DVD Review: STAN HELSING

It’s very easy to hate a movie like this. It might as well be part of the SCARY MOVIE series, only it’s no where near as clever. Stan Helsing (Steve Howey)  is a stoner, douche bag, video store clerk who happens to be the descendent of Van Helsing, the famous monster killer that took out Dracula. On Halloween night several of films most famous monsters come to kill him, but first Stan has to drop off some tapes to the owner of the video store’s mother. Along the way they run into a lot of creepy people, but eventually get lost and trapped in a small cursed town where monsters come out after midnight. Now Stan has to save the people of the town, his friends, and live up to his destiny. Oh and he has to do it in a very terrible comedy with almost no laughs.

I honestly hated everything about this movie and had a very VERY hard time sitting through it. It’s jut on the cusp of seemingly like anyone actually tried. It’s several performances that are just bland and boring all around. The villains are bad rip offs of Pin Head, Leatherface, Freddy, Michael Myers and some others and they’re all idiots. What’s worse are there are moments that literally make no sense. One character comes out of the bathroom, did a costume change and then says “…does my vagina make me look fat?” To which the two men in the group start ranting and raving and then say no. It has nothing to do with anything, and you don’t see a vagina at all. It’s just awkward and unfunny. If they had panned down and she had some monstrous camel toe I might have understood.

Every single joke in this film fell flat. The only thing I laughed at was Leslie Neilsen’s appearance. It was surprisingly funny because he acted like a complete jerk. Most of the time Neilsen’s appearance in one of these films involves him playing some one slightly dumber than everyone around him. Here he’s sharp, witty and very biting. Nice change of pace. I guess it would have been redundant to have him playing a moron around an entire cast of people acting like morons.

You can’t really be surprised by how awful STAN HELSING is as a film. Director Bo Zenga has no directorial experience and is one of the writers on SOUL PLANE.  SOUL PLANE is one of the worst movies of all time and I’d have thought that anyone involved with creating it would have been banished from making more films. Sadly this isn’t the case. Zenga’s also responsible for writing STAN HELSING which explains the lack of any kind of humor.