I haven’t seen this movie since it hit cable back in the day, and I seem to recall liking it, but until my revisit last night I forgot all about how it also creeped me the fuck out! Shrunken Heads is in a sub-category of horror all its own. Unless I seriously missed something in the intervening decades this is the only movie in existence about good ol’ traditional shrunken heads being at the center of a movie, being full-fledged characters, and in the weirdest way possible, because director Richard Elfman decided to give it a superhero origin vibe. More in the tradition of The Punisher than anything else, because these crazy, little heads ain’t takin’ prisoners, they’re straight up killing ’em, but did you expect anything less from a Full Moon movie? I think not.

The setting appears to be Brooklyn, New York, circa 1994, but it has hints of a yesteryear quality, especially in the Good vs. Evil category. There’s no gray areas in this film, well, at least not where the opposing forces are concerned. On the side of right are three comic book collecting young teens, Tommy Larson (Aeryk Egan), Bill Turner (Bo Sharon) and Freddie Thompson (Darris Love). On the side of fucked-up is a group of local thugs the trio have been dealing with since kindergarten, led by Vinnie Benedetti (A.J. Damato), with two sub-henchmen, Podowski (Troy Fromin) and the director’s son, Bodhi Elfman, as Booger Martin. There’s more in Vinnie’s crew, but they’re mostly background characters with no lines. But Vinnie himself is revealed to be nothing more than a henchman himself, to a local lesbian crime boss by the name of Big Moe, a nearly unrecognizable Meg Foster, complete with Brooklyn accent and a pompadour that looks like it broke out of the 50s or 60s, in fact Vinnie’s hair looks very retro as well. It’s an interesting and startling clash to Moe’s girlfriend’s fashion sense, Mitzi (Leigh-Allyn Baker in her first ever role), who looks like she’s coming off the tail end of an 80s bender, big hair and all, and refusing to give in to changing times. She’s also hot because of that. I guess I have a weakness for hot chicks from the 80s. That era was my jam, people.

They padded Foster so she physically looks different than her normal self. Not fat, just bulky. Foster is mostly glamorous in all her previous roles, with light colored eyes that stand out, but here she almost goes the Charlize Theron route from Monster (2003) in making herself unrecognizable, and it works in spades, baby. Meg Foster is quoted as saying Big Moe was her favorite of any character she ever played, and I second that. She’s very memorable. Too bad she meets a fate worse than death in the end, and too bad there was never a Shrunken Heads franchise that couldn’t have brought her back.

Big Moe is more hardcore than Vinnie, but she’ll convert him right quick when she orders him and his buddies to execute the three kids! But before we get to that point I have to stress how much Tommy digs his own grave. He collects comics and feels like he could be a superhero on some level and starts by wanting to really get back at Vinnie. His plan is to videotape them doing a crime, in this case, stripping a car down the street (a felony mind you), and hand it over to the cops. His first mistake was handing the tape over to the cops right as the arrest the kids. I mean, he just says, sure, they did the crime; here, I have it all on tape.  Rookie mistake, kid . . . or an egotistical one. Maybe both.

So, naturally, Vinnie’s guys swear revenge, and revenge means they now get to meet who pulls Vin’s strings, and this is where Tommy makes mistake #2. Big Moe gives the kids a chance to forget about them, but Tommy has to speak up and basically say, fuck you. So, now, she’s forced to have them tied up in the back room until she figures out what she wants to do with them. At this point she may have been thinking of killing them now anyway, so what Tommy does next may not have changed their fates. While tied up in the back room, with a bunch of receipts her men just dragged in in sacks, Tommy makes mistake #3 (aka his last mistake). These receipts had something to do with gambling, or fixing local gambling on something or another, point being without those receipts Tommy knows he can cripple her business, and so when he, Bill, and Freddie manage to wiggle out of the ropes they’re bound in they escape with the sacks.

The murder/execution of kids isn’t something you normally see in movies, which makes it all the more startling not to mention the turning point from being a twisted After School Special done Full Moon style to a supernatural revenge opus, done Full Moon style. Vinnie, Booger and Podowski find the kids as they’re heading home with the sacks and literally gone them down right there on the sidewalk. Even though this film is rated ‘R’ Elfman didn’t go the extra twisted mile and show the kids hitting the ground riddled with bullets. We just get a bloody hand touching down in slow motion.

There are two characters I have yet to mention who are crucial to this tale. Vinnie had a girlfriend by the name of Sally Tommy’s known for years, she’s one of those girls whose not morally bankrupt as Vinnie, but seems to be attracted to such types regardless, and can do nothing to help stop the bullying but stand and watch. Tommy’s had a crush on her for a long time, and it might be mutual. Eventually one moment of bullying goes too far, she breaks up with Vinnie, and pursues Tommy. So, things were looking up for the two of them, but you just know such a relationship in such circumstances was doomed from the start. And he didn’t even get to have sex with her before he got his head blown off. Her virginity will play a crucial part in a final ritual of revenge.

