Best movie of this year hands down!

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Like with Monster a-Go Go and Manos: The Hands of Fate, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders wouldn't have been known to me if I hadn't seen the MST3K episode. That episode was brilliant in how it tore the movie to shreds and in such a funny way, while the movie was a weird mess. Its one saving grace is Ernest Borgnine, he makes for a great storyteller and deserves a lot of credit for restraining the urge to strangle the boy playing his grandson. The rest of the acting is just terrible though, especially Mark Hurtado as the grandson, throughout he mumbles his way through his lines and even looks spaced out. It isn't just the acting that is terrible about Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. It looks bad too, too much of it looks like a badly rendered 80s movie, it's choppily edited, the sets lack any colour and wonder and the special effects at best are substandard. If I was honest, my jaw actually dropped when I saw that it was a late 90s movie when it could have easily passed for at least 15 years earlier. There is nothing memorable or original about the music either, it distracted from the atmosphere when it should have enhanced or complimented it and some of it sounded like a really pale imitation of the music of James Horner.You don't care at all for the characters and you never learn enough about them, while the dialogue is atrocious on the whole. Admittedly some of it made me laugh(have you seen my monkey? is a classic), but rather for their ridiculousness and how they were delivered above anything else. Worst of all was the story, it had one sweet moment with the grandson singing to the monkey though even that felt shoehorned in, but overall it was dull and jumped around so much that much of the time it was difficult to decipher what it was about.(it even had a beginning that was so vulgar that it is difficult to put into words) It also had no idea at who it was aiming for, it was too creepy and nightmarish for children(The Devil's Gift segment was derivative of Stephen King but without the suspense, mystery or any effective scares) and adults would find it tame and obviously amateurish(they will also cringe at how maudlin and substance-less the couple segment was). In conclusion, a truly terrible movie that deserved all the bashing MST3K gave it. It is not as bad as Monster a-Go Go or Manos- they had no redeeming merits, Mystical Wonders at least had Borgnine- but that is saying little in its favour. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Wow! I question as to why this was made into a movie instead of a terrible anthology TV pilot. Along with being bad, this is just truly bizarre. It starts off with a burning building, which turns out to be a little kid watching TV. I guess the television program he's watching may foreshadow later events, but it's still pointless. The kid's Grandpa (Ernest Borgnine) tells him to turn that trash off, only to tell him a couple of strange horror stories to put him to sleep.Before the first story really starts, we are introduced to Merlin and his wife who now own a shop to bring magic to the world. Merlin ends up giving a book of spells to a jerk who's wife can't have a baby, but wants one. This guy ends up dabbling in the spells and doing some crazy stuff, including spitting out fire at the cat. Then there's a really dumb twist ending that I'm not going to give away. This segment was really strange, mainly because the first 15 minutes of it was Merlin, then it switches to a short 15 minute story. Also, by the rationale of this segment, Merlin gets his power from Satan. The second segment is better than this one...and the second one was terrible.A dad ends up giving his boy a stolen wind up monkey with symbols toy for his birthday. This doll claps the symbols together and bad things happen. To stop the bad things, all you have to do is put your finger in between the symbols, so it really isn't a very effective killer. The dad finds out the toy is evil somehow when his dog dies in a fire, which leads him to ask a psychic for help. Meanwhile Merlin walks the streets searching for info on where the evil toy he has for some reason, may be. The plot all leads to the dad trying to dispose of the doll before it hurts anyone, but when plans fail, will his family be fine? Who cares. This story is a big rip-off of two Twilight Zone episodes, "Living Doll" and "It's a Good Life", and even though they were made 30 something years earlier, they were much scarier and more believable.Along with these two stories sidetracked by Merlin and his wife's wacky antics, we have this dumb wraparound. The wraparound is stupid and pointless, but even more pointless is the title character, Merlin. There was no need to have Merlin in this. It would've been slightly better if they put in 3 stories and cut out the stupid old wizard and his cantankerous wife. Plus the music in the film I'm pretty sure is stolen from various films, including "the Pagemaster". In the end, this is a very bad and bizarre film. Adults will feel it's too violent and profane for little kids, older kids won't like it, and little kids will be too scared. For my final thought, I know this review sounds like a big complaint, and it really is. Let's hope the movie studios learned from their mistakes.My rating: BOMB/****. 85 mins. Contains some violence, language and some mildly sexual innuendos.

I love Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders! But mostly, that little Mark Hurtado is just so darn cute! Of course, I love that it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. MST3K is this awesome show that used to be on the sci-fi channel that makes fun of awesomely bad movies while you watch them. In my opinion this is the only way to watch this movie, which I have personally seen something like five times. I love watching people make fun of Mark and Ernest Borgnine. It's just so funny! So this movie basically takes two really horrible movies--one made in the 70's and one made in the early 90's--and sandwiches them together with Mark and Ernest Borgnine. It is also interesting to note that Mark's sister, Allee (I'm not sure if that's how you spell it) is the little baby boy in the latter of the horrible movies. Also, it has recently been released in the MST3K Collection, Vol. 5. I can't wait to buy it so that I can watch what has repeatedly been called 'the worst movie ever made' over and over again. ...That darn cute Mark Hurtado...

My sister and I were credited with 'production design' for this movie so I actually know quite a bit about how and why this movie was made... It took, I think, 5 years to shoot and was totally paid for by Ken Berton. A lot of the furniture and props in the film were from my home or from my prop garage... I had to admire Ken for his tenacity in actually and eventually getting the film in the can. His marriage ended due to his obsession with it and I think that the last letter I got from him mentioned that he'd had to declare bankruptcy. That was in response to my insisting that my sister and I get paid for the work that we had done for the film. We have yet to be paid, and shortly before I moved back to Canada from LA, I stopped bugging him.The movie must have been cursed because the last day/night of the shoot caused my sister's return to Canada, and her not speaking to me for nearly four years, until I myself returned to Canada. My sister and I went to the premiere together, and we were totally surprised to see Ernest Borgnine telling the story to the little boy. That part of the shoot we hadn't been involved in and Ken told us it was a last minute type decision to cement the different segments of the feature together... After a few years, I finally got a couple of copies of the film, but the memory of the shoot was so painful for me that I have never even opened the shrink wrap to the copies that I have. Neither has my sister. Is it possible that they may be collectors items one day?... I also helped with some of the special effects and with the make-up...Yes, it was a very, very LOW budget film and I learned a lot from it, and I thank ken for that. I didn't think that it was the worst film ever, since I've seen much worse with much higher budgets.lee~