So, yeah, here is VHS promotional poster for Puppet Master, which, despite my previous admission on my previous review of Demonic Toys, even I have to say is a strong running, and rather enjoyable at times, franchise. There are a few films in the currently 10-film franchise that feature the puppet as antagonists, heroes, of the story, which is one of the reasons why this franchise has gone on for so long. Most of the time, left to his own devices, Charles Band will do something, or hire someone who will, take his film in a direction that honestly, comes off as cult-film gold. But to really get into that, we need to go into the history of the man, and his many film companies. Here we go: The History of Charles Band, Part 1: the 1970s. Charles Band, son of Albert Band, had a love of filmmaking, that Dad honestly helped along. When he got to his 20s, Charles decided he had waited long enough and formed Charles Band Productions. During it's ten year(73-83) long run, CBP was responsible for 16 films, 3 of which, including the very first film Band ever made, Last Foxtrot in Burbank, a spoof of Last Tango in Paris, were some form of erotica. The other thirteen were mostly sci-fi and horror related, with standouts being Laserblast (the film used as the Season 7 closer for MST3K, the last episode before the show switched channels from Comedy Central to The SciFi Channel), and Parasite. There were also some rather interesting ideas in filmmaking presented in this time period, with sci-fi weirdness in The Day Time Ended, and even conventional crime drama, in Walking The Edge. The films in this period also show another Charles Band trademark: first time screen roles of highly recognizable actresses, most notably Demi Moore(the previously mentioned Parasite). In 1983, however, Band, still living in and around Italy thanks to the filmmaking he grew up around, dissolved CBP and formed Empire Pictures, sometimes known as Empire International Pictures. Those of you who know what's now coming, good OR bad, take a shot.
You see, Empire, while formed in '83 (Walking the Edge lists Empire as the film house behind it, despite being firmly in the CBP era), didn't actually release any films for two years, while building up what was to be some of the best films Band would release, as well as some of the worst films ever put to celluloid. The first four films from Empire, all part of 7 they would release that year (1985), included Re-Animator, highly regarded as one of the best indie cult horror classics of all time, mainly due to it's star Jeffrey Combs, and the rampant comedy throughout. It got two sequels, but neither of them had anything to do with Band, and instead had everything to do with hack producer and director Brian Yuzna, but he's a different story altogether. Also in this illustrious group was Ghoulies!, Trancers, and The Dungeonmaster, all three of which were either interesting, new ideas in filmmaking, or honestly entertaining works that would become franchises later on. The Dungeonmaster was a rather awesome idea actually, on paper: let's make a sci-fi fantasy, with a quest based, episodic premise, and let a DIFFERENT DIRECTOR film each 'episode' within the film? We'll give each one the basic outline of what HAS to happen, and have a final editing director to make sure they all flow into each other well, but each sequence will have it's own unique feel! And, in the end, it kind of succeeds, in that there are SEVEN directors listed, one for each sequence, including Band, as the main plot revolves around seven 'tests' the main character must perform for the villain, or lose the soul of the girl he loves. It was a rather ambitious idea, and one of the reasons why I hate Band as a director now, as he shows NONE of that earlier ambition anymore. Ghoulies! would become a well-known late night TV horror show franchise of the late 80s and early 90s, with it's first sequel, Ghoulies II, being handled by Empire as well, with two more sequels later on from other companies as well. That leaves Trancers which, as a premise, was again an AWESOME idea. With one part Robocop, one part Terminator, and a dash of Timecop, Trancers wasn't all that original, but it was freaking entertaining as hell. It would stand alone for about 6 years, until Charles' third and longest lasting company, would revive it as a franchise. It revolves a man named Jack Deth(subtle, no?), and one of the more interesting premises on time travel, in that one can take a drug to enter into a mental state, that allows one to 'take over' the mind of one of your own genetic ancestors.
