Touches You

Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

Beautiful, moving film.

Ever reliable Dick Miller plays Burt, owner / operator of a cleaning company. His four very sexy young female employees are dropped off at an old house that - and you can all say it with me now - HAS A DARK HISTORY. The babes never get around to doing very much cleaning, but among the ancient artifacts that they find are a "book of the dead" type of thing. By reading from it, they summon a demon into existence. This demon takes the form of a wolf-like cartoon characterDespite the title, we only ever see one Evil Toon. And writer / co-producer / director Fred Olen Ray never spends nearly as much time exploiting the "Roger Rabbit" hook of combining live action and traditional hand drawn animation as you'd think. Mostly, it's the comely quartet of ladies that is required to carry the movie, and although most of them aren't particularly good as actresses, viewers will still enjoy watching (and ogling) them. Ray does have some fun with this material; some of his dialogue may be patently ridiculous, but he does have his characters repeatedly address tropes and clichés of the horror genre.David Carradine, hired for name value, doesn't do a whole lot until the finale. He's just picking up a paycheck, but Miller is always worth his weight in gold. There's a protracted sequence where he actually watches himself in the Roger Corman classic "A Bucket of Blood". Arte Johnson is mildly amusing as a lecherous neighbor. Among the ladies, well endowed Monique Gabrielle comes off the best. She really does have a knack for playing a "smart, nice" type. Alas, fellow B movie perennial Michelle Bauer is wasted in an extremely brief cameo as Millers' hot to trot young wife.The animation may not be super slick, but the cartoon villain (designed by horror journalist Chas Balun) is a mild hoot. Certainly one major asset is the classy music score by the talented Chuck Cirino.So-so entertainment that doesn't live up to its potential. The sight of our actresses in various stages of undress is obviously the real drawing card.Six out of 10.

This movie essentially begins with 4 young college women being hired to clean a house prior to it being put up on the real estate market. What they don't know until they get there is that the house has a reputation for being haunted. Undaunted the young ladies decide to continue on with their work even though they will have to spend the night in the process. That evening a man named "Gideon Fisk" (David Carradine) knocks on the door and delivers an ancient book to them which upon being read releases a cartoon demon intent on killing all of them. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that the concept of using animation probably came from the successful film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" which was produced 3 or 4 years earlier. No doubt the director, "Fred Olen Ray" figured that if he threw in some attractive women and used every opportunity to show their breasts that he could make some money from it. The end result is a "bimbo comedy" where acting is basically a side issue that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. The funny thing is that it almost worked thanks in great measure to the presence of "Monique Gabrielle" (as "Megan") and Barbara Dare ("Jan"). But as pretty as they were there was no way either of them could lift this movie any higher. No way. Slightly below average.

Hey look, it's sleazeball writer/director Fred Olen Ray trying to bring us a horror parody! Unfortunately, for him, he didn't seem to realize his scenario is lacking two very important – I even daresay essential – components in order to accomplish this: the film is not funny, nor scary. Fortunately, for us, Fred Olen Ray can always safely rely on two other vital elements: the wittiness and charisma of genre veterans that inexplicably continue to collaborate with him (in this case David Carradine and Dick Miller) AND gratuitous nudity provided by voluptuous and professional adult film starlets. Presumably inspired by the contemporary revival of Looney Tunes and maybe even still the successful aftermath of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Evil Toons" is a passable low- budgeted early 90's flick that clearly didn't knew which target audience to address. Die-hard horror buffs won't be very pleased with the goofy animations and (youthful) cartoon freaks aren't likely to be exposed to such amounts of nudity. Dick Miller runs an illegal cleaning company and employs young college girls that are willing to make a quick extra buck. He drops them off at a spooky old mansion on Friday night and their assignment is to get the place cleaned up by Sunday, as the new tenants movie in after the weekend. The hot trio discovers an ancient book and dagger. Stupidly reading a passage from the book out loud revives a demonic cartoon figure that promptly possesses one of the chicks and goes on a murderous rampage. It might sound like an extremely shallow thing to say, but I will only remember "Evil Toons" for the copious amounts of T&A. The three leading ladies look ravishing and they do even more so when they're topless. Especially the supposedly shy girl (forgot her name) is a real jewel. She wears loose sweaters and barely any make- up, so it comes as a pleasant surprise when she exposes her impressive D-cup all of a sudden in front of the bathroom mirror. The rest of the film is pathetic and forgettable. The "evil" cartoon looks like a crossover between the Tasmanian Devil and Wile E. Coyote, yet without the charm of those legendary figures. Dick Miller has a couple of great one-liners, like when he's watching himself in "A Bucket of Blood", and David Carradine inarguably remains a cool dude, even though he has little else to do than stand around in a cloud of fog outside of the mansion.

There are so many things wrong with this movie, I'm not really sure where to start. There is little animation, the plot is a not so subtle rip off (the book is a very cheap replica of the Necronomicaon used in the Evil Dead movies), the acting is pure garbage and the ending is beyond stupid.What the hell is the point of this movie? Sure, there's a good bit of nudity, but it just comes across as boring and tired. The girls are pretty, but their assets are wasted in this piece of trash. The effects are also pretty laughable.I love B movies, don't get me wrong. But there's usually some sort of redeeming quality. This thing didn't even make me laugh.Don't waste your time.