Mad Monster Party?

It’s time to review the first of the Rankin Bass’ Halloween Trilogy, the seventh Rankin Bass film, as well as the very first pure Halloween Stop-Motion Movie, Mad Monster Party!

The Doctor Baron Von Frankenstein (played by Boris Karloff) invites all the monsters he knows to his party/ convention for the unveiling of his masterpiece at the Caribbean island; an atomic chemical that’ll explode on contact, even trenched on a living being such as a raven.

The monsters he invites are Dracula, the Mummy, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the creature of the Swamp, and a human named Abbot and Castello.. I mean Felix Flankon, the Baron’s wimpy and mostly useless nephew, as I’ll call him Felix the George Bailey.

Residence to Baron Von Frankenstein are his creations of Frankenstein Monster, The Monster’s Mate (played vocally and designed after Phyllis Diller), Francesca (played by Gale Garnet), and zombies with one of them being Peter Lorre named Yetch. The rest of the film would have all the monsters to fight each other to reveal whose Dr. Frankenstein’s successor dead or alive.

While this is the first of the theatrical stop-motion pure Halloween feature length film, it’s the last of Rankin Bass theatrical movie, the last time we hear the great Boris Karloff in Rankin Bass films, but we wouldn’t have another Pure Halloween stop-motion film until probably Corpse Bride. Granted, we had other Halloween films with a mix of stop-motion such as Evil Dead 2, Return to Oz, It, etc., which was natural for special effect at the time before relying on CGI and predictable jump scare. Upon realizing, most of the horror family picture are mostly bombs, along with most of the Disney horror films with Watcher in the Wood, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc.. I don’t have a theory why Halloween Stop-motion films are a rarity. Maybe there’s no story involving monsters for an hour and half without padding, which this film does with the chef’s scenes, Felix’s repetitive scenes, and most of the music. The songs are mostly forgettable, except Little Tibia & the Fibians’ “It’s The Mummy”. Most of the music’s’ purpose was for padding, as it was said in the commentary. Maybe television was safer to do Halloween specials than to be bombed in theaters.    

The designs are each of the monsters are unique and captured the detail of the Universal Monsters close to the T, even King Kong- oh wait, I mean “It” due to copyright that they won’t acquire years later in TV. The design of Dracula with his monocle would later influence another Dracula five years later, Count Von Count from Sesame Street. Unlike most other monsters films would design the monsters to look like pretty models such as Twilight, “I, Frankenstein”, or Tom Cruise in the recent Mummy film. The setting has a haunting Hammer style of film, gray yet detailed sceneries, and it’s a different tone for Rankin Bass with a mallow sorrow. What are really distracting are the strings on the characters. Majority of Rankin Bass film is where you barely see the strings possibly due to the white North Pole background that helps blend it, but since the background in Mas Monster Party is mostly gray than black, you can easily see the lighting or shadow on the strings. Their flying scenes in the climax are underwhelming. It’s strange that Rankin Bass can animate flying reindeers or reinsnake better than Wright Brothers style planes. Even Puppetoons can do better flying scenes in Tulip Shall Raise.

I first watched this film on all of channel on TCM. Yes, not Fox Family, not ABC Family, and never Freeform to fill in their bottomless list of Hocus Pocus that makes people want to shout, “I’ll watch Hocus Pocus every single Halloween!” It’s TCM. It’s very odd, yet it’s not the only one with The Wacky World of Mother Goose, which I missed it and couldn’t find it on DVD. I was aware of Mad Monster Party when I remember spotting them on VHS in Blockbuster. Though my dad was against renting it as I assume he didn’t like and any non-Christmas Rankin Bass films aren’t worth it. Judging with some of non-Christmas Rankin Bass films I’ve review so far, I can see some of his points.

Mad Monster Party is an interesting Cult Classic film. It’s not a Halloween film I would willingly pop as much as the Simpsons Halloween Specials, Daffy’s Quackbuster, or other underrated Halloween films online. Some scenes drag and go nowhere, but there’s some neat stuff Mad Monster Party has to offer. If you want to see a stop-motion film with all the monsters you know together, you’ll watch this film, but you’ll watch Nightmare Before Christmas more than this film; the groundbreaking Holiday connecting film I’ve grown to hate yet it became a little more favorable overtime. If you wanted to see an animated film of with all the monsters you know together, well in general, you might go to the Hotel Transylvania films or Frankenwennie in terms energy it has more of. In terms of animated 2D version of the similar premise, there’s “Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf”, or our next film to review, Mad Mad Mad Monster.

If you do have interest in Mad Monster Party, give it a watch for this Halloween, or March in their original film release for some reason.