Hideous!

A group of rival collectors of severely deformed freakish human beings and the FBI agents that are investigating them must battle against some of their collections which aren't as dead as they seem...

Full Moon makes cheap movies, often involving puppets and often with gratuitous nudity. This movie is clearly cheap, but there are no puppets and even the nudity seems okay because it is done in a humorous manner. This is not a "good" film, but compared to just about everything else Charlie Band has touched, it is actually alright.

Now, not that I would recommend this, but if it happens to be on or turn up on your Netflix queue, and you have a few friends and a case of beer, you could do worse than this. At least it's not "The Dead Want Women".

Here is the thing. You have to enjoy cheesy horror movies. To be delighted by the bizarre also helps. Hideous! is a weird movie involving collectable biological oddities preserved (mostly) in formaldehyde, a girl band in a cage rocking out, and a mutant born of noxious waste hell-bent on getting revenge or eating people or something. A quirky movie that entertained me to no end just by it's amusing oddness. The topless bandit didn't hurt either. If you like Full Moon Pictures, you will probably like this one. If the Puppet Master or Subspecies movies didn't do anything for you, then you should probably skip it. But, if you are ready to take a leap of faith and/or have a backup video at the ready, get a copy and set back on the couch for a bizarre evening.

When sewage workers serendipitously discover a discarded and deformed fetus, several collectors of medical oddities vie for possession of it. Subsequently, the fetus, along with others in a collection, come back to life and begin wreaking havoc. The plot offers an interesting premise, as medical oddities are an exotic source of fascination, as well as a dark biological aesthetic which lends itself well to the horror genre, while providing an antidote to the sterile and plastic commercial culture which permeates the mainstream media.

While the viewer may be inclined to perceive the reanimated fetuses as the antagonists of the film, the real antagonists are the collectors - Elvina, Napoleon Lazar, and Dr. Lorca. They can be characterized as such because (1) they seek to obtain the deformed fetuses for their own personal collections, thus gratifying their own egos, whereas such preternatural specimens should be studied by science, or if such specimens are to be put on display, it should be a public exhibition in order to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of the novelty-starved masses. Preferably, they should be in a museum, ideally one that specializes in medical oddities, such as the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. (2) They are antagonists because they continue their pursuit of the fetuses even after they discover that the specimens are not only alive, but sentient. Therefore, they would exploit the fetuses for their own gain, despite the fact the fetuses express (in the form of writing notes!) their preference to be left alone. This can be symbolic of how businesspeople view the consumer as a commodity - a means of improving one's "bottom line" - rather than as beings with their own desires. The deformed fetuses, therefore, are not antagonists but antiheroes. They only cause trouble once their desire has been disregarded. This film contains some creatively sexy scenes. Regarding sexual content, mainstream films tend to offer little more than mundane male-female sexual intercourse. B-movies often deliver a refreshing selection of uncommon/unnatural sexual scenes, serving to satisfy one's desire for an alternative to routine and unimaginative sexuality. "Hideous!" is no exception, and in fact, the sexual scenes make for some of the most appealing content of this film.

"Hideous" is the most professional Full Moon film on the surface. Its beautifully shot, very well-cast and makes use of an epic and atmospheric locale. But unfortunately it features one of the driest, most predictable and uneventful scripts. Charles Band directs in his usual cheapo style with loads of longwinded, faux-intellectual dialogue, sloooooow scenes where nothing happens and loads of stale or over-the-top acting. The incredible production value of this film should've been given to a Puppet Master film. Puppet Master 3 shows what a good budget can do for a Full Moon movie, but that film also succeeded because had Band his hands off artistically.

This is a decent watch if you want to see great low-budget cinematography or a 1940s style "old dark house" story redone in the 1990s. But its not entertaining enough or weird enough for the average audience.

A sewage treatment plant clean-up crew (where do I sign up?!) fish out a red glob "specimen," which turns out to be more than just worthless sludge, but an invaluable formula capable of reviving mutant creatures. What it's doing in the sewer is anyone's guess. After it's stolen by eccentric, unorthodox Dr. Lorca (Michael Citriniti) and his sexy, blonde always topless assistant Sheila (Jacqueline Lovell), the "owners" hire a private detective to get it back. Above characters (plus a ditsy secretary) become trapped inside Lorca's castle home and face off against four bite-size mutant monsters who attack and start killing because they want their independence (!)

Although the little killers will instantly bring to mind Band's Full Moon PUPPET MASTER series, this silly, but very fun, time waster has decent production values, cute slimy puppet monsters and a decent unknown cast (Tracie May and Lovell are especially good). Although Band has fallen into a pit of mini-monster reptitiveness, he has improved as a scriptwriter, and the witty, sarcastic and often very funny dialogue in this film proves it.