B-Movie Review: Evil Toons (1992)

What do you get when you combine four Z-rate scream queens, absolutely terrible animation and Dick Miller and David Carradine REALLY needing the money? Why, an unadulterated camp classic from the early 1990s, of course!

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo_American

You know, after reviewing so many damn Jim Wynorski movies, I reckoned it was high past time that I put a spotlight on the OTHER undisputed kingpin of low-budget, late 1980s/early 1990s softcore horror sleaze. You know EXACTLY who I’m talking about here — the man, the myth and the legend, one Frederick Olen Ray. 

Now some might recognize him most for The Alien Dead, that one movie he made in 1980 about people on a pontoon boat who catch zombie-itis and wind up eating a buncha' alligators. Others might recall him best for Beverly Hills Vamp, that great 1988 flick where all-time Hollywood nerd idol Eddie Deezena nd Tom Conway are seduced by a bevy of bodaciously stacked B-movie queens, like Michelle Bauer and Britt Ekland. And really, what can I say about 1991's Scream Queen Hot Tub Party that hasn't already been said before, a million times over?

Alas, from my vantage point, whenever I think “peak Fred Olen Ray,” I think of one movie and one movie only — the immortal, the infamous and the iconic Evil Toons from 1992. 

Now, I’d be lying to you if I said Evil Toons is anything even remotely resembling a good movie, or even a good genre movie, or even a good so-bad-it’s-good-no-budget-genre offering from the apex of VHS America. It’s a movie that has a LOT of shortcomings — and trust me, we’re gonna’ churn our way through all of ‘em shortly — but it the same time, it just exudes this weird charm that you can only get out of straight-to-video ‘90s genre offerings made by schlockmeisters who probably only made it as a tax write off or something.  

And come on — is it really possible to turn down an opportunity to watch a movie about porn starlet Madison Stone getting raped by a cartoon pitbull while Kwai Chang Caine from Kung-Fu leers at her in the background? Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

We begin with an opening credit message from Fred Olen Ray, who says this story LITERALLY happened, even though he knows ain't nobody gonna' believe him. From there, we cut to David Carradine holding a knockoff Necronomicon, which tells him to let his "conscience be his guide." So naturally, the first thing he does is grab a noose and hang himself, which — yeah, in hindsight, is all kinds of prescient. "You lose," he remarks before taking his own life. To which the evil book replies "I never thought you were one to jump to conclusions." Oh shit, it's a punny movie, this ought to be fantastic.

Well, that's all sorts of uncomfortable, in both hindsight AND foresight.

So we fast forward a couple of years (presumably) and then there's his one guy in a serial molester van checking out this fairly pristine-looking abandoned mansion in Hollywood. And hey, wouldn't you know, the guy playing him is none other than DICK MILLER! So he's got these four broads in the back of the van with him, and they're all a bunch of early 1990s-looking Day-Glo bimbos with the exception of this one mousy looking broad who tells everybody want a contortionist is. Then Miller chews on a cigar while checking out everybody's ass, and we all chortle.

So then the broads go into the mansion and start talking about all of the mysterious stuff that happened inside it over the decades, including this one couple that got so spooked out by something or another that they left their CD players behind them. Then the mousey broad (who is actually the hottest girl in the movie, really) runs into this one old Jewey pervert while the rest of the girls stock up the fridge with ham, cheese and Budweiser. Then the old Jew pervert talks about a buncha' murders happening in the neighborhood and that he's only there to see what their faces look like in case he has to identify their corpses to police later.

Then the girls (who, apparently, are part of some kind of maid service)  go into the basement with mops and 409 en tow and hey, what do you know, they find a mysterious trunk in there. Inside is a skull and a dagger, which freaks out the girls but not as much as you'd probably expect. So later that night, the eldest cleaner reads some book called The Frankenstein Wheel while all the other hoes at ham and potato chips. Out of the blue, David Carradine's ghost rematerializes on the front lawn, as does that evil, joke-cracking book from the opening scene of the movie. Which, naturally, is our cue for the first of what is hopefully MANY hoochie dancing sequences, complete with exposed breasts and wacky Looney Tunes sound effects.

So David rings the doorbell and gives them the evil book, for no discernible reason whatsoever. Then the skanks open up the cursed tome and try to figger out what kinda' language it's penned in.  "It looks like some sort of ancient sorcerer's wet dream," one of the skanks says about a really, really shitty drawing of a skeleton contained in said book.

