What happens when you put a group of entrepreneurial teens with relationship issues, a Masonic father with a drinking problem, and a 200-year-old dark magician with an army of puppets in an abandoned television studio on the night of a super blood moon?
You get madness. And more than a few Evil Dead references. Most importantly, you get Devil’s Junction: Handy Dandy’s Revenge. A film so schlocky, so ludicrous, so saturated in exposition that it demands half of your attention, but all of your enjoyment.
The film’s first 5 minutes or so is a weird, disjointed cat-and-mouse opening that had little suspense. I didn’t really know what I was watching except that it had a school-project finish and some genre favorite talent. Cut to: Bill Moseley, stumbling in a broad daylight parking lot in a beige suit and flask in hand. He sees a man on a roof, far too gothic for the industrial rooftops of Detroit, and Moseley starts yelling veiled exposition at him about the super blood moon. I snorted a laugh. The gothic guy in the cherub-like mask raises his hand and Moseley falls to the ground in pain.
I must have done something wrong rang through my head as the full length of the song “Kill Us” by No Resolve plays while the opening credits run over Detroit exterior shots. It has been quite a while since a new film has had a 3+ minute opening credits with zero actual action. I was starting to feel like this would be a hard watch and mustered up the resolve to remember that people put time and effort into this project and that should always be respected. What happened after that…well, I must have done something right.
Devil’s Junction: Handy Dandy’s Revenge is as ridiculously gory as it is comically genius. The problem seems to be that it’s not a comedy at all – or maybe it is. Perhaps the goal was to play the story so straight that the comedy took over. This was the open-question of the hour and twenty as main character Steffan (Jake Red) mentions three times in the same scene that an “old ’60s kid’s show with puppets” used to occupy his would be “after-hours” club. There’s a saturation of references to things like the masonic temple in Detroit, the super blood moon, Kandarian artifacts, and character Rick (Arthur Marroquin) being a dog. The references are so over-utilized it draws into absurdity. I half expected the camera to quick-zoom into close up while our actor’s looked directly into the camera, ala Hot Tub Time Machine, any time a spooky trope was said on-screen.
It’s the worst choice a fledgling screenwriter could ever make: way too much exposition. However, after the first couple dialogue-heavy, scene-chewing speeches, it grows increasingly funny. I was nearly in tears during the first reveal of Mr. Jolly, played by Bill Oberst, Jr., as he and Richard Crane (Moseley) share the screen (again, i.e. 3 From Hell) and pretty much talk at each other about all the important plot points that led to this encounter. It’s almost like Devil’s Junction is a sequel to a film that was never made, and these two are doing a damn fine job of explaining all we missed. And, it gives Moseley a chance to saying “motherf*cker” a few times, which is always a good thing. Ultimately, the only thing Mr. Jolly is killing in this film is tension, but that doesn’t matter too much as your rolling on the floor in laughter.
But, of course, it does get worse, because there is an army of puppets who also like to chitter-chat. There is a healthy amount of mayhem perpetrated by the puppet army, led by the titular Handy Dandy, whose apparently the one seeking revenge (except that it’s Mr. Jolly’s revenge..but let’s not split hairs). And while the puppets could have benefited by shutting their traps, the gore FX are well conceived and executed, opting for practical when it could be done well and just a little bit of CGI for a couple large stunts. The puppets are all real, keeping the film watchable and engaging. It’s the difference between watching a SYFY channel monster flick – which tends to falter from bad/good to bad/bad mainly due to heavy CGI – and something like Devil’s Junction, which falls solidly in the “so bad, it’s good” camp of horror.
The film overflows with so serious it’s silly dialogue, and the climactic “puppet show” verges on talk show instead of horror show. There’s one seriously heavy moment where character Rosie (Kyle Anderson) has some backstory shoehorned in that seriously makes you question how serious this film was trying to be, but it’s glossed over and forgotten so quickly you barely have time to care. This is not something you watch because it has some deep, underlying societal commentary – and it’s definitely not worth caring about any of these characters because the ones we end up caring about, the filmmaker and writer do not.
Despite reservations after the opening moments, Devil’s Junction: Handy Dandy’s Revenge is truly a fun spectacle of new low-budget horror. Not mentioned in this review are Doc (Danni Spring), Josie (Katelynn E. Newberry), and Abby (Cody Renee Cameron) who are just a few more of the expendable cast given appropriate screen time for the film to make weight as a slasher. It’s a romp akin to schlockfests of old like Creature From the Haunted Sea and Astro-zombies with a bit of Gingerdead Man thrown in for good measure. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder why-oh-why.
Devil’s Junction will be available via On Demand and DVD as of November 15th from Midnight Releasing.
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