Hobgoblins (1988).
Welcome, lovers of sleaze and horror that time forgot. Today, I offer for your approval one of the most famously failed attempts at a Gremlins ripoff. No, it’s not Spookies, Ghoulies, Munchies, Critters, Elves, or Trolls, but one of the worst rated films of all time according to the Internet Movie Database…1988’s Hobgoblins. Filmed in less than a week for about $15k, it’s lived in infamy for years because of Mystery Science Theater and countless YouTube “Worst Films Ever Made” videos, yet somehow, for no good reason, I’d never checked it out…until now. There doesn’t seem to be a better way to open up the Vinegar Syndrome Collectors Club, so let’s dive into Hobgoblins.
The story starts at a Los Angeles film lot that is apparently all but defunct, yet there’s still a boss who’s working there burning the midnight oil and still a team of security guards that work there overnight. One of the security guards, an old-timer named McCready, seems to be the only mainstay. The other position is a revolving door of young kids because they keep going into the one place that McCready tells them is off limits - an old film vault in the basement, where I guess they die? See, it’s filled with creatures, and McCready has apparently spent the last thirty years of his life there to prevent them from escaping. The moment we hear this from McCready, you realize he’s a big stupid idiot, because these things are normally locked behind what looks like a foot and a half thick bank vault door and a separate cage on the outside, but as we see not one, but two dimwitted kids open up both doors, we realize McCready just doesn’t keep anything actually locked. When these things eventually escape, there’s no one to blame but this old piece of trash security guard.
The one who finally lets them out is Kevin, a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kid who needs a job, probably so he can get enough money to leave his toxic girlfriend. After his first night at work, he comes home to Amy, who’s just a real piece of work. She’s constantly irritating everyone around her, but Kevin just worships the ground she walks on. We’re also introduced to Kevin’s friends in this scene, all simple sex-obsessed caricatures of people you’d never actually want to be friends with. Aside from his bitchy girlfriend, there’s the leotard wearing woman who’s clearly in heat, her tough guy sex-starved Army boyfriend and the horny nerd who only uses Kevin for his home phone so he can call a sex hotline called 976-SCAG for thirty second oral fantasies. These scene ends with a play fight on the lawn, Kevin vs. Army guy to see who wins a battle of smacking rake handles together. After Kevin loses, Amy tells him she’s disappointed because he’s never made her proud. Red flags all over the fucking place, Kev.
The next night at work, Kevin lets the hobgoblins out because stupid ass McCready again left things unlocked, and the geezer comes clean. Thirty years ago, the hobgoblins touched down in a tiny spaceship right in the middle of the movie lot, and they stayed there as his little secret for a while. They have a super power that allows them to tap into peoples’ minds and gives them their wildest dreams, but apparently it always ends badly and they destroy themselves, so he locked them in the vault and just hoped no one went down there, I guess. Now the creatures are loose, and lazy McCready just decides he’s too old to fight them, so he gives Kevin the rules - their weakness is bright light, and if you kill them, the fantasy they’re tapping into dies as well, presumably saving whoever they’re controlling. Once daylight hits, he’ll never be able to stop them, so he’s only got a limited time. The stage is set for an epic showdown - the hobgoblins vs. Kevin the Simp.
Of course the hobgoblins just go straight to Kevin’s house, because I’m guessing there was no money left in the budget for other extras. The friends are still there, now having a dance party and Amy is still uninterested in everything, dancing like the worlds wettest blanket. Before we get into what happens, we need to discuss the look of the creatures. They’re essentially Gremlin knockoffs, but without the benefit of animatronics. What we’re left with are either puppets being controlled like Muppets, or they’re just sitting there looking stupid. The models are hilariously bad looking, like hairless cats who glued the hair of other dead cats on them to fit in. They’re bad in hand puppet form, but even worse when you have to see a poor actor rolling around on the floor with something that just looks like a ragged plush doll.
