Because of Karen Black’s iconic role in the 1975 made-for-TV Trilogy of Terror, there’s an irony to Ooga Booga‘s casting of her opposite a killer doll. Any semblance of cleverness ceases thereafter.
The Full Moon Features production stands as yet another example of director Charles Band’s love for pint-sized puppets and demonic toys, this time in the tasteless African native of the title. Early in the story, the African-American protagonist Devin (earnest first-timer Wade F. Wilson) says to his friend, “Not the bad-ass dolls idea again?” The rhetorical question could be directed at Band himself, and should be.
Devin’s dreams of becoming a doctor are shattered when he’s shot dead by racist cops in a convenience store. But because his corpse is shocked by the slushie machine (his girlfriend requested “one rhubarb squirtie”), Devin’s soul is transferred into Ooga Booga — an action figure made by his pig-nosed pal, Hambo (Chance A. Rearden, Zombies vs. Strippers) — and, therefore, is able to exact revenge on the officers and the epithet-spewing Southern judge (Stacy Keach, The Bourne Legacy) who cleared them.
The spear-chucking, bone-through-the-nose Ooga Booga is just one of a series of offensive figurines Hambo hawks; the others include Joe Cracker, Crack Whore, The Gook and Butt Pirate. Any assumption that Band might be parodying racism is null and void, given that the market-savvy filmmaker sells limited-edition replicas on the Full Moon website at $39.99 each.
But back to the movie, which is a lamebrained, long 75 minutes. Not the motorboating kids’ show host, not the meth head named Boner, and not even the giant breasts of the hooker named Skank (porn star Siri, Gazongas 7) can mitigate the considerable tedium. —Rod Lott