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Monster Brawl (2011)

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Overall Rating 36%
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Ranked #6,822
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Eight of the world's most legendary monsters, along with their diabolical managers, compete in a wrestling tournament deathmatch to determine the most powerful champion of all time. Interviews, pre-fight breakdowns, trash talking, and monster origin segments round out this ultimate fight of the living dead. --TMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: August 19, 2012
Every here and there, you stumble across a trailer for a film that you just know is absolute mindless drivel and you're gonna love every second of it. Monster Brawl is one such film, and as soon as I found out about it, it was moved right to the top of my queue.

This isn't really a plot synopsis, since the movie doesn't actually have a plot. Anyway, a man named Jacob Blackburn has decided to fuse his two greatest loves, horror movies and professional wrestling, and organizes the inaugural Monster Brawl. They've brought eight monsters from around the world to compete in a one-on-one tournament to win the Monster Brawl Championship belt. They've been split into two conferences: the Undead Conference and the Creature Conference; furthermore, each conference has two middle weights and two heavy weights. The creatures' lineup consist of middle weights Cyclops and the Witch Bitch and heavy weights Werewolf and Swamp Gut, while the undead warriors boast Lady Vampire, a mummy, and the heavy weights, Frankenstein and Zombie Man. Matches are intra-conference, with the victors of the two heavy weight bouts going head to head in the main event to win the championship. Between each match we see a short back story explaining each monster's origin or reason for entering the Brawl. Throughout the tournament, Buzz Chambers and "Sasquatch" Sid Tucker provide play-by-play while WWF legend, Jimmy "The Mouth of the South" Hart takes on the role of ring announcer.

The film plays more like a typical night on Raw than an actual movie, which for a project like this is absolutely fine. I'm sure this approach has annoyed a lot of people, but in my opinion, trying to add some dramatic behind-the-scenes plot line would have just served as an unwanted distraction. Hell, if anything, they didn't stick close to the wrestling theme enough. In the future (writer/director Jesse T. Cook isn't sure if he wants to move forward with a sequel or get his hands on a bigger budget and remake it), I'd like to see them take this to the next level. Never mind the back story flashbacks, only some of them served a purpose and even less than that were entertaining. I'd like to some more promos and backstage segments. Any information the flashbacks were used to get across could be conveyed with banter and the announcers, and they'd create a much more cohesive sense of immersion for the viewers. Not to mention I'm sure it'd be a lot cheaper keeping everything on one set than the different locations. Also, if he has the bucks to pull it off, I'd like to see them up the ante on the matches too. Really go all out with it: cages, tag matches, the whole nine yards.

Considering the movie was filmed on a microbudget, the costumes looked damned good. I could see the wolfman, the zombie and Frankenstein all in their own movies with no complaint about how they look, and here's a movie that had to put all of these costumes into one film. Sure, the cyclops' eye could have looked a little less plastic, but in the grand scheme of things that's a pretty minor complaint. In fact, the biggest issues I had were more stylistic choices. Specifically, I really didn't like Swamp Gut or Lady Vampire. Swamp Gut is obviously supposed to be a half-plant/half-reptile creature in the vein of Swamp Thing. While the costume itself actually looked really fucking good, I hated the obesity angle they decided to take with him. I'm sure they were going with the age-old comedy trope of the fat guy with excessively gross bodily functions, but it really didn't fit that character at all. For one, an aquatic life-style usually leads to slimmer, sleeker body forms, plus its flashback comes right out and says that its diet (consisting of bumbling inbreds) is extremely scarce. Likewise Lady Vampire could have used a more appealing look too. I'm sure they wanted her to fit in with her more monstrous competitors, but the whole concept behind vampiresses are their seductiveness. They're supposed to be irresistibly sexy, but here they gave her a raspy voice, demonic visage, and the woman who plays her, indie wrestler Kelly Couture, has a bit too much of a beefed-up body for the part. If they can get the cash to swing her, I'd like to see Mickie James in the future; she has both the body and the wrestling background to pull the role off. Of course, I'd like to see her in a lot of roles.

There's incredibly little to say about the acting on display here since, as you might have guessed, the grand majority of the roles involve grunting, roaring and heavy prosthetics. Robert Maillet (Frankenstein) is perhaps the best known, as he had a fairly decent run in the WWF under the name Kurrgan, but Jason David Brown and R.J. Skinner take a handful of characters apiece, and they both excel in their sole speaking roles . Hell, Skinner's take on the werewolf is phenomenal. This particular lycanthrope can talk, and brings to mind some of the more charismatic wrestlers in recent memory. Outside of our eight wrestlers, Kevin Nash is OK as the lieutenant that manages Zombie Man (the military found him in the "farmhouse raid of '68") and will likely play a bigger part if Cook decides to take the sequel route. Herb Dean, of UFC fame, steps in as referee and Jimmy Hart does the same spiel he's done in the WWF for his entire career, and then of course there's the hot Ashley Byford and even hotter Rachelle Corbeil standing around in bikinis as ring girls. As an added bonus, Lance Henriksen lends his voice as a narrator, channeling Shao Kahn all the way.

Despite all the little gripes here and there, this movie is still an absolute ball. This is one of those flicks that's just absolutely impossible to fuck up, and while I've lamented that many such movies have found a way regardless, this is just not one of them. Monster Brawl revels in the cheese inherent in bringing these two niche genres together, and the results had a grin on my face the entire time. Think of the more famous movie monster mash ups: King Kong vs. Godzilla, Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason. For the most part, those were enjoyable fights to watch, but when the move set is changed to body slams and elbow drops off the top rope, the kid in you will be cheering.

As can be expected, Monster Brawl is racking up some horrible reviews, but I'm pretty sure these people set their expectations just a tad too high. Sure, Cook played things a little too straight and the concept could definitely use some polishing, but it's still fun as hell and will have a spot on my DVD shelf soon enough. 8/10.
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