Terror Toons

[Dave Munger]

Someone mentioned that we should probably do more talking about actual bad movies here. This movie was so bad, I actually couldn't watch it. I think that's the only time that's ever happened to me, I like a lot of the type of movies featured on this site. Rented it with a bunch of my friends, none of  them seemed to hate it that much, which troubles me. The thing reeks of meth and excuses. Every fifteen minutes you think it might finally be over, but it just keeps slogging on. I actually got a little bit of a headache. We had another movie to watch, and I wanted to just eject this and move on to the other, but my peeps wanted to know how it ENDED??? Everyone knows how movies this crappy end, they act like maybe things will be explained so they at least make some sense, then they just cut to something and zoom in on it to imply a sequel (a little pile of eggs or something), then it's just suddenly over except for the credits, that will feature some self-indulgent touch, like a blooper reel or everyone's got a wacky nom-de-plume. Anyway, the premise is pretty much that cartoons are jumping out of the TV and killing people in half-assed Tim Burton ways, which I'll concede has potential, but I suggest that the proper execution would require a budget over four dollars and SOME EFFORT. I finally convinced the phillistines to let me fast forward it (so they could see how it ENDED!!!), but somehow we ended up right where we started and I insisted on watching the other movie right then (It was Session 9, which in retrospect might not have been that great. When I saw it I was coming right off of Terror Toons!) I was like George C. Scott in Hardcore, man. Either the tape went all the way to the end and started to rewind, or (my theory), they padded the movie out by just having the whole damn thing start all over. It's just the kind of cheap "it's like the Matrix, undermining the viewer's concept of reality" recursive swirly thing trick they'd pull.  There was a palpable sense of evil about this thing (which you would think would help in a horror movie, but no) as if the people making it did not merely suck, but were up to something really nasty, I thought maybe the guys in it were using the whole thing to lure the girls in it into something not nice. I spent most of the time that we were watching it speculating on why it was made. Clearly, conventionally cinematic motivations couldn't be applied, they couldn't have seriously expected to make money off of it, or had any artistic reasons for anything they did. Money laundering front for meth dealers, I speculated. Definitly meth involved somewhere, crackheads have too much class and dignity to get mixed up in anything like this. We did end up watching the credits at some point, and one of the girls (the retarded one from the off-putting topless scene (which is hard to do)) was named Lizzie Borden, HAHAHA, I mean, ROTL. So I remembered that name when I heard it on 60 Minutes in a story about nasty scat/puke/snuff porn!!! Holy crap, the freaks must have had some tape and sets and stuff left over from that, and decided to throw together some high concept horror! I'm horrified alright!

[Eirik]

I saw this and stopped it after the beginning which was incredibly gory and just unnecessary (the cartoon doctor part)...  Then it nagged at me...  Like that closed airplane window in the TZ episode where Captain Kirk just had to open and see!!  Yep, I started it again and watched the whole awful mess.  This wasn't even laugh-out-loud-at-it and interject-funny-lines bad.  Dave's assessment is right on the money.  Just horrid and hard to watch.  The end when the protagonist turned into a superhero was the pinnacle of badness.  I will say this: the monster costumes were VERY good considering that they were supposed to be cartoons.  In fact, their picture on the box is what got me to rent it.  This concept, with those costumes, could have been pretty good on the level of a Killer Klowns type movie.  But it wasn't.  Total hack-work, don't even bother renting it.

[I luv dolma]

I started fast forwarding it after the the Terror Toons made their initial attack on the four kids. It was a pretty stupid and disgusting movie.

Eirik, you said it best, the gore was unnecessary.

[nshumate]

To tell the truth, it's one of the better films released by Brain Damage.  I thought it was pretty clever.

http://www.coldfusionvideo.com/t/terrortoons.html

[Mr_Vindictive]

I've seen it at the local blockbuster on DVD but have yet to rent it.  I doubt that I ever will now.  

Btw Dave, what did you end up thinking about Session 9?  Not a fast, gory nor upbeat horror film and definently not one to watch after mind numbing trash.  Was just curious if the film was still entertaining?

