Goblin (1993)

 

Director: Todd Sheets

Screenplay: Jerry Angell and Todd Sheets

Cast: Mike Hellman as Jerry; Bobby Westrick as Larry; Jenny Admire as Tammy; Kim Alber as Sherry; Dana Cheney as Dorothy; Tonia Monahan as Jodie; Matthew Lewis as Jeff

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #213

 

Quit acting like a bimbo in a b-movie!

It should be pointed out that, in a rare case of a director reflecting negatively on their career, micro budget filmmaker Todd Sheets has dismissed his own work up to Zombie Bloodbath (1993) despite starting in 1989, finding embarrassment in the likes of Goblin¹, one of many projects in the early nineties shot-on-video market which was produced by J.R. Bookwalter, another genre film maker, and one of many Sheets made in a very short period of time. Goblin itself does feel like an acquired taste even if you are not as harsh on it as Sheets himself is, a production that, whilst it is explicitly referencing Lucio Fulci in dialogue and in a scene of prolonged eyeball trauma, feels like an offspring of Herschell Gordon Lewis for a micro budget, with its "El disgusto blood effects", and long scenes of organ fingering and blood which looks like the drippings of meat defrosted in a freezer.

This premise strung on the idea of a couple of people at a housewarming party being terrorised by a killer goblin, freed from a well  and looking more like a dishevelled King of the Landfill troll that is visibly wearing jeans under the costume. Said gore scenes in-between are legitimately gross. A lot of actual organ meats from a butcher's store (or a slaughterhouse) are used, which with the dull grey washout of the film, and a tendency to go longer then even Lucio Fulci on them, creates an incredibly repulsive effect that, credit due, is more horrifying than slicker made horror films in their gore scenes. What is the appeal of a film like this? Honestly, viewers can have very basic pleasures, no matter how prurient, with a lot of this created from a fan of horror films who wanted to make something to escape from the ordinary world, which may seem weird with a film like this until you think of the gore scenes in this being to gross out than to actual horrify. One scene probably crosses a line, of a female character getting a sickle to an intimate place, but this is equal opportunities production with a man getting a pole up the anus through the guts. Even this type of description may seem problematic, yet the context in the film all of this come off as a spectacle which is completely unrealistic and meant to cause people to feel gross, literally flinging real meat off the actors when it is impossible to do so to a viewer through a screen.

The organs are not human, and do not have anatomical accuracy as they are even extracted from a man's head through the ear hole, instead the equivalent of sticking one's hand through a mystery box and thinking there are brains inside only for it to actually by jelly or a stand-in. We have forgotten that believing cinema should be narrative driven first is a hold-over from literature and other mediums, and even this type of film emphasises on the fact that any motion image is as much its form and image as the content having a structure to grasp. Goblin is definitely not a high bar to technical skill in the slightest, beginning with the fact it feels semi-improvised throughout. Dialogue is difficult to here at times, and there are huge tangents in-between a string of gore scenes. The lead group of individuals do speak in monotone and do incredibly dumb things, like walk up a ladder backwards when there is a killer goblin around, or think acquiring a ride-on lawnmower to run into it seems a wise idea, only to be stuck trying with a hand push rotary hoe against it. The sense of improvisation is found in how Todd Sheets himself, with a magnificent mane of hair and leather jacket, is a character completely separate from everything, for over what feels like ten minutes searching for an empty house before the goblin gets him in his own little scene. Whilst amusing to see the creator killed by his own creation, it does feel like a necessary to get the film to a feature length and only for that reason.

It is also a film which, as it feels like the film has ended with a happy conclusion, suddenly includes an abrupt and nihilistic ending with zombies which is out-of-nowhere and does feel abrupt, among the moments where dialogue from an unknown voice (including the director himself) can be heard occasionally to make sense of a scene. To an outsider, it is sluggish production, insanely sluggish, a reminder that whilst I have come to admire these films, Goblin is an example of these films having to be appreciated in spite of their huge issues per subjective experience. Sheets himself reflects on the fact that he strived to make better films as he went on¹, which would make a film like this not really a blueprint but a film from a different time he would prefer to move away from.

One with charm, its self reflective nature in referring to pop culture before that was commonplace is found throughout, and it never feels like it is dragged out for too long if you have a taste for these types of film. It is an acquired taste only for a few however, as not only would some be put off by its grossness and aesthetic look, but its structure is repetitious to an extreme. This is, as a result, an outlier from a very early period in his shot-on-video era, where he clearly learning and having to work in a very difficult scenario with minimal resources. So I do not viewing Goblin with as much harshness as I could have given it. The irony that this was the first of his films I have seen, due to how difficult they are to see in the United Kingdom would probably just cause him to shake his head in disbelief if anything if he read this review.

 

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1) The podcast No-Budget Nightmares, covering Goblin, includes an interview with Todd Sheets where he admits this. The episode can be found HERE.

 

Additional Notes: Comments that were not included in the review in a stream of consciousness.

Mars Bringer of War by Gustav Holst is a constantly used music cue for gore scenes for the better.

Music by Enochian Key is also used, the director's own band which is also fun and means we also get his own singing as well as his filmmaking.

Tonia's feet and eye get their own end credits. The credits for various parts of her are odd and I do not know if they are mean or not.