A trio of retro teevee robot toy commercials fills out Trash-O-Rama. It's way too brief, but the ads may get your nostalgia nodes a-firin'.
The second disc, Spooktacular, goes beyond trash-o-rama sci-fi into low-rent horror. As with Blood Vision, the set contains intros by the trés busty Ghost Hostess with the Mostess Morella, as well as two Retro Drive-In segments hosted by Retromedia mastermind Fred Olen Ray. All very corny but still fun for anyone who ever got hooked on a late-nite local teevee creature feature. And, unlike Blood Vision, all three of the movies on the disc contain a Morella intro.
Odd film out on the set is Hobgoblins, which is not mentioned in the outer boxed set packaging – the mysterious ninth flick in this "8 Huge Hits" set. An inept attempt at horror comedy a lá Gremlins, the future concerns a group of evil aliens who are capable of turning peoples' deepest dreams into reality. After crash-landing in a Hollywood studio (because movie studios are dream factories, get it?), they're locked in a vault by crotchety studio guard Jeffrey Culver until their inevitable release by the requisite dumb teen. The muppety Hobgoblins, so cheaply constructed that their hands don't work, play their mind games on a group of '80s kids, turning the movie's nice girl Amy (Paige Sullivan) into a bar-performing tease, bringing a horny teen's phone sex fantasy to life, etc. In the right hands, the film could provide plenty of sardonic chuckles, but these aren't the right hands.
Why is it not mentioned in the outer packaging? Perhaps because a "20th Anniversary Edition" of this turkey is also being released this summer on DVD – or maybe because the movie was memorably trashed in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 set. Whatever the reason, it's an unforgettably egregious film.
The other two entries, 1972's House of Blood and The Cremators could have also provided fodder for the MST3K guys, especially the latter entry. The first is a weak attempt at a psychological horror thriller, which even includes the hoary fake-dead-body-in-a-bathtub gag, while the second could have fit on the Sci-Fi Trash-O-Rama set without any argument. Written and directed by Harry Essex, co-writer of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the movie centers on a batch of intelligent space rocks that are capable of pulling a great fiery ball out of the water whenever anyone fondles 'em too much. ("It never reacts unless it's disturbed," the movie's ecologist/scientist explains.) Said fiery ball rolls along the road without burning anything until it gets to its victim, which it turns into a doll-sized pile of ashes.
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