All right, I’m curious: what’s with the puppets? A quick browse through the Full Moon catalogue gives an impression of a company obsessed: at least seven Puppet Master movies, Dollman, Demonic Toys, and innumerable spin-offs / rip-offs (Blood Dolls) and match-ups of all kinds (Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, the abysmal Puppet Master vs. Demonic toys, etc.). With this mind-bogglingly diverse array of viewing options, one would think it a safe bet that the public might not feel that extreme of a need for another killer doll / toy movie. One would be wrong.

And that brings us to the subject of today’s review, Decadent Evil, yet another mini-monster opus to spring from the fertile mind of Charles Band, this time being released under the newly-revived Wizard Video (remember them from back in the day?) but bearing all the marks of Full Moon.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Full Moon, but no matter what your feelings on them, you’ve got to admit, they’ve certainly got a recognizable style, particularly in the newer films. Even if there aren’t any puppets or dolls to tip you off right away, a 70-or-so minute running time, a cast of about six people, and “US locations” that all have a strangely Romanian feel to them are sure to tip you off that this is a Band production. Decadent Evil carries all these.

The action begins (well, after an opening costumed back-story introduction that, while probably accounting for half the film’s budget, is completely superfluous) at a strip club, where a man comes in with his wife in tow. Understandably, the wife isn’t all that excited about being at a strip club, but the husband eventually goads her into getting a lap dance from one of the strippers, who then invites the two back to her mansion. It should be little surprise what happens to the two once they arrive.

And now that we’re about a third of the way through the movie (18 minutes in), we finally get to meet our heroes: Sugar, a blonde stripper, and her boyfriend Dex, who—I think—manages the club. After his girlfriend leaves for the evening, our hero is quite surprised to find a little person (Full Moon regular Phil Fondacaro) at his door, telling him that he’s sleeping with a vampire. Our hero is understandably upset by this turn of events, and so he proposes the two head over to the strippers’ mansion (that felt funny to type…) and see if all this is true. But how will they know where to go? Luckily, our bubble-headed little vampiric blonde left her drivers license at the club, which, naturally, lists the address of the three vampiresses’ secret lair.

So where do the puppets / little monsters come in? Right about now, actually; for there’s some complicated back-story about the leader of the vampires keeping a cheating former lover whom she’s transformed into a little red puppet-beastie in a cage in her room. And as if all this weren’t convoluted enough, apparently, the vampire leader is quite close to having drunk the blood of 10000 victims; once she succeeds at this, she will become the leader of all vampires (I’ve no idea what happens when another reaches 10000 victims), which, for some reason, will not bode well for humanity.

As you can well imagine, with our six characters (if you count the little red monster) in the mansion, much mayhem ensues, the world is saved, and everything wraps up after a lightening-fast 59 minutes before eight minutes of massively padded credits begin. Oh, and did I mention the puppet sodomy?

So is there really anything of much interest here? The answer is no, not really. Decadent Evil is, essentially, an exercise in cinematic cannibalism. The film plays like a mixture of various elements from other, better Full Moon productions, and, in other instances, it even rips off sources that aren’t in-house. Probably the worst instance of plagiarism occurs during the opening scene in the strip club, where the dancers perform to a song so obviously ripped-off from Run Lola Run I’d encourage director / composer Tom Tykwer to sue, if the threadbare production hadn’t convinced me that whatever recompense he could get from Wizard would hardly be worth it.

With only an hour to tell its story and with much of this time consumed by uninteresting murders and poorly-lit stripteases, there’s very little story to this film and even worse characterization. Our hero, Dex, gets no characterization, for example: we simply learn that he’s the vampire girl’s boyfriend and then he sets off on his adventure with little Phil Fondacaro. Acting is overall banal, though it is occasionally enlivened by a few peculiar deliveries and Daniel Lennox’s (as Dex) perpetual stare of mystified wonder that dogs him for the entire production.

Nevertheless, an occasional bizarre moment or goofy line aren’t enough to save Decadent Evil, which is boring to the extreme. Wizard Video’s website, www.fullmoondirect.com, makes a point of saying Wizard’s goal is to produce six movies a year. If this is the quality we can expect, I’d rather they only made one and focused on making it good, original, interesting and entertaining.

The DVD’s extras are basically what one would expect on a traditional Full Moon DVD. A 16-minute making-of feature is provided that gives a moderately interesting peek behind the scenes (a lot of the actors seem a lot more interesting than their parts would suggest). Also present in a short blooper reel that, like most blooper reels, makes it look like those involved in the film are more amused by their mistakes than I am. A brief message from behind the scenes of Band’s next production, Doll Graveyard (looking like it will surely chart new storytelling realms in the Full Moon universe) follows, along with another message from Band about Wizard Entertainment. Things wrap up with a trailer gallery that includes this film’s trailer in addition to ads for Cinemaker, Band’s how-to moviemaking documentary; When Puppets and Dolls Attack!, a compilation for which there must have been myriad scenes from which to choose; and Monsters Gone Wild!, which appears to be the most varied and interesting production being advertised on the disk.