Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular
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DVD details
Actor: Don Brandon, Joseph Armand (II), Judith Carol, Mary Dwyer, Peter De NotoBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: 3D, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 214 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-11
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular
DVD Review: Negative reviewers missed the point...
Summary: 5 Stars
Gear up, this is a long one.
I bought this disc a few weeks ago, but I only recently had the time to sit down and watch it. First of all, you must understand that I am crazy about this sort of stuff. I am too young to remember when midnight spook shows played across the country, but I love getting my hands on anything having to do with them. I love the cheesiness and the spin that promoters would put on these things, and wonder what it would have been like to actually sit through one.
So after reading all these negative reviews, I confess I don't understand their frustration. People's first complaint: the lack of a menu. Another reviewer got it when they said that it's supposed to be like finding your way in a haunted house. Click here or click there, you never know what it's going to be! I loved finding all the icons on the DVD and figuring out where stuff was hidden. If you have a decent memory or just write down the location of your favorite features when you find them, it's not a big deal. I guess some people want everything handed to them easy, including DVD features. Me, I love the idea of an entire disc of easter eggs. It's a different experience every time, which is the idea behind the old spook shows. Get it?
Second complaint: the Something Weird Video logo at the bottom right on nearly every feature. This is justified, as one of the major reasons we buy DVDs is so we don't have to watch movies with a TV station's ID covering a fair portion of the screen. However, I stopped noticing it after about the first 10 minutes. I'm not easily bothered, but I can see why this would upset other people. As someone above me noted, there are times when it's nearly invisible and times when it sticks out like a sore thumb. Hopefully SWV will correct this in future releases.
Third complaint: the quality and artistic merit of the content. Are you kidding me? The whole point of this disc is that it's a time capsule to a long-forgotten, incredibly cheesy era of American theater. The quality shouldn't be considered here, we should be thankful that Something Weird gave us so much on one DVD! Sure, the "3-D" feature may be somebody's home movies, and the technology may not translate well to television (although really, did you expect it to work all that great anyway?), but I was thrilled to have it along with the two pairs of classic 3-D glasses. One by one, here's what I think of the content:
The hypnoscope opening - I loved it. It got me in the mood, just like it was supposed to.
Monsters Crash the Pajama Party title feature - To the reviewer who said it was unwatchably bad, you're wrong. Sure, the extended opening bit with a gorilla acting out the parts of everyone involved in the making of the thing gets a little boring, but the show itself has wonderfully bad acting, pointless sound effects (does a university professor's office always sound that windy?), and many moments of unintentional hilarity. I laughed several times and enjoyed it immensely. Besides, it's interesting to see a relic from the "live monsters grab a girl from the audience" days.
Asylum of the Insane in 3-D - Boring, overlong, and cheaply made, but hey, free glasses!
Spooks-a-poppin' Trailer Show - I absolutely loved this feature. For some reason, I can't get enough of drive-in intermissions and spook show trailers. I was sad that I got only 45 minutes. Sure, a few images and themes pop up over and over, but if you're like me, you'll be fascinated by the eerie music and the outrageous claims that all these hucksters made to draw in crowds. Fascinating.
Spooky Musical Soundies - Charming, odd, and one of the most entertaining inclusions, these things play like ancient music videos. And who doesn't love a dancing skeleton in heels?
Horror Home Productions - These clips are some of the more interesting bits on the disc, and it's a shame that there's no information on them included anywhere. The musical accompaniment by Something Weird band The Dead Elvi fits the images and the mood nicely.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark educational short - A random thing to include, but it's worth watching for its time capsule appeal and insight into our earliest PSAs.
Spook House Ride - A home movie kind of clip showing the sights inside a carnival haunted house. Cheap and charming.
Drive-in Werewolf - The guy's muttering as he "transforms" had me howling with laughter, but the clip is cut short. Seems to be added as an extra purely for extra's sake.
Stills Gallery - 300 rare posters and lobby cards tracked with radio-spot promos from the time. Very cool to look at, but a click-through option would have been nice. The feature rumbles through each picture at its own pre-set speed.
How to Put On Your Own Spook Show - Informative and useful, for me anyway. A step-by-step guide to pulling off a few simple tricks.
Tormented feature - a 72-minute film from 1960 with predictably lousy acting and story, although the direction hints at occasional greatness. A few scenes are genuinely impressive.
Secrets of the Spook Show enclosed booklet - A great read, and short enough to be read in a few minutes. Jim "Mad Doctor" Ridenour shares his story of how he became, as those in the business called it, a ghostmaster.
There are other hidden snippets scattered about the menu. They're mainly there to fill up space (in fact, two of them are shorter clips of material found elsewhere on the disc), but a few are so unexpected and strange that I laughed upon first discovering them. In any case, they add to the DVD's surreal nature.
As stated above, those who reviewed this disc negatively either didn't understand what Something Weird was going for with their execution, or got hung up on mostly trivial issues. While I've never had the opportunity to attend a real live spook show, I believe that this disc accurately presents the strangeness, randomness, and humor that characterized so many of them from the 30s to the 60s. There are some things that could have been done better, but hopefully, Something Weird will correct them in the next Spook Show Spectacular, which I'm hoping very much they make. I recommend this DVD highly, and hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.
Description of Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular
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