I'm surprised I haven't talk more about Full Moon Entertainment. I should do a "Puppet Master" retrospective someday. Anyway, why am I talking about "Dollman" which isn't a horror film? A month ago, while browsing through my local Dollar Store, I found the "Dollman / Demonic Toys Box Set" for three dollars. A dollar a movie! I couldn't pass up such a bargain. As soon as I bought it, I knew I'd be reviewing all three for Halloween."Dollman" was probably motivated by three factors. It was a superhero movie released in the wake of '89's "Batman." Wikipedia will tell you that this film is unrelated to the Golden Age superhero of the same name but I refuse to believe this. It's not surprising that Charles Band would rip-off a diminutive superhero, considering his love of all threats tiny. Of course, there's nobody Band likes to rip-off more then himself. In Full Moon's long-running "Trancers" series, Tim Thomerson plays Jack Deth, a hard-boiled, sarcastic cop who chases a fugitive from the future to the modern day. In "Dollman," Tim Thomerson plays Brick Bardo, a hard-boiled, sarcastic cop who chases a fugitive from another planet to Earth. The catch? Though normal sized on his world, Brick is only thirteen inches tall on Earth. Armed with an absurdly powerful laser gun, Dollman cleans up the streets of Los-Angles-posing-as–New-York."Dollman" has a good sense of humor about itself. The title character is introduced as a bizarre riff on Dirty Harry, tying in fat ladies and laundry with the famous "You feelin' lucky?" sequence. Brick explodes a guy with a single shot, a hilarious special effect. Once on Earth, our hero is badgered by children, slings size-related one-liners and leaps from a building, somehow safely landing on a moving vehicle. The miniature Dirty Harry's new size doesn't affect his abilities much, save for a gag where it takes him several minutes to travel a short distance."Dollman," weirdly, reaches for social relevance. After the sci-fi intro, we get a long montage showing the crime-ridden city. Brick's normal sized love interest is a single mom attempting to survive in the ghetto. A post-"Bad News Bear," pre-"Watchmen" Jackie Earl Haley plays the villain, a nasty thug obsessed with the mom. In one of the more clever bits, what appears to be the primary villain is bluntly dismissed, making way for Haley's vulgar, clueless creep. Don't get the wrong idea. This is an Albert Pyun joint after all. As in accordance with all 90s low-budget action flicks, the climax is set in an abandoned warehouse.Keep your expectations relaxed. "Dollman" is goofy, self-aware, violent, and featuring some solid actors having a good time.

When, upon watching this movie and hearing some of the negative feedback, I'm reminded of that adage that "one man's trash is another man's treasure". "Dollman" may indeed be silly, cheesy, low budget nonsense but it IS fun on that level, damn it. Maybe not as much fun as it could and should have been (It would have been more amusing if everybody else besides star Tim Thomerson hadn't taken themselves quite so seriously.).The high concept story is a time honoured one, having to do with the idea of seeing a tiny individual interact with giant surroundings. That individual is Dirty Harry type cop Brick Bardo (Thomerson, in fine form), who's from a distant planet rather similar to Earth. After chasing his nemesis Sprug (Frank Collison), a living severed head whose other body parts have been eliminated by Brick, to Earth, Brick realizes that by normal Earth standards he only stands 13 inches tall. Brick befriends a hot young South Bronx resident named Debi (Kamala Lopez) and her son, while Sprug aligns himself with local gang members led by Braxton (Jackie Earle Haley). Sprug has with him a deadly bomb, but Brick's own lethal gun is absolutely nothing to be laughed at.The director is Albert Pyun, the man behind so many other low budget genre flicks, and the supporting cast features some of his regulars like Vince Klyn (the villain of "Cyborg"), Michael Halsey, and Nicholas Guest. Other actors you'll undoubtedly recognize are Frank Doubleday (a heavy in the John Carpenter favourites "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Escape from New York"), Luis Contreras ("After Midnight"), Eugene Robert Glazer (TV's 'La Femme Nikita'), and Judd Omen ("Pee-Wee's Big Adventure"). Great, grim 'n' ugly urban decay production design, decent pacing (it's NOT deadly slow), amusing music by Anthony Riparetti, entertaining gore, and ENJOYABLY unconvincing visual effects add to the diverting package that is this little B flick. Even at just over 82 minutes, however, one can see some padding, especially in the end credits.Overall, it's a hoot, and recommended for Thomerson fans.Seven out of 10.

Only a director like Albert Pyun could handle material like this. The director of many B sci-fi/martial Arts projects (the "Nemesis" series, "Cyborg"), a teen video game adventure, and a post-apocalyptic musical, Mr. Pyun loves to combine genre tropes into stimulating, unique experiences. Pyun asked what many B-filmmakers did in the Tarrantino administration: why bother with new material when it has all been done so well before?The 90s direct-to-video market thrived simultaneously with this era of genre hybrids; those movies that recycled old genre tropes, archetypes, and approaches into new material. In "Dollman" Pyun makes a tasty salad out of various conventions from "Dirty Harry", "Honey I shrunk the Kids", "Suburban Commando", "Time Cop", various gang films, and the action and sci-fi conventionality of its era.Tim Thomerson plays recurring Pyun character Brick Bardo who, in this incarnation, is a futuristic bad-cop who is inter-dimensionally displaced via space ship into the Bronx with his his WMD-packing floating head nemesis Armbruiser. During their trip, the two are shrunken into action figure proportions. After Bardo's spaceship is abducted by a young boy, he must struggle against various domestic terrors (the family dog, a cockroach) while Armbruiser shops his WMD to a dangerous local gang headed by the dangerous Braxton Red (Jackie Earle Hayley in a hammy, vicious performance).Fortunately "Dollman" delivers in every way you want it to. The shrunken person tropes are satisfying and realized; the action scenes are intense; and its science fiction backbone is always present. Pyun juggles these elements well and has fun with the formulas at play. Although it suffers from Pyun's tendency toward awkward pacing, "Dollman" is one of his strongest and most controlled films.

This is one of those movies that is so bad it is good. Tim Thomerson is hilarious as Brick Bardo, the cop from Arturos that gets stranded on Earth after chasing a criminal from his planet through space. Funny, funny stuff!