3 Short Paragraphs: Dollman

 1991, d. Albert Pyun - Tubi

Back in the 1980's and 90's sci-fi and superhero stuff was on such a downswing in spite of successes like Star Wars and Batman that the major Hollywood studios didn't really invest in that "nerd shit".  Instead, if you were a sci-fi and high-concept action movie nerd, you had to look to the low-budget, direct-to-video end of the spectrum for your entertainment. There were whole production houses, like Canon Films, Roger Corman's (RIP) New World Pictures studios and Full Moon Entertainment that were more than happy to fill the void with thrifty genre pictures that were generally hastily written and even more hastily shot and assembled.  A fan at the time would have to invest their own brain power into filling in details and dream of bigger, more grandiose adventures and bigger, more grandiose set pieces.  Because most of what you would get would be thrifty shit like Alber Pyun's (RIP) Dollman.

I remember seeing this for rent at my local comic shop that doubled as a Laserdisc and B-movie videocassette rental place. I was always intrigued by the cover, but just knowing that it was not the DC (formerly Quality Comics) character Dollman (of the Freedom Fighters team), it greatly lessened my interest. Like watching Nemesis last week, I'm pop culture touring through a bit of Albert Pyun's filmography after listening to a podcast about the director, and, so far, two films in, I'm not at all impressed.

This film opens with some matte shots of an alien world, and then some poorly constructed sets that merely hint at being another planet, where a criminal on the run takes hostage a family of fat people (and they cannot stress enough that they are fat, dozens of references from seemingly every character) in a laundromat. Suspended cop Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson, Nemesis) walks on the scene to do his laundry (that's about the closest the film ever gets to clever or funny) and Dirty Harry's up the place. Then his floating-head nemesis escapes from police custody with an anti-matter bomb (or something) and he gives chase in his cruddy-looking spaceship. They wind up on earth where they discover they are 1:6th scale beings. Bardo rescues a neighbourhood watch organizer from being murdered by some drug fiends, and then becomes embroiled in stopping the drug gang altogether (led by Jackie Earle Haley, A Nightmare on Elm Street) despite being 12-inches tall. With a big ol gun and a big ol attitude he stops them all dead, all by hisself.  This is a dull, boring, unadventurous movie. I was hoping all these years it would be a low-budget Honey I Shrunk the Kids or even somewhere close to on par with the classic Incredible Shrinking Man. But no, it's more interested in aping Dirty Harry than anything sci-fi oriented. Bad!