The ’80s were a wild time for horror movies.Eight Friday the 13th films released in the decade,leading to Jason Voorhees becoming a household name and inspiring countless copycats.Halloweenwas around for a few sequels as well, but the king of horror was Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), the pop culture icon from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Silly, supernatural clones were everywhere, but none could compare to the original. The 1980s was one of the golden eras of practical effects,but for every awe-inspiring movie likeThe Thing,there were monster movies with effects so bad that you could only laugh at them.
Among the most successful horror films of the decade was 1984’sGremlins.Joe Dante’s film was the best of all worlds. It was part nasty horror film (one so frightening that it helped create the PG-13 rating), part over-the-top comedy, and also a practical effects spectacle, with the gremlins and Gizmo looking so lifelike that even the family dog in the movie thought they were real. It all led to a box office haul of $148 million,making it the third biggest movie of the year. Suddenly,Gremlinsripoffs were everywhere, with fun but subpar films likeCrittersandGhouliestrying to recapture the magic. Then there was 1988’sHobgoblins,aGremlinswannabe so bad in every way that it sums up everything that went wrong in the worst of ’80s horror.
Hobgoblins
A young security guard must track down diminutive aliens who kill people even as they make their fantasies come true.
‘Gremlins’ Was the Highest Grossing Horror Film of the 1980s
Gremlinswas written by a youngChris Columbusas yet another straight-up R-rated monster movie. In his screenplay, the mother dies,Gizmo turns bad, and the gremlins kill everyone inside a McDonald’s.It was producerSteven Spielbergwho made the film lighter fare, turning it into a boy-and-his-dog story. Combine that with the direction of Joe Dante, whoshowed how well he could tiptoe between horror and comedy withThe Howling, and you had something audiences had never seen before.
Gremlinssucceeds at everything it includes. If you want a love story, you’ve got it, with the burgeoning romance between Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates). If you want comedy, there’s a ton. The gremlins are the ultimate pranksters, leading to the unforgettable chaotic wackiness of the tavern scene. If horror is what you’re seeking,Gremlinshas that as well. The pint-sized, sharp-toothed, demon-looking creatures do kill, and they look scary as hell, thanks to the work ofChris Walas, the same manwho’d later win an Oscar for his makeup work onThe Flytwo years later.Gremlinsput its all into every aspect of the film, which is something that its many clones can’t say.
The 1980s Were Full of Rip-Offs of Varying Quality
Just asMichael Myers and Jason Voorhees inspired an abundance of silent, masked killers,Gremlinsbirthed a series of horror-comedy monster movies that wanted to share the spotlight with Gizmo and company.Only one, 1986’sCritters, came anywhere close to being in the same league asGremlins, with its story of sharp-toothed, hedgehog-like aliens who come to Earth and consume everything in their path. The creatures are silly (they even speak), but still maintain the fear factor, leading to a franchise, with1993’sCritter 3, starring a youngLeonardo DiCaprio.
The 13 Worst Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked According to Rotten Tomatoes
Oh, the terror! …And not in a good way.
Every otherGremlinswannabe was a failure.1985’sGhouliesmight look like a lot of scary fun with that great poster showing a green creature emerging from a toilet bowl, but the result was something more bizarre than horror. 1987’sMunchiesstarred little green ghouls in a plot that might as well have been trying to be aGremlinssequel. In 1989,Elvesgave us creepy little monsters at Christmastime, just likeGremlins,with even its poster of a scaly arm ripping through the inside of a wrapped present copyingGremlins' marketing material.TrollandTroll 2jumped on the scary little goblins train as well, withthe latter film often being referred to as the worst horror movie ever made. And it wasn’t only horror films that were attempting to recreate the magic of a better, more successful film.Paul Rudd’s favorite movie, 1988’sMac and Metried torecapture the boy and his creature friendship ofE.T. the Extra-Terrestrialbut is instead remembered as a joke. None of these examples, however, quite capture the hilarious failure of 1988’sHobgoblins.
