Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Monster Brawl Blu-ray Movie Review

Couch Potato Grindhouse

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 11, 2012

Judged by the standards of even a low-budget studio release, Monster Brawl might be fairly criticized as an overextended comedy sketch that needed more development time. But those aren't the right standards. The film was the passion project of guerilla enthusiasts whose commitment turned a few hundred thousand dollars into a production professional enough to pass for something a studio might have released. Yes, it's essentially one joke repeated for 89 minutes, but there's a gleeful gusto with which writer-director-producer (and other jobs too numerous to mention) Jesse Thomas Cook keeps finding new wrinkles in the notion of classic monsters engaged in a pro wrestling tournament. As bout follows bout at the Necropolis Arena in Emmett County, Michigan, and the station bug for "Monster Brawl" (presumably on pay-per-view) keeps reappearing in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, while two adenaline-fueled announcers maintain a non-stop patter of ringside commentary, eventually you have to admire the dedication with which Cook and his cohorts have explored this loopy premise to its outer limits.

Then you're watching one of the "interludes" between bouts (about which more below), and you see something like the headline crawl beneath a news broadcast that refers to a M.I.L.F., which is a "Mummy I'd Like to Find". If that kind of gag (one of dozens casually tossed away during the film) doesn't win you over, this clearly isn't your kind of movie.

Cook and his co-conspirators shot Monster Brawl in and around their home town of Collingwood, Ontario, completing it in time to be shown at the Fantasia Film Festival in July 2011. From there it played additional festivals in Canada and Europe, then appeared on video above the 49th parallel in March 2012. It debuts in the U.S. three months later on DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of Image Entertainment.

Monster Brawl partakes of the same grindhouse aesthetic legitimized by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, but it reimagines it for the video age, despite its Cinemascope aspect ratio. (To their credit, the filmmakers have not attempted to reframe the action for home video.) The entire event is conceived as a television broadcast without any live spectators. A brief interview with the fight promoter, one Jake Blackburn (Jason Deline), explains that bright lights and cheering crowds unsettle the monster combatants. They prefer the darkness and privacy of the Michigan graveyard where the so-called Necropolis Arena has been set up. In vain does the graveyard's groundskeeper, Cyril Haggard (production designer Jason David Brown, in one of several roles), warn the organizers that anyone disturbing the cemetery's inhabitants risks doom and destruction. As is universally the case in horror movies, the creepy prophet's warning is disregarded, even though he always proves to be right.

Two veterans of the sport provide running commentary. They are Buzz Chambers (Dave Foley, capturing some of Howard Cosell's intonations), and former game champion "Sasquatch Sid" Tucker (Art Hindle, a familiar face from numerous TV appearances and the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Providing additional commentary and playing himself is legendary wresting manager Jimmy Hart, whose clients included Hulk Hogan; Hart gives an introduction to each contestant, but he himself is flanked on both sides by the Ring Girls (Ashley Byford and Rachelle Wilde), two scantily clad hotties who serve no function in the match beyond eye candy for the testosterone-fueled viewers. A fourth participant is referee Herb Dean, a widely respected referee in Mixed Martial Arts, who, like Jimmy Hart, is also playing himself. However, as Dean explains to Hart in a ringside interview, his role as referee is limited, because there are almost no rules in Monster Brawl.

An additional presence, heard but never seen, is what director Cook calls the Voice of God, although the reference is probably tongue-in-cheek. The film is narrated by none other than Lance Henriksen, he of Aliens and Millennium and the video game Call of Duty 2. Henriksen's authoritative tones provide the film's prologue and pronounce the outcome of each bout. He may not be God, but he's certainly Olympian.

Eight monsters appear on the fight card. Some responded to invitations; some volunteered; some came as if called by a dark power (or so says promoter Blackburn). They are divided into the Creature and the Undead Conferences, and then into Middleweight and Heavyweight Divisions. The bouts line up as follows:

• Middleweight Contenders
• Creature: Cyclops (Jason David Brown) vs. Witch Bitch (Holly Letkeman)
• Undead: Mummy (RJ Skinner) vs. Lady Vampire (Kelly Couture)


• Heavyweight Contenders
• Creature: Wolfman (RJ Skinner) vs. Swamp Gut (Jason David Brown)
• Undead: Frankenstein (Robert Maillet) vs. Zombie Man (Rico Montana)

An additional bout is held between the winner of the two Heavyweight contests, which supplies the film's grand finale. (Why, you may ask, is there no match between the Middleweight winners? Because the budget wouldn't allow it.)

