Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Evil Toons

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Evil Toons



    Released by: Retromedia/Bayview Entertainment
    Released on: June 5th, 2014.
    Director: Fred Olen Ray
    Cast: David Carradine, Dick Miller, Arte Johnson, Monique Gabrielle, Michelle Bauer
    Year: 1990
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    Evil Toons, like a lot of Fred Olen Ray movies, revolves around some nubile young women, this time made up of a quartet of college students - Megan (Monique Gabrielle), Terry (Suzanne Ager), Roxanne (Madison Stone) and Jan (porn star Barbara Dare acting under the alias Stacey Nix) - who are dropped off at a creepy old house by a guy named Burt (Dick Miller) who runs a cleaning company. His van pulls up at the place and they unload everything that they'll need to spend the weekend cleaning the place up - you know, essential things like slinky outfits and lingerie. They head on inside and get comfortable but later that night a mysterious guy dressed sort of like a pilgrim named Gideon Fisk (David Carradine) shows up and hands them a weird old book.

    The brightest of the girls, Megan, decides to read a few passages from the book out loud and, well, you've all seen Evil Dead, right? Right. Bad things start to happen when a cartoon demon (voiced by the director himself) appears, summoned by the reading, and starts to make trouble for the ladies, first by killing off Roxanne and possessing her body. When various guys start showing up, some looking for sex and others looking to check in on the girls' progress cleaning, the demon kills them too. Maybe the weird old neighbor (Arte Johnson) will be able to help?

    There's a whole lot of rad boobs here and the cartoon (there's only a toon, not toons) that pops up is interesting to see alongside the live action players a la Roger Rabbit, but Evil Toons never quite takes off the way that it should. The ladies all look great and gleefully show off the goods at the drop of a hat but none of their performances are particularly convincing. Granted, it's probably tough to act against a cartoon you can't see on set, but bad is bad and the novelty aspect of the production isn't exploited well enough to really compensate for that. David Carradine is fun to see here (watch for a scene where he hangs himself - eek!) and Dick Miller is his typically amusing self, but they're underused. Michelle Bauer pops up here as the wife of Miller's character but it's more or less a cameo, albeit one with the unveiling of her mighty jugs, so that counts for something.

    Borrowing elements from The Evil Dead (the book looks an awful lot like the Necronomicon from the Raimi film) and slapping them alongside an evil cartoon and some naked ladies is a very good idea on paper but this one takes a little too long to get going and once it does, while the payoff is there, it still feels like it was a longer film than it actually is. It wouldn't be fair to call it boring, it never drags like that, but we don't get quite enough evil or enough toonage to really make this one live up to its potential.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Evil Toons looks soft and fuzzy in this 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. This one could definitely use a nice remastering. It's watchable enough but don't expect much in the way of fine detail and colors are sometimes pretty flat looking.

    The only audio option on the disc is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track, there are no alternate language tracks or subtitles offered. There are a few spots where the levels are a bit flat but otherwise the audio here is okay.

    The extras on the disc are plentiful and start with a commentary track from Fred Olen Ray in which he dishes the dirt on where the ideas for this one came from, what it was like directing flesh and blood characters opposite cartoons and more.

    The disc also include some footage from the original work-print version of Evil Toons that shows some material in unfinished form. It's interesting to compare it to the finished material in the feature itself. We also get an Evil Toons Suite comprised of segments of Chuck Cirino's score. Outside of that we get a trailer for the feature, a ten minute 'behind the scenes' segment that shows off life on the movie's set, a vintage Nite-Owl Theater intro with a few bonus naked ladies, menus and chapter selection.

    The Final Word:

    Evil Toons is a fun mix of sex and violence, live action and animation and trash-horror and comedy done in Fred Olen Ray's inimitable style. The DVD could look better than it does but it's got a load of extras on it. Pretty quirky stuff, yet somehow never as entertaining as it should be.





























    • Ian Jane
      #2
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      Ian Jane commented
      Editing a comment
      It's back in print through Bayview.

    • Tom K
      #3
      Tom K
      Senior Member
      Tom K commented
      Editing a comment
      Madison Stone was also a porn star...

    • Jason C
      #4
      Jason C
      Senior Member
      Jason C commented
      Editing a comment
      I've enjoyed most of the Fred Olen Ray films I've seen despite them being schlock and I'm a sucker for bimbos running around a cursed house flicks. EVIL TOONS is good fun. The Toon was pretty cool even if he wasn't onscreen as much as he probably should have been for a film called EVIL TOONS, but I think the cast (especially Carradine) and the T&A made up for it. Monique Gabrielle has one of the greats racks I've ever seen on film. I dug the Michelle Bauer mention in the review. Big fan of hers.
    Posting comments is disabled.

Latest Articles

Collapse

  • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Severin Films
    Released on: April 30th, 2024.
    Director: Lee Frost
    Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
    Year: 1969
    Purchase From Amazon

    Hot Spur – Movie Review:

    Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
  • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Mondo Macabro
    Released on: April 9th, 2024.
    Director: Max Pecas
    Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
    Year: 1985
    Purchase From Amazon

    Death Squad – Movie Review:

    Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
  • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Quality X
    Released on: February 28th, 2024.
    Director: Chuck Vincent
    Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
    Year: 1982
    Purchase From Amazon

    Roommates – Movie Review:

    Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
  • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Blue Underground
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Jess Franco
    Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
    Year: 1970
    Purchase From Amazon

    Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

    Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
  • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Saul Bass
    Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
    Year: 1974
    Purchase From Amazon

    Phase IV – Movie Review:

    Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
  • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Radiance Films
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
    Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
    Year: 1969-1972
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

    Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
    ...
    03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
Working...
X