DVD REVIEW: MONSTER HIGH

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STUDIO: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
MSRP: $14.94
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 84 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: None

The Pitch

”From the Co-Producer who brought you Return of the Swamp Thing! No, that’s a good thing!”

The Humans

Dean Iandoli, Diana Frank (not Diane Franklin of The Last American Virgin), David Marriott, Bob Cady and other heavy hitters with short resumes.

"And you, Invisible Tony! I’m sick of your invisible shit!"

The Nutshell

Two aliens made of Silly Putty take a basketball to earth to set off Armageddon. The basketball turns into a fella with an unfortunate fashion sense named Mr. Armageddon. The aliens lose track of Mr. Armageddon (who resembles a thinner, more interesting Meatloaf) and spend most of the movie running around the halls of MONtgomery STERling High School (Get the joke? Look harder! It’s hidden, but it’s worth it!) and shooting random teens with ray guns. Meanwhile an average dweeb, Norm Median, has a crush on Candace, a hot foreign exchange student. Ah, hormones. Norm, somehow not killed early in the film, gets the school basketball team to challenge Mr. Armageddon to a game of hoops in an attempt to postpone the end times for another thousand years. People a thousand years in the future piss on Norm’s grave. The game takes place. Norm and Candace do “it”. The climactic scene from a much, much better movie is ripped off. What else? Oh yeah, some guy who’s face we never see cracks jokes while watching the whole thing in flashback. And there’s a character named Mel Anoma.

Halloween X: The Dwarf of Michael Myers

The Package

It’s dark green and light green. There’s a plastic sprocket in the case that holds the DVD in place. The back has some pictures and text, in keeping with the industry standard for DVD covers. The presentation, if we can use that term, is full screen. Not that the picture quality matters much, but it is pretty horrible. The digital transfer goes from blocky to grainy to blurry at different intervals. A Dolby Digital logo appears near the bottom of the back cover, but don’t be fooled. The audio is spectacularly average. It’s just good enough to hear some of the unintentionally hilarious lyrics to songs in the film, like the one sung by someone’s grandmother over the end credits that includes the line “Lift your heart and the Star-Spangled Banner, to America our land.” Yeah! Be patriotic with your schlocky horror, you bunch of United We Standby-ers.

It was always the same dream. Aunt Audrey. Leather. The smell of hot oatmeal cookies.

The Lowdown

Apparently, this movie used to play all the time on the USA Network’s Up All Night program. Luckily I did not catch it there, because minus the smattering of nudity spread throughout the running time (including three different breast doubles for the female lead) I would have switched over to the Community Bulletin station and drifted off to an uneasy sleep. The key to watching Up All Night when this type of movie was on was that you needed to be in some kind of altered state, either giddy with insomnia or intoxicated to the gills. Maybe that’s why they called it Monster High. It’s a suggested state of mind.

After crippling Apple, Inc. Bill Gates wanted to dominate the NBA.

Monster High is one of those movies that was produced especially for late-night cable TV, for people sick of Ron Popeil and that shrill little woman who sells the Turbo Cooker. It has no reason to exist today. Up All Night is no more. Rhonda Shear has issues of droop and Gilbert Gottfried has duck voices to loop. Take pride in your love of bad movies, readers, but don’t kid yourselves. This movie deserves a quick death on DVD. It needs to be gently euthanized in a warm tub of potassium chloride or some other lethal injection drug. Please, your country is counting on you.

1.4 out of 10