This movie is best summed up in one word: cheap. The hobgoblins of the title were obviously cheaply made puppets, the actors were cheap, the attempts at humor were cheap, the dialog was cheap, and I could name every aspect of this film and that one word would appear again and again. I am also reminded of the words cheesy, stupid, and lame.

The premise is there are these little hobgoblin puppets from space that have been locked up in a vault in an old movie production lot. They have the power to make anyone's wildest fantasies come true. They just wander around in their own fantasy world, oblivious to the real world. The trick works as long as the puppet is nearby. If this movie (which I guess wanted to be horror) really wanted to scare people, I wouldn't do it while making their own fantasies come true. But people die in their wishes, it seems, and that's bad.

The hobgoblins landed thirty years before and ran around the lot, making people happy, then killing them. A security guard locks them up in a vault after the lot closes and continues to stand watch until the present day. This old guy has no life, and by the end of the movie you'll be angry at him. A cheap extra dies in the establishing scene in the beginning, when he gets into the hobgoblin's vault (which is never locked). He is replaced by our terminally wimpy (and cheap) hero, Kevin. He feels a need to impress his harmless, goody-two-shoes girlfriend throughout the whole movie, which is why he got the exciting job of standing around protecting nothing.

The best scene of the whole movie happens after Kevin returns home. His girlfriend is there, with his friend who wears pink shorts, and her other friend Daphne, who is the oddest character in this movie. They sit around doing nothing till Daphne's boyfriend Tom comes back from boot camp (I guess), and then he and Kevin have it out with garden tools to demonstrate the hand-to-hand techniques he learned in the army. His skills consist of thrusting his rake vertically at his opponent and spinning around. I would feel real safe in a world where our armies learn to fight like THAT, provided everyone else in the world was armless and blind. Kevin's girl is mad at him for being a wimp, but that's understandable.

The hobgoblins escape, of course, during a robbery (who'd want to rob an old movie warehouse?) that night, and the old guy tells the kid to track them down and kill them before daylight, or else something bad will happen. We never feel the urgency of this deadline, and the only clue we have about the daylight's effect on the puppets is that "Gremlins" was a popular movie when this one was made. He immediately drives off to his house, where Pink Shorts and Daphne are dancing to music vaguely reminiscent to Sonic the Hedgehog. Kevin's girl joins reluctantly. Then Daphne is outside, waiting for Tom, and is attacked by a hobgoblin. She rolls around with the puppet, then all three of them roll around with puppets, and Kevin arrives, and the puppets are locked up inside the house. Tom had arrived and wanted to throw in a grenade, and there is a lame attempt at humor. Then the hobgoblins are trapped inside Tom's van, and then Pink Shorts is nearly killed by a gross, evil-looking call girl in his fantasy. It's a really dumb scene, but it doesn't match the Club Scum scene.

It starts when Kevin's girlfriend gets this dumb look on her face and sees an ad for Club Scum, the (supposedly) filthiest club in the world. She goes off there because it is part of her fantasy, despite the fact she is incredibly straight-laced. The crew heads off to Club Scum, which, despite the hype, is really just a school cafeteria in bad decor, where a few extras hang out and listen to a very 80s band. Look for the odd biker guy at the front: his role is so...well, the initial effect is a disgusted "Huhn?!"

The girlfriend has become a dancer with bad make-up, and everything is pretty senseless until the hobgoblins arrive -- then everything just loses all hope of reality. Tom's commanding officer shows up in full uniform, carrying loads of grenades and guns somewhere, and arms Tom when the crew try to kill the hobgoblins. He, supposedly the best soldier the commanding officer has ever seen, tosses grenades around randomly and carries his Uzi (are they standard army issue?) around very...awkwardly. Then, for no reason whatsoever, the commanding officer tosses Tom a live grenade, and Tom is instantly immolated. Then the officer gets a grenade down the shirt but is only blown backwards. The crew escapes in the van, with the girlfriend back to normal.

Our heroes show up at the studio (why?), and then the same robber from before threatens Kevin and wants to settle the non-existent score. They fight with some oriental weapon I can't name, and Kevin is still clumsy (too bad they weren't fighting with rakes). But it's all just Kevin's fantasy, and the old guy shoots the hobgoblin responsible, and the robber disappears. The rest of the hobgoblins run back to the vault (again -- why?), and everyone wonders what to do next. The old guy just smiles and blows the floor up.

Ok, let's recap -- he's been guarding those puppets for thirty years, with no life to speak of, and he just blows them up?!? No! It doesn't work that way! Even he says he should have done it a long time ago. Why didn't he? He just wasted his whole worthless life on those stupid puppets!

Anyway, Tom shows up with only a broken arm, leg, and some cuts. (Wasn't he just incinerated?) Everyone is happy again, except for Pink Shorts.

This movie is just strange. Don't watch it alone; otherwise you'll turn it off after the first scene. But a pretty good laugh altogether, and it doesn't drag too much.

Rating: two and a half turkeys.

Best line: "VAN!"

Scene to watch for: Garden tool combat.

Things that make you go "Huh?": Pink Shorts, what Tom sees in Daphne, and Club Scum. Oh boy.