Dollman

Dir: Albert Pyun

1991

****

Albert Pyun’s 1991 science-fiction cult classic is the stuff of Full Moon Features legend. Full Moon Features have made some amazing low-budget b-movies, they’re not all to everyone’s taste, but I have a real affection towards them. Dollman stars Tim Thomerson as an intergalactic cop called Brick Bardo (Bardo being Pyun’s pseudonym since his second film), a flat-topped ‘Dirty Harry’ type character complete with signature "Groger Blaster", the most powerful handgun in the universe. We’re introduced to Bardo on the planet Arturos, many light years from Earth, in a brilliant scene involving a kidnapper, a laundrette and a group of morbidly obese ladies. He saves the day but is framed for a crime he didn’t commit/didn’t happen anyway and gets shouted at by his boss as he shouldn’t have been on the case in the first place. It’s classic cop parody, done surprisingly well. Bardo soon gets captured by his greatest enemy Sprug, who is now just a head floating on a hover platform, after Bardo has shot most of his body parts off during previous encounters. A particularly funny but gory gun fight ensures and Bardo flies after Sprug in his spaceship after he tries to escape. After passing a sign saying ‘Do not cross the energy band’ the pair cross through the energy band and find themselves transported light years away to earth. In a twist, that I’m pretty sure is out of one of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy books, the pair find that they appear much smaller on our planet, around 13 inches to be exact. As if the huge reduction in size wasn’t enough for the pair to contend with, the battling enemies find that not only are they far from home, they have also landed in a rough part of New York’s undesirable districts: The Bronx. If 80s and 90s films told me anything, it was to never find yourself lost in the Bronx. Bardo witnesses a woman being harassed and assists her by blowing her assailants away and she offers him refuge in return. Sprug on the other hand finds himself at the hands of bad-tempered gang leader Braxton Red (played by Jackie Earle Haley) and start negotiations that would mean bad news for Dollman and the people of earth. It all seems predictable from there on but it isn’t. The story twist and the unexpected outcome are utterly joyous to fans of low-budget sci-fi parody like myself. I’ve said it many times before, some early 90s horror/sci-fi is of the highest calbre, Dollman I think is a prime example of this. I would bet my life many well-known directors working today saw Dollman as youngsters and were influenced by it. It’s hugely enjoyable and a treat to watch but it also comes across as being something of a tutorial on how you can make your own film. I couldn’t never make a film as brilliant as this, but you could work out how to visualize certain effects etc, although it has to be said that the special effects are nothing short (excuse the pun) of awesome. It was an instant cult classic. It was so popular, as were many Full Moon films, that Eternity Comics created a comic series for it. It is a little bit puzzling however, how a film like Trancers (also staring Thomerson, in a somewhat similar role), for example, enjoys a long string of sequels, and Dollman gets one in which he has to share it with two other, very different franchises. Don’t get me wrong, I love Trancers and I love Dollman vs Demonic Toys (a mash-up sequel to Dollman, Demonic Toys and BadChannels) but I feel Dollman had so much more to give. If Dark Moon can make several Evil Bong movies, then why couldn’t it do more for Dollman? Sprug needs an origin prequel at the very least. Still, what could have been. Dollman is every cinephiles dream, and every twelve-year old boy’s who never grew up for that matter. A ridiculous sci-fi cop adventure through time and space, featuring exploding bodies, evil gangs, spaceships and a floating head. Albert Pyun is a b-movie legend, along with the Nemesis series Dollman is his best work and I would probably say the same for Tim Thomerson.