1991, United States. Directed by Todd Sheets.

It seems like it might be an interesting idea. Take a bunch of horror film fans and independent film making enthusiasts and let them write a movie based around each person coming up with a completely wild and inventive way to be killed off. If anyone can think of a good way to kill of a horror film character, it's got to be a horror film fan, right? Right?

This was the basic idea behind Goblin, the brainchild of shot-on-video gore director Todd Sheets. Unfortunately for Todd, all the actors came up with the exact same death: they get their guts pulled out. That's the best they could come up with . They get their guts pulled out. Every damn one of them. Hell, a woman even gets her guts pulled out of her head. You may think the human skull is mostly full of brains and that's about it, but apparently it's chock full of assorted livers as well. This girl gets more sloppy pink guts pulled out of her ear than most people could have pulled out of their whole body. Sometimes, if you are especially unlucky, your head may also contain a microscopic Donald Pleasance, but that's something for another discussion. This entire movie is about people doing two things: clutching their head in desperation, and getting their guts pulled out.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk for a moment about the strange world that is the horror underground. I don't think any genre's fans have embraced the actual process of film making quite like horror fans. Few and far between are the horror film buffs who haven't at least attempted to throw together a no-budget gore film all their own, complete with their friends in various roles involving gobs of Kayro syrup mixed with red and blue food coloring. Ahh yes, the blue food coloring is the secret. You put red in, and your blood is too pink. A touch of blue will darken it nicely and give it that real blood look, so long as your real blood possesses the same thickness of clear Kayro syrup.

I myself have more than a few shot-on-video home horror movies to my name. I started in high school with my friends Dave, Rob, and Enrique. Pretty much every movie we made was set in Dave's basement, and we had such genius moments as needing an executioner but not having an actual executioner's hood. So we just wrapped our friend Todd up in a checkered table cloth. Problem solved. When I got into college, I matured a lot and moved on to making killer dummy movies with Scott and a cast of dozens of bored punk rockers. See, Scott had this Billy Baloney ventriloquist dummy from the Pee Wee's Playhouse line that he found at the Waldo flea market in lovely Waldo, Florida (speed trap capital of America). It was the creepiest damn thing ever, and everyone knows you can't own a creepy ventriloquist dummy and not make a movie about it. Why do you think they made Black Devil Doll From Hell? You know those guys found that dummy in a store and absolutely had to make a movie about it.

The first Billy Baloney movie was a smash success despite the fact that we filmed it at a time when the battery for my bulky camcorder was dead. Thus, we could only film at locations within reach of the cord for the power pack, which was about seven feet long. It didn't really afford us much in the way of movement, but we did the best we could. The second Billy Baloney film is steeped in legend and tragedy to this day. Billy, condemned to Hell at the end of the first film, escapes with the assistance of his pal, The Hair Skull (a weird miniature plastic skull with a thick black mullet and headband), and decides to raise an army of the dead to take over the town. Unfortunately, when we went off to film the zombie resurrection scene at a nearby parking lot, we left Billy sitting on the porch swing outside where we thought he was safe. When we returned, triumphant except for the fact that our friend Rob Ray nearly choked to death when we set off a bunch of smoke bombs inside a dumpster so he could emerge in a big billowing puff of colored smoke, we found Billy had been stolen.

Scott was devastated, to say the least. I'm not exaggerating when I say a little piece of him died that day. You could hear Don MacLean's winsome folk ballad off in the distance. We trudged on, finishing the film without Billy, shifting focus instead to The Hair Skull and culminating in an exciting climax in which hordes of zombies (well, about five zombies) raid a house only to find no one home. "We got raised from the dead for this?" they complain as they file back to the graves, their mad schemes foiled. After that, Gainesville was never the same. We'd hear reports from time to time from someone who thought they caught sight of a couple frat guys across the street who were running around with a tattered Billy Baloney dummy, but nothing ever came of it. It wasn't until Rob and I dug up a new tattered old Billy Baloney doll and gave it to Scott for a wedding present that the twinkle returned to his eyes.

