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.
Hobgoblins is an incredibly cheap ripoff of Gremlins (1984) and Ghoulies (1985). It is one of the worst films in the entire listing on this site.
Everything about Hobgoblins 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).
Elsewhere, Rick Sloane has made other genre films such as Blood Theatre (1984), The Visitants (1986), Marked for Murder (1990) and Mind, Body & Soul (1992). His most popular work is Vice Academy (1989) to which he has made five sequels.
Trailer here