Don't do anything with these Hobgoblins.
In 1998, the Peabody award-winning television show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” directed their brand of observational and improvisational comedy toward director Rick Sloane’s 1988 film “Hobgoblins.”
MST3k writers have gone on record saying that it was one of the worst films that they have ever seen in their lives that made for one of the best episodes of the entire show. One would think that earning such infamy for a terrible film would inspire Rick Sloane to refine his craft and learn where he went wrong upon producing a sequel to what is widely considered one of the worst films of all time. Sadly, it would seem that 20 years wasn’t quite long enough for Sloane to learn his lesson.
Though “Hobgoblins” holds a status as one of the worst films of all time, its sequel, “Hobgoblins 2” somehow defies logic to be worse than its predecessor, yet somehow far less memorable.
Set an unspecified amount of time after the first “Hobgoblins,” which ended in the destruction of the titular creatures after being locked in a vault destroyed in an explosion, how these little Gremlins knockoffs just happen to make a comeback in this sequel, is never quite explained but it follows a group of five of the most inhumanly obnoxious college students ever brought to film, as they come across former security guard, now mental patient, McCreedy, who has since been institutionalized for blowing up the vault.
He warns the group of five, now part of a psychology class and studying mental patients in a home with little to no competent security of the unexplained return of the Hobgoblins, vicious little creatures that can cause hallucinations of one’s greatest fears. The group is forced to confront their greatest fears in order to destroy the creatures once and for all, chanting their name three times in a row in order to summon them and remind the audience of better horror movies that they could be watching.
As is the case with most horror comedies, the ultimate downfall of “Hobgoblins 2” is that it is a comedy that just isn’t funny. On the surface, its major problem is undeniably the pitifully high ratio of bad or flat jokes that it makes. However flaws of its execution run even deeper than that.
The film tries almost painfully to be a self parody of its previous installment by refusing to take itself seriously in any capacity. The effects, puppetry of the creatures and the acting remains just as bad as it always has been but the ingenuity of the first film has unfortunately, been lost in the making of this sequel. As wretched as the original “Hobgoblins” is, it remains to this day, one of my favorite B-movies of all time. It was a stupid premise with no talent attached to it that tried to make do with everything that it had, almost making it an admirable kind of bad.
“Hobgoblins 2” has the gall to point and laugh at its own incompetence and think that this alone will excuse the fact that it sucks, rather than do something witty, insightful, or entertaining with that knowledge.
Awareness alone of a terrible films’ status of being terrible does not lead to it being good. “Hobgoblins 2” has a few moments sprinkled throughout that garner chuckles but it otherwise forfeits almost every opportunity it gets to be clever in the slightest and suffers for it. Maybe in another 20 years, Sloane will master his craft but for now, “Hobgoblins 2” remains worse than its already gloriously terrible prequel, a feat not easily achieved and a statement that should not be taken as a compliment.
½ Shatners out of 4
Bottom Line: Just go watch the original or the MST3K riff of it. It was a more effective comedy without even trying to be one
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