Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Crikey. Even the worst Scooby-Doo outing had more dignity than this.
From Bo Zenga, one of those hapless Tinseltown schmucks who brought us such twaddle as Soul Plane and several of the lesser Scary Movie entries (read: any Scary Movie entry), comes one of the dumbest horror/comedies of all time. The amusingly titled Stan Helsing musters up all the incompetence of an Ed Wood/Michael Bay collaboration, fueled by a script that most SpikeTV writers wouldn’t even want to claim.
The story: the ambitionless stoner/slacker/video clerk Stan Helsing (Steve Howey) is asked to take a bagful of DVDs to a house in Stormy Night Estates. En route, Stan and his buddies (Kenan Thompson, Diora Baird, and Desi Lydic) meet up with just about every cliché in the horror-spoof book, before finally reaching their destination. Stormy Night Estates itself is also inhabited by a multitude of horror movie parodies, with goofy characters like Pleatherface, Needlehead, Mason, Fweddy, and Michael Crier. Leslie Nielsen further vilifies the remainder of his career by co-starring in drag.
On DVD, Stan Helsing looks a’ight. The 1.85:1 widescreen presentation is very clear and crisp, but I suppose it doesn’t matter since this movie’s a piece of shit anyway. An English 5.1 Dolby Surround track sounds fairly good, but, like the movie, annoys more than it thrills. English subtitles are included. Special features include an audio commentary with the director and actors Thompson and Lydic; a featurette; some alternate/deleted scenes; an outtake reel; two galleries; and a couple of trailers.
Look, just don‘t bother: Stan Helsing is dumb, dumb, dumb — with an extra large helping of dumb on the side. But, on the plus side, it should receive rave reviews on every college-based website around.