Gainesville actually has something of a storied shot-on-video splatterpunk past, primarily because of the film Twisted Issues, in which a straight edge skate punk is murdered by a gang of drunks and returns from the grave as a gooey zombie with a colander strapped to his face. The movie's true stroke of genius came in the fact that he bolts his skateboard to his foot. Twisted Issues is a lot funnier if you lived in Gainesville in the late 1980s or early 1990s, because you get to see lots of people you know, but even without that added level, it was at least a decent film as far as shot-on-video films go, which is to say that it was really bad but there were certainly worse films out there. Need I even mention the day we found our friend Scott Huegel's own "skeleton in the closet," in which he wears a pink half-shirt and realizes his own brother has become a super-powered clown who kills people. The best part of that movie is that it was done with total and complete earnest and seriousness. That's the beauty of these types of films: the people who make them really love the fact that they're actually cobbling together a movie, however inept it may be. That effort alone is to be admired, though it doesn't make the movies any better.

The long and short of it is that our movies, like most shot-on-video home horror movies, really sucked. They were funny to us, and that was about it. At least we had the good sense not to distribute them to anyone other than our closest friends. We also had the good sense to lose the movies, or possibly record episodes of Kojak over them by mistake. Once no one could see them, they took on a mythic, local legend existence. People would gather and speak in hushed tones about the Billy Baloney movies, twisting them around through the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia, until they became something you almost wish you could see again. Of course, deep down you knew that would be a bad idea, but the fact that you couldn't see them again meant it was a safe thing to pine for.

Todd Sheets not only made his own horror films, he got lots of people to watch them. Well, lots of people by shot-on-video made-at-home horror standards. Todd's movies are a lot better than our movies ever were, but they're still not very good. They're on par with Twisted Issues, and I can recognize that each of the movies would be the coolest fucking thing in the world if you were in it. Every horror fan wants to and probably eventually makes their own horror film, and to give credit where credit is due, very few of them are as good as what Todd Sheets does. He puts a lot of effort into each film. He casts people, writes actual scripts (even if they are not masterpieces), uses proper lighting. Technically, his films are about as sound as anyone could expect from people with absolutely no experience in film making, who are doing it purely out of love for the medium and the genre.

At the time, which was several years ago, Goblin was the culmination of Todd's hands-on learning experience with making shot-on-video films, and like I said, the basic idea was that he would come up with the script, but each actor would get to devise their own gory demise. And of course, they each came up with, "I get my guts ripped out!"

The movie opens with a weird scene of some crazy ranting redneck guy pitching hay. He's just sort of yelling and ranting about stuff to no one in particular. Just about the only thing that is comprehensible is the frequent use of the Southern guy mantra, "Sheee-it!" I don't think a lick of crazy redneck dialogue has ever been penned that didn't contain copious use of the phrase "sheee-it." The guy's ranting is rudely interrupted when he gets impaled on a pitchfork, or maybe it was a hedge clipper thing. If a horror film features a pitchfork at any point (or hedge clippers), even if it's just walking by it in some incidental scene, you can bet your ass someone is getting rammed through with the thing before all is said and done. There is no wasted motion. If they show a pitchfork, someone's gettin' a bellyful of it.

After the guy gets rammed through by the unseen murderer, he of course has his guts ripped out.

We then skip ahead a spell to meet a group of young goblin fodder, though we haven't met the goblin itself at this point. Everyone is the typical "sort of metal dude, sort of punk dude, or dude with ponytail" that pops up in horror films and conventions across the globe, although there is this one older guy as well. I really don't know what he was doing hanging around. I mean, when you and your metal-punk-white trash friends go to move in to your secluded new home, do you also think to yourself, "Maybe we should invite our grandparents?" But I guess you cast who you can get, and to the movie's credit, it does manage to avoid the dilemma of no-budget casting. That's what happens when you can only afford to hire your friends who will work for free (or beer), so you end up with a scruffy 18-year-old guy playing an FBI agent or something. You just have to pretend.

You also got your standard assortment of sort-of punk, sort-of metal, sort-of white trash girls. If you are thinking that at least one of them has a strong interest in the occult, then give yourself a pat on the back. It seems like every one of these groups of friends always has the occult expert among them, which I guess is lucky. I grew up in a part of the country that is renown for interest in the occult, so I knew a few of these kids. I don't know any now, which is why I don't go around awakening ancient or new evils.

Sure as a pitchfork is gonna get used, when you gather a group of people together in a secluded cabin, someone is gonna summon up some ancient evil that has lain dormant for a thousand years -- or in this case, something like fifteen years. Really, when you think about it, if you are being stalked by a malevolent force, it doesn't really matter to you whether or not it is an ancient evil older than the trees themselves or an evil that was just made last week. Either way, it's causing you grief. Sure enough, there's something in the woods. And one by one, it stalks our heroes and kills them in a variety of ways that all boil down to people getting their guts ripped out.