‘Hobgoblins’ Has a Hilarious Setup
To callHobgoblinsa bad movie doesn’t do it justice. It’s so horrible that it only gets a 2.2 rating on IMDb,putting it at number 35 on the site’s lowest-rated movies. For many, it falls into the “so bad it’s good category"due to its usage on Mystery Science Theater 3000and Rifftrax. WhileHobgoblinsis a movie you can find entertaining if you love to laugh at cheap movies, that doesn’t stop it from being so bad that it sums up everything wrong with the worst of the decade’s horror.
Hobgoblinscomes fromRick Sloane,who not only wrote, directed, and produced the film, but also handled its cinematography and editing. Kudos to him for having that much passion for his project — but oh boy, it did not work out. The plot revolves around an older security guard named Dennis (Kevin Kildow) at a closed movie studio. After several of his co-workers die, he hires a new guard, a young man named Kevin (Bartlett). When the two chase down a burglar,Kevin goes into a vault Dennis tells him to stay out of. He’s really messed up now because Kevin just let the hobgoblins out. Dennis explains that these creatures can make your wildest dreams come true, but use them to kill you in the process because, well, who knows? And why have they been kept in a vault at an abandoned movie studio, you ask? Hush now. This is not the time for rational questions.
‘Hobgoblins’s Creature Design Is Lackluster
80s horror is known for its overused tropes(that’s part of why we love them) andHobgoblinsis filled with them. Though it could be an exaggeration to call the film’s massive flaws offensive, they speak to the laziness in a lot of ’80s horror films. The ’70s was a golden age for horror, even the misses weren’t that bad; but a decade later, studios pumped out anything they thought could make a few dollars on the back of something better. IfGremlinshad little green monsters, well damn it, so wouldHobgoblins. The only difference is that the monsters inGremlinsare works of art in that they are so realistic whilethe monsters inHobgoblinsare nothing more than cheap hand puppets.The gremlins were intricate creations, with robotic faces and several people controlling them, but the hobgoblins are the simplest of puppetry.
Not only do the hobgoblins look cheap, but the simplest of things, such as making them feel like an accurate part of their environment, aren’t done. Many scenes have these monsters, who are only a foot tall, suddenly come face to face with a human character, an impossible predicament given their size. One scene has a hobgoblin running across a bar, but it’s so obvious that it’s a puppet bouncing up and down with the human controlling it barely hidden behind the wall. WhileHobgoblinsis a horror comedy, it fails by not putting much into the horror part. If you don’t believe the villain, there is nothing to fear. That’s a sin often made by the cheapest of ’80s monster movies. In 1990’sGremlins 2: The New Batch,the plot went into full zany comedy, leaving much of the horror behind, but Joe Dante still knew to make his little monsters look real and frightening.
Like Many ’80s Horror Movies, ‘Hobgoblins’ Needlessly Oversexualises Its Characters
Perhaps the most overdone of 80s horror tropes is the one-dimensional, lazy sexualization of its characters. There is always at least one perpetually horny male and female character.Hobgoblinshas that as well, and while that’s fine, one of its characters, the blonde valley girl Daphne (Kelley Palmer), exists to be nothing more than a source of pervy one-liners. Another, Kyle (Steven Boggs), has an addiction to phone sex hotlines, even when the hobgoblins are attacking, and another, Amy (Paige Sullivan), is the butt of the joke for being a virgin, only to have the hobgoblins awaken her closed off desires. Amy’s subplot could have been interesting but between the wooden line delivery and the lack of anything beyond the superficial (hey, look at the previously stuck-up Amy dancing awkwardly in the strip club!), it’s only used for humor.
Hobgoblinslives in infamy as one of the 80’s worst horror movies, one so bad that you can only laugh at its many flaws. In an era of monster movies and cookie-cutter character tropes,Hobgoblinsfails by not putting much effort into its visuals or what it’s trying to say. Its only saving grace is that it’s part comedy. It’s in on the joke, but like the worst of 80s horror, it doesn’t know how to tell it. Still, stay for the very last line. It’s one of the funniest you’ll ever hear in horror, and it’s on purpose.
