Matty waxes lyrical about a Full Moon favourite. 

Before hitting the big leagues with the Blade franchise, Dark Knight saga, and various other comic book-based shenanigans, screenwriter David S. Goyer was navigating the B-movie trade. As his first flick, vintage Van Damme biff-‘em-up Death Warrant (1990), sat on video store shelves in the wake of a successful theatrical run, Goyer met with Full Moon Entertainment boss Charles Band. The producer made him an offer, of the kind that couldn’t be refused:

If Goyer wrote two movies for him, he could direct one of them.

The first, Arcade (1993), was spearheaded by the young scribe’s Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991) collaborator, Albert Pyun, and Goyer was all set to take the second, DEMONIC TOYS (1992), until he got cold feet and backed out. Consequently the megaphone was passed to Band’s Empire oppo, Peter Manoogian (Eliminators (1986), Enemy Territory (1987), Arena (1988)), who, in turn, tackled the film – then called ‘Dangerous Toys’ – virtually in tandem with another Full Moon assignment, Seedpeople (1992) [1]. 

Essentially an extension of the ‘killer doll’ formula of previous Band-ers Dolls (1987) and Puppet Master (1989), Demonic Toys finds a pregnant cop (Tracy Scoggins), a grungy pizza delivery boy (Bentley Mitchum), and a few other folk battling the titular tiny terrors while trapped in an empty toy factory. Though mostly an enjoyable lark, some of the Stephen King-esque supernatural elements are heavy-handed and basic, the overarching idea being that the events in the factory are part of a deeper, more eternal battle between good and evil. However, Band’s preference for simplistic, easily cheerable and boo-able heroes and villains, as well as his obsession with dense mythology that can be siphoned into sequels and spin-offs, is enlivened by the darker aspects of Goyer’s screenplay and Manoogian’s bombastic direction. 

Closer in manner and style to his own ace action romp Enemy Territory than David Schmoeller’s arty and elegiac Puppet Master, Manoogian positions Demonic Toys as another siege flick. It doesn’t always work. It sometimes feels a little jarring, but the helmer’s decision to present the various doll attack sequences like big, gun-toting action movie scenes lends the film a propulsive sense of ferocity, and he makes excellent use of Demonic Toys’ confined locations to ratchet up the tension. Manoogian also unleashes several potent horror images, and has fun piling up the satanic iconography — pentagrams, dark robed figures, demons, sinister senior citizens who are, in fact, disciples of old scratch a la the two codgers in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) etc.

The film’s cast — Scoggins, Mitchum, Barry Lynch, Manoogian regular Pete Schrum, and ‘90s horror-kid icons William Thorne (Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991) – a sturdy Demonic Toys supporting feature!) and Daniel Cerny (Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)) among them — are solid if unremarkable. The real stars are, of course, the eponymous miniature monsters: Jack Attack, Baby Oopsy Daisy, Mr. Static, and Grizzly Teddy. Designed and orchestrated by longtime Band associate John Carl Buechler and his MMI team, they’re fabulous creations and very much characters in and of themselves. As an aside, Grizzly Teddy’s final form – a hulking ‘were-bear’, if you will – calls to mind both the design of Buechler’s earlier Cellar Dweller (1987) and a similar gag he executed in the aforementioned Dolls; and is part of the same conceptual family as the highly physical furballs he’d unleash in Project Metalbeast (1995) and Watchers Reborn (1998).      

Demonic Toys was released on U.S. tape by Full Moon’s then partner, Paramount, in March 1992 and landed on British cassette via perennial Band distro Entertainment in Video the following July [2]. A respectable earner  rather than the  mega-bucks, Puppet Master-type smash Band intended, the film’s development into a modern-day Full Moon tentpole has been slow and patchy, involving crossover capers Dollman vs Demonic Toys (1993) and the rogue, made-for-SyFy Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004); sole official sequel Demonic Toys 2: Personal Demons (2010) (which retroactively tethers itself to Hideous! (1997)); sidequels Baby Oopsie (2021), Baby Oopsie 2: Murderdolls (2022), Baby Oopsie 3: Burn Baby Burn (2023), and Jack Attack (2023); and bits of visual overlap with Blood Dolls (1999) and Band’s short-lived digital TV series, Ravenwolf Towers (2016).

After all, who is the mighty Mr. Mascaro if not a human Jack Attack?

[1] A quick Full Moon time frame: Demonic Toys was lensed in July 1991, right after Netherworld (1992) the preceding June, and Seedpeople shot in November, a month after Ted Nicolaou wrapped Bad Channels (1992).
[2] Production mate Seedpeople, meanwhile, was issued on either side of the Atlantic by Paramount in May ‘92 and November ‘92 respectively.