MONSTER HIGH (1989)
It should be blatantly obvious that I'm a fan of campy movies. I find that the most conducive camp is either subtle or unintentional, which is why I grimace at self-referential b-movies that shove cheese down your throat with juvenile gags and overblown comedy. Monster High winks at the camera with the same peremptory mirth of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. I didn't care for it. It wants to be a zany cult classic for the ages, but there is just one problem...it's not funny. It's ridiculous. It's outlandish. It's gratuitous. But it's not funny. Truth be told, it's essentially a Troma flick without the clunky, forced Lloyd Kaufman intro.
A rococo demon by the name of Mr. Armageddon (imagine a flamboyant Vegas act who is possessed by Satan...no, scratch that; a transsexual game show host cross-pollinated with a peacock) has arrived to set doomsday into motion. The fate of the world is decided by the outcome of a basketball game. It's almost as if the screenwriters were content to volley absurd punchlines back and forth for 90 pages. We get a zombie, a mummy, a pair of killer shoes, a Triffid-esque marijuana bud beast and an extraterrestrial pop duo (at one point, they rap/sing about a hysterectomy). Yep.
In the end, Monster High tries too hard. It might have been tolerable if the characters were remotely likeable. Seriously, I wanted to butcher every single person in front of the camera. Thumbs way the fuck down.
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