Brick Bardo

Brick Bardo
First appearance	Dollman (1991)
Created by	Charles Band
Portrayed by	Tim Thomerson
Information
Nickname(s)	Doll man
Aliases	Dollman
Species	Alien
Gender	Male
Occupation	Police officer
Spouse(s)	Wife (deceased)
Children	Son (deceased) Daughter (deceased)

Brick Bardo (otherwise known as Dollman) is a fictional diminutive alien lawman in the Full Moon Features universe, who comes from the fictional planet Arturus. He is not to be confused with the Doll Man of Quality Comics.

Not unlike Clint Eastwood's character in the Dirty Harry films who uses a Magnum, Dollman is the owner of a 596.8 Ruger; "the most powerful handgun in the known universe." His name is based on an ongoing writers trademark by director Albert Pyun who has used other characters with the same name.^[1]

Tim Thomerson (known for playing Jack Deth in Trancers played the character in Dollman, Bad Channels and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.^[2] As with other Full Moon franchises, the Dollman character later became a comic adaption, with four full color issues released from Malibu Comics.^[3]

Dollman was to appear in another crossover film titled Legion of Doom. However, the project was abandoned.^[4]

Biography

Dollman

Brick Bardo is a hard-boiled cop living on Arturus, a planet much like Earth, who is very good at nailing the city's criminal population. But this seems to upset his superiors and the Mayor.

One day, Bardo saves a room full of hostages at a laundromat while serving out a suspension. This inadvertently leads to his framing of the death of several people, as reported on the news Bardo is listening to in his apartment. Just then, Cally, an enemy of Bardo's begins shooting at him, and temporarily stuns him using a small device. When Bardo awakens, he finds himself surrounded by his archenemy Stolvan Sprug and his henchmen (Cally and Fisher) on a desert plain in the middle of nowhere. Sprug wants revenge on Bardo for shooting off most of his body parts, leaving him only a floating hi-tech head. He reveals that he is in possession of a powerful dimensional bomb that he will use if the city does not pay the fifty thousand ions he is demanding.

Before Sprug's goons can finish off Bardo, Bardo uses a magnetic-like force that appears as a disc-shaped glowing on the palm of his hand to retrieve his gun and proceeds to blast Cally and Fisher into bloody chunks. While Bardo's handgun is not capable of doing this to humans, its bullets can still do significant damage on Earth.

Sprug makes a fast getaway in his spaceship. Bardo steals a ship from a nearby police garage and chases Sprug through a glowing anomaly. Following their crash landing on Earth, they discover that they are now only a few inches tall. Earth is approximately 10,000 Light Years from Arturus.

Bardo soon gains a friend in an impoverished woman named Debi Alejandro, by saving her life from three gang members "Hector, Wicks, and Jackson" who attack her close to his spaceship. shooting Hector in his ribs, and kills Wicks by shooting him in his forehead, From here on, the villains refer to Bardo as being a "Dollman" because of his size. Although Bardo takes a liking to this name in the movies, he does not like it in the comic books.

Debi lives in a crime-ridden part of the South Bronx with her young son Kevin, and is part of a Neighborhood Watch team who are just trying to make a difference. Knowing that the gang members will return, Debi takes Dollman and his ship to her home, where he becomes a major attraction for the noisy neighbors. Meanwhile, Sprug has enlisted the help of a local gang led by Braxton Red, and Dollman is not safe for long when the gang regroup and lead a vengeful assault, as payback for the previous attack on their men.

Braxton and his gang go to Debi's house demanding to know where Dollman is. Just then, Dollman kills all the bad guys, including Jackson, save for Braxton, who barely escapes with his life, and is left fatally wounded.

Braxton makes it back to his hideout, but is about to die. Sprug offers to save his life by healing his injury, only if he will obey his every command. After partially healing the wound, Sprug is squashed by Braxton when Sprug demands that he now work for him. Braxton further declares war on the Dollman.

During a conversation with Debi that night, Dollman confirms that he once had a wife, son and baby daughter, who were murdered by someone to get back at him (possibly Sprug). Debi also confesses that her husband was killed holding up a liquor store, and that Kevin doesn't remember much about his father.

While Debi is returning home from work the next day, Braxton (now close to death) leads his goons in kidnapping her to lure Dollman into a trap. Hearing the commotion outside in the street, Dollman dives through a window and narrowly grabs on to the side of their car, as they speed off and stop at the city outskirts where they first encountered Dollman. Once there, they await Dollman's arrival. But Dollman is aware of their plan to take him out, and does a surprise attack of his own on the bad guys from above, laying waste to all of them. Dollman manages to overcome the odds, and saves Debi from Braxton by shooting his right arm off.

Dollman is about to finish Braxton, but Debi resents the unnecessary violence and Dollman agrees not to kill him. Braxton then activates Sprug's dimensional bomb, forcing Debi and Dollman to run for cover as the area is destroyed in the blast. Following this, Dollman bids farewell to Debi.

Bad Channels

Unable to leave Earth, Bardo sets out to Pahoota to find Bunny (Daryl Strauss) - a character who survived an alien encounter in Bad Channels, but remained trapped at 12 inches in a glass bubble at the outcome of the movie. Bardo learns of her circumstances through the tabloid press.

