Monster High

I found this movie very amusing, it's use of off-beat and cheesy humor is absolutely wonderful! I thought the abstract storyline was very well put together, and is not your typical 80's high school movie. It has all things that make a great movie, blood and gore (check out the excellent microwave scene!), nudity, campy humor, and it even has a killer pot plant! I highly recommend this movie to anyone. If you ever see it in your local video store, check it out, it rocks!

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the movie on RCA/Columbia video cassette.

This hokey horror spoof was made in 1988 but barely passes muster as a belated direct-to-video release.

Loaded down with voice-over narration and other clumsy devices, pic purports to mock the teen slasher genre but is as cliched as its forerunners.

Dumb cover story has a Mr. Armageddon from Outer Space visiting Earth (at Montgomery Sterling High School in L. A.)in pursuit of two jerks Dume and Glume from the planet Polyester who have stolen a doomsday device (that looks like a basketball).

Various monsters show up pointlessly and kill coeds until a basketball game of students versus monsters is organized. The kids win and stave off destruction for another thousand years.

Film's bad puns and silly attempts at horror are hard to take. Nondescript cast goes through the motions with the young women undoing their louses with clockwork regularity.

Overreliance on voice-over smacks of post-production tampering.

When I worked on this movie in 1989 I was new to the business and could tell nobody was out to make a masterpiece or win any awards except maybe in a few cases and then masterpiece would be the wrong word. (Some that worked on this movie have gone on to win big big awards) I am trying to say that on any movie most of the cast and crew (above the line included) work hard and it is well known that it will be great if the movie is released at all, in any market or format. (I suppose some might hope just the opposite, thus the Alan Smithee credit). "Monster High" was just a comedy and was not trying to hard to be great. Just to be fun and silly and great in it's own way. I think, IMHO, it did just this. If I remember right anything that would get it a R rating such as nakedness was shot after principal photography was finished. (I am not sure what it's final rating is) It was a lot of fun and hard work and I had a easy job kind of... DTz'r

Bad movies can be hilarious! They can make us laugh or in some cases cry, and they later are remembered as hilarious cult gems that people quote in everyday life. That seems to be the ultimate goal of the awful film, and only certain movies ever make it to that level. Some make it to a much smaller cultish level of bad where friends gather to watch it and laugh, but most have never heard, nor want to, of the movie. Then there's movies like this. You start off saying, "Boy, I know this will be horrible, but I bet I'll get a good laugh!", and by a mere 20 minutes in you just pray this thing will be ending very soon. This is a very annoying, and awful movie, and the overload of humor results in an audience sensory overload where everything goes dead, except for boredom which stays very much alive.

Nerdy 35 year old student Norm is quite infatuated with foreign exchange student Candice Cain, but oh no!, the end of the world is coming! Mr. Armageddon, a voice modulated ugly middle aged creeper who molests and kills the students at this high school is going to end the world. This weirdo was freed from his prison by two flamboyant aliens, Dume and Glume, who go around this same school zapping people with their stupid looking guns. Meanwhile all kinds of crazy stuff happens at this school like a mummy coming to life, a killer pot plant, a tennis shoe monster, and many other ridiculous creatures.

It's hard to decide what to criticize first with this thing, so I'll go with the least discussed first. This movie has some truly unbearable music! It sounds like bad early 80s video game music, and made this cornball movie even more cornball than ever imaginable.

The acting in this is really bad, but compared to most other aspects of this movie, the acting is quite masterful. The actors are actually speaking with straight faces so they get ten points above the writers and director. The characters are stupid, and not funny in the least. There is a random narrator guy who apparently is Mr. Apacolypse's relative, and he is the most random unfunny guy ever, and the actual female narrator has a horrible speaking voice. She sounds like a voice over for a cheap early 90s VHS trailer.

Nothing about this movie is remotely funny in any way at all. The lack of plot makes this thing boring, the acting is atrocious the writing is also, and this movie nearly bored me to death. Don't see it!

My rating: BOMB out of ****. 84 mins. R for constant nudity, language, drug use and sexuality.

Lately I find myself hopelessly over the hill, frantically scrambling for vestiges of my long-gone youth to validate my current adult existence. Being that I'm only twenty makes this kind of hard, and besides, I spent my adolescence watching the Gilbert Gottfried magnum opus USA Up All Night. I remembered that as a youngster I enjoyed the Up All Night staple "Monster High", which usually aired after "Dr. Alien" or "Surf Nazis Must Die".

Watching it again now, I found it pretty stupid. I think the reason that I liked it as a ten-year-old was that this movie seems to have been made by ten-year-olds (not unlike "Bats"). It's packed with corny jokes and pointless scenes, and has some pretty awful acting, even worse and over-blown than Shannon Elizabeth in "Scary Movie", and that's no easy feat.

However, I must applaud the sheer volume of stuff that they packed into this, a "quantity over quality" sort of thing. This movie has got a mummy, a zombie, a killer computer nerd robot, a walking gargoyle, a huge, sentient clump of marijuana, shoes that eat people, and two aliens so annoying they seem to have come from Planet Charles Nelson Reilly. These ghoul's ring-leader is Mr. Armageddon, the embodiment of all evil, who kind of looks like a doughy, aged Corey Feldman.

Oh, I figured out another reason that I liked this- there's a cute girl playing the female love interest. What's odd is, the girl and her breasts are played by two different actresses, so every time a scene calls for nudity (which is often, remember, this was made by ten-year-old boys) they cut to a disorienting shot of a headless torso. This made me wonder: The gal playing the lead was pretty awful actress, but they wanted her so desperately that they were willing to let her use a body double? There was no other actress that was just as bad AND would show her breasts? Weird.

Anyway, this is a pretty simple-minded, innocuous bit of entertainment. The people making it were probably having a lot of fun, and there are a few funny bits (like the finale's "basketball on the rim" gag, worthy of a "Naked Gun" movie). If you're a little kid or a heavy drinker you'll probably love it.