Mad Monster Party?

1967 ***

Before I start opining about this movie, I need to place it in context. Screen Novelties is the name of the production company I've worked with the most since I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago. You can see some of their work here (If you're looking for stuff I made personally, check the SpongeBob opening theme and the Rotofugi commercial).

Screen has three founders, my friends Mark, Chris and Seamus. Long before they founded the company, Mark and Seamus already had a long (and artistically productive) friendship that started when they were having lunch once and one of them said "Hey, have you ever seen Mad Monster Party?"

So when the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles started a series of outdoor movies and the first one was Mad Monster Party, the Screen Novelties guys got tickets for any of us who wanted to go. The movie itself was projected on the side of this old boxcar (these pix get pretty large if you care to click them).


Behind us was a row of exquisite old houses.








It was an excellent place to see a movie, and a great time hanging with my fellow stop-motion freaks. There were blankets and popcorn and pizza and some cheap red wine. And this flick holds an important place not just in stop-motion history, but my own present. It's a good time. Which is why I wish I liked watching it more than I do.

I had a better time at this viewing than the one other time I'd seen it. Despite the low-tech setup, it was still a big screen, and a lot of details stood out better. Some of the sets were beautiful, and I could see the influence on Screen's aesthetic more than ever. I said to Seamus afterwards that the castle wall in one room looked exactly like one in their short Monster Safari.

But, but, but...

I never saw this when I was a kid. Like The Goonies, it was something lots of people my age saw that I just happened to miss, and like The Goonies, it doesn't really work if you're not a kid. The jokes are shticky in a way I don't like, the songs are distinctly un-catchy, and the character voiced by Phyllis Diller had a catch-phrase "hawww hawwwww!" laugh which just made me cringe a little inside.

Generally I'm not one to second-guess my own opinion of a movie, but I so want this to be cooler. I mean, it's Rankin/Bass, the guys who made Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, doing ALL the classic monsters, in a big creepy castle. Count Dracula goes to meet a beautiful redhead on a moonlit balcony, while the Bride of Frankenstein peers suspiciously from the curtains... shouldn't that be awesome!?!

The gaggle of monster royalty is entertained by a band of beatnik skeletons! How can this not dazzle? If only it had zombie bellhops willing to defend the castle in crude aircraft...

Ack! I can't believe it!

But I do. The fact is, it's dated, and I missed the window for any counteracting filter of nostalgic love decades ago. Back then the animators couldn't even see their work until the film came back days later; my colleagues today can make animation far more smooth than anything you'll see here. I can't not notice that.

But I also can't suggest a remake; it's the closest thing to sacrilige I've got. It does stand as a classic, warts and all, and if I've made you at all curious you should take a look at it. I'll continue to send it all my love, but not all my like.

Let's take another look at that awesome chimney, shall we?