Terror Toons.
About five or six years ago, when I was in high school, I went to Hollywood Video to rent a movie with my BFF Meagan (zombie girls can have BFF's). We were having trouble deciding when we found Terror Toons, a low-budget horror that was sure to be comedy gold. How low-budget? Well...
First let me remind you that this was back when new releases still often came out in both VHS and DVD, while many old movies hadn't even been transferred.
So when we said, "If it's on DVD, it can't be that bad," what we meant was that we expected a real movie. Not--not--whatever Terror Toons is.
Terror Toons is the worst movie I've ever seen, and it isn't just because it was shot in three days for $2300, or because in his interview, director Joe Castro is clearly tweaking on something. No, this is really why: when Meagan and I turned it off, all I could say was, "I just feel sad inside now." Terror Toons isn't only a bad movie; it's a bad feeling. And I'm actually watching it again.
To really get the bile going, the movie starts with a special introduction from a man who is supposed to be a punk rocker, but looks more like a confused Bono. The video quality is about cable-access level, while the set decoration--plastic trash bags, smiley faces, and printouts of the Terror Toons cover--is hobo's-cardboard-house level. Confused Bono sloooowly describes how frightened we will be by Terror Toons. It's about as terrifying as if your dad dressed up like a "punk rock guy" and performed a D.A.R.E. skit to scare you away from marijuana. Bono explains that Satan is going to take Dr. Carnage and his evil monkey, Max Assassin, out of the "cartoon dimension"--so there's your first leap--to murder humans. Satan's reasons for this are never sufficiently justified, catechismically speaking. I didn't think he was into just killing people. I thought he was more about making us touch our private parts.
We now leave Bono's Hefty Bag Warehouse to venture into the cartoon dimension, a place where the true horror is in the sound effects. You will come to fear Dr. Carnage's tiny gremlin laugh, and the inner ear corrosion it is inevitably causing you. I will give credit where it is due--Terror Toons is one of the more horrifying horror movies I've ever seen. This is in part because the gore is pretty all right for a low-budget movie, and it's in part because Terror Toons is obsessed with having adults play children. In the opening scene, a hideous masked creature straps a grown man to a torture table, while the man pretends to be a mewling little boy. And no, Bono didn't warn us about the Freudian undertones.
Back in our dimension, we find young Candy in her bathtub. I should warn you that Candy, big sister Cindy, their transsexual "mother," and their father, are all played by real-life porn actors (Lizzie Borden, Beverly Lynne, Shimmy Maxx, and Gil Chase). Any amount of coolness associated with this unusual family, though, is destroyed by the fact that Candy's character is either a little kid or a severely retarded girl. Yeah, there's nothing disturbing at all about pretending that a woman soaping up her pumpkin tits in the tub is actually seven years old. Or about how dear old dad looks just a little too sweet on her.
Thanks for nothing, Bono.
Anyway, their parents are going out of town for the night, so "teen" sister Cindy and her friend, Amy, invite Rick and Eddie over. They decide to juice up on wine coolers and play Strip Ouija. I'm really ashamed to say that one of the guys (Rick) is a little bit cute, in a cartoon-monsters-have-corrupted-my-vision kind of way, so I was at least hoping he'd strip and briefly distract me from the movie. (And distract me from his tiny teeth. What's up with tiny teeth?) Instead, there is a long montage in which they strip and re-strip the same clothes, slooowly spelling out each item they're removing. So if you've outgrown Sesame Street but you're still an idiot, then Terror Toons might be for you.
In her room, Candy watches a movie she received in the mail: "Terror Toons." Terror Toons features "a new kind of animation," by "Say Tonn," that's basically a mish-mash of clip art, horrible sound FX, and two guys in masks. In the scene she's watching, Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin kill two adults who are pretending to be horrible, puling children. (No big surprise there.) Normally I'd support that as a mercy killing, but Terror Toons's combination of cartoon effects and unusually brutal torture is upsetting even for me. If you've ever watched old Looney Tunes episodes and thought, "That's nice, but I'd really like to see Yosemite Sam's brains splattered on the wall, and where are Daffy Duck's ropy intestines when I need them?" then congratulations, you might be the target audience for Terror Toons. Also, I hope your dog never tells you to kill me and eat my eyeballs.
Once Candy falls asleep, the villains escape from the TV and pin her down to cut out her spine. This must have been a confusing moment for Ms. Borden, as this is normally when the monsters/daddy gangbang would start. Shortly after she's killed, the unluckiest man in the world arrives at the house. He's a dude delivering pizza to a house full of porn stars--pizza delivery, porn stars--and who should answer the door? Dr. Carnage. And the good doctor isn't even wearing a silk teddy. This poor delivery guy deserves poontang, not murder! How can a movie have an all-porn cast, and yet the only nudity is the "pre-pubescent" character's awful soccer-ball tits? How specialized do you want to get, Movie That Appeals to Horror-Loving Pedophilic Bono Impersonators Only?
You might not think that Terror Toons sounds that bad yet. That's because you don't know about the dance scene, the first moment 
when Meagan and I began to truly appreciate the movie's unbelievable sadness. The teenagers are still trying to Ouija Cindy into taking her boobs out, when the lights turn down low and a disco ball starts spinning. Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin have appeared behind the couch. This is when Sean came in the room while I was writing this article and said about the kids, "Oh, man, they're going to get served, aren't they?" And yes, the villains begin an extended dance scene that mostly involves wiggling and dubbed spanking noises. And rather than running and screaming in terror (or breaking into a semen-soaked orgy at the sound of bass-heavy music), the teens start--they start laughing. They laugh so hard that Eddie's veins swell up, blood spurts out, and he coughs up what I think is supposed to be his brain. (Or, as Sean put it, "Man, they really did get served.")
