My Favorite Bad Movie: Hobgoblins

Hobgoblins is a 1988 movie written and directed by Rick Sloane and starring Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs, Kelley Palmer, Billy Frank, and Daran Norris (who you may have seen on Veronica Mars or iZombie or heard in Team America: World Police). When a group of alien/goblin creatures escape from a movie studio, a young security guard named Kevin (Tom Bartlett) must try to capture them before they kill his friends.  These hobgoblins somehow know where Kevin lives and are hellbent on making his friends' wildest fantasies come true right before slaughtering them.

I discovered Hobgoblins in high school when I saw it on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was the worst movie I'd ever seen, but I felt like I really needed to own it, so I bought it on video and later bought the MST3K version when it was released on DVD. (I also bought Hobgoblins 2, but haven't felt the need to watch it more than once.) I'd much rather watch a terrible movie than a mediocre one, and Hobgoblins is glorious in its awfulness; it includes the worst fight scene ever seen on film (but it might be the best fight scene involving two guys sparring with garden tools), as well as the worst phone sex line and strip club ever. (Here's a good tip: If you come across a place called Club Scum that's managed by a guy named Roadrash, maybe don't go in.) When a hobgoblin attacks in one scene, it's obvious that someone just threw a stuffed animal from off-camera and the actress is holding it to her neck and rolling around with it (or as they said of the hobgoblin attacks on MST3K, "Someone's rubbing puppets on us!"). If you enjoy bad movies, Hobgoblins is a great one to watch. : )

Roswell Filmfest and Cosmicon

The dates for this year's Roswell Filmfest and Cosmicon have been announced, and it will be going on the same weekend as the Roswell UFO Festival!  The Filmfest takes place July 2nd-4th, and Cosmicon will be July 3rd and 4th.  It will be a very busy weekend for anyone lucky enough to be in Roswell for the Fourth of July.  If you'd like to submit your own short film to the Filmfest, here are the rules for the Sci-Fi Short Film Shootout:

http://www.filmroswell.com/shootout.html

Roswell Filmfest and Cosmicon sounds like fun, and tickets are only $5! : )

http://www.filmroswell.com/index.html