Upstairs, the insecure, mousey redhead with the tremendous rack gets nekkid, pulls off her glasses and starts panting in front of a mirror. Then she starts reading the evil book and is aghast at this one pictograph of a demon performing connilingus on some busty wench. Of course, since she's a nerd, she already knows how to speak a litany of dead Latin languages, and she accidentally reads a demon incantation aloud. OK, the dark haired one is definitely my favorite. So the other two girls go upstairs and show off their ta-tas (which means literally EVERY female in the movie thus far has sprung their tops at least once) and then the dark-haired one struggles to open a champagne bottle with her teeth, because that's COMEDY right there. Then a REALLY crappy looking cartoon bulldog werewolf monster materializes out of thin air, and it looks like it was drawn by the same people who did the animations for those CDi Zelda games. 

So the dark-haired one shows her titolas again and the cartoon dog starts doing the old Tex Avery horndog bit, then she pours a glass of Boone's farm in a paper cup, because that is the epitome of class. And then HOLY SHIT, THE WEREWOLF DOG TRIES TO RAPE HER. Well, this movie just went from kitschy fun to all sorts of uncomfortable.

And before you ask, no, they don't kiss, even though we all know that should've been, like, 80 percent of the entire movie.

Apparently, the cartoon dog has now POSSESSED the body of the dark-haired chick, and David Carradine is still traipsing around the house looking all concerned but not really doing anything, either. The dark-haired skank said she cut herself opening a bottle of champagne. The mousey redhead automatically detects something ain't right with her. Then the dark-haired chick's boy toy Biff shows up, and he looks so much like WWE B-tier 'rassler Billy Gunn that it's both comedic and a little terrifying. Then they start making out and her teeth get all point and then she bites his jugular open. Meanwhile, David Carradine STILL keeps walking around everywhere, just looking at stuff.

So the skanks talk some more and all I can notice is that vintage Seattle Seahawks metal trash can in the background. Man, their old uniforms were so much better than their current ones. 

Then we get all meta with a scene where Dick Miller watches himself in A Bucket of Blood, complete Dick M. dropping the line "how come this guy never won an Academy Award?" Then his wife or mistress or whoever comes out in lingerie and shows off her breasts, but Dick turns down her sexual advances because he doesn't like "Fridays." Yeah, there's some context there, but I don't feel like getting into it. Oh, and by the way, his ultra-horny wife is played by B-movie legend Michelle Bauer, whose enormous talents have also been exposed in such genre gems as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama and Assault of the Party Nerds, among dozens upon dozens of other VHS-era classics.

So the mousey redhead finds the dead boyfriend rolled up in a carpet, which the redhead explains is actually a "soul shroud" offering to the Dark Lord or some such mess. At that point, Dick shows up (with a bottle of Mad Dog in tow) and the girls decide to simply HIDE the dead body instead of, you know, reporting it to the police. Then the possessed dark-haired one takes Dick Miller into an evil storage room and seduces him. She starts giving him a blow job, but then her teeth turn sharp again and she (presumably) bites his pecker off. That seems to happen a lot in these kinds of movies — seems kinda' Freudian to me, really.

Then the other three hos start exploring the basement and they uncover Dick Miller's corpse and the dark-haired skanks cadaver. And yep, David Carradine is still ambling around the set, just looking at stuff.

Then the old Jewey neighbor from earlier shows up out of the blue and tells them they can use his phone to call the coppers. He sees the evil book and immediately identifies it as a 17th century warlock spell book, and oh shit, it's actually the dark-haired possessed girl in disguise. So the four decide to go back into the basement (still wearing lingerie, because why not?) and then the dark-haired chick sports Dracula teeth again and starts talking in an evil warlock voice. Then she takes a chunk out of the neck out of one of the two blonde chicks I can't tell apart while the redhead and the other blonde return to the main house to retrieve a holy dagger, which apparently is the only thing that can kill evil cartoon-possessed THOTs. Then the other blonde gets hickied to death, leaving the mousey, insecure redhead as our de facto final girl. Then David Carradine FINALLY decides to make the save, and he really upsets the dark-haired skank by calling her a "doodle," which is apparently the evil cartoon possessed skank equivalent of the "n-word." So the two tussle over the sacred dagger for a bit, and then the redhead conks her over the head with the champagne bottle from earlier. That gives David an opportunity to drive the bladed instrument through her side, which turns her back into a cartoon werewolf dog. So the redhead tosses the evil book into the fireplace, milk (or semen) starts pouring out of its eyes and the werewolf dog calls her a "bitch" and promises to get her in the sequel. David chunks the evil shroud in the fireplace while he's at it. Then he magically disappears and hey all of the other skanks are alive again! And so is the old Jewey creep, who brings 'em some hot coffee in a thermos. And yeah, everybody else we thought was killed earlier in the movie are alive again, as well. Then the Jewey guy brings out a portable TV so they can watch Saturday morning cartoons, and the redhead chick, of course, screams like crazy to end the flick on a self-reflexive note.

