Did you ever have one of those nights where you and a couple of your friends make up a movie with endless, insane scenes? Sketches that you claim carry some sort of narrative, but that really isn’t evident once you’ve completed your conversation. Yeah, me too.

I have a follow-up question.

Did anyone ever give you the money to make that movie? No?

Don’t fret, Monster High proves it possible.

That’s no insult, I’m sitting here in complete awe of this movie. On writing duties we have Roy Langsdon and John Platt, they would go on to write Menaheim Golan’s The Forbidden Dance…is Lambada!

Sorry.

After that, they produced a bunch of successful reality television shows, including The Amazing Race and Big Brother. I mean, that has to say something positive about them. They know how to entertain teenage girls, thirty-something men and your parents. Rudy Poe directed this one, he’d go on to produce a ton of content for Playboy and a few television documentaries. We’ll get to how this one informed his later work in a bit.

As far as I can tell, Monster High was released on December 20th, 1989 and went directly to the local video store. In Germany, it was known as Das Alienteam, something that actually makes complete sense by film’s end. Since its one of the few plot points, I won’t ruin it. So, basic premise here is that the “Monster in Charge” runs the universe and sometimes destroys planets. He’s also a demon, and kind of an alien, or at least he has to do deal with aliens. Whatever. We are watching the movie along with the Monster in Charge, as he finds out all of the things that stopped Earth from being destroyed when it was scheduled to be, a day earlier.  I think that’s the basic premise. Oh, there’s also something with this guy Mr. Armageddon being banished and then two dumb aliens freeing him from his basketball shaped prison. Which then makes even less sense because if Earth was supposed to be destroyed, why wouldn’t they want Mr. Armageddon to do that and why would they be trying to figure out why he failed? Honestly, none of that really matters about 10 minutes in anyway. All that matters is that Mr. Armageddon comes to Earth and can do all sorts of weird shit.

This particular High School is populated with 25 to 30 year old students who frankly look the same age as their teachers. Though most of the main cast has, uh, limited filmographies, it does include a personal favorite of mine, Troy Fromin.  Fromin was a constant presence in the early 90s, perhaps most notably as Ox on Saved by the Bell. Here, he plays a computer nerd who meets a Cenobite-like end. That part is pretty cool. The movie feels more like a series of sketches than anything else, only regaining a little bit of focus at its climax. The real fun can be found in a bunch of weird scenarios driven by Mr. Armageddon’s ability to do pretty much anything. I’m tempted to tell you more, but honestly the randomness of the gags is pretty exclusively what the movie has going for it. There are certainly monsters though. I usually wouldn’t mention this next thing, but I have to. As present as the monsters are boobs. Boobs everywhere. You’ll be shocked how many boobs you get to see in the first 30 minutes. The lead actress even has three different pairs of stunt boobs over the film’s duration. That might be a first, and likely a last. Though I can’t say Monster High is a good movie in any reasonable sense of the word, it is the type of movie I hope to stumble upon occasionally; completely bizarre and singular. If you like campy humor, gore and gratuitous nudity, I’m sure you’ll feel the same way.

Monster High is available on Sony’s The 4-Movie Thrills & Chills Collection: Volume 3, which is widely available and super cheap. You’ll also get Fright Night, The Craft and Brainscan in that package; well worth the price of admission.