I’m going to break format for a moment here. It’s October and this column is called “31 Days of Horror” (subtitle: Full Moon Fever, since I plan to do a different theme next year) so I’ve stuck with horror-ish movies and shied away from the more Sci-Fi oriented stuff like Trancers, Oblivion, Crash and Burn, and Robot Wars because they really don’t fit the spirit of the season. There is, however, one movie I feel I must break format for.
I feel like Dollman may have started out its life as a Trancers sequel. We have Tim Thomerson as a gritty no-nonsense future cop traveling to a foreign world in pursuit of his greatest nemesis, but this Tim Thomerson is Brick Bardo rather than Jack Deth and rather than going back in time he’s just traveling to another world where cosmic radiation shrinks he and his nemesis Sprug (who is now only a head floating on a platform after their previous encounter) down to about a foot tall.
Bardo ends up with a single mother and their young son in an inner-city slum that is terrorized by a gang lead by Braxton Reed (Jackie Earl Haley) who mostly leaves the mother alone since he’s in love with her. Naturally, stuff happens and Bardo has to go all Harry Callahan on some street punks. That’s really the plot, the sci-fi trapings are almost entirely dropped once Bardo and Sprug wind up on earth and it just turns into a Death Wish movie where the Paul Kersey character is a tiny man.
How is a 13-inch man meant to fight back against a street gang, you ask? Well he has an absurdly powerful handgun capable of exploding a man of his proportions with one bullet and it’s still pretty damaging to his new giant foes. I know this sounds kind of dull, and if it doesn’t then I’m sure the words “directed by Albert Pyun” in the opening credits will make it so, but Haley and Thomerson bring their talents and energy to their characters and the over-the-top absurdity and gore just make this movie a whole lot of fun.
Of all the characters that Full Moon brought to life, I feel like Dollman should’ve gotten some more use. I would happily watch Tim Thomerson’s tiny vigilante go through various misadventures, but alas Dollman remains a solo outing. The character would reappear but we’ll get to that a little bit later.
Watch, Toss, Or Buy? It’s an Albert Pyun movie that’s not oppressively boring, buy that shit!
If You Liked This, Watch: Dirty Harry (1971), Death Wish 3 (1985), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Dr. Cyclops (1940), Trancers (1984), Ant-Man (2015)