The murders are so-so. Sometimes they are fairly well done, but other times, they suffer heavily from shot-on-video slowness. For example, one girl gets a power drill to the eye (before having her guts ripped out of her head). There must be a good minute or so of close-ups as they wave the tip of the drill menacingly at the camera. This has always been one of the biggest pitfalls of do-it-yourself horror. The murderer always feels the need to show the camera the murder weapon, to turn it around and look at it from every angle. No one would do this in real life, of course. No one, especially an evil goblin, would go for the power saw and spend the next minute turning it around and making sure to show every angle to the camera. Of course, no one would lie there waiting for a goblin to slowly, so very slowly, move the drill closer and closer to their eye.

This pitfall occurs for a couple reasons. For one, the people making the film just don't know a lot about what they are doing. They are learning. And what might seem cool at some point during the filming just looks tedious and silly in the final product. And that brings us to the main reason so many shot-on-video productions have problems with the "wait around for the effect to happen to you" syndrome. Anyone who has worked with VHS as a medium can tell you it is a major pain in the ass, or at least it used to be. Back in the day, there weren't any Avid editing suites with dual processors and Final Cut Pro. There was no such thing as non-linear editing with a computer. To edit VHS, you had to simply put your final cut tape in one deck, your raw footage in the other, and do a lot of fast forwarding and reversing. If you were lucky or in college, maybe you had access to an Amiga with a video toaster, and you could do more precise edits, but for the most part, it was a clunky, inefficient, frustrating way to work. Add to the general clunkiness of the equipment the fact that NTSC videotape is good for about two generations of duping, which means you can only do so much before your picture quality degrades to the point of being unusable. There's a reason you find tons of film enthusiasts who edit super8 or 16mm film the old fashioned way, but you won't find many people pining for the days of analog VHS editing.

What this means more times than not is that it's easier to simply not edit something, or to try and do all your editing in-camera, which means just trying to only tape the shots and angles you want so you don't have to do any post-production on it. It takes a damn good cameraman to perfectly edit an entire film as they are shooting. If you are just a bunch of kids making a horror film, you're going to end up with crap you don't need, and you're going to find that it's difficult to get rid of it all. Thus, you end up with scenes that consist of ten seconds of someone standing around looking dumb while they wait for a blood packet to explode or something like that.

Finally, a lot of independent and amateur film makers simply aren't very good at editing. Editing is hard, not just functionally but theoretically. It's difficult to sit there and know what you need to cut out of your film, to determine what builds suspense and what just amounts to people standing around waiting for something to happen. Far more so than the cinematographer, a good editor is one of the most under-appreciated gears in the film making machine. When you're trying to do it all yourself, and you haven't done it very much before, you're going to make bad calls. You're going to leave stuff in that should be trimmed, either because you can't see that it needs to go or you simply don't have the precision equipment for doing the proper cuts. That anyone was ever able to edit entire feature-length projects with analog VHS equipment is a testament to their dedication, even if the final product leaves something to be desired. I spent many a long hour in the chilly editing suites at the University of Florida, and even with the aid of a well-maintained Amiga, the whole process was an insufferable pain in the ass. Sometimes, if I am doing editing these days on the dual-processor Mac G4 with Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro on it, I emit a quiet chuckle and think of how much better things are these days. Let us never return to the old ways.

The drill-in-the-eye scene is made all the sweeter by the pound of ground beef they slap on the girl's face after the deed is done and she gets her guts pulled out of her ear. They pull about twenty feet of guts and various vital organs out of there. Then one of those guys who is too old to be in this movie walks in and does the "I'm taking nonsense very quickly until I can express my shock at discovering the body OH MY GOD!!!" thing where they run through their first batch of lines too quickly because they are anticipating shouting a very unconvincing "Oh my God!" upon discovering whatever grotesque acts have been committed. Then, of course, the guy gets his guts torn out, but not before getting a bar-b-que fork rammed through his ass and out his chest. Okay, so that one was pretty good. And then there's the girl who climbs the ladder only to get the sickle through the crotch, followed by the ripping out of guts. All in all, you could do worse I suppose.

I will say this about Todd Sheets: what he lacks in editing skills he attempts to make up for with interesting and creative camera work. For the most part, he's rather successful. A lesser film maker would just set up a camera and let the grue flow, possibly zooming in at some point to catch a neck wound in all its glory. Tip for budding neck wound creators: take some tissue paper, dip it in your gooey blood concoction, and plaster it lovingly but sparingly across the victim's throat. It looks surprisingly real through the eye of a video camera. Sheets goes for more than a simple "point the camera at the blood" approach. He uses different angles, cuts away, cuts to different things. For every technical mistake he makes, there's something else that he hits right on the head. Again, having labored away in many a shot-on-video mini-feature, I admire the amount of skill that shines through just as brightly as the lack of skill shines through in other places.

