| Monster Mash | |
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| Cinematography | Scott Andrew Ressler |
| Edited by | Stephen Mirrione |
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Production company | Prism Pictures |
| Distributed by | Prism Pictures |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Monster Mash (also known asMonster Mash: The Movie andFrankenstein Sings) is a 1995musicalcomedy horror film written and directed byJoel Cohen andAlec Sokolow, based onBobby Pickett's 1962novelty song "Monster Mash" and the 1967stage musical,I'm Sorry the Bridge is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night, also by Pickett andSheldon Allman. The film adaptation follows Mary and Scott, a young couple who find themselves spendingHalloween night at the mansion of Dr.Victor Frankenstein. Along with housematesIgor,Count Dracula,Wolfie,Frankenstein's monster, and a reanimatedElvis Presley, Dr. Frankenstein takes a personal interest in what secret designs await the main characters.
It features seven musical numbers. Starring Pickett himself asDr. Frankenstein, alongsideCandace Cameron andIan Bohen, the film was theatrically released on November 14, 1995, by Prism Pictures.
A teenage couple, Mary and Scott, are on their way home from aHalloween party when car trouble prompts them to seek help at the old mansion ofVictor Frankenstein, a mad scientist fromHyannis Port. Once inside, they meet a host of strange characters resembling theUniversal Classic Monsters, at whose mercy Scott and Mary suddenly find themselves when Frankenstein informs them, "I'm sorry the bridge is out, you'll have to spend the night!"
Each character has his or her own secret designs on Mary and Scott. Frankenstein wants to take Scott's brain and put it inhis latest creation. Meanwhile, Frankenstein's assistant,Igor, develops feelings for Mary, especially after she encourages him to be confident and "play your hunch," thinking that, once Scott's brain has been removed, Igor's own brain can replace it. CountDracula and his wife, Countess Natasha, a pair of vampires, decide to spice up their lifeless marriage ("Eternity Blues") by feasting on Mary and Scott respectively, but Dracula instead decides to take Mary as his next wife. Wolfie is constantly struggling with hislycanthropy and worrying hishelicopter mother ("Things a Mother Goes Through"), who insists on setting Mary up with her son in hopes of curing him since Frankenstein refuses. Finally, a jive-talking musician's agent named Hathaway has revivedElvis Presley as a bandaged mummy and plans to launch his new client's comeback, but in order to fully restore The King to life, they need the blood of a virgin—a bill that Maryand Scott both fit. Both Igor and Wolfie lament their insecurities and lack of love life to Mary, who does her best to comfort them.
By the next morning, Dracula is forced back into his coffin just before sunlight (having not noticed the end ofdaylight saving time), Hathaway and Elvis are trapped in the sarcophagus without the needed sacrifice, and Igor betrays Frankenstein by tricking the doctor into switching his own mind with Igor's instead of Scott's with the monster's. Mary and Scott escape unharmed, and the previously mute Frankenstein's monster reveals he could speak all along with his last line: "I am surrounded by idiots."
† This song is heard during the film's closing credits.
Monster Mash is decidedly very different fromI'm Sorry the Bridge is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night. While the premise and basic plot are the same, much of the music and certain characters were reworked for the film version to better reflect the 1990s setting. The script was modernized to incorporate topical jokes, with references toJack Kevorkian,QVC,Chia Pets andHillary Clinton.
Bohen's character, "Scott," is named "John" in the stage show and Stole's "Wolfie's mother" is named "Mom Talbot," an explicit reference toLarry Talbot, the name of the title character in the 1940 filmThe Wolf Man. "The Mummy" was rewritten as Elvis Presley, who was still alive when the original show was conceived, and "The Mummy's"factotum, "Dr. Abdul Nasser," became Elvis' manager, here renamed Hathaway instead of Presley's real manager,Colonel Tom Parker (who was still alive at the time of the film), and is tailored to Walker's jiving screen persona. The ever-present dancers in the film are based on Count Dracula's onstage harem of "Draculettes." Dracula's motivations are also slightly different: onstage, he seeks to turn Mary into a Draculette while feasting on her boyfriend, whereas in the film Dracula and his wife decide to share the teenagers from the outset. In addition, the stage production includes several characters who do not appear in the film, includingRenfield (fromBram Stoker'sDracula), twograverobbers named Montclair and Clairmont, and a not-quite-dead body.[1]
The music also underwent some significant changes. Only four of the twelve songs from the original show appear in the film in some form: "I'm Sorry the Bridge Is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night," "Play Your Hunch," "Eternity Blues," and "Things a Mother Goes Through"[1] The songs "On a Night Like This" and "You're About to Lose Your Mind" were written and recorded specifically for the film; the writers, Jeffrey Zahn and Joe Troiano, would later collaborate with Pickett on the film version ofSpookley the Square Pumpkin. A new version of "Monster Mash" was also recorded and used, even though the song does not appear in the original stage play.
David Andreas of SplatterCritic.com rated the film 2.5 stars out of 4, describing it as, "a strange blend of typical horror tropes, amid atypical musical numbers, that succeeds as a whole mainly for existing since there aren’t many other films like this (for better and for worse)".[2]