[Fearless Freep]

Heh, until I re-read Nathan's link, I thought you were talking about Evil Toons


To tell the truth, it's one of the better films released by Brain Damage.

Damming with faint praise, indeed

[Dave Munger]

Nathan Shumate: HOMAGEING!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I think this is one of those things where some people go into it so in love with the premise that they can't bring themselves to admit how bad it sucks. I'm probably a little bit that way about Futorama myself. That rather kind review comes right out and says that the premise covers a multitude of sins. That's clearly what they were banking on. Like I said, meth and excuses. "We totally did that on purpose. It's supposed to be like that. It's low budget horror with a cartoon premise, so being annoying, gratuitous, pointless, and not making sense actually mean we did a GOOD job." Eirik reminds me that Killer Klowns was clearly what they were trying to rip off here, which is particularly sad because the distinguishing quality of KK is that it's not a rip off of anything.

The part at the begining bugged me too. Annoying sound effects (repeated through the rest of the movie) aside, the message seemed to be, "We don't have the money to do it realistically, and our premise is an excuse for doing it cartoonishly and pretending it's supposed to be funny, but isn't the NOTION of pulling a guys bones out of his body just so incredibly enchanting that you could daydream for hours about it?" We actually did make it up to the superhero part, but there'd been so many false endings I thought it might go on for another half hour. I was finding it hard to estimate time, seemed like it'd been three hours and I wanted to see the other movie before sunup.

I liked Session 9. Most horror movies that I see are probably quite a bit worse. The did a really good job making the building scary, and the session tapes of course. Probably could've made more sense, but what couldn't?

Man, I had more left in me about Terror Toons than I though. Kind of fun, now I know why some people like beating cripples.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Dave,

Session 9 makes perfect sense after a few viewings.  I was extremely impressed with just how deep and mulitlayered the flick is.

[Drezzy Mac]

She is the wife of former Extreme Associates owner Rob Black, who is perhaps best known as the operator of now-closed wrestling promotion XPW. His pornography was mostly about pushing the envelope (simulated rape, tons of b*****e, scat, etc.), and his wrestling was terrible (XPW took everything that was wrong with early ECW - terrible gimmicks, generic punch-punch-chairshot "hardcore" wrestling, and champions who were made known in other promotions and were over the hill - and melded it with b-movie charm).

At least, I think this is the same Lizzie Borden, because if you recall hearing about her being involved in pornography scandals, then it most likely is.

[Dave Munger]

I suppose there could be a lot of Lizzie Bordens, but this kind of corroborates my "meth freaks" hypothesis.

[nshumate]

I think this is one of those things where some people go into it so in love with the premise that they can't bring themselves to admit how bad it sucks.

Ah.  So I must be self-deluded in denial, because, after all, no one could honestly have a  different opinion than yourself, after all.

[Dave Munger]

That must be it, because there's no other way I could have meant that. I checked out your site awhile after I made that comment, and it's pretty cool. I think you have a different perspective, having viewed so much of the bottom of the barrel. I just don't want people to be under the impression that Terror Toons is Killer Tomatoes bad when from the perspective of a less seasoned bad movie viewer it's more like kick in the head bad.

[Joe the Destroyer]

In my honest opinion, it was a fun kind of bad.  The effect did wear off toward the end, but I still enjoyed it for what it was worth: idiotic, mindless killing with silly looking antagonists and a premise that could never be viable in a serious film.  It's not one you're really supposed to take seriously.  Then again, that goes for any of the Brain Damage films.  This was one of the few by them I actually enjoyed.  I would even go so far as to say this was their best one. 

From what I'm hearing, Terror Toons 2 is actually a lot better, and I know that IMDb has Terror Toons 3 as being in pre-production.

[PSlugworth]

From the terrible special effects at the beginning that looked like a cardboard cutout of a skull sliding out from behind a cardboard cutout of a man's head, to the 30 year old woman portraying a ten year old girl for some reason, this was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Luckily, I've managed to push everything else in the movie to the back of my head, with the sole exception being that I remember (for some reason) reading that the little boy at the end was the producer/director's son, and thinking first, Wow, these people managed to reproduce?  And second, Doesn't putting your own child into this kind of movie constitute some form of child abuse?