Monster mash, it was a graveyard smash!!

MONSTER BRAWL (2011)

Let me crack an egg of trivia over you all about your old pal Bucklesworth.  Growing up, I used to spend a fair amount of time watching the classic black & white universal horror movies with my Dad.  You know the ones; Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, etc.  So fast-forwarding to today, you can imagine my excitement when I heard that there was a flick that threw in all those monsters I listed (and a few more) into a wrestling ring to brawl it out tournament-style, with the winner declared the champion and King of Monsters. 

To start, I was quite happy with the casting.  Dave Foley and Art Hindle as the play-by-play commentators, Kevin Nash as a manager, Jimmy "Mouth of the South" Hart doing the ring intros, and UFC referee Herb Dean holding things down in the ring, just to name a few.  All of the non-monster cast was very entertaining, doing justice to the roles they were given.  I personally think a b-movie actor cameo, like Bruce Campbell or Jeffrey Combs for example, would have been a nice touch.  But it wasn't absolutely necessary.

The monster cast/pairing is as follows: you have Cyclops vs. Witch Bitch, Lady Vampire vs. the Mummy, Frankenstein vs. Zombie, and Werewolf vs. Swamp Gut (imagine a more bloated Swamp Thing).  The make-up effects for the most part are good, though 1 or 2 of the monsters could have been done a little better.  For example, Cyclops eye doesn't really move.  And while I'm not a fan of cgi, I don't think it would have been too much to have a cgi eyeball looking around.  But it's not really that big a deal.

The movie itself is chock-full of cheese and awesomeness.  It's in an mma-style atmosphere, with such additions as a monster statistics shot, which is similar to what you'd see in a UFC style.  And before each fight, you get a back story for each monster.  One thing I didn't expect from this flick was that I got into each fight just like I do with any real mma fight, wondering who was gonna win each one.

All in all, it was a giant cheese fest, and incredibly fun to watch.  If you either like mma, old school monsters, or any kind of cheesy, "shut your brain off" kind of movie, you really need to check this one out.  DO IT NOW!!!!

 Movie scale: 4 out of 5 stars
Cheese/action scale: 4 out of 5 stars.


-Because K. K. Bucklesworth says so!!