Once a couple people get offed, everyone else figures out they are being stalked by a goblin, who is shown from time to time running and front tumbling across the lawn, looking sort of like a small gorilla dressed as a member of Morbid Angel. This revelation of their plight causes most of the actors to do what untrained and/or bad actors always do to convey desperation and fear. They clutch at their head, pull back at their head, and spend a lot of time saying things like, "Okay, we have to stay calm!" or "Just let me think!" I've been in a couple situations where I was terrified. I wasn't terrified of a goblin or anything scampering and rolling across the lawn, but I was pretty damn scared. Come to think of it, it's rather difficult to drum up fear of anything that scampers. Even when a big-ass silverback gorilla goes tearing across a field, it looks like scampering and doesn't seem very threatening -- though I imagine I'd change my tune if he was running straight at me. But whether I'm being charged at by a scampering gorilla or supernatural goblin, at no point would I feel the need to clutch at my hair and mutter, "We have to keep our heads on straight!" I guess, now that I reflect 'pon it, clutching one's head makes for slightly more dramatic stuff than standing there dumbly going, "Oh fuck," which is what I elected to do in every instance of terror. Yes, I have witnessed my own ability to stare potential death in the face, and when my time finally comes, I am going to stand there indifferently and say, "Ahh, crap."

Sometimes, there will be a scene where the entire cast is clutching their head and muttering. It gets a bit ridiculous in some spots. I was going to do a "best of head clutching" photo feature, but when I screencapped a good thirty shots of head-clutching that happened in a single scene, I decided it was a lot funnier to think about that it actually was to do or look at. Try this. Instead of clutching your head, next time try clutching your genitals and shouting, "Yeaaaahhh, Boyeeeee!" It may not convey fear as well, but it'll break up the monotony, and maybe it'll throw off the monster.

I've always wondered what these monsters and stalkers do in their down time. I mean, what the hell does Michael from Halloween do in those fifteen years spans between his killing sprees? How does he support himself? Does he have a job? Maybe at a warehouse or something? Likewise, what has the goblin been doing for the last dozen or so years? Just running around in the woods? The only movie that even bothers to answer this question is Friday the 13th II, in which our heroine stumbles upon the crumbling old shack out in the woods where Jason spends time while Camp Crystal Lake is shut down. Apparently, he whiles away the hours eating birds and making moonshine or something.

From this point on, Goblin remains in pretty familiar territory. While every horror fan wants to make their own horror movie, let it never be said that any of them are overly original. They pretty much make whatever their favorite movie is, only worse, and with at least one instance where someone shakes their head incredulously and stammers, "This can't be happening. This is like a bad horror film!" See, Wes Cravens will pretend like he invented the whole self-aware insider reference idea with Scream, but horror films have always been self-referential and full of inside jokes. It's nothing new to have your characters say, "This is just like a bad horror film." Hell, the lame-o low-budget horror film There's Nothing Out There features a horror film nerd who is constantly reciting the rules one must follow in order to survive a horror film, and that must have been at least a decade before Kevin what's-his-name and Wes Craven ripped the idea off and called it revolutionary. You know what? Fuck Wes Craven. I'd rather watch ten poorly edited Todd Sheets videos than any one Wes Craven film.

The "this is like a bad horror film" thing is far and away the most commonly abused of these many in-jokes. Every time I hear it, I half expect whatever character uttered it to then turn to the camera with the "exacerbated Jack Benny face" while wah-wah-wahhhh music plays. It's not exactly the most subtle joke in the world, though it gets less of a groan from me than the bit where the last two survivors think they are okay, so one of them will say something like "We're home free!" and then seconds later the killer they thought was dead jumps out at them. To be honest, I can't even rightly remember if they ever say "this is like a bad horror film" in Goblin, but either way I just had to get that off my chest.