Great Idea, really, and it was really helped by the stars, Tim Thomerson, who was already partly known as a b-list badass before this, and a early film role by none other than Helen Hunt. Who reprised her role in the sequel. Now comes the scary part. Over the next four years (Empire effectively died in '89 with the crash of the Italian lira), Empire was at least partly responsible for atrocities like, well, the one I can say I've seen to prove my point, is Troll. Yes, THAT Troll. There were two films released after Empire's collpase that bared the Empire name, 1990's Robot Jox, and 1992's The Spellcaster, but that release was after a four year delay due in part, to the collapse in the first place. I would use Robot Jox as another example of bad filmmaking from that era, but as Empire was effectively dead before it's release, it's kind of a moot point. That, ad again, Robot Jox actually had some decent ideas in the premise department, as I actually like the post apocalyptic sports approach to resolving conflict, and I find films that use that premise at least mildly entertaining.So yeah, Charles Band can count himself as one among many responsible for Troll. And while the staple of actresses show up here too, what with Julia-Louis Dreyfuss showing up here, it's still terrible, in every aspect. 
Then, in 1989, from the ashes of Empire Films, Charles Band launches the film, and franchise, he'll be forever know for, Full Moon, and Puppet Master. I only put Full Moon there, as the company has gone through five name changes since it's inception, six if you count Band's emo period. While currently Full Moon Pictures, in started as Full Moon Productions, and was changed to Full Moon Entertainment, Studios, and Features, in that order, before settling on Pictures a few years back. It is the Full Moon Era, still going on, where Band hit his stride, so to speak, both with good, and bad, filmmaking. The good was well, most of the early stuff, actually. Puppet Master. Shadowzone. Crash and Burn. Netherworld. All films with good premises, good effects, and were entertaining, for the b-movie direct to video market. Not to mention the franchise tentpoles the Puppet Master and Trancers became for the studio, even giving birth to another idea of Band's: presenting Full Moon's films as a self contained universe, like the comics of DC or Marvel, where characters and ideas can interact with each other freely, even making new films out of the possibilities, with one of the films I reviewed previously, Demonic Toys, being a standout in this regard, getting crossover films with Puppet Master and Dollman, another Tim Thomerson vehicle, playing the same kind of cop that he does in Trancers, only he's an alien, and because of the different scale of size from his home planet, he's 6 inches tall. And other franchise films, like Subspecies. Early Full Moon film work is a gold mine of good ideas executed well, despite time and budget constraints. 
Then comes 1993, and while good films were still coming out of Full Moon during the entire time frame I'm about to spell out here, here was where Band himself, simply lost sight of what was going on around him, and a period of no less than 7 subsidiary film houses emerges, the first two being Moonbeam Entertainment, and Torchlight Entertainment. Moonbeam, if you can't guess from the name, was a film house Band formed with children's films in mind, the most famous probably being the Prehysteria! trilogy, with honorable mentions Josh Kirby...Time Warrior! and couple of leprechaun films, Leaping Leprechauns!, and Spellbreaker: The Magic of the Leprechauns. It is with the knowledge of those two films that I realize my first encounter with Charles Band was in 1995, when Leaping Leprechauns! was released, as not only was it a VHS, it played on a few family channels during that time. The second company, Torchlight Entertainment, was Charles Band's attempt to de-sleazify the Full Moon banner, by placing all of the racy, damn near softcore potn like stuff, under a different label. It worked, for the the most part, but, as Torchlight only has seven releases in eight years, it seems as if, in 2001, Band just gave trying, and put all of the T&A back under the Full Moon banner. Still, he gets points for trying, I guess. In 1996, 1998, and 1999, other production companies were formed under Full Moon, and all of them were short lived, kind of like how most of the films these days are 'financed' by [film name here] LLC, to make the films infinitely more marketable, by greatly reducing the overall financial risk involved. In 1996, we get two more companies, responsible for two film each. There's Pulp Fantasy Productions, with Head of the Family, and The Killer Eye, both of which are all right, with Head being the standout for again, a rather interesting premise, in a family of mutants, of which, in the five of them, are no one complete being, but five separate entities, each with one aspect of a human being extrapolated to it's extreme end. So, one huge brute, one with amazing senses, etc, led by the intelligence, who is literally just about a head in a wheelchair, who not only has the brains, but psychic powers as well, including mind control. The other company is Monster Island Productions, so named because it's two films are monster movies in the vein of the old Toho Productions Godzilla franchise. They'r called Zarkorr! The Invader! and Kraa! The Sea Monster! should you wish to look them up. 
