Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

Let's see. The hero is a plumber with anger management issues, the villain is played by none-other-than 80's horror icon Robert Englund, and the special-effects are pure, unadulterated monsters suits, latex and goo, all shamelessly 80's-style. This movie has "cult classic," written all over it! So what could go wrong? Unfortunately, a lot.

While this movie certainly has "that 80's look," it doesn't have any of that 80's feel. It's as if they were having so much fun making a retro flick that they forgot movies like "Evil Dead 2" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" were built around great STORIES, memorable CHARACTERS and slick DIALOGUE. With the exception of Robert Englund and the Jim Henson-style ghoulies, the whole thing just feels utterly phoned in.

The direction and editing are clumsy. The story stumbles along without a purpose. And the actors are practically starving for decent lines. Trevor Matthews (as Jack Brooks) shows some real potential, but the script is so weak, his character has no room for growth, and sadly, by the end of the movie, I could care less about the continuing saga of Jack Brooks The Monster Slayer.

Of course, for fans of Robert Englund, this is a must-see. Although somewhat brief, this is by far his best performance since the Nightmare On Elm Street series. Watching his character's gruesome yet quirky transformation from kindly professor to goo-dripping demon really shows off his talent and is without question, the highlight of the film. Unfortunately once he's finished transforming, the rest of the story just drags along aimlessly without him.

I had such high hopes for this movie. I'm glad at least someone is trying to re-capture that pre-CGI era of campy horror flicks. For that alone, I gave it an extra star. But to be honest, unless you're a hard-core Robert Englund fan, this movie is a rent at best.

"Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer" is a horror/comedy B-flick that borrows heavily from The Evil Deads/Army of Darkness and throws in a few more old-school horror cliches in as well. I actually knew how the final monster would die and which girl he'd end up with within 20 minutes. It's that predictable. But this movie isn't trying to break out of any mold or keep you guessing, it just wants to make you laugh and show you the kind of movies its creators obviously wish were still being made. All around, not a bad way to spend your time or money if you are into this sort of film.

Young Jack was a happy young boy. Then his family was devoured by a monster before his very eyes. Turns out he grew up with anger issues. GO figure. He works as a plumber, seems to destroy everything he touches, has the world's shrillest girlfriend, and seldom gets out of an interaction with a fellow human being without punching them out. Think of him as an endearingly crass cross between Happy Gilmore, Joe Dirt, and Bruce Campbell. He (sort of) attends night classes with his girlfriend, Eve (played by Rachel Skarsten, who last graced us with her fair-haired hotness in Birds of Prey). Their professor is played by a very over-the-top Robert Englund, who excels in the role. The awkward prof becomes contaminated by a corpse he unearths in his yard and begins acting...mmm...I'm going to go with erratically while bleeding, vomiting, and sprouting tentacles in inappropriate places. This is usually not a good omen. There is a scene where he shows up to Jack's class chowing down on some....thing, begins drawing loops on the chalkboard (while making loopy noises) and then vomits on the board. He then smears the puke all around and turns to face his class, declaring that he's starving and issuing a well-timed "class dismissed". Best college class ever.

Needless to say, this all turns out bad and eventually the class is faced with a Jabba The Hutt meets The NeverEnding Story monster ho captures Jack's classmates and begins either devouring them or administering them an oral injection of his hot demon seed, turning them into flesh-eating demons. All Jack's got is his handy toolbelt adn a lot of frustration to work out. Groovy. The kills in this are lots of fun, the practical effects are refreshing, the gore is icky, the story is fun, and the characters are hilarious. After a brilliant first few scenes, the film slows down a lot and for a long stretch, but the character humor makes up a lot of that ground. This isn't exactly movie of the year material, but as direct-to-dvd releases go, I don't know that I've seen much better. See if you can guess where I would have thrown caution to the wind and had Jack say "Gimme some sugar, baby!" had this been my film to make. It would have rocked.

The dvd has a lot of special features including some very good deleted scenes. If you love your horror old-school, gooey, and occasionally silly then this is for you. And can I just say "best dvd cover ever"? This film deserves cult classic status for paying homage to the kind of films we just don't see much anymore. For those about to splat, I salute you.

Ohh, this movie was bad. Bad, bad, bad...

The special effects are more or less guys in rubber suits and flailing rubber tentacles. It hearkens back to badly made 70's/80's horror movies. Which was maybe the point, maybe not. For me, it did nothing.

Maybe I would have suspended my disbelief if I hadn't watched some of the "making of" material BEFORE watching the movie. But I doubt it. Frankly, the "making of" featurettes were probably the best part, as they showed the movie-making and prop- / costume-making process. Sadly, the movie was second rate at best. It just wasn't compelling and felt very contrived. The big baddie professor monster looked like a giant puppet (even if I hadn't seen the "making of," I probably would have still thought so).

If the movie didn't take itself so seriously, I'd almost assume it was a spoof of 80's bad horror movies. Perhaps it's best watched in that light (without watching the "making of" first)?

Again, features: good, movie: not good.

WARNING!! SPOILER!! (Don't read further if you don't want to know what happens; review's over other than that):

Plot synopsis:
Boy sees family get killed by monster and develops an anger problem and loser-like tendencies later in life. No hilarity ensues. College professor lives in "that house he got way to cheap because it was cursed," digs up a demon's heart and gets possessed by it making him into a gross blobby monster, with rubber tentacles the actors have to hold up around themselves (much like Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood's "Bride of the Monster," I believe), capable of making normal people into mutant monsters (in a shall we say phallic sort of a way?). Plumber with anger management problem is the perfect guy to bash monsters (think "young Super Mario with mental health issues"). Graphic, gory monster bashing ensues. The End.

This is a low budget comedy/horror effort that has a lot of things going for it. For starters, I really enjoyed the character of Jack Brooks. He is a man with a severe anger issue and the actor did a good job in portraying this. It was amusing to see this character interact with his surroundings and other people, always on the verge of totally loosing it. There are also a few other cliched characters that are fun to watch and really pull off this campy material. There is the overly emotive sensitive guy, the brainy, nerdy girl, the creepy old guy who warns Jack about the horrors, etc. Robert Englund also puts in a decent performance as a teacher who becomes possessed. The one problem with the film for me was that it took a long time to get to the monster slaying and once there it does not have enough. I was hoping for a Bruce Campbell vs. Zombies kind of thing but it was closer to one guy versus a few people with bad makeup on their faces. This was too bad as I really liked the characters and story but it ended up not amounting to much of anything. I would welcome a sequel with a better budget and more focus on monster slaying. All in all it is definetly worth checking out but don't get your hopes up for something great.

I was sold on the cover! It looked like "Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer" was going to be a lot of fun, I hoped I had found another film along the lines of "Shaun of the Dead", "Evil Dead 2" or "Army of Darkness". And while I can appreciate what the film makers were trying to do, "Monster Slayer" just isn't very good.
The basic premise is that the main character Jack Brooks lost his family to a monster attack when he was just a boy. Now, a grown man working as a plumber and attending the local community college at night, Jack has trouble dealing with his anger. Therapy isn't working, the relationship with his girlfriend is falling apart, and Jack seems helpless to stop the events destroying his life. All of that changes once his professor, played by an over-the-top Robert Englund, asks Jack to take a look at the old plumbing in an ancient house he is restoring. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but the "Monster Slaying" part soon follows.
For a movie like this to work, you need a really strong character for an audience to follow, and unfortunately Jack Brooks isn't a great character. He has his moments, but it's like someone took Ben Stiller's Mr. Furious character out of "Mystery Men" and built a film around him. Robert Englund's professor is really the star of the film. I expected Englund to make an extended cameo here, in similar fashion to what he did in "Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon", but Englund's role is pretty large. And you have to give Englund credit for what he goes through in "Monster Slayer", he is covered in more goo, throws up more oatmealish like lumps, and in general gets very messed up in the movie. I can only hope that most of the film's budget was directed toward his bank account, and he's the reason for one of the stars in my rating.
The second star in my rating goes to the special effects people. I am so sick of CGI effects in horror films, that "Monster Slayer" was a nice surprise. Good old fashioned, stop motion, puppeteering, blood and latex. It gave the film an old-school feel during the climax.
Overall, I would recommend "Monster Slayer" to die-hard horror fans, who don't mind a little comedy (both intentional and unintentional mixed together). But overall I would pass on picking this one up.