So anyway, from here on out there's lots of running about, boarding up windows, creeping down into the cellar, and searching for the ancient spell that will send the goblin back from whence he came, which is presumably a Slayer concert. From time to time, we cut back to that scene of the goblin frolicking and cavorting on the front lawn, and it just keeps getting funnier every time I see it. Again, I'm sure if I looked out in real life and saw a beefy goblin rolling around on the front lawn and bolting toward me, I probably wouldn't think it was as funny. But since I've never been chased by a goblin, I don't know what it feels like. Eventually, the survivors go after the goblin with a tiller machine, which might have been more effective if they'd turned it on first. After the spooky girl goes through her ancient evil spiel, they finally confront the beast with that age-old holy relic, the power saw.

Judged even by the standards of a low-budget B-movie, Goblin is pretty bad. The writing is dreadfully unoriginal, the acting ranged from awful to laughable, and obviously, the budget was minute. However, I really don't feel any of those criticisms should apply, because quite simply, you should not judge a shot-on-video home brew film like this by the same criteria as you would a film that had backers, producers (however sleazy they may have been), and all the other trappings of "bigger" little films. Approach Goblin on its own terms and for what it is, and there's a lot of positive things about the movie. For one, as I stated earlier, that Todd and his bunch were even able to complete a shot-on-video feature-length film is an impressive feat in and of itself. It's not easy. Within the realm of such films, Todd's work is also remarkably competent. There are no glaring technical errors within the confines of the budget and equipment. It's obvious a lot of devotion and work went into the film, unlike most films of this nature, which are dashed off in a couple days without so much as a script, lighting, or a clear idea of what the movie is even going to be about.

Sheets' attention to details like proper lighting is commendable. There are no scenes where things are so dark you can't see what's going on. Hell, it's a shame more bigger-budget cult film makers don't pay as much attention to technical aspects like that. Sheets is obviously influenced stylistically by Dario Argento in his use of colored lights (mostly red and blue) to set certain moods. However, where Argento uses them to invoke a hallucinatory, nightmarish feel, with the flatter color capabilities of video, they make Goblin look like one of those EC Comics horror anthologies -- which is not a bad thing at all.

With a few exceptions, the sound is also competently engineered, and it's obvious once again that Todd took the time to get things as right as he could and rented some boom mics and other sound equipment beyond the pathetic little microphone that comes embedded in the camera. All in all, Goblin is one of the most technically adept shot-on-video home movies around.

So while Goblin may be a pretty silly movie, it manages to avoid the two things that actually make me dislike a film: it's not incompetent compared to similar homebrew horror films, and it's not boring. The acting may be bad, the script may be unoriginal, but if nothing else, Sheets keeps the action traipsing along at a decent pace that is only slightly hindered by some weak editing and overlong segments. The gore effects are, of course, plentiful, but as we've already stated: they consist primarily of people just getting their guts pulled out. That's funny the first couple times, especially the girl who gets them pulled out of her ear (she bears a disturbingly close resemblance to one of my best friends back in Louisville), but after about the fifth time someone gets their guts pulled out, you start wishing they'd show a little more imagination.

For the most part, the gore effects are competent. They are definitely heads above the vast bulk of gore effects that litter lesser shot-on-video horror films, though they aren't as wildly over-the-top and absurd as the gore from the wonderful shot-on-video short Bad Karma. Since Bad Karma is a movie about S&M punk rockers fighting bloodthirsty Hare Krishna monsters, you really can't expect too many things to live up to it. For a movie devoid of Hare Krishna monsters and a character in leather bikini underwear who has the phrase "Mr. Whippie" scrawled across his scrawny chest, Goblin's effects are fairly well executed. yes indeed there are some bad ones, but remember what we're talking about here: total amateurs working outside even the fringe in-circle of independent film making. Everything they do in Goblin, they had to figure out how to do on their own.

I can laugh at Goblin, but it's more because I'm having a good time. I really can't be condescending toward and critical of a movie that was obviously made for one reason: the people involved in it love movies. Plain and simple, that's their motivation. Like a punk rock band, they aren't going to let a lack of money or formal training, a lack of equipment or stellar talent stand in their way. Todd Sheets knew going in that this movie had zero chance of ever being a "financial success." It was never going to win him countless accolades from strangers, make him any money, or even be seen by most people. He made the movie because he wanted to, because his passion and love for film far outweighs any other consideration. Within that context, it's very easy for me to overlook Goblin's multitude of weak points, to admire the monumental effort and care that went into making a movie that is far more enjoyable than 99% of the shot-on-video fan films out there. Most of all, it makes it that much easier for me to simply sit back and realize that even if Goblin was pretty bad, it was also pretty entertaining. And ultimately, that's what I care about most in a movie.

