Whether you watch the regular version of this monstrosity or the MST3K version, you can only be impressed by the utter GALL that went into this production. The filmmakers insult the viewer's intelligence from one end to the other and obviously couldn't care less that they are doing so.
Everything about it is rock-bottom cheap. Even the 1950s car in the flashback sequence to that era looks like it was hauled out of a junkyard.
The "hobgoblins" are, as you probably know, "realized" with badly-crafted hand puppets and stuffed toys; when a person is supposed to be attacked by them, it's clear the toy is being held by the victim to his or her own body. When the critters scurry away from the two security guards, this is shown (or rather, not shown) by the camera aiming UP at the guards as they look down and turn their heads as if watching the hobgoblins scurrying past. It's reminiscent of the scene in the film "Tangents" where two people are standing in the ruins of a future world, surveying the wreckage, and we aren't shown any of it. Budget constraints alloyed with utter incompetence generally mean you won't have anything worth showing, so why try? The "sets" were utterly laughable. "Club Scum" was an obvious diner; the house appears to have been a vacant house --probably for rent or sale-- which the production company got hold of for an hour or two to do the shoot. The "spacecraft" is something I would have been ashamed to build when I was a model-making 10 year-old.
The motivations of the characters make no sense-- Kevin gets denigrated by his worthless ingrate of a girlfriend because he hasn't made her "proud of him." I'm sure this was intended to make their reconciliation oh so touching at the end, but any guy with real self-respect would have told her to go to hell and left her. Nick is supposedly back from 2 months of Army training (yeah, nice regulation haircut, Nick,) and seems bent on proving that our country is being defended by sadistic, moronic animals who are sex maniacs. Kyle is a phone-sex freak in red shorts who dreams of a night with a spandex-clad dominatrix type, but he's so effeminate that he's more likely gay than not. One of the girls is a prude and the other is a sleaze.
And the hobgoblins? At the end they all head back to the vault where they've lived for 30 years. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Watch this film and be amazed at how primitive film-making in our modern age can be when you have an idiotic script, incompetent direction, actors who are so bad they'd be rejected from a high school theater production, and sets worthy of Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Everything about it is rock-bottom cheap. Even the 1950s car in the flashback sequence to that era looks like it was hauled out of a junkyard.
The "hobgoblins" are, as you probably know, "realized" with badly-crafted hand puppets and stuffed toys; when a person is supposed to be attacked by them, it's clear the toy is being held by the victim to his or her own body. When the critters scurry away from the two security guards, this is shown (or rather, not shown) by the camera aiming UP at the guards as they look down and turn their heads as if watching the hobgoblins scurrying past. It's reminiscent of the scene in the film "Tangents" where two people are standing in the ruins of a future world, surveying the wreckage, and we aren't shown any of it. Budget constraints alloyed with utter incompetence generally mean you won't have anything worth showing, so why try? The "sets" were utterly laughable. "Club Scum" was an obvious diner; the house appears to have been a vacant house --probably for rent or sale-- which the production company got hold of for an hour or two to do the shoot. The "spacecraft" is something I would have been ashamed to build when I was a model-making 10 year-old.
The motivations of the characters make no sense-- Kevin gets denigrated by his worthless ingrate of a girlfriend because he hasn't made her "proud of him." I'm sure this was intended to make their reconciliation oh so touching at the end, but any guy with real self-respect would have told her to go to hell and left her. Nick is supposedly back from 2 months of Army training (yeah, nice regulation haircut, Nick,) and seems bent on proving that our country is being defended by sadistic, moronic animals who are sex maniacs. Kyle is a phone-sex freak in red shorts who dreams of a night with a spandex-clad dominatrix type, but he's so effeminate that he's more likely gay than not. One of the girls is a prude and the other is a sleaze.
And the hobgoblins? At the end they all head back to the vault where they've lived for 30 years. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Watch this film and be amazed at how primitive film-making in our modern age can be when you have an idiotic script, incompetent direction, actors who are so bad they'd be rejected from a high school theater production, and sets worthy of Edward D. Wood, Jr.