SHRUNKEN HEADS
***
Directed by Richard Elfman.
Starring Julius Harris, Meg Foster, Rebecca Herbst, Aeryck Egan, Darris Love, A.J. Domato.
Horror/Comedy, USA, 86 mins, Cert 15.
Released in the UK on Blu-ray via 101 Films on Monday 14th April 2025.
SHRUNKEN HEADS is a 1994 horror comedy from the Full Moon Features stable, and is one of those movies where the title says exactly what it is about, which means that when you combine the title and who made it you can raise or lower your expectations accordingly, depending on your tolerance for such things.
Clearly aimed at a younger audience, the movie centres around three teenagers - Tommy (Aeryck Egan), Bill (Bo Sharon) and newcomer-to-the-area Freddie (Darris Love) - who regularly get picked on by greaser bully Vinnie (A.J. Domato) and his gang, who are connected to androgynous gangster Big Moe. The boys are watched over on the street by newspaper seller Mr. Sumatra (Julius Harris), who also happens to be a Haitian voodoo priest, and when the bullies go too far and kill the three friends on Big Moe’s orders he uses his magic to bring their shrunken heads back to life to get revenge on those responsible, turning them into flatulent zombies in the process.
A straight-up revenge story with a very silly premise, SHRUNKEN HEADS is actually a whole heap of fun, if you can excuse some of its peculiarities. For a start, Vinnie’s girlfriend Sally (Rebecca Herbst) is said to be 15 (the actress was only 16 at the time), which is a little troubling as the character is sexualised quite a bit, in her fractious relationship with the abusive Vinnie and her more tender scenes with Tommy, whose flying shrunken head quite happily enters her clothing for a rest.
A little picky? Maybe, and SHRUNKEN HEADS doesn’t ask more of you than to take its strangeness at face value, so if you put yourself in this world of greasers, ‘90s fashions, a weird, almost Tim Burton-esque vibe and just accepting that Haitian voodoo priests make shrunken heads out of people on a regular basis (btw, they don’t - different culture), then there is a lot to enjoy with this movie as it bounces along at an energetic pace - helped along by a jaunty score courtesy of director Richard Elfman’s brother Danny, which would explain the Tim Burton vibe - with likeable characters, solid performances and special effects that won’t win any awards but they do the job and could have been a lot worse considering the limited budget and ambition of the story.
With former Bond villain Julius Harris providing the fun and B-movie legend Meg Foster almost unrecognisable (until she speaks) as Big Moe, SHRUNKEN HEADS is a much better movie than it probably should be, given its crazy premise and Full Moon’s reputation for low budgets, but it works and provides enough entertainment for its running time, never outstaying its welcome. The flying heads are quite funny and how they achieved the effects for them is very simple and very clever, which is detailed in the accompanying VIDEOZONE archive featurette, so as long as you aren’t too fussed about some of the close-to-the-knuckle sexual politics then this is as amusing an 86-minute cheapie as you could expect to pick up on a shiny new Blu-ray disc.
Chris Ward