Even if you hate this movie, you have to give these people credit for being different. This is the Purple Rose of Cairo of video camera gore and one of the few movies out there that’s just as weird as its video cover suggests. The story, as best I can tell, concerns a DVD called Terror Toons created by the devil. When you put it on, the two main characters—Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin, a mad scientist and a homicidal gorilla, respectively—step out of the screen and start hacking up bodies cartoon-style.
Before all those torture movies showed up, horror films of the 00s were generally lighter on the gore than the red meat specials of the 70s and 80s, but not this one. In Terror Toons we get to see nearly everyone’s entrails (don’t say this movie doesn’t dig deep into its characters). And there must’ve been a sale on fake brains, or cow brains or whatever filmmakers use when splattered cerebellums are absolutely necessary to the story, that week because this flick is brainier than Stephen Hawking. We get someone vomiting up their brain, we get a brain pulled out of someone’s body via their STOMACH, we get brains on the floor, we get someone holding their own brain in their hand, and we even get brain-tickling.
Terror Toons was shot in three days all on one set—the exec-producer’s house, with lava lamps in every room—and, according to director Joe Castro, only cost $2,300 to make. There are breast implants here that were more expensive. And attached to a movie with a budget that low, the special effects showcase documentary on the DVD is among the rare ones in movie history that’s actually watchable (and the special effects here ARE good, actually—or at least unique).
Like so many great films, Terror Toons challenges the audience and asks tough questions that don’t have easy answers. Why is the little sister (played by Lizzie Borden) portrayed as being about 8 years old, but she looks about 20 and has big fake basketball breasts? Why does our heroine’s mother look like Lux Interior of The Cramps in drag and speak with a deeper voice than her husband? Why does our heroine suddenly turn into a pink-haired, caped superhero at the movie’s climax? And, the biggest question of all, how does the game Strip Ouija work exactly?