The three remaining kids try to get away, but discover that the world outside their home has become, um, red and yellow swirls that make Rick vomit. Seeing his friend cough up his brain, Rick can handle, but cartoon swirls are too much for him. (Naturally the girls abandon him and he gets lobotomized, which must be more of a relief than a punishment.) I'll tell you what's too much for me: when Cindy and Amy discover the Police Officer, who's also from the cartoon dimension and is just a normal dude wearing a badge that reads "Police Officer." The girls scream, "Who the hell are you?" I know that Cindy's normal motivation for a scene is, "lots and lots of dicks," but still, her reactions don't make any damn sense. Then Amy gets cut in half in an evil magic show, and blood actually comes OUT of her mouth. Ladies. Have you learned nothing from starring in Cumslut Babes 2? Fluids go IN or ON only.
For a woman who doesn't know what a Police Officer is, Cindy faces down the Devil 
pretty calmly, when Carnage and Max Assassin take her to him. (So calmly, she giggles when Satan shrinks Dr. Carnage and explains, "in the animating world, you can be whatever you want." Listen, adult movie directors. In porn, you can make me believe Cindy is a dirty housewife who wants it bad--you can even make me believe that we live in a world where the plumbing and food-delivery industries are populated by men who have enormous dongs and speak English. But I will never, ever think that Terror Toons are funny, no matter how many times you make them dance or shrink.) Cindy is so calm that she becomes a superhero just by mentioning it. Yeah, that's believable. C'mon, in real life, a porn star would use the magical be-anything "animating world" to grow herself an extra vagina.
The Devil starts describing all the awful, torturous things he will do to her, and she of course replies, "Bring it on." No, Cindy. When someone has the power to give you otherworldly weeping sores, the proper response is not, "yes, I can handle that; I'm sure Walgreens has a cream for it. I shall now be sassy!" Bitch, that the Devil. Sugardrops and rainbows DON'T EVEN EXIST in Hell, and you can bet that fluffers and Astroglide don't, either. If the Devil was trying to intimidate me into giving up, and my choice was, "torture from the Prince of Darkness" or "move to a country where there are somewhat fewer DVD players to spawn evil monsters," well, let's just say I'd be willing to sacrifice the Employee of the Month blooper reel.
The filmmakers apparently also realized that catchphrases are no match for the powers of absolute evil, and so the Devil gives up for no reason, and Cindy flies back through the TV to fight Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin. First she stomps on Max Assassin's monkey mask head until chili and about half a dozen fart noises come out. I know a lot of gross things happen when you die, but I hope none of them could cause my skull to make fart noises. Then Dr. Carnage's gremlin laugh is silenced forever when he is ax-chopped in the head, and clip art monsters and his skeleton fly out of his body. You might recognize that this is exactly what is supposed to happen to Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson during the Rapture. Finally, Cindy destroys the evil DVD-printing machine, and is victorious! Victorious except for the whole, the-Devil-could-probably-make-a-new-DVD-machine thing. Yeah.
Cindy's parents return home, where they find Cindy still in "animating world" superhero costume and laughing maniacally, clutching Candy's blood-soaked, breast-implanted body. I'll buy that Cindy's had a psychotic break. I mean, why shouldn't I believe that you could go from being afraid to take your top off, to laughing at disco-dancing intruders, to crying hysterically at the sight of Police Officers, to teasing the Devil, to almost looking bored as you crush someone's skull, but...Well, let's face it. I stopped thinking about how to end that sentence as soon as I mentioned the dance sequence.
Terror Toons ends on a classy note: the final scene is an ACTUAL LITTLE BOY running outside to get "Terror Toons!" out of the mailbox and then running back in to, as Dr. Carnage's gremlin-y giggle implies, get brutally murdered. Oh, yeah, and they tell us that he lives right next door to this house of porn stars.
Murder or none, any movie that features a "child" with enormous orange breasts, and then later throws in HOLY SHIT a real little kid? Terror Toons deserves a Top Hat and Monocle Award for Tasteful Sexual Dysfunction.
Final Assessment: Watching Terror Toons again has been therapeutic for me, as it's dispelled some of the mythic unhappiness the first viewing left me with. Of course, it was probably only better this time because I watched it while writing this article. I still have to warn you that watching in one attentive sitting will make you feel nauseated, clinically depressed, and kind of physically dirty. If only Bono had warned us about the sexual deviance.
And about the dance scene.
Availability: Obviously you can get it from Hollywood Video. It's also available on Netflix. If you have any friends that actually own Terror Toons, though, then good job: you've made friends with pseudo-child molesters.
Special Note: Lizzie Borden, or Candy, is both an actress and producer/director. As her porn name implies, she's also kind of a monster. She is "not for a woman's rights," and she likes producing/directing violent porn "to take my aggression out on others." During the Behind the Scenes, she mentions--still in pigtails and little girl outfit--that she's had sex with a plunger, and also, for no apparent reason, "Hit her in the shitter, slap her in the crapper." Lizzie Borden is a lady.
And as a perfect side note, in 2003 Borden and her husband were indicted for distributing obscenity--apparently she made movies involving hardcore simulated rape, unusual bodily fluids, and actors pretending to be LITTLE KIDS. Haha!
click on Candy's mutilated corpse to go back to EYES