The fantasies the hobgoblins tap into with regards to the gang are obvious enough. The nerd things he’s about to get with the phone sex operator, the army guy thinks he’s Rambo, and Amy becomes a stripper. Everything comes to a head at Club Scum, the place Amy is dancing. It’s a wacky sequence, giving us a full five minute music performance from a band on-stage, followed by a tame dance scene by Amy in which the only article of clothing that comes off is a glove, and then things get really weird as Army guy starts tossing live grenades that appear out of thin air around the bar which only seem to phase those flying off-screen because of the explosions.
Eventually they round up the hobgoblins and drive them back to the studio, but before they can try to redeposit them in the vault, Kevin is challenged to a nunchuck fight in the parking lot by a guy he pointed a gun at earlier in the film. I instantly recognized this dude as Chris from the film Deadly Embrace starring opposite Mindi Miller. Of course Kevin learned from his stick fight loss in his front yard earlier in the day and wins this sticks on chains battle in one of the worst fight scenes I’ve ever seen. At the end of the film, the hobgoblins just go back to the vault on their own and the old guy reveals that he used to be a munitions expert in the war and blows up the vault, which he probably could have done thirty years ago. What a fucking idiot.
The End.
It’s easy to see why this film is known as one of the worst things ever put to film. There’s hardly a redeeming quality about it. It’s like a car wreck- not the kind you can’t help but look at as you pass by, but more like the one that’s just slowing you down to the point of annoyance so you instinctively look over just to see who the assholes were that made you late for work. It appears to be going for horror comedy, as Gremlins perfectly did four years prior, but it fails on both levels. The dream sequences are absurd, much like J.D.’s on Scrubs, but unlike the Bill Lawrence medical masterpiece, the scenes are so poorly written and unfunny that they just seem like juvenile confusion. The craft behind the camera is abysmal - if you go in thinking of playing a drinking game every time you see a continuity error, you’ll be dead from alcohol poisoning before the third act.
This was written and directed by Rick Sloane, a guy who somehow kept getting financing to make six Vice Academy films. He also had one film in the middle called Good Girls Don’t in 1993 that features a quote, “Brash and gutsy stripper Bettina and mousy secretary Jeannie who are framed for a murder they didn't commit.” which sounds delightful. He hasn’t made anything since he rode the Hobgoblins nostalgia into a 2009 sequel that looks dreadful and not in a so-bad-it’s-fun way.
Hobgoblins has a long history of physical media releases, although this 2016 release is the first time it’s been on Blu-ray. It was released on VHS first by Trans World Entertainment in 1988 and later on laser disc from Star Classics. It’s had multiple DVD iterations, starting with Rhino's MST3K version, a 2002 Retromedia DVD that was unfortunately full screen only. It was also featured on a 2007 Morella triple feature with THE CREMATORS and HOUSE OF TERROR, and finally was given an anamorphic widescreen 2008 special edition from MicroWerks. In fact, the most interesting extra from the Vinegar Syndrome release is actually one that wasn’t produced by them, but rather a carryover from the 2008 special edition DVD, and that’s Rick Sloane’s feature length commentary. As he drones over the film, he seems almost morose, a man defeated by his film’s reputation over the years. He mentions that he didn’t even see the hobgoblin creatures until the day of filming, but had to shoot anyway. The track almost made me feel sorry for the guy, as he didn’t have many positive anecdotes about the film aside from the score and his own cinematography. There are, however, some funny moments where he reveals that the neighborhood they filmed in was next to a crack house. There are new interviews with Sloane in which he outlines his film deal and how the home video market really allowed him to make the movie, and with Kenneth J. Hall, the creature designer, who reveals that he was not happy with the way his puppets were used in the film and that he wasn’t paid to be on set to supervise it.
For some reason there’s something endearing about the film. It reminded me of a time when I was out there just picking up a camera and writing a cheap script and then you’d just go…film it. There’s something inspiring about that. Not inspiring enough for me to watch the film again, because as the director kind of puts it, it’s a piece of shit, but inspiring nonetheless.
I scoured the internet looking for other opinions on the film, but most of the positive reviews are clearly facetious. I couldn’t even find archival reviews, although my reach isn’t that great. There’s one critical review on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s not far off from my opinion - that the MST3K episode is better.
