Hobgoblins (film)

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Hobgoblins

Directed by	Rick Sloane
Produced by	Rick Sloane Craig Turkel
Written by	Rick Sloane
Starring	Tom Bartlett Paige Sullivan Steven Boggs Kelly Palmer Billy Frank
Music by	Alan DerMarderosian
Cinematography	Rick Sloane
Editing by	Rick Sloane
Distributed by	American Cinema Marketing
Release date(s)	July 14, 1988 (USA)
Running time	92 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

For the legendary creatures, see Hobgoblin.

Hobgoblins is an infamous, low-budget B-movie that is often seen as a rip-off of Gremlins.^[1] It is perhaps best known for being shown on episode #907 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Despite the fact that the director himself, Rick Sloane, offered up the film for ridicule, the MST3K writers' jokes and comments were especially brutal: For starters, Pearl Forrester removes the film from a chest looking suspiciously like The Ark of the Covenant, and hints she uses it as means of extreme punishment (the movie reel case itself has a label reading "Hobgoblins. Caution: May cause Blindness and Death"). Halfway through the movie Crow T. Robot set up a crisis hotline for people "traumatized by the film". Crow even impersonated Sloane during the end credits, and said that he was "high on crack" during the shooting of the film and had his brains replaced with "rat droppings". Tom Servo, another robot star of the show, tried to go back in time to assault Sloane in order to prevent the film's production, but inadvertently caused the opposite. MST3K writer Paul Chaplin later commented on Hobgoblins, saying, "It shoots right to the top of the list of the worst movies we've ever done."^[2]

Duane Whitaker, who has a minor role as a bouncer, went on to play Maynard in Pulp Fiction. Daran Norris, who played the Club Scum MC, appeared as Spottswoode in Team America: World Police.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film opens with a man named Dennis investigating an old vault at an old movie studio. While inside, his fantasy of being a rock star comes to life, but he dies while performing on stage. His boss, Mr. McCreedy, closes the door upon discovering the body.

A young man named Kevin takes the vacant job so that he can impress his girlfriend Amy. After his first shift, he drives home to Amy, finding that his two friends, the sex-crazed Daphne and the dorky Kyle, waiting for him, and Daphne's army boyfriend Nick arrives. In one of the film's most commonly mocked scenes, Nick and Kevin fight with rakes in a long, protracted scene. After Kevin loses horribly, Amy berates him for his weaknesses while Daphne and Nick have sex in Nick's van in the background of the scene.

While in pursuit of a burglar the next evening, Kevin stumbles across the vault, which contains a small group of furry, demonic little aliens--the Hobgoblins. They escape, leaving Kevin stunned. His boss, the elderly Mr. McCreedy, explains that the Hobgoblins crash landed on the studio lot decades earlier, and he has been closely guarding them ever since. The Hobgoblins have the hypnotic power to make a person's wildest fantasies come true; however, they also kill their victims in the process. Precisely why the Hobgoblins never affected McCreedy himself in this way is unclear.

Coincidentally, the Hobgoblins next strike at Kevin's house, where his friends are partying. The Hobgoblins quickly make their fantasies come true. Daphne is lured out of the house thinking that she's about to have sex with Nick; she's attacked by a Hobgoblin, but manages to kill it with a rake. Kyle is also lured outside with the promise of sex; he drives a prostitute (really a phantom created by the Hobgoblins) to the local make-out spot, but Kevin rescues him before his car is pushed over a cliff.

The quiet, prudish Amy's fantasy leads her to the sleazy nightclub Club Scum (which judging by the decor was in fact a mid-1980s Shakey's Pizza). Kevin and the others follow her there, and the film is interrupted for an unintelligible musical number by the Fontanelles ("Kiss Kicker"^[3]).It turns out that Amy's deepest fantasy is to lose her sexual inhibitions and be a stripper. While onstage, she launches into a speech about how she wants to be objectified by men.

The nightclub erupts into chaos while Kevin and his friends try to kill the rampaging Hobgoblins. Nick is given a fantasy in which he leads a commando raid; in the melee, Nick is set on fire and presumably dies, though he returns later in the movie, bandaged and on crutches, but otherwise unharmed. Kevin kills the Hobgoblin in control of Amy before she can have sex with the scruffy bouncer Roadrash (Duane Whitaker, who played Maynard in Pulp Fiction). Although Amy is restored to her original personality, her experience leaves her less sexually "repressed" than she was before.

Thinking that all the Hobgoblins are dead, Kevin, Amy, Kyle, and Daphne return to the lot to report back to Mr. McCreedy. Kevin is confronted by the burglar from earlier that night and beats him in a fight, finally proving his bravery to Amy. The burglar is yet another phantom created by the Hobgoblins, and McCreedy shoots the alien before the phantom can kill him. The remaining Hobgoblins run back into the vault, which McCreedy has filled with explosives. The Hobgoblins are blown up, though the question of why McCreedy did not simply do that to begin with goes unanswered. Amy promises to have sex with Kevin, Nick returns to have sex with Daphne, and Kyle remains a virgin.