Monster Mash (2024)

Monster Mash Review

When you think about chances that only come once in a blue moon, you usually think of winning the lottery. My one-in-a-million chance was getting cataracts in my twenties, which is about fifty years earlier than most old people get them. They took them out, but ever since then I’ve seen everything through a cloud of floaters that like to move little dots around my field of vision. It’s a common side effect that’s always there, except a couple weeks ago I noticed a much bigger floater that stuck around so long and got so big and so cloudy I had to go see another eye doctor before I went blind for real this time. The good news is, despite what anyone who knows me might suspect, I am not going blind (yet). The bad news is now my right eye has “a new annoying friend for life,” as the doc put it, which makes everything blurry for half a second every time I look quickly to the right.

One hour into the movie “Monster Mash” there comes what it calls a “Fright Break.” During this break they put on the screen some bold white text on black background that says YOUR HEART MAY NOT BE ABLE TO STAND THE SHOCKING CONCLUSION OF THIS FILM and then under those words it says IF YOU ARE TOO AFRAID TO SEE WHAT LIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS CARD YOU CAN LEAVE NOW AND AVOID CERTAIN TERROR. The irony of saying “You’re very brave to have made it this far, but we won’t hold it against you if you chicken out now before it’s too late” is they could have said exactly all of those words one minute in and it still would have been true.

Dr. Frankenstein is dying. In order to build himself a new body he needs pieces from all the best monsters in the world: He needs Dracula’s blood and he needs a mummy’s heart and he needs the Invisible Man’s skin and he needs the Wolf Man’s limbs, which can do that now. But Dr. Frankenstein — Madsen, I mean — doesn’t want to leave his lab so he sends his original creation, named Boris, out to collect them for him. And this lines up all the famous creatures in a row until they all come together for five minutes of fighting each other in the dark with digital lightning flashing on and off between them while also somewhere werewolves are flipping around doing kicks and stuff like it’s “Crouching Tiger” or some shit.

In order to bring this review back into my introduction, I meant to joke that maybe being blind wouldn’t be so bad because then “Monster Mash” would only attack my sense of hearing, not vision. But it turns out the joke’s on me because “Monster Mash” isn’t bad enough for that. A tripod keeps the camera steady and sets are lit with actual electrical equipment instead of available light sources. Shots appear properly blocked rather than being grabbed run-and-gun style and though not great, monster makeups at least equal what was passable on syndicated TV like “Psi-Factor” and “Poltergeist: The Legacy.”

Watch Monster Mash For Free On Gomovies.