In between the bouts, which are staged with all the theatrics one would expect from pro wrestling, we go around the world for "origin stories" that are introduced by "the Voice of God" and explain how the monsters came to be who they are. Among the additional intriguing characters is the Army officer responsible for the training of Zombie Man, one Colonel Crookshank (former wresting champion and occasional actor Kevin Nash). The colonel is now AWOL from a base in Pittsburgh, a locale dear to the heart of zombie and George A. Romero fans everywhere.

It shouldn't come as a spoiler that the carnage doesn't remain confined to the ring, or that every person near the Necropolis Arena is in peril. After all, no one tunes into these shows to see anybody play it safe.

Monster Brawl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Monster Brawl was photographed on the Red One digital system by Brendan Uegama, a young cinematographer whose credits to date are principally short films, but who obviously has mastered digital cinema. As presented on Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, Uegama's images perfectly replicate the feel of live TV footage during the Monster Brawl sequences, even though he's working with a wider aspect ratio. When the film switches to the "origin" interludes, Uegama adopts a more cinematic shooting style that helps disguise the fact that all of the sets and locations (which are supposed to represent far-flung places) are situated within a few miles of each other.

The image on the Blu-ray is clean, clear and detailed, which doesn't always work in favor of the budget-conscious make-up by the Gore Brothers (Jason and Jeff Derushie). Still, cheesy make-up is part of the great tradition of monster movies, and it does help that the colors for the nighttime Monster Brawl sequences are muted and washed-out—a deliberate choice, as is evident by the stronger colors in some of the origin sequences. Blacks, however, are strong and solid; as illustrated in the extras, the Monster Brawl set was carefully designed to have a sense of endless night surrounding it, and the Blu-ray's image conveys that. Since this is a digitally derived image with no analog stage in the process, high frequency filtering, artificial sharpening or other such tinkering does not appear to have been applied. Compression artifacts were not an issue, as they typically are not with Red One productions.

Monster Brawl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio for Monster Brawl has been well recorded and mixed, but surround effects on the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track are limited. The most obvious example is the reverberating impact of Lance Henriksen's voice, which seems to be everywhere when it speaks. Bass extension is strong and deep, both for effects and for the atmospheric music track by Todor Kobakov. The mixing philosophy seems to have been that, since wrestling is not a subtle sport, the soundtrack should be as "in your face" as possible, and deep bass is the quickest and cheapest way to achieve that effect.

(For some reason, there is an alternate Dolby Digital 5.1 track, at the oddly low bitrate of 320 kbps. If the disc's producers were trying to help people without DTS capability, a higher bitrate would have been preferable. If they were thinking of people playing the disc through TV speakers, a 2.0 track would have made more sense.)

Monster Brawl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary Writer-Director-Producer-etc. Jesse Thomas Cook and Producers Matt Wiele and John Geddes: The three co-producers stick closely to the action on screen, but this allows them to point out the many economies and shortcuts that allowed them to make the film for approximately $200,000: the crew who doubled as cast, the production designer who continued giving orders to his builders while covered in latex as Swamp Gut, the found locations, the improvised setups, etc. The "gee whiz" tone is sincere and infectious. Whatever one may think of the final product, everyone in this group is still excited about making movies.


• Monster Brawl: Beyond the Grave (HD, 1080i; 1.78:1; 23:21): Hosted and narrated by Cook, this behind-the-scenes featurette takes us from conception through pre-production, set construction, adaptation of "found" locations, casting, effects work and shooting.


• Tales from the Hart: Jimmy Hart Outtakes (HD, 1080i; 1.78:1; 6:37): Not so much "outtakes" as a kind of diary of the famous fight manager's time on the set. According to the commentary, Hart enjoyed being part of the production, and the filmmakers, all of them devoted fans, enjoyed hearing him talk about his career. These excerpts are some of the highlights.


• Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 1:34): The trailer essentially replicates the opening of the film.


• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Beneath the Darkness, Rabies (original title: Kalevet) and Don't Let Him In. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Monster Brawl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My goal in this review has been to provide an overview of Monster Brawl while leaving the details of its fighting matches and riffs on monster origins for the individual viewer to discover, if (and only if) the film sounds like something you'd enjoy. It's an obvious candidate for cult classic, designed to appeal to viewers who would enjoy the silliness of watching figures in heavy makeup engage in classic pro wrestling maneuvers, and who would also get the joke when one of the announcers pokes fun at people who pedantically insist that "Frankenstein" isn't really the name of the monster. If this sounds like your cup of witches' brew, by all means give Monster Brawl a look. If not, definitely skip it. Either way, the technical quality is beyond reproach.