Article from Fangoria #131. Click photos to enlarge & read. 

Now, onto the flick’s most important character, a character so important without him it would have been a short film, ending after the first act’s murder of the kids. Without Aristide Sumatra (Julius Harris), a retired cop in the secret Haitian police known as the Ton-Ton Macoute, also a voodoo priest, there’d be not one, single, shrunken head. You’d have to call this flick, Three Kids Get Iced By A Gang Of Murderous Douches, or something. Mr. Sumatra, as the kids call him, owns a newsstand they get their comics from, and he’s kind of a surrogate father figure to them, so you can see how devastated he’d be to find they were murdered in cold blood. But every action deserves an equal and opposite reaction, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Yeah, I’m talking about revenge.

I find Sumatra to be a problematic character, one I like, one that fits the tone of this flick, and remember he’s supposed to be, and is, the good guy. And that might be the problematic part, but in a good way, a good guy, like Frank Castle, if Frank Castle was into voodoo. Always keep that in mind when you watch him sneak into the mortuary and take the heads of the kids back to his condo where he sows up the eyes and mouths, ties up the hair, and submerges them in a bubbling vat to shrink them. Again, for a rated ‘R’ flick we never see the post mortem beheadings or even their dunking in the vat, we only see them after they’ve shrunk and floating. Uttering a ritual he brings the kids back to life as shrunken heads, with powers!! Each of them can float and fly about, but each of them has a unique gift: Tommy can shoot an electrical bolt from his noggin that gives bad guys insane conniptions; Bill has a pair of fangs that holds a “dark gift,” (more on that later); and Freddie can materialize a switchblade in his mouth, deploy it, and slit some throats!!

The more they kill the more their humanity is supposed to slip away. They’re killing machines now, Tommy thinks otherwise, at least enough to want to visit his crush again. I forgot did I mention after their resurrection as dark heroes of the shrunken variety the film makes a surprising time jump to a year later? Having spent that year in Sumatra’s condo honing their gifts, now they’re ready to fuck up some douche bags.

You wouldn’t know it from the movie, only if you read the Fango article above, but Bill’s fangs inject a zombification serum into their victims, turning them into zombies, but this being a twisted horror comedy, they don’t eat other people, they have an urge to pick up garbage and clean graffiti, and there’s this horrible side effect of them walking around farting all the time too. I wonder if the farting muckmen from Spookies (1986) was some kind of inspiration in this department? Eventually there are enough turned scumbags in Brooklyn the neighborhood starts looking noticeably clean. You see, it’s all these shrunken head scenes that gave me the creeps. The effects are expertly rendered for this kind of emotional extraction, and those scenes still manages to give me the willies after last night’s revisit. The gore isn’t heavy in the killings, the throat slittings are soft ‘R’ material.

In superhero movie tradition there are some really nice shots of the camera swooping over a city rendered in convincing miniature as the heads go out flying. Check out the Vidoezone extra on the blu for some behind-the-scenes filming of those parts of the movie. Eventually, revenge is had on Moe (stick around for an after credits scene of what happened to her and Vinnie once Sumatra captured them and brought their sorry asses back to his condo for a fate worse than death). Sally ends up being the “keeper” of the heads after it’s all over, and, yes, it ends with the heads still out and about turning New York scum into farting, undead, garbagemen. Jesus, this should have been a franchise.

Full Moon has had a DVD version of Shrunken Heads out for some time. I’ve never picked up, but as I understand it’s shorn about a minute, clocking in at 85-minutes rather the full (uncut) 86-minutes the old VHS was. The DVD was a more family friendly cut, but this new blu-ray and DVD are uncut and remastered, and you can buy it on Full Moon Direct right now (blu-ray, DVD)! It goes into wide release in April (Amazon link here).

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1080p 1.78:1 high definition widescreen—2.0 English Dolby Digital (stereo), 5.1 English Dolby Digital (surround)—No subs

For those most part this disc sports a great transfer. Since parts of this film are extremely colorful, colors pop appropriately and clarity is quite good. There are a few nanoseconds of print damage that pop up, with the most glaring occurring during the murder of the kids. When it switches to Tommy’s shocked face, and to Bill’s, there’s a thin, purple, vertical line that can be seen going right down the middle (see photo below). Keep in mind this was taken with a 2012 Samsung tablet and in no way does it represent the actual blu-ray transfer. It does show off the line real nice though. I personally didn’t see it so much of a problem it destroyed my viewing pleasure. Just curious as to why 99% of the transfer looked so good, and yet that line couldn’t be “erased?”

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . . 

  • Videozone (27:31)
  • Trailers (Shrunken Heads, Shrunken Heads–Alternate Trailer, Weedjies: Halloween Night, Barbie & Kendra Storm Area 51, Blade: The Iron Cross, Head Of The Fanily, The Dead Want Women)