There is an hilariously blackly comedic opening with psycho Frank Doubleday holed up in a laundromat (apparently on Arturos they spell laundromat as ‘laundrymat’) with a group of fat ladies as hostage. Tim Thomerson turns up, dressed in traditional dark glasses, trench coat and tight-lipped expression. “What are you going to do?” asks his captain. “I’m going to use hot water for my whites and cold wash and a warm rinse for my colours,” Thomerson replies, whereupon he enters the ‘laundrymat’ and nonchalantly proceeds to do his washing in full view of Doubleday. When Doubleday starts getting antsy, Thomerson threatens to blow him away right through one of his fat hostages, something that causes the fat lady to have a heart-attack and collapse on top of Doubleday. It’s an hilariously bad taste sequence that sets the tone of the film perfectly. The rest of the scenes on Arturos keep a similar tone – there is some amusing gunplay with Tim Thomerson wielding a weapon that entirely splatters his targets and the equally preposterous image of one victim blown away until he is nothing but a torso, smoking his last cigarette. Tim Thomerson carries the part off with panache – he perfected this type of role in the Bands’ Trancers series. (Indeed, the Bands’ managed to turn Tim Thomerson into a cult figure through these roles).

The scenes on Earth take a very different tone. Here Albert Pyun opts for a strongly felt and often angry sense of social realism. The opening montage cruising the Bronx and casually observing liquor store holdups is highly effective. Best of all is Kamala Lopez who portrays her part with a convincing sense of moral purpose – a scene where she tells Tim Thomerson about how her husband was killed by gangs is heartfelt. However, the tone of these sequences jars with the tone of black comedy and comic-bookish ultra-violence in the initial scenes on Arturos. As a result, Dollman never satisfactorily finds a vein to settle into during these scenes.

The film is further weakened by mediocre special effects. Despite the central selling point of its pint-sized hero, the very area that lets the film down is an unconvincing portrayal of its miniaturization effects – Tim Thomerson is almost never seen in contrast against any normal-size people. There is one amusing gag where Kamala Lopez cuts off discussion about whether Tim Thomerson should stay out in the open by simply picking up his spaceship and carrying it home. There is an equally amusing scene where gang leader Jackie Earl Haley hears Sprug’s plans for the bomb then simply squashes him under his fist like a bug.

For all that, the Dollman’s adventures in The Bronx never amount to much – we are only getting into their flow when the film’s slight running time is over. Perhaps it is that the Bands’ intended to make a Dollman series like they did with their Trancers and Puppetmaster films – although this is something that never eventuated, apart from Dollman Vs the Demonic Toys (1993), which brought back Tim Thomerson and paired him up with several other creations from Full Moon films.

Albert Pyun’s other films are:– The Sword and the Sorceror (1982), Radioactive Dreams (1986), Vicious Lips/Pleasure Planet (1987), Alien from L.A. (1988), the uncredited Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988), Cyborg (1989), Deceit (1989), Captain America (1990), Brain Smasher: A Love Story (1993), Knights (1993), Nemesis (1993), Arcade (1994), Heatseeker (1995), Hong Kong 1997 (1994), Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995), Nemesis 3: Timelapse (1995), Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1995), Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996), Omega Doom (1996), Postmortem (1997), Ticker (2001), Infection (2005), Cool Air (2006), Bulletface (2007), Left for Dead (2007) and Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010).