In 1999, came the final two companies, Action Xtreme, with Alien Arsenal, a so-called 'loose remake' of Laserblast, and Murdercycle. The second company here was originally called Alchemy Entertainment, but was quickly name changed to Big City Pictures, which was were band wanted to place the 'urban' (read that: minority) centered horror films, such as clown franchise Killjoy. All of the aforementioned companies were defunct as of 2002, so everything since then that would fall under one of those categories has been released under the Full Moon banner. And here starts the real horrorshow. You see, now that all of these crazy rebranding experiments were over, Band had became somewhat disillusioned with the film making process as a whole, citing 'corporate Hollywood control', as the impetus behind his self imposed exile for a short time. He even went so far as to temporarily rebrand Full Moon as Shadow Pictures, stating that he felt that the studio's current work(including a 2002 release of the 1977 horror film Death Bed: The Bed that Eats), was straying too far away from the content the film house was known for. He was somewhat right, but it was still a rather pretentious move on his part. Soon, however, he came out of his funk, and did it by going into full douchebag mode: Every film release since Band's return has to fully controlled by him, every step of the way, as he now produces AND directs every film Full Moon releases. And, since it has the Full Moon name again, one can conclude that he is now happy that the current direction of the studio is now in line with the previous vision. To this I can only say: REALLY? Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong? Decadent Evil 2? The Gingerdead Man and IT's two sequels? While some of the recent films have some sparks of the original Charles Band (Gingerdead Man's casting of Gary Busey as a prime example), when Full Moon stopped being releasing low-budget indie flicks with great horror or sci-fi premises, and instead became Charles Band's self-masturbatory Vanity Project House, everything it touched became tainted. Even it's rich history. Full Moon's name may go on releasing films for another 40 years(Band himself will that hallmark soon.), the studio is dead, and until Band grows up, and goes back to the film making that made him actually good, for the genre and the market, in my opinion, dead Full Moon will stay.Oh, and a weird side note, Charles Band is the father of Alex Band, of the band The Calling. You may know their one major hit song. Alex has since moved on, and has started a solo music career in 2010. I mention it because he is now my main hope that something of some artistic substance can come out of this family.
Good piece -- two corrections though:
ReplyDelete1) Walking the Edge was released in theaters by Empire in 1985. Empire did not produce it and only took it in for theatrical distribution.
2) 5-7 unreleased films ended up in TWE/Epic's hands when they folded Empire. One was the David DeCoteau film Deadly Weapon.
Except ALL of my research into the subject, as in, I couldn't find even one source to the contrary, puts Empire as a producer as well on Walking the Edge, even listing Band as an uncredited Executive Producer. I'm not saying anything like "OMG don't correct me!", just that, as far as anything I can find on the film is concerned, it seems to have been produced in 1983, and released in 1985, maybe so that Band could use it as a more 'legitimate' opener film for Empire's body of work. It seems to be a common practice of the time, and, I have to go with what I can conceivably connect at the time of posting. However, if you have something that says other wise, please, link it here, I'll be more than happy to look it over and change my article to fit the factual information found therein.
ReplyDeleteWhich leads me to your second point. I didn't find anything on those films either, but I'm sure at least one of the sources I used probably glossed over that bit and instead just moved the films into Epic's body of work without stating where they had come from. Again, if you have a link to the information, please, link it. I don't write this stuff for laughs. The fact that you read through it to the point of pointing out possible flaws in my timeline of research means a lot to me, it means I'm doing something right. So thank you, for the comment, and in advance, for the materials for the corrections.