Back in 2020 I had the delight of watching the Evan Jacobs directed comedy horror film Death Toilet 3: Doody Calls. This was a film whose very premise ensured nothing that took place in it would ever be taken seriously. The indie effort leant hard into its lack of budget, making for a film full of purposely bad acting and purposely poor special effects. Spoilers for previous films in the series to follow, especially seeing as how this appears to start directly after the ending of Death Toilet 4: Brown Snakes on a Plane.
International possessed toilet fighters, Vietnam veteran Brett Baxter (Mike Hartsfield - the Death Toilet series, and in his directorial debut for this fifth entry) and Father Dingleberry (Isaac Golub, who unexpectedly sadly passed away in real life around the time this film was being made) had been on board a hijacked plane, with the hijacker, super villain Pottymouth (Jacobs) blowing it up. Luckily both the hapless heroes have parachutes, but are separated during their descent. Baxter is severely injured due to a bowel displacement and is taken to the local Brownsville hospital. Perhaps in a worse situation, Dingleberry is arrested on the accusation of being the one who had hijacked the plane, with arresting officers, Det. Dick Frisque (Jacobs) and Det. Howie Wipes (Hartsfield) not believing his wild stories of battling possessed toilets.
Meanwhile, believing the duo to be dead, Pottymouth and his henchman Stinkeye (Hartsfield yet again) have enacted their total toilet takeover, using the power of the Death Toilet they have made the world's toilets disappear, with Pottymouth demanding to be made President of the World in order for him to return the toilets.
It didn't take me long to remember just why I enjoyed the previous entry so much. So many characters here have such a funny way of acting. While intentional, it always felt like the actors had too few lines for their long scenes, and so with a combination of ad-libbing and repeating their lines over and over again, stretch them out to fit the scene length (much of the dialogue was improvised). This never got old, I found this forever amusing. This also is used for comedic effect with actions characters make. The never ending roll Baxter does across a field after landing from the plane explosion was one such early highlight. Surprisingly, I found the absolute highlight in terms of characters to be Frisque and Wipes, the dynamics between the two was amazing, the way they speak with an exaggerated 'seen this all before' type attitude to their police work never failed to get old. The interrogation scene between them and Dingleberry was peak Death Toilet. To be honest, I could have watched an entire movie of just these two characters and I think I would have been happy, they were that entertaining. The late great Golub helped make these interrogation scenes work, I loved how he kept over explaining everything, his convoluted and constantly interrupted attempt to summarise the previous four films to the detectives, and his straight faced stern demands to "call off the mad dog" whenever one of the two detectives started getting in his face. It was during one of these scenes that got a laugh out loud moment for me.
Less good was Pottymouth, despite being the antagonist (with the Death Toilet taking a very sidelined role), I found him not that interesting, his plan may have been bad on purpose, but I found the scenes with him and Stinkeye hanging out at their apartment to be more irritating than funny. Stinkeye was great mainly due to the monocle he sported, and Hartsfield's facial expressions, but Pottymouth not so much. That isn't even down to the actor, as of course Evans also played Frisque as well, one of my favourite characters.
The plot has never been a strong point of these films, and here it is as simple as always. Baxter spends half of the hundred minute film in a hospital bed, while Dingleberry spends his entire time in prison, with his subplot fizzling out. I fear this was due to the actor dying in real life, rather than this originally being the intention for the character to disappear well before the film's end. With quite a long run time for this sort of movie I did find there were moments were this dragged a little, especially in the second act. Special effects were as bad as I recalled, with a fun battle against the Death Toilet much as it was in the third movie, and a fun fight that had two of Hartsfield's characters sharing a fight scene. Due to being the same actor, this was presented as fists from off screen hitting the on-screen character, with Stinkeye's arms in particular being very funny due to blatantly not looking much like Hartsfield's arms at all.
Death Toilet 5: Invasion of the Potty Snatchers was a fun movie to watch, again, I find it great that a film so full of terrible toilet humour works so well. Jokes about bodily functions have never appealed to me, but they are constant here, and some I did find funny (such as the doctor exclaiming over and over that Baxter is having a 'fart attack'). This shares a few issues with Death Toilet 3 in terms of the film feeling a bit overlong, but overall, I did enjoy this one. Death Toilet 5: Invasion of the Potty Snatchers has its official premiere at the Atomic Monster Weekend in Mesa, AZ that is taking place between October 27th to 29th. The first three entries in the series can be watched on TUBI TV for free.
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