Dollman

Dollman

1991

Dir; Albert Pyun

"Thirteen inches... With an attitude"

The worlds tiniest bad ass gets dumped in the South Bronx and becomes a member of the local Neighbourhood Watch

Keeping with type, director Albert Pyun makes another failed attempt to fuse together two disparate movie genres with underwhelming results, (see also, Radioactive Dreams for his attempts to mate Film noir and Mad Max making a right fucking mess of a child). Here we have a largely unsuccessful mixture of futurist science fiction and hard boiled inner city drama with an idea so incredibly ludicrous that we should probably add "comedic" to the start of one of those descriptions despite the fact that there is nothing funny about this shit sandwich. Pyun really has earned his reputation as a modern day Ed Wood Jr, churning out numerous cinematic wonder turds, each idea crazier and less likely to work than the last.

Here, Mr Pyun thought it appropriate to take a hard boiled, no nonsense cop from a far away planet who speaks exclusively in an intense whisper, shrink him down to 13 inches and send him to the South Bronx to have some shoot outs with a racially confused drug gang. Although the idea could be good fun, the film lacks a certain amount cohesion in its tone, neither playing it too seriously or accepting its true fate and playing up the laughs. Overall, the production values are acceptable for this level of film although it is occasionally let down by atrocious green screen effects which are timed badly and poorly lighted. Its a shame because hidden behind the nonsense there is a vaguely enjoyable movie trying to get out.

The film opens on the far away planet of Arturous, 10000 light years away from Earth. The planet looks like a noir netherworld, its sepia tones and futuristic cityscape provide a really effective atmosphere only broken by the occasional nugget of shit dialogue. A man with a complexion so white and a jew-fro so voluminous that he looks like an albino clown is being chased by the police. He hides out in a laundromat where he stumbles across a gang of fat middle american women and children and exclaims "oh my god, I'm so angry with my life". He takes the chunkers hostage and forces them to stand around him in a circle to give him a full ton of human shield. The police officer outside (whose name is Captain Starburst for christ sake!) decides he needs to bring in the Mayor for some reason who insists on giving the criminal all of his demands because he doesn't think a pile of dead fat ladies is going to help him get re-elected. The plan goes awry when Brick Bardo (Tim Tomerson) arrives on the scene.

Brick is a suspended cop who appears from nowhere. He is a dead ringer for a middle aged Dee Dee Ramone and has a very filthy mouth. He wears a lovely flat top. When asked how he is going to tackle the situation he reply's "I'm gonna use hot water for my whites" before going into the Laundromat and completing a full cycle of washing under the gaze of the hostages. The criminal is not impressed so Brick threatens to shoot him through a fat lady. This makes the whole crowd panic and fall over crushing the criminal under flabby woman meat. As Brick leaves the scene, the Mayor is so angry he tells him to "take off those sunglasses, its night" which is probably the most sensible thing anyone says throughout the entire movie.

For no apparent plot development reasons Brick is framed for the deaths of some of the fat ladies, he seems as uninterested in this as the writers obviously were because it is not mentioned again. He returns to his futuristic apartment where he is accosted and kidnapped by Sprug (Frank Collinson's head) who plans to kill him in revenge for Brick apparently shooting his body off in some previous escapade. Brick refuses to go down without a fight. His gun literally makes men blow up. The effects in this scene are very effective, gore explodes across the screen and body parts splat across the rocks. Sprug gets in a rocket and flies away with Brick close on his tail. The pair both fly through a black hole and end up landing in the South Bronx, unscathed but inexplicably tiny in comparison to the natives.

In another very effective sequence the South Bronx is introduced in a montage and is painted as an urban wasteland. We see a collage of Tenement blocks, prostitutes, a homeless man wearing a plastic bag on his head, graffitied walls and Mexican gang bangers. The sequence has a rain soaked ambiance to it which really does feel depressing and gritty. Sadly all this good work is undone when Braxton Red (Jackie Earl Haley), the worlds whitest Mexican gang lord, is introduced carrying a machine gun which could have been a left over prop from Apocalypse Now. His character is so out of place within the context of the genuinely gritty surrounds that he feels like a comic book villain stuck onto a Polaroid with a prit stick. Despite this, I have to take my hat off to Haley, who puts on a genuinely convincing and unstable performance considering his character description must have read "white child with mullet who runs a Mexican gang". His performance is enhanced even more by the cardboard blockhead he has to act against.

Inevitably, Sprug gets friendly with the drug dealers whilst Bardo gets friendly with the local neighbourhood watch. The community group is led by annoying busy body Debi Alejandro (Kamala Lopez) who, if his legs and penis were longer, Brick would surely like to get busy with. She gets beaten up by the drug gang but is saved by Brick so she takes him and his tiny spaceship home with her. As she walks along the road with it Brick wobbles around inside in comedy fast forward. Once home, Brick has to put up with Debi's annoying child and his friend Gerald, who comes over to fiddle around with Bricks spaceship. Brick uses his most intense whisper yet to mutter "back away Gerald". Debi goes out to her job at the local toxic waste factory where her boss gives her shit because she refused to "go to the Guns and Roses concert" with him.

Whilst our hero is getting settled in his new pad Sprug and his new found friends head back to the gangs drug den where some women in bra's are counting large sums of money. Sprug and Braxton make an agreement to help each other take over the world but first they need to do away with Brick, or Dollman as he's being referred to by the local, apparently unsurprisable, Bronx residents (they don't seem bothered to see a 13 inch man angrily walking around on Debi's kitchen table). Sprug has a "Dimensional Fusion Bomb" which he would like to use. Unfortunately as soon as he hands it over to the gang, Braxton squishes him into mush and decides to go and kidnap Debi to lure Brick to his lair.

Brick goes to save Debi. He finds the gang and stealthily crawls through a very muddy drain pipe, coming out the other end looking like a minstrel. His tiny gun doesn't do quite as much damage on Earth as it did on Arturous but he still quickly dispenses with most of the gang bangers. He calls Braxton a "fucking puke" and a "sack of puss" but silly liberal Debi doesn't want anymore blood shed on her hands so she stops Brick from finishing him off. This gives Braxton a chance to set off the Dimensional Fusion Bomb which sends them all back to the planet Artuous.

Once there Brick and Debi's sexual organs are of a somewhat equal size. Hazzah!