Hello from South Africa!
Long time fan, first time writer. Thanks to your site I was able to relive the memory of a movie that scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, "The Haunted" about the Smurl Haunting. I'm hoping you can -please- point me in the direction of another childhood trauma. Here are the deets, bit of a read, but I hope you will find it interesting.
In South Africa we had an early subscription based TV channel called M-Net. One of it's regularly scheduled program slots was K-TV. (Kids television.) During the school holidays they would have "the K-TV holidays special" which meant extended broadcast hours and also movies that we would never have a chance to see otherwise. (This was the late 80s to mid 90s)
Thanks to them I saw so many weird movies that I may need to revist Kindetraumas services in the future. The titles I do remember catching were "Robotech the movie" (That weird butchered one which flopped in the cinema) the Robotech Sentinels pilot episode, The Peanut Butter Solution…that kind of stuff.
One of the films we saw was about a spoiled upper middle class kid (live action film) who had a ton of cool toys and basically could regularly pick any toy he wanted from the toy store. He offers his Euro friend the opportunity to get a toy, but his friend turns him down and shows him a ball with lights on it. The friend tells him he needs no other toys except this ball. So of course our "hero" steals this ball for himself.
That night his mom has to go out, leaving him home alone. The ball activates and his toys come to life and try to murder him. I remember a cackling skeleton and an almost Tyco looking train set that tried to shoot him, as well as others. The vacuum cleaner also tries to murder him and then he hears his friends distorted voice coming from the ball taunting him. (the movie starts to veer into wtf territory)
He heads downstairs and encounters his mom, except it's not his mom it's actually a freaky killer cyborg version of her. (no reason for it..just insanity.) This thing chases him out the house and his real mom arrives home and runs it over.
I know it sounds a bit like a fever dream, but I have a buddy who also saw it. We connected via our love for the film on the he-man forums. Coincidentally he is in the toy design biz himself now. Helping design action figures for Battletoads.
I have tried EVERY source, from repeated word combos on google and youtube, to keyword trawling on IMDB and am now searching archive.org. I find it worrying that there is no sign of it as I think it would be insansely popular online with the ongoing trend of adult toy collectors and retro revivals. I mean, not a single hint of it??? It was definitely not a South African production, I think possibly it was dubbed into english which means the original title might be very obscure.
It is not a holiday themed movie, it is not part of Silent Night, Deadly night…I have no idea what it was.
Sorry for the wordy mail, thanks for reading. Any help at all would be so very appreciated.
All the Best!
Mike W
Stab in the dark because it is not a precise match at all but maybe the BBC made for TV movie Glitterball (1977)?
Thank you Kindetrauma for doing such a cool job with my request. Much appreciated.
Brother Bill, interesting looking movie! Yours is the best attempt yet, but alas no, it was definitely more 80s and had no grown adult men in it that I can remember. Thanks for trying though.
Hi there. Did you ever get an answer to this? I am looking for the same movie! To add details that I remember, I believe the friend was named Emil, the main character had a really cool slide that went from inside into his pool that had a door that opened and closed in it. He replaced the toy at one point with a decoy in his friends backpack. I remember the movie being called “Toybox” but this hasn’t help me find it. I’m also from SA but surely this movie didn’t only come here. ?
A couple further points after chatting to my sister who remembers the movie well. The main “protagonist’s” name was Jimmy and she also remembers the movie being called Toybox. She thinks the friend was called mee-gil (spelling) as opposed to Emil. I think she may be right. There was a scene where Jimmy was opening up mail not addressed to him but rather to “occupant” and he claims “I’m an occupant” We both remember the Skeleton and train set (which had rockets on it later) well and Jimmy also had a circular keypad to get in and out his room and he had to enter the code at one point but it was not working causing much panic. We both agree the movie only had 3 characters other than the very minor characters that were in the toy store scene as Jimmy is telling Mee-Gil to choose any toy he wants in exchange for his ball.
Hi Dunkstar, I'm in the same position as you lol, I saw this movie around the same time as you did, I remember it was on Saturday morning and it aired on SABC more then several times…
All the details you recall are exactly as I remember it to be… Still to this day, I have tried searching for Toybox and have no outcome with finding this particular movie. Please let me know if you have found any further information, maybe a date it was made, I'll try as well…
Thanks for your thread, Jarred.
Hi Jarred,
Thanks for the comment! I still have no new information although I did find another forum of someone else looking https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/213281/a-sci-fi-ish-movie-about-toys-coming-to-life-i-saw-on-tv-when-i-was-a-kid/289232#289232
It’s insane that there is no info on this movie anywhere ?