As a certified Full Moon kid of the 90s, I grew up on the Puppet Master franchise and Moonbeam offshoot films like Prehysteria! and Mystery Monsters. The specificity of these low budget flicks made them easy rental choices at video stores, colored by their iconic VHS artwork and wild concepts. For this very reason, Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story was very much in my wheelhouse. The celebrated visionary behind the global brand is just as compelling outside the confines of his VideoZone video diaries. Compiling numerous interviews with familial connections and creatives adjacent to Band, Full Moon Rising is an entertaining documentary that serves as a quick overview into Charles Band’s undeniable genre contributions.
Peppered with a montage of outlandish clips, this documentary on purely a surface level checks off most boxes one would expect when it comes to a career retrospective. But it feels more personal than most fluffy docs, perhaps because Charles Band himself was a fearless pioneer of the low-budget indie moviemaking to reach the widest audiences possible. We begin with a tour of Band’s home, where a centerpiece of his living room is the iconic Evil Bong, star of nine Full Moon films and counting. Getting a full dip into Band’s living quarters and hearing about his undying creative imagination constantly at work from those who know him the closest makes him an incredibly endearing figure. He appears free from ego, content to embrace the trappings of the silly little movies that made him a household name. Anyone who has a “thinking chair” in their study that sits near endless rows of puppets and strange oddities must be the epitome of cool.
Band’s peers liken him to Roger Corman and even Jason Blum of Blumhouse. John Carpenter, who edited Band’s obscure X-rated spoof The Last Foxtrot in Burbank, speaks highly of Band, and do just about every interviewee lucky enough to have found themselves on a film set with him. One of Band’s sons shares stories of growing up on film sets where bare breasts and giant bears ripping things apart were totally the norm. Band’s own words speak the loudest here though: he recounts his beginnings, where a brush with death led to aspirations of moviemaking. He easily pivoted from his love of sci-fi for the far more attainable horror genre, one which absolutely could be made for cheap.
The sheer amount of material here and variety of entries in Band’s filmography means there was probably enough material here for an entire docu-series rather than just a single film. It would have perhaps felt even more rewarding to do deep-dives into distinct eras in Band’s career, or to go deeper into development of Full Moon Entertainment. As Full Moon Rising dives into the icons of Band’s career and the Moonbeam children’s entertainment label from the company, it was an injection of nostalgia straight into my heart. Band’s desire to sequelize any movie that would perform well on the video format may not have always worked, but his intuition over what would work best for his audience was often quite correct.
The documentary does notably sidestep controversies, such as a surface-level detail of the struggles behind the underrated Shrunken Heads, or the all-important merchandising opportunities that went into maintaining Full Moon’s cultural relevance in the early 2000s and beyond. Still, as a piece of entertainment that highlights an unsung hero of the genre, there is no substitute. Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band story pays loving tribute to Band and the potency of his talent.
Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story screened at 2026’s Tubi FrightFest.
