Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 6:2	Budget Low

Ron Ford has made quite a career out of cheap movies. Most low budget directors at least occasionally scrape together enough money to hire a big name or two and make a stab at respectability, but not Ron. As I have mentioned before, there is a class of director that I call Journeymen. They know how to make a movie, but lack the creative skills to make a really good movie. I have seen several of Ron's movies and this may be his best. It is still not a great movie, but Ron has avoided the major pitfalls of low budget filming such as:

Overly ambitious acting. Tiki is set at a college theater class. The actors may even be from a beginning theater class and not the A students either. The acting is very low key with no one even really raising their voice. Julie, our narrator, spends most of the movie shackled to a chair providing a very detailed description of events she could know nothing about. In some cases this flat style is the lesser of two evils. Here the monotone delivery and the not very suspenseful plot are balanced against one of the cheesiest monsters you'll ever see.

Control your monster. Oftentimes cheap films will blow their budget on special effects and still have silly monsters. Cheap CGI looks cheap. Models take a skilled model maker, a clever director and a diligent editor. Ron's monster in Tiki is all of six inches tall. It is a little rubber Tiki doll with what is probably meant to be a bow in one hand and a spear in the other. The monster's facial expressions are limited to opening and closing its mouth. It is frequently shown scurrying across the bottom of the frame to the sound of some odd chanting. The Tiki is not scary in the least, but it is funny and it kills people in amusing ways. By not letting the monster get away from him and eat up his entire budget, Ron avoided a major pitfall.

After being shot by a policeman, our titular monster temporarily has a hole through his chest. Apparently the cop was using a BB gun, Tiki is only about six inches tall.

Play it straight. This is apparently much harder to do that you would think, but way too often in inexpensive movies the cast winks at the audience. Good actors working from a great script might be able to get away with this, though it is an iffy " live by the sword, die by the sword" thing. If it doesn't work, you're sunk. If it does, you've made a comedy not a horror movie. In Tiki everyone takes what is happening at face value. Something is killing people and main characters see the Tiki early on. They don't spend a lot of time yelling at each other about whether it is real or not. Instead as the bodies pile up and the policemen actually see the Tiki, they go after it. Of course, smart cops would probably start with the new kid from Hawaii first.

So is TIki a good movie? Nope, not by a long shot. It is, however, entertaining. I had to suppress a giggle every time the Tiki sped across the bottom of the screen like the Energizer bunny. Listening to Julie's nasal monotone as she detailed events that she had not witnessed became funny in a Zen sort of way. As is typical of Ron Ford's movies, the plot lacks any originality; voodoo revenge is not a particularly new theme. The mental patient explaining supernatural events to an unbelieving academic is a standard plot device as well. Still a minor variation on a joke that you know well can still make you laugh. The movie does not take itself too seriously, the director is obviously not striving for great art and there is no message to the movie. Because of that I am more forgiving of the flaws and more willing to go along for the ride.

Addendum: It has been several months since I initially reviewed this film and on watching it again I find my feelings really have not changed. The tiny Tiki monster was still really funny and the acting was atrocious.

The size of the Tiki does require a certain amount of suspension of belief, but it is filmed well enough that this is not as hard as it sounds. There is a significant giggle factor watching the Tiki's victims attempt to fight off the six inch menace but Ron Ford gets his money's worth on the special effects. The puppeteers actually get a couple of different expressions on the Tiki which make for a quick sight gag.Of course, it could be that the Tiki looks good because the acting is so incredibly bad. The actors that are not chewing the scenery are mouthing their lines in monotone voices. Turns out Fred Olen Ray was executive producer on this film, must have been odd for him working with some many amateur actors. But the movie looks pretty good for what I would assume to be a very limited budget.

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