Dollman contributes a post-credits cameo, which is presented as an epilogue to his own movie, and also as a set-up (stinger) for the sequel, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. The same cameo from Bad Channels is also in the next film. But Tim Thomerson redubs the dialogue mentioning Bunny.^[5]

In Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, Bardo learns of the whereabouts of Nurse Ginger (played by Melissa Behr) instead of Bunny. Ginger's change in size is never provided with an on screen explanation in the movie, as Ginger and another girl named Cookie along with news reporter Lisa Cummings were later unshrunk in Bad Channels after the DJ Dan O'Dare and maintenance engineer Corky fought the alien. As such, it has been suggested by Full Moon fans that the producers deliberately ignored the outcome of Ginger's fate, and cast her in the next movie anyway instead of Bunny, either because Daryl Strauss couldn't return, or because Ginger was the obvious odds-on favorite.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is the sequel to Dollman (1991), Demonic Toys (1992) and Bad Channels (1992). It was one of Charles Band's first attempts at combining characters from his different franchises.^[6]

The story surrounds police officer Judith Gray's obsession with destroying the titular toys, while Dollman's search for Ginger (later nicknamed "Dollchick" by the baby doll Oopsie Daisy) leads him to Pahoota, upon finding out there was a girl his size. Dollman shows up just in time to save Ginger from impending doom when a spider attacks. After relating their predicaments on Ginger's kitchen counter, they share a brief moment of intimacy before Judith Gray shows up. Being a cop in peril, she seeks Dollman's help in battling the toys because she is serving out a suspension. She found out where they were by smooth talking a reporter who had been interviewing them.

Since Dollman is similarly sized, he can use the ventilation shafts to move around in and hunt the toys. He quips a joke about how he hasn't been hunting since he landed on the planet, and that'd be fun. Ginger insisted on tagging along with the two cops, to help out if they get hurt.

The toys somehow returned when a drunken hobo had a gruesome accident inside their warehouse, while sheltering from the rain. Since human blood is able to summon the demonic toys, four of these toys magically appear. Only this time, the Teddy Bear from the first movie is replaced by an angry looking combat doll, named Zombietoid.^[7]

After transporting Dollman and Ginger into the warehouse inside a suitcase, they are confronted by a dwarf security guard whom the toys have recruited to do their dirty work. After easily taking him out, Judith is shot and killed by Mr. Static (a toy robot that fires laser beams) and the toys capture Dollman and Ginger by outnumbering them in the air vents, when Dollman's gun gets stuck between a pile of crates.^[8]

Baby Oopsie explains that Ginger will be impregnated at midnight. This is a crucial part of the toys' plan to resurrect their demon master, so that he may finally get the human body he sought out. Thus why the toys captured Ginger (as The Kid had failed to be reborn through Judith's unborn baby in Demonic Toys). Their plan is ultimately thwarted by Dollman, who eliminates the toys one by one. Dollman and Ginger alert the police that Judith has died, and then hire a taxi to take them back to Pahoota.

Dollman defeats the toys in the following order: Mr. Static (Toy Robot), Zombietoid (Action Figure), Jack Attack (Jack-In-The-Box), and finally, Baby Oopsie Daisy (Baby-Doll).

Abilities

Dollman has no real abilities, other than a magnetic like action that can return his Proto Blaster gun directly back into his hand when it is out of his reach.

In other media

Malibu Comics released four separate issues in the early 1990s, chronicalling the battle between Brick Bardo and his archnemesis, Stolvan Sprug. In this story, Sprug uses a human gang to market a drug called Blaze. Bardo is partnered up with a lady called Toni Costa and Ferguson, a fellow cop. Readers learn that Bardo's late wife was called Vicki.

Full Moon Features produced a series of collectible trading cards based on Dollman and their other movies at the height of their popularity. They included a card about the film (#16), plus Brick Bardo (#17), Sprug (#18), Braxton Red (#19), and The Mark V Speedsnake (#20), which is the name of Sprug's illegal spaceship.^[9]

Written by Bill Spangler and illustrated by Marcelo Campos, the comics also featured poster art between pages for upcoming Full Moon Features releases. Although Malibu Comics also released comics based on Demonic Toys, there was no crossover with Dollman.

The battle music from Dollman can be heard in one scene during Trancers III. A trailer for Dollman features music from RoboCop.

In 2005, Full Moon Features released a DVD box set that contains Dollman, Demonic Toys and the previously unreleased Dollman vs. Demonic Toys in NTSC form (Region 0). Each DVD also included the Videozone / Making Of feature. Dollman vs. Demonic Toys was finally released on its own in 2008.

Other uses

Dollman may also refer to the comic book character of the same name, created by Will Eisner and published by DC Comics. This can cause confusion, as the movie character has its own comic spin off as well.

Trivia

"Brick Bardo" was originally the stage name used by cameraman/actor Joseph "Joe" Bardo who was very helpful to Dollman director Albert Pyun early in his career, and it was used in the film both as an homage to the him and because Pyun always thought it sounded cool.^[10]

References to Trancers

Tim Thomerson is probably best known to genre fans as the time-traveling cop Jack Deth in Trancers 1-5, with the original Trancers being a hit on home video during the pre-Full Moon Features era.^[11] Thomerson's role as Brick Bardo in Dollman and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys has also brought him a cult following.

In Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, Brick Bardo makes mention of Arturus having an Angel City while talking to Ginger about his history as a cop. In Trancers, Los Angeles is renamed Angel City in the 23rd century, following an earthquake. Brick Bardo also copies some of Jack Deth's lines, including "Ladies please!" and "You sack of pus!", among others.

References