Hobgoblins (1988)

Rating:

USA. 1988.

Crew

Director/Screenplay/Producer/Photography – Rick Sloane, Music – Alan Dermarderosian, Pyrotechnic Effects – Kevin McCarthy & Players Special Effects, Creatures – Kenneth J. Hall. Production Company – Rick Sloane Productions

Cast

Tom Bartlett (Kevin), Paige Sullivan (Amy), Steven Boggs (Kyle), Kelley Palmer (Daphne), Billy Frank (Nick), Jeffrey Culver (McCreedy), Tami Bakke (Fantazia), Duane Whitaker (Roadrash)


Plot

Kevin takes a job as a security guard on an old movie studio lot. There he unwittingly unleashes a horde of small, malicious alien hobgoblins that have been locked in a disused soundstage since they landed in a UFO thirty years ago. Kevin races to stop the hobgoblins as they start manifesting the dreams of his friends in ways that always prove fatal.


This cheap ripoff of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies (1985) is one of the worst films in the entire listing on this site. Everything about it is ineptly executed. The entire production looks as though it has been shot with a home video. The acting is unbelievably bad. The hobgoblins are incredibly obvious hand puppets – their bodies have to be hidden off-screen throughout. Their UFO looks like a picnic thermos – with its landing being conveyed by unconvincing off-screen flashes of light and smoke.

About halfway through, director Rick Sloane seems to have realized just how bad the film was and started treating it with derision – after the end credits, for example, stripper Tami Bakke appears telling people the next time they see a PG-rated video to call her to help spice things up, something that only shows a film that holds itself in contempt. The film reaches a fascinatingly sleazy height in one scene where heroine Paige Sullivan does a G-rated strip while begging the patrons of a bar to treat her like a tramp, shout obscenities and pour beer over her.

Director Rick Sloane later made a sequel Hobgoblins 2 (2009).


Full film available online here:-


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