Monster in the Closet

I agree with most of the posts that this was a pretty good 'bad' movie (as cheap as it was I thought the monster was creepy looking!) But didn't anyone notice that the movie is one big gay joke?

The whole 'in the closet' thing

The way the monster reacts to the hunky guy (there's no reason to imply that the monster was female)

It's final march to, where else, San Francisco!

I don't think it affected the film at all. But it's really weird that a goofy, low-budget, comedy-horror movie would try to have some kind of 'message' like this. And I'm not even sure whether its pro or con!

MONSTER IN THE CLOSET is a wonderful monster / sci-fi movie parody. The humor is well-placed, the monster is well-realized, and the characters are just nutty enough to not be annoying. Some of the satirical genre references are hilarious, especially those concerning CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and THE THING.

Two personal favorite scenes are: John Carradine as the old blind guy, and Stella Stevens in the shower. Hysterical!

Highly recommended for all horror spoof addicts...

I recently watched the Troma Films classic Monster in the Closet (1986) on Tubi. The story follows a killer on the loose who seems to be abducting people-and even dogs-from their closets. A reporter, a professor, and a science student team up to uncover who (or what) is behind these bizarre killings. Could it be a misunderstood closet monster?

Directed by Bob Dahlin in his only directorial project, the film stars Denise DuBarry (Do It or Die), Claude Akins (Battle for Planet of the Apes), Henry Gibson (The Blues Brothers), Donald Moffat (The Thing), Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious), and Fergie (Black Eyed Peas).

Monster in the Closet is another Troma Films horror comedy that manages to execute its horror elements fairly well. The opening narration is hilarious, and the setup is engaging. The monster's costume design is tremendous-I only wish it had been better utilized to create a truly formidable villain. There's the anticipated horror nudity, including a fun shower scene, and it was entertaining to see a young Paul Walker and Fergie in action.

In conclusion, while Monster in the Closet isn't a great film overall, it has enough horror elements to keep genre enthusiasts interested. I'd score it a 5/10 and recommend it only if you have the right expectations.

My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Monster in the Closet" is a pleasant, occasionally funny combination of homage and spoof directed at the science fiction monster films popular in the 1950s. It will be appreciated by fans of old B-pictures but is out of step with the tastes of contemporary audiences.

Writer-director Bob Dahlin carefully apes the rigid format of the traditional monster opus (with corny dialog intact): an unknown creatures is killing Californians living in the small town of Chestnut Hills in their closets an San Francisco obituary writer Richard Clark (Donald Grant) is sent by his editor to cover the story. He soon teams up with science prof Diane Bennett (Denise DuBarry) and her brilliant child nicknamed Professor (Paul Walker) to follow the clues.

Monster eventually shows up, looking like a brown-skinned, huge-mouthed imitation of Carlo Rambaldi's oft-copied "Alien" creation, and the military, led by no-nonsense Gen. Turnbulll (Donald Moffat) steps in to handle the situation. It turns out the monster is impervious to conventional weaponry, leaving the star trio to invent methods of destroying it. In several funny twists, the monster's unexplained affinity for closets turns out to be a key script element.

Despite some dull patches in which parody becomes merely repetition of cliches, "Monster" is cute with lots of guest stars. Stella Stevens does a fine version of Janet Leigh's "Psycho" shower sequence, getting solid laughs opposite Paul Dooley as her husband. As a goofy old scientist, Henry Gibson has his moments, too. Moffat is perfect as the tough-talking general.

Lead players are fine, particularly Donald Grant, who, in film's well set-up and funniest payoff, turns out to be the object of the monster's affections (once his Clark Kent glasses are taken off) rather than the heroine.

Overproduced in relation to the targets of its parody, "Monster" is well-made (it was shot in 1983 and had post-production completed more recently). End crawl is unintentionally funny as what seems like a thousand people are individually credited or thanked for working on the picture. Film probably will be best remembered for the inspired silliness of its tagline solution to the monster problems, when the heroined goes on tv to plea: "Destroy al closets!".

This was sort of a cute movie, nothing too great.

It starts off with a pre-credits sequence of people getting dragged into their closets, or walking into their closets, only to be attacked by something. We don't see the attack, since the camera takes a side view of the open closet door, and we hear screaming and cartoonish monster eating noises, as clothing is tossed out of the closet. John Carradine has a small role as one of these people, and blind man violently smashing his cane around his apartment looking for his guide dog (who the monster hung on the closet door).

We then meet a reporter who looks a lot like Superman's alter-ego Clark Kent, complete with big black-rimmed Clark Kent eyeglasses. He's named Richard Clark. He got his job at the paper through nepotism, and only does obituaries, but her wants something more. The lead reporter "Scoop" gives him a three-week old story about the people dying in their closets as a laugh.

Clark befriends a young boy at the police station while waiting to talk to the chief there. The boy is a bespectacled small version of himself, perhaps. He's doing some kind of experiment recording all different kinds of sounds, while his mother - a teacher at the local college, where some of the deaths occurred - talks to the chief, explaining how the bite marks found on the victims are somewhat consistent with snake bites. Clark angers the bespectacled mother by having let the boy have a chocolate bar. Everyone, including the mother, calls the boy "The Professor."

Clark also meets an Albert Einstein-looking Nobel Priza-winning professor at the college, and gives him a claw he found at one of the crime scenes. We also see that the mother becomes speechlessly, motionlessly smitten with Clark every time he takes his glasses off.

They soon see the monster, who starts coming out of closets. There are elements of "Alien" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to the monster and their attempts to communicate with it.

This movie could be appropriate for children, although be forewarned that there is a brief topless scene. A bit surprising for a PG-rated movie, but not altogether without precedent. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985) had a lot more. The scene it occurs in is one early in the movie, and comically spoofs the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.