chrisalba This film isn't anywhere near as bad as people say it is. It's poor and Ernest Borgnine is obviously reading from an autocue for the whole thing, but it held my sons attention. His actual summation was that it was "scary and rubbish". Thats actually true (apart from the scary part). It IS entertaining and the first story about the scoffing reporter undone by Merlins spell book is purposely amusing. The second story is just an excuse for pet-death and is probably a bit too creepy for young folk. Think of it as a scrap-book of kinder-horror, except instead of cuttings you have used toilet-paper and instead of glue, vomit.

bensonmum2 How do you explain a movie like Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders? On its surface, the movie seems to be some sort of children's fantasy that was marketed at families. I mean what's wrong with a movie that features a kindly grandfather telling his grandson a couple of harmless bedtime stories about Merlin the Magician? Well, when the two bedtime stories in question feature pets dying in fires, people turning into horrible creatures, and images of Satan – I would say there's a whole lot wrong with it. And surely the movie wasn't aimed at real, hardcore horror fans. The combination of the grandfather and Merlin would be enough to turn off any real horror fanatic.Getting past the question of the movie's target audience, the movie itself offers very little. The movie's set-up as an anthology is clunky at best. As I've indicated, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders features two wrappings – (1) the grandfather and (2) Merlin. Bad idea all the way around! As for the two featurettes, neither is anything to get excited about. The first is entirely predictable and features poor acting and special effects. And director Kenneth Berton got even lazier with the second featurette. It's nothing more than a chopped-up version of a movie he made in 1984 – 12 years previously. I don't mean he remade that movie – he re-used it! I seem to remember seeing the 1984 movie and not enjoying it. It's not any better with a new name and a dozen years later.Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders makes for a very disappointing MST3K episode. With something this bad and utterly ridiculous, I would have expected a real home-run. I've seen the MST3k episode a couple of times not and cannot rate it any higher than a 2/5 – don't put it at the top of your "to see" list.

Jesse Barboza It's hard to classify this atrocity. It's not really a fantasy, it's not very dramatic, and it most certainly isn't a family film. However, it is the type of film that's just begging to be torn to shreds on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", and fortunately, the folks at Best Brains turned this dog into Experiment 1003.Ernest Borgnine reaches the lowest point of his career as the narrator of a soul-scarring television movie he apparently wrote years ago. Now, keep in mind that he's telling this to his young grandson (who's still sharp enough to pick out a couple of plot holes). Apparently, Merlin decided that he wasn't moving enough merchandise in the Dark Ages, so he packed up and moved to 1996, setting up "shop" in an unidentified city. Entertaining a kid who suffers from bouts of slow-motion, Merlin is approached by an uppity reviewer for the local paper who sports a superiority complex and a wife who he hates for not being able to get pregnant (again, this story's being told to a kid). So the guy takes Merlin's magic book of spells and plans to demolish it with a strongly-worded review, but only ends up turning his cat into a ruthless hellbeast, then proceeds to light the animal on fire (again, there's an eight-year-old listening to this story). The guy ages a hundred years, rips off Humphrey Bogart, then turns into a baby, much to his wife's delight. So somehow, he's his own father.And now for something completely different. One of Merlin's most demonic possessions, a cymbal-clanging toy monkey (I always knew those things were evil) ends up being bought by a family from 1984. The young son, sporting googly-eye glasses and happily singing about the Rock and Roll Martian, is blissfully unaware that every time the monkey clanks its little cymbals (in the hopes that somebody somewhere is playing "The 1812 Overture"), some living thing in the house snuffs it. It starts when the dad notices that all the houseplants are dead (another issue - since when does a man notice a plant in the house?). Then an exploding lightbulb and an unattended pan of motor oil results in the fiery death of the family dog (remember, the little kid's still listening to this). With advice from his homicidal psychic friend, the dad tries everything he can to eradicate the plastic simian, if "everything" involves knocking it into a paper bag with a vacuum cleaner. But no, evil always finds a way, and the monkey keeps making it back to the 1980s. Merlin spends much of his time back in 1996 walking the streets, asking women if they've seen his little monkey.It amazes me that someone on the production crew watched the final product and said "Hey, that's good, let's release it." If this was intended for the family market, then all parties concerned failed miserably, as the story flips back and forth between mundane and terrifying. But it offers a thousand good chances for being made fun of, and Michael J. Nelson and crew took those chances eagerly. Thank God.

lee_sjostrom My sister and I were credited with 'production design' for this movie so I actually know quite a bit about how and why this movie was made... It took, I think, 5 years to shoot and was totally paid for by Ken Berton. A lot of the furniture and props in the film were from my home or from my prop garage... I had to admire Ken for his tenacity in actually and eventually getting the film in the can. His marriage ended due to his obsession with it and I think that the last letter I got from him mentioned that he'd had to declare bankruptcy. That was in response to my insisting that my sister and I get paid for the work that we had done for the film. We have yet to be paid, and shortly before I moved back to Canada from LA, I stopped bugging him.The movie must have been cursed because the last day/night of the shoot caused my sister's return to Canada, and her not speaking to me for nearly four years, until I myself returned to Canada. My sister and I went to the premiere together, and we were totally surprised to see Ernest Borgnine telling the story to the little boy. That part of the shoot we hadn't been involved in and Ken told us it was a last minute type decision to cement the different segments of the feature together... After a few years, I finally got a couple of copies of the film, but the memory of the shoot was so painful for me that I have never even opened the shrink wrap to the copies that I have. Neither has my sister. Is it possible that they may be collectors items one day?... I also helped with some of the special effects and with the make-up...Yes, it was a very, very LOW budget film and I learned a lot from it, and I thank ken for that. I didn't think that it was the worst film ever, since I've seen much worse with much higher budgets.lee~