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thenightling · 8 months ago

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My review of Asylum's Monster Mash: How Asylum managed to do what Univeral Studios Dark Universe could not

Last night I watched the new Asylum mockbuster, Monster Mash. What is Asylum? And What is a Mockbuster? A Mockbuster is a low budget knock-off movie of a film that is either already a blcokbuster hit or anticipated to be a hit. When Pacific Rim came out Asylum released a Mockbuster called Atlantic Rim. When Dracula 2000 came out, Dracula 3000 aired on The Scifi Channel. When Morbius came out, Asylum made Dracula: The Original Living Vampire. Sometimes the connection to the blockbuster they were "inspired by" is very slim. Asylum was founded twenty-five-years-ago to make mockbusters of high budget, blockbuster, and mainstream scifi and horror films. A lot of Asylum's creations have been released on Syfy (Formerly the Scifi Channel) as Syfy original movies. Most Asylum movies are either made-for-TV or direct to DVD / Blu Ray / Streaming. One season of the Netflix incarnation of Mystery Science Theatre were all Asylum mockbusters. This year there was a highly anticipated vampire movie called Abigail. The plot was about the daughter of a crime boss (heavily implied to be Dracula all along). The daughter gets kidnapped and it turns out her kidnappers are actually her intended victims. So Asylum released their own Mockbuster called Monster Mash and managed to release it two weeks before Abigail came out.

And what a treat this Monster Mash was! It was so delightfully corny! So wonderfully bad. I actually loved it. This was a so-bad-it's-good movie. There are other films called Monster Mash, including a semi-Juke Box musical. This is the only one from 2024. I think I liked Asylum's Monster Mash more than the 2012 Dario Argento's Dracula, which until now, was my favorite campy, bad Dracula movie. My nickname for Dario Argento's Dracula is Mantis Drac because Dracula transforms into a giant female preying Mantis at one point with very low quality CG effects. In Monster Mash, Dracula's daughter is kidnapped by Boris (A rather simple minded but sweet hearted Frankenstein monster) serving the evil Dr. Frankenstein, who wants to use Dracula's daughter as bait to lure out Dracula. Dr. Frankenstein is dying and wants to transfer his consciousness to a new monster, an utterly indestructible monster- supposedly. Dr. Frankenstein wants to use the parts of all the classic monsters including blood from Dracula, skin from The invisible Man, the heart of Rameses The Mummy, and the limbs of an immortal werewolf. Werewolves in traditional folklore, and the original Universal monster movies actually were immortal except when it came to silver.

The movie has minimum gore and suspense (except perhaps where Dracula almost kills his daughter's slave girl). It's tame enough where I think it could work for a child's first introduction to the classic monsters in a horror setting. (You know, outside of cartoons like Hotel Transylvania). I liked it a lot. For an Asylum film there was limited low-quality CG except once Dr. Frankenstein's creation came to life. That's when Asylum brought it its trademark low quality SFX.

The movie was not just a mockbuster of Abigail. It also felt like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but with the classic monsters. There were aspects that reminded me of House of Frankenstein. Dracula's daughter even had wanted a cure for her vampiric condition, like in the Universal monster movie, Dracula's daughter. There are a lot of nice, subtle, homages to classic monster movies. You realize pretty fast that the classic monsters are the heroes of the story (even though Dracula does occasionally snack on a hapless damsel). And I found myself delighted through the corny cheese. THIS is what Universal studios should have give us with their promised Dark Universe. THIS was a classic monsters version of Avengers and with the campy cheese of an asylum mockbuster it was actually fun. It was charming. I usually have difficulty sitting through an Asylum mockbister, let alone want to watch it again. This one I would happily watch again. It was fun. It was cheesy, good, fun. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Honestly, the actor who played Dracula was so much fun in this, Asylum doesn't deserve him. He deserves to be in something better but man, he made the movie. It was the sort of corny movie you might imagine Peter Vincent from the 1985 Fright Night starring in. Much like a classic Hammer Horror movie you can't quite tell what country it's set in or even what time period. There's almost a fairytale-like quality to it. An agelessness that is nostalgic and also refreshing.

This is, hands down, my favorite Asylum Mockbuster. Honestly, I loved it. If I had kids I'd have probably used it as their first horror film exposure to the classic movie monsters, not too scary, yet also well paced and the characters are likable. It was cheesy, corny, fun. I want to see more monster movies like this. THIS is the sort of film Universal Studios Dark Universe should have produced for us. Somehow Asylum managed to give us what Universal should have. It's rare that I say something like this but Universal Studios take note. The low budget mockbuster did what you wanted to but could not. I liked this so much I want Asylum to make a whole franchise out of it or even a TV series. I'd watch the Hell out of Dracula and his team of monsters trying to be the heroes. This was some damn good brain candy. My harshest complaints are that I prefer articulate and intelligent Frankenstein monsters like in Mary Shelley's novel but as this creature was named Boris he's obviously a homage to the zeitgeist Universal Studios tropey idea of the Frankenstein Monster. Also there's an odd moment where Dracula's daughter (named Elisabeta as a nod to the Bram Stoker's Dracula movie) comments about how she can read minds (with the aid of psychometry) but Dracula cannot read minds. I find this particularly odd since psychic abilities are some of his more common powers, even in films where they forget his ability to turn into Bat, wolf, and mist. Other than these petty details I loved this movie. It was very bad but very fun, a deliciously cheesy monster movie.

#Monster Mash #Asylum #Asylum films #Asylum pictures #Asylum movies #Asylum 2024 #Dracula #Frankenstein #The Invisible Man #Griffin #The Mummy

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vudder · 1 year ago

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Mom, can we have Transformers?

No, we have Transformers at home.

Transformers at home: