Customer Reviews

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party: Spook Show Spectacular

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This DVD is a mishmash. A low-rent theatrical short here, a trip through a carnival haunted house there, some still shots of old spookshow posters in between. In fact, "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party" is nearly impossible to describe. It's not a feature film, though there is a feature ("Tormented") included somewhere on the disc. Nor is it primarily about the title segment, a short monster/comedy flick starring a bunch of college kids and a mad scientist. Instead, it's almost as if the entire DVD is made up of extras. But what a great collection of extras it is! For one low price, you get monsters, happenin' 60s co-eds, horrible narration, REALLY bad acting, a bit of 3-D, a guy in a bargain-basement gorilla outfit and a whole lot more! Watching this disc feels like channel surfing in a world in which the Cramps run all the TV stations. It's like watching snippets of movies made by people who...well...wish they could make better movies. The result? It's absolutely, over-the-top brilliant; a patchwork of lowbrow cinema that will leave you wondering, "Where the heck did this stuff ever play??"

My only complaint about this disc (and I'm docking it a whole star for this) is that it's REALLY hard to navigate! The viewer is pretty much left to just stumble onto various scenes by trial and error. It's an amazing collection of clips and snippets overall, but this thing should have come with a map.

DVDs with a lot of extras are great. But when one is almost entirely extras, it falls flat. So I feel the need to warn mal-informed b-movie fans as to what they are truly getting on this disc.

Now make no mistake, I like obscure sci-fi/horror as much as the next geek (I rate The Brain From Planet Arous 4 stars, for Pete's Sake), but that's not really what this dvd is about. While it may be fun once in a while for parties, avoid it if you are considering it on its own merits. To enjoy this disc, one must really really be on the lookout for regional rarities. If you like looking at other people's home movies, that is a head start; and don't think I am exaggerating because some home movies are in fact included on this disc. (Manos is an A-Picture epic compared to some of this stuff.)

First, the navigation of the dvd was admittedly great: sort of like a spectral treasure hunt. Some items are highlighted but not explained in text, while others are not shown at all, so you really have to search. Some people may find it annoying. I found it rather charming. With patience, you'll locate them all.

BTW, this dvd is not really for kids, although there is not anything too objectionable. But most would probably not have the patience to sit through this. Much of the disc achieves a certain amount of nostalgic spookiness (as opposed to being frightening) by being the most hypnotically stupid things these eyes have ever seen.

A collection of trailers from midnight spook shows is fun for 15 minutes, but continues on for another 30, becoming very repetitive and dull and repetitive and dull and repetitive. Buffs will enjoy playing Spot the Art, as these stage shows often ripped off poster images from movies of the time, such as Beverly Garland screaming in Not Of This Earth. Some are amusing or cool, but they just go on forever. I didn't even watch the still gallery of poster art; there were 300 items!

The 3-D Asylum of the Insane is a genuinely odd, headache-inducing affair even with the free glasses. At first it consists of happy suburban families throwing footballs at the camera. Then a yo-yo expert comes on. Finally, three costumed weirdos make stabbing motions at the lens for approximately 13 hours (actually it only seemed that long). This was disturbing in a Flying Monkey sort of way.

The title feature is terribly dumb but watchable hokum about portly and rather old sorority sisters spending the night in a creepy house. Then there is a short where a guy turns into a werewolf as he returns with snacks to his car at the Drive-In Theater: pretty lame, uncomfortably idiotic. Another is a ride through a carnival spook house: why, I must ask? Another is an educational short about a boy who is frightened, why that is fine and how he can combat his fears: it will likely have you wishing for Joel and the 'Bots. Another follows a guy as he is menaced by grotesque women in gowns: like a low-rent Carnival of Souls and nowhere near as good.

There are other extras, too, which you can read about for yourself. I only mean to give my take on things without the bombastic ad-speak, and I thought most of the extras were blah. I am not criticizing the effort put out by the makers of this disc, only the flawed thinking behind it. To give you an idea, one of the "hidden gems" in the navigation is footage of a skull that turns to the camera and says "Stay cool," and that's it. Ho-hum.

I will say that some of the silent short movies included are not bad; one about a mummy and one in an operating room are of particular artistic merit. I wish I knew exactly what they were. But they are the exceptions and definitely not the rule.

The Bert I. Gordon film Tormented is the most enjoyable thing on the disc, but it seems like sort of a last-minute add-on, rather than one of the main attractions. A matter of perspective and (poor) taste, perhaps. If you grew up with these spook shows, maybe you'll feel differently. But I feel that they easily could have chopped out some of the "junk" and added another full-length feature. The disc just needed less salad and more meat.

In summation: you get a lot, but what you get is not too good. Like a cheap all-you can-eat buffet where the food has been out under the heat lamps too long.

P.S. IMHO this all just goes to show how good William Castle really was at his showman shtick.

That's what I hear from people who realize I purchased this DVD...but man, I'm glad I did! It's a treasure hunt through a haunted house that you experience by clicking your remote control. There are tons of Easter eggs here with theatrical featurettes and promos a-plenty! Of course, the 30+ minute farce MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY is so bad, it makes Ed Wood look like Spielberg. This is a loving "retro-mentary" on the old spook shows that movie houses used to present live onstage with a horror feature; magic shows, monsters, ghosts in the audience and scads of ghoulish fun all meant for the kids! There's no friggin' way any theater these days would have the guts to do this stuff without worrying about getting reprimanded by some activist group. And the early 60's feature TORMENTED is great schlock horror! Total enjoyment for everyone and such a wonderful, forgotten part of cinema history that someone had the good sense to preserve for us all!

For creepy, nostalgic Halloween fun this disk is hard to beat! Not only do you get a copy of "TORMENTED" (in itself worth the price of the disk) but HOURS AND HOURS of spook-show fun from the 20's through the 70's.

"TORMENTED", starring Richard Carlson, was released by Allied Artists and is an underrated classic. You may be tempted to draw some similarities between "Tormented" and "House on Haunted Hill" which was released by the same studio several years before. The look/feel of the two movies is similar in several respects.

The many classic ghost-show trailers look and sound great, and are classically atmospheric. The short gimmick film "MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY" is great, silly fun. When we showed the disk for the kid's Halloween Party, we "recreated" the gimmick by having a guy in a mask emerge from a door near the TV, look around the room menacingly, and then "kidnap" one of the youngsters and take her back into the room -- all timed to the screen action the way it might have originally played. Then, once order was restored, we settled down, put on our 3-D glasses and watched "Asylum of the Insane". "Insane" appears to be a home-made movie (fun with the movie camera) except that it is in 3-D (anaglyphic process). Anaglyphic 3-D is not a great process, but the 3-D of "Insane" was surprisingly good in places.

I loved the "soundies" too. "Soundies" are the forerunner of the music video. Soundies were short musical films which featured popular songs and performers. They date from the era when going to the movies was a complete entertainment package. The soundies on this disk are all "spooky" in theme. My favorite one features a skeleton in high heels. One small note of concern, the soundies on the dvd, like other popular entertainment of the era, may not be considered politically correct by todays standards.

The DVD has too many treasures to write about all of them, but I especially want to mention the four short "amateur" take-off's of classic Hollywood fright films. The shorts appear to actually have been made in the 1920's and 30's using home movie equipment. They are all quite good, surprisingly so. It's almost like coming across 8mm. home movies that an unknown major director might have made at age 15.

The only criticism I have of this disk is that the material presented on it is relatively without context. Part of the problem has to do with the menu options. Although exploring the menu is fun the first time out (like prowling through a haunted house) subsequent viewings render it annoying rather than cute. Also, I found that I craved information about what I was seeing. For example, who was responsible for the four black and white shorts, and how did they come to be made. Who are some of these forgotten performers in the soundies, what's their background. What's the origin of the film "Asylum of the Insane"? The lack of context makes the odd juxtopositions odder still as we jump hither and yon between a major Hollywood production and someone's home movies.

With a little imagination, this is the perfect Halloween Party disk. It should be a family favorite for many Octobers to come.

Recommended co-features: 13 Ghosts (original film in it's new "Illusion-O" DVD), House on Haunted Hill (original vers.), Matinee', Terror in the Haunted House (Rhino) and Popcorn (Buy a bag - go home in a box).

This DVD provides hours of great spooky entertainment, ideal for Halloween parties or when you are simply in the mood for horror hijinks. Terrific trailers, shorts, ads, 3-D, & a cool feature w/ Richard Carlson certainly provide loads of bang for your buck. It all comes together to provide an excellent example of those live spook shows of yesteryear. The menu, which some have complained about, is a gas. It is set up to lead you through a haunted maze where you don't know what will pop up around the next corner. For me, this is Something Weird's finest hour. Hours of fun are provided with superior quality presentations of dated material. One from the vaults, I must recommend it to all horror fans.

Something Weird's "Monsters Crash The Pajama Party Spook Show Spectacular" is one of the most enjoyable DVD I now own. They perfectly exploit the medium by making every one of the nearly four hours of rare spooky shorts, trailers, and features "Easter eggs" that you discover by clicking your way through a haunted house. I don't know where they dug some of this stuff up, but
it's priceless and quite addictive. Alright, so the 3-D short consists of a bunch of kids in rubber masks stabbing at the camera, but it does work. This is one of the most lovingly prepared disks I've seen. I can't imagine a classic horror fan not being delighted by this one.

I chose the title of the review based on one thing only: it was the most entertaining line from the entire DVD. I am a big Something Weird fan, and almost always love their work, but this time I have to make an exception. This DVD is really pretty boring, except for the drama of 'Tormented' and the lowbrow comedy of 'Monsters Crash The Pajama Party'. Since 'Monsters Crash The Pajama Party' was selected as the title for the DVD, let's begin there. The story is basically this: five sorority pledges stay in a haunted house and fall victim to the resident mad doctor (we know this because "Mad Doctor" is emblazoned on his lab coat.) There is much wackiness foisted on the audience over the next 30 minutes, including men in gorilla suits, women in chains, a werewolf in polka dotted boxer shorts, a laser cannon that seemingly has no point, and police detectives summoned to investigate it all because of a noise complaint. The film ends in absolute mid-action when a monkey bangs a gong, and it's suddenly over; no climax, no denouement, nothing. The best part of the film are some fairly entertaining credits done with guys in gorilla suits at the opening. It is campy fun that is timed just right at 30 minutes; any more would be pushing the limits. Besides 'Tormented' this is easily the best thing on the DVD.

Seemingly out of place to me on the disc is 'Tormented' a feature length psychological drama of love torn asunder in a lighthouse by Bert I. Gordon, who for once uses characters of normal size. 'Tormented' is well made and fairly creepy, and therefore not really in keeping with the rest of the DVD, which is thematically tied to spook shows of the 1920s to 1960s. I like 'Tormented,' and that (plus some funny camp value points from 'Monsters Crash The Pajama Party') is what brought this DVD up to three stars for me.

Now that I have discussed the good, let's turn to the bad. In any discussion of the bad features of this DVD, the logical place to start is the index. This DVD has the worst designed, most irritating and utterly pointless index system I have ever seen. Some people seem to like the 'hidden Easter egg' charm of this index, but most people will hate it. Let me explain. The index has no words, merely symbols like a bat or a headstone to select the features. This means that there is absolutely no way to find what you are looking for other than by random chance. To further aggravate the viewer, there are multiple sub-menus of index functions, meaning that the search is even more aggravating than it even sounds. I will never watch this DVD again for that reason alone.

There is a short feature, wholly inappropriately titled 'The Asylum of the Insane'. It is in 3-D, and (very cheap) glasses are provided, but it doesn't really matter, as the 3-D does not work on a television, but gave me a big time headache (or perhaps it's the content that did it...) This movie is not terribly horrifying inasmuch as it consists of ten minutes of some kids throwing a football around, an old guy doing yo-yo tricks, and a some teenagers in Halloween masks poking baseball bats and hatchets at the camera. To exacerbate the 'horror', there is the bonus of no sound, so it's really a silent movie of a Saturday afternoon with some adolescent boys. It is the most utterly pointless piece of celluloid ever exposed to the light of day.

There are scads of other, unrelated things, like some bad horror shorts from the 1920s to 1960s set to the tune of "Little Jack-o-lantern" sung by 'The Dead Elvi'. There are some amazingly boring audio tracks superimposed over random other things like stills and spook show art (this gets tedious...there are 300 stills in this section), there is a ride through a fun house, something called 'Chased By Monsters', that I never grasped it's reason for existing, and it's all introduced by the amazing 'Hypnoscope,' an effect used much more effectively by Ray Dennis Steckler in 'The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies.' There is also a documentary named 'Don't Be Afraid', about fearing darkness, but honestly after looking over and over through that stupid menu, I could never find it, so I really can't tell you anything about it.

This DVD was supposed to be fun. Instead, all I felt was 'Tormented'.

This was great fun, and if you are a theater historian, look no further-the booklet, trailers, and ads alone are worth the price of the package. Its hard to believe how big spook shows were from the 20's-60's, but forgotten now-the booklet was a great read! But the menus are a nightmare when trying to find a favorite section-you'll probably have to make notes and tuck them in the case, like I did. The logos are a pain as well, but I've seen this material pirated, so SW has their reasons. Enjoy!

because there sure are alot of crybabies reviewing this one! ;)

something weird video, as they frequently are, completely and totally misunderstood and undervalued.

that's a real shame.

"monsters crash the pajama party" is an idea. it's an inside joke. it's a lifestyle. you're either in, or you ain't.

the TOTAL JOY of this dvd is that you get LOST.

you're looking for one thing, and you end up someplace else. you watch things two and three times, totally confused and baffled that you uncovered the wrong egg- and it's a rotten one.

tell me that you get it. please.

you are in the funhouse, and you are totally LOST. that is the whole point.

point the zapper and get lost. enjoy the ride. some of it is brilliant, some of it sucks, but, hello........ when you went to a triple feature, that is what you got! if you went to the drive-in..... that's what ya got! a mixed bag, some of it mint, most of it cut all to hell- but always a good time.

bon appettite!

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.