And, and just so you know — the cartoon monster is credited as playing himself. What a knee-slapper.

More true crime storytelling from the same guy who gave us The Bare Wench Project and Wizards of the Demon Sword.

Well hell, if nothing else, you can’t say this one didn’t have an amazing cast in it. The mousey redhead, Megan, was played by Monique Gabrielle, a former Penthouse Pet who has been in a TON of B-movie classics over the years, running the gamut from Deathstalker II to 976 Evil II to The Return of Swamp Thing. And if she looks more than smidge familiar to some of our longtime TIIIA readers, it’s probably because she was the one redheaded vampiress in Transylvania Twist, which, let’s be honest with ourselves, you probably fapped to. As far as mainstream exposure, probably her biggest role was in Bachelor Party opposite Tom Hanks. Tis’ a pity she never got more entrenched in the Hollywood mainstream, really — methinks she would’ve made an EXCELLENT Poison Ivy in mid-1990s Batman movie, personally.

For me, the big breakout star of the movie had to have been Madison Stone, the brunette, quasi-punk chick Roxanne, who did the totally pointless striptease around the 20-minute mark of the movie (and, of course, got sexually assaulted/possessed by the film’s titular Evil Toon.) Despite her solid acting job in this one (and I’m being serious, for real), the IMDB tells me that she never really starred in another quasi-mainstream-ish movie ever again. I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but I’m just going to go on ahead and guess that it’s because, for the bulk of her career, she was an adult movie actress, starring in such illustrious works of erotica as The Cockateer, Edward Penishands III and The Anus Family. And if you think I’m making any of this up, feel free to see the evidence for yourself right goddamn here.

Not that you really care, but the other two chicks were played by Suazanne Ager — probably best known for playing Maureen in Inner Sanctum parts one and two — and Barbara Dare, who, as it turns out, also appears to be a fairly prolific pornographic film actress. Feel free to peruse her resume at IMDB anytime you want a quick case of the giggles; I’m not sure if my favorite flick of hers is Fatal Erection or Hannah Does Her Sisters.

At this point, I guess I don’t need to tell you ANYTHING about the legendary careers of David Carradine or Dick Miller, but I would like to bring up the guy who played the extra-Jewey Mr. Hinchlow. That’s a guy named Arte Johnson, who apparently did a TON of cartoon voice work back in the 1980s and 1990s, with gigs on everything from Pac-Man to Foofur to The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo to The Smurfs to The Flintstone Kids to DuckTales to Swat Kats to that one shitty Bill and Ted cartoon nobody watched or, really, even remembers was a thing. 

As for the guy who played Biff, he’s a dude named Don Dowe, he went on to have one of the most random acting careers of all-time. In addition to one-off parts on TV shows like Married … With Children and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, he also had minor roles in flicks like Tale From the Hood, Test Tube Teens From The Year 2000, Rumpelstiltskin and Bruce Almighty. Of course, we here TIIIA remember him most for one thing, and one thing only — portraying Rayban in the Sega CD cult classic Ground Zero Texas.

Of course, you can’t wrap up any write-up on Evil Toons without circling back to its writer and director, Mr. Fred Olen Ray. At the ripe old age of 65, he’s still making movies with the efficiency of a Nigeria midwife’s womb, with IMDB crediting him for no less than 158 directorial gigs to date. Even more amazing, however, is that it appears the former king of straight-to-video softcore shlock has found himself an entirely new genre to exploit: per the ‘DB, his last five films have been, in order: Baking Christmas, A Christmas Princess, One Fine Christmas, A Christmas in Royal Fashion and A Wedding For Christmas. Yep, that’s right, the same guy who gave the world Wizards of the Demon Stone and Bikini Drive-In is now helming goddamn Hallmark Channel originals — geez, what’s next, Jim Wynorksi directing feel-good Christxploitation movies a’la Unplanned and God’s Not Dead?

So yeah, that’s just about everything I can say about Evil Toons. Although there is one thing about the movie that’s still stuck in my craw. I mean, considering there’s just ONE evil toon showing up throughout the whole movie, shouldn’t the title of the movie be singular and not plural? I mean, truth in titling goes a long way goes, even in the domain of straight to VHS sleaze ...