protecting my evil plan isn't worth it."

And there are still more things wrong with this film that I'm just too damn tired to list.

EDIT: I just IMDB'd this thing... There's a damn sequel! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362230/

Oh I just have to comment even though this is 3 weeks old, I too, was dead curious about the awful horror movies at Blockbuster's that my parents wouldn't let me rent. Now I see I really wasn't missing anything.

The end with the kid's HARBLEGARBLE is just icing on the shit cake.

Given the improvements in cheap computer graphics programs Part III should be...oh, who are they kidding? It will be every bit as horrid as the first two.