I'd recommend Goblin to anyone who is thinking about making their own film. First, I encourage anyone out there who might be thinking such thoughts to do it. Pick up the camera, grab yourself a few books on the technical aspects of making a movie, and jump in. Just as I encourage anyone who wants to start a band or do a zine or whatever, I say you should make a movie. Despite what most people will tell you, you don't need teamsters hanging around. You don't need a million dollars. Hell, play your cards right and you don't even need a thousand dollars -- eBay is a great place for picking up essential equipment for ultra-cheap prices. As far as I am concerned, all you really need is the desire and passion. Yeah, you're film will probably suck, but it might also be great, or at least good. And regardless, you have this thing where you can sit down, watch with friends, and say "We made this!" Trying to make your own movie, regardless of how cheap and amateur it may be, gives you a whole new understanding of films, opens you up to a whole new perspective and way of looking at things.

One of the most common criticisms of critics is "Why don't you make your own movie instead of making fun of everyone else's work?" To be honest, I think it's a fair question. Most critics will huff and not answer it, but it's a question that always deserves an answer I think. for some, the answer may simply be, "I enjoy watching movies. I enjoy writing about movies. I have no desire to make one myself." That's a perfectly acceptable reason. I mean, you don't have to be a cook to think a certain food dish tastes rotten, though if you are a cook you might understand more about what actually went wrong. Making a movie may give you a different perspective on things, but it's definitely not a prerequisite for writing about film. Frankly, there are a lot of critics out there who write not because they love film, not because they love writing about film, but because they hate the fact that they never found the drive within themselves to accomplish something like making a movie. These critics spew countless gallons of venom at the movies they watch, not because they have some insight, but simply because they are bitter. Seems like the vast majority of art critics fall into this category.

Even though you don't have to make a movie to critique a movie, I think it does add an extra layer of legitimacy to what you are saying. And again, when I say "make a movie," that could mean sitting in your basement with some friends and a camcorder while you do a rip-off of Friday the 13th. I'm not talking about having to go out and hire a whole crew, pay for permits, and all that stuff. Being involved even if cobbling together zero-budget goofball shit with your pals still opens your mind. Part of the reason I think Roger Ebert is the only halfways respectable mainstream film critic (besides being the only one who will give genre films a fair shake and refuses to go on studio press junkets and hype sessions) is because he's one of the only ones who actually busted his ass behind the scenes in the film making world. Ebert worked alongside Russ Meyers, of all people, and penned the story for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, though I don't know if he wrote the genius line, "It's my happening, man, and it freaks me out!" The fact that Roger Ebert toiled away writing a story for a fringe film gives him an edge and a degree of respect other film critics don't have. It also causes him to be softer on low budget and genre films than most critics in his position.

For these simple reasons, I think the old "Why don't you make a movie?" question is justified, even if the answer is simply, "Because I don't really want to." I do think that anyone who writes about film and might also harbor secret interests in making one should do it. You don't have to break into Hollywood's elite circles. You don't have to rub elbows with the smarmy self-important assholes at Sundance. You just have to sit down, or stand up, and do it. It ain't easy, but movies like Goblin prove that, for better or for worse, it can be done. Sometimes, it won't even look half bad.

You learn a lot about making a movie by watching a movie, but you also learn even more about watching movies by trying to make one. And while you may learn something by watching Citizen Kane, you'll probably learn a whole lot more if you make sure to get on a steady diet of ultra-low-budget fan-made films. It's a lot easier to recognize what does and doesn't work, to see the importance of things like actually lighting a scene or writing a script. If nothing else, a movie like Goblin is a superb classroom. If you are going to make a shot-on-video feature with friends and locals, you should watch and study movies like Goblin, just as if you are interested in working with super-8, I think you should watch films like Instrument and Darkness (still one of the most impressive DIY horror film efforts of all time). In my opinion, Goblin is also a fun film, which makes the learning even easier. Not good, but fun, and within the universe of such films, it's quite an impressive accomplishment.

Sheets himself has come quite a ways since his shot-on-video days, so you could go through his filmography and watch a guy try, fail, succeed, learn, and grow as a director. That in itself is a learning experience. To be honest, I've not seen any of Todd's later output, though now that I'm writing about this film, I suddenly feel inspired to see exactly how far he's come since Goblin. Good or bad, he's proof that conviction and a dash of madness (and metal music) can go a long way.

Just try to come up with something other than "they rip his guts out" when you make your own movie. There's something to be said for "they pull his arm off and beat him with it."

Labels: Horror: Microbudget, Year: 1991