Hobgoblins

THE WORST HALLOWEEN movies EVER!

Tonight: Hobgoblins

So, despite being a bad movie, this was goofy as hell. I think MST3K kind of oversold this one a bit. I saw trailers for this and originally decided not to put it on the list, but Wikipedia said it was on the worst movie list and described it as torture for the MST3K cast.

So we start the film with Old Man McCreedy berating a younger security guard for being young and bored on the job. Then when doing rounds of the old film studio, McCreedy tells the young guard not to go down a specific hallway. The young man ignores the vague warning and goes into an unlocked vault and suddenly finds himself on a rock stage. He then starts. . .mock singing and then accidentally falls off the stage. McCreedy then finds the young man’s corpse in the vault and . . . just shuts the door.

Cue the credits. We then cut to McCreedy’s boss yelling at McCreedy for another security guard “quitting” and that the deserted film studio will lose their insurance if there isn’t a security guard watching the gate. So we show the new young security guard, Kevin, learning the ropes of his new job. He also gets told not to go in the vault area, and at least gets the excuse of “dangerous machinery.” He is then given a cap gun and ominous music plays.

Kevin then goes home to find his girlfriend, Amy, and his friends, Daphne and Kyle, at his house. Kevin rented a video for him and Amy, and Daphne complains that it doesn’t have an X in its rating. Then Daphne’s boyfriend, Nick, arrives after 2 months at army boot camp and they talk about banging. Then Kyle says he needs to call his girlfriend that they’ve never met. 🎶His girlfriend that lives in Canada!🎶 Actually, his girlfriend turns out to be a sex hot line. “We’ll go to a PG movie and make it rated X!” (Checks movie listings) So you’re going to bang during a showing of Goosebumps 2: The Haunted Halloween? Or Is it Smallfoot that gets you hot and bothered?

Kevin walks in on Kyle listening to the sex line and asks if it is long distance, cause he keeps arguing with the phone company about mysterious sex line charges. (Ba dum tsh)

Anywho Nick keeps going on about his army training and decides to show Kevin some hand to hand fighting. Apparently Nick attended the Chinese Army bootcamp from Mulan because Nick decides to fight Kevin with a rake while Kevin defends himself with a hoe. Not yet, we’re saving the ho joke for later.

After about three minutes of just beating their sticks together, Nick defeats Kevin. Daphne and Nick have sex in Nick’s van while Amy has a 25 second argument with Kevin about her embarrassing him because he didn’t win in a fight he didn’t want to have against a trained soldier. Daphne and Nick then exit the van. 25 seconds. Including time to get semi decent again.

We go back to Kevin’s job and a guy decides to sneak onto the film studio lot and happens to walk by the ONLY camera the security guards are watching. Old Man McCreedy decides to go challenge this ne’er do-well and ends up getting held hostage with a knife. Kevin arrives with his cap gun and carefully fires it into the air. This causes the man to flee and Kevin gives chase.

Kevin then decides to go into the vault. McCreedy arrives just in time for the sound effects to run past Kevin and McCreedy. We then see 4 teddy bears wearing goblin masks driving a golf cart off the film set.

McCreedy then tells Kevin how a space ship landed on the film set and inside were two masked teddy bears and he decided to hide them in a vault because he thought they were okay. Then everyone starts dying. The teddy bears apparently make your fantasy’s come true before they ultimately result in your death. Then McCreedy goes into detail about how to stop them and they need to be stopped before sunrise. Because he got the instruction manual in the space pod when they arrived, I guess.

The hobgoblins go to Kevin’s house where Amy, Daphne, and Kyle are dancing around with strobe lights.

Daphne then goes outside because she hears a horn that sounds like Nick’s van. The hobgoblin then sneaks up behind her and attacks her. After a brief struggle, the ho grabs a hoe and starts beating the living daylights out of the ho goblin- I mean hobgoblin.

She goes back inside, and everyone thinks her disheveled appearance is from sex(ba dum tsh). Then the hobgoblins burst in and everyone has to fake wrestle teddy bears. Nick arrives and decides he’ll use a hand grenade that he has in his van to kill the creatures. Kevin arrives in time to STOP Nick from blowing up his house and turns the lights off. The sound effects then sneak past everyone and go into Nick’s van.

Everyone relaxes. Then Kyle decides to call the sex line again. This time one of the hobgoblins brings the fantasy to life and Kyle finds the sex line worker outside. She talks about going all the way, and says they need to go to Reputation Row, which has sections for kissing all the way to “all the way” clearly marked. Kyle asks if they can stop to pick up pop rocks and whipped cream.

Kyle needs this to work out. Badly!

On the way there, you can see someone’s hand on the roof of the car rocking it back and forth.

When they arrive, the sex line worker tells Kyle to stay in the car as she gets out and tries to push the car over the cliff. She can’t do it until Kyle apparently turns the car on and drives forward a little bit, as indicated by the headlights and tail lights being on. Kyle apparently is unperturbed by his car moving forward several feet.

Kevin manages to arrive in time and, learning that the rake is the superior weapon, hits the hobgoblin with a rake, dispelling the fantasy. Kyle gets out of the car to complain to Kevin about his imaginary girlfriend disappearing. Kyle apparently left the car in neutral, because the car then rolls off the cliff. This is apparently enough to convince Kyle that hobgoblins are real.

They return to Kevin’s house to find that Amy has gone to Club Scum. They go there and after a band plays a song that inspires very unenthusiastic dancing, discover that Amy has gone all Sandra D from the last scene of Grease(if she got her clothing cues from Dr. Frankenfurter).

The hobgoblins go full psychic onslaught as Nick believes he is in war and gets handed a bunch of guns, ammo belts, and a the official army regulated bandanna headband. He then proceeds to start chucking grenades all over the place.

Nick’s commanding officer(who is at the bar in full uniform because. . .) then decides to blow up Nick with a grenade because he wants Daphne to himself. . . and a truck load of soldiers. The grenade engulfs Nick in flames instead of blowing him to pieces. . . because.

Daphne then blows up the Commanding Officer, and two hobgoblins, freeing everyone from the fantasies. The hobgoblins then return to the studio vault(via sound effect travel).

Old Man McCreedy then blows up vault and an entire floor of the building. Kevin and Amy reconcile because Kevin proved his manliness by fighting a nunchuck wielding fantasy thug earlier. Kyle starts hitting on Daphne and uses pinning a flower to her shirt as an excuse to rub her boob, which works until Nick shows up with only very minor burns after being FULLY ENGULFED IN FLAMES AFTER DIVING ON A GRENADE.

Nick and Daphne then jump into the van and have sex. The end.

This movie is very low quality and a clear Gremlins rip off, but it is goofy and fun. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. They even ended up making a Hobgoblins 2 over 20 years after the first. I’ll need to check it out sometime, but not for this list.

Tomorrow: So I need to go back to a kid friendly movie because my niece will be around tomorrow. So why not go with an earlier work of the maker of Legend of Hallowaiian.