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Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (Spook Show Spectacular)

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (Spook Show Spectacular)

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $17.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent genre disc
Review: Something Weird has really gone to the wall on this disc. It's even quite fun navigating around the "Haunted House" menu screen in search of the various different features/shorts/films.

Some of the material is less than riveting (haha), but SW has done a fabulous job in presenting some very unique footage, taking full advantage of the DVD format.

You'd have to be a fan of old horror films/monsters to fully appreciate this disc - but for you connosieurs out there, this one packs the goods!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A must for all "Psychotronic" fans!
Review: Something Weird Video is fast becoming my favorite DVD company. It seems like nearly every DVD is packed with enjoyable extras and lovingly reproduced features and featurettes. I especially like the "educational" shorts that they often include (such as Encyclopedia Britannica's "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" on this one).

The "Spook Show Spectacular" is indeed a spook-tacular 214 minutes (including Bert I. Gordon's feature "Tormented"). The access screens are set up like a haunted house ride, with scary sound fx and hidden nooks and crannies for you to explore. If you want a fun, ghoul-haunted tour of the history of the old "spook shows" that were staged in theatres between screenings of horror films from the 20s to the 60s, then you need this DVD!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A must for all "Psychotronic" fans!
Review: Something Weird Video is fast becoming my favorite DVD company. It seems like nearly every DVD is packed with enjoyable extras and lovingly reproduced features and featurettes. I especially like the "educational" shorts that they often include (such as Encyclopedia Britannica's "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" on this one).

The "Spook Show Spectacular" is indeed a spook-tacular 214 minutes (including Bert I. Gordon's feature "Tormented"). The access screens are set up like a haunted house ride, with scary sound fx and hidden nooks and crannies for you to explore. If you want a fun, ghoul-haunted tour of the history of the old "spook shows" that were staged in theatres between screenings of horror films from the 20s to the 60s, then you need this DVD!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You can't go wrong!
Review: Something Weird's "Monsters Crash The Pajama Party Spook Show Spectacular" is one of the most enjoyable DVD I now own. They perfectly exploit the medium by making every one of the nearly four hours of rare spooky shorts, trailers, and features "Easter eggs" that you discover by clicking your way through a haunted house. I don't know where they dug some of this stuff up, but
it's priceless and quite addictive. Alright, so the 3-D short consists of a bunch of kids in rubber masks stabbing at the camera, but it does work. This is one of the most lovingly prepared disks I've seen. I can't imagine a classic horror fan not being delighted by this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Oh My God......
Review: That's what I hear from people who realize I purchased this DVD...but man, I'm glad I did! It's a treasure hunt through a haunted house that you experience by clicking your remote control. There are tons of Easter eggs here with theatrical featurettes and promos a-plenty! Of course, the 30+ minute farce MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY is so bad, it makes Ed Wood look like Spielberg. This is a loving "retro-mentary" on the old spook shows that movie houses used to present live onstage with a horror feature; magic shows, monsters, ghosts in the audience and scads of ghoulish fun all meant for the kids! There's no friggin' way any theater these days would have the guts to do this stuff without worrying about getting reprimanded by some activist group. And the early 60's feature TORMENTED is great schlock horror! Total enjoyment for everyone and such a wonderful, forgotten part of cinema history that someone had the good sense to preserve for us all!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not even worth 1 star, I had to give it something.
Review: The menu was useless..would it have been too much trouble to label the items to make finding the stupid content easier?
The films were a ridiculous unwatchable total joke..in fact I couldn't sit through any of them they were so GODAWFUL BORING!!

As far as the 3D effect goes...there wasn't any! Even if the 3D effect WOULD have worked..what's so interesting about watching a couple of kids throwing a football back and forth?...then seeing some people wearing cheap, and I DO mean cheap rubber masks pointing things at the camera. It took me 10 minutes to even FIND this section which added to my already dissapointment.

The rest of the garbage on this disc is stuff picked up off projection booth floors. If you enjoy reading advertisements you'll LOVE this section!

I bought it, fast forward through the features, found the "so- called" easter eggs, removed the disc from the dvd player and placed it in the garbage for the garbage man to take the next trip. I'm saving the container..might be useful someday. Come to think of it, I could go skeet shooting with the disc itself.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dimestore Monsters Run Amok! BRILLIANT!!!
Review: This DVD is a mishmash. A low-rent theatrical short here, a trip through a carnival haunted house there, some still shots of old spookshow posters in between. In fact, "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party" is nearly impossible to describe. It's not a feature film, though there is a feature ("Tormented") included somewhere on the disc. Nor is it primarily about the title segment, a short monster/comedy flick starring a bunch of college kids and a mad scientist. Instead, it's almost as if the entire DVD is made up of extras. But what a great collection of extras it is! For one low price, you get monsters, happenin' 60s co-eds, horrible narration, REALLY bad acting, a bit of 3-D, a guy in a bargain-basement gorilla outfit and a whole lot more! Watching this disc feels like channel surfing in a world in which the Cramps run all the TV stations. It's like watching snippets of movies made by people who...well...wish they could make better movies. The result? It's absolutely, over-the-top brilliant; a patchwork of lowbrow cinema that will leave you wondering, "Where the heck did this stuff ever play??"

My only complaint about this disc (and I'm docking it a whole star for this) is that it's REALLY hard to navigate! The viewer is pretty much left to just stumble onto various scenes by trial and error. It's an amazing collection of clips and snippets overall, but this thing should have come with a map.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: More fun than the neighborhood spookhouse!
Review: This DVD is fueled by the power of discovery. The attractively designed DVD menus offer no information, and the viewer must click on graphics to decipher the many tricks or treats within. And there are plenty! The only criticism is the well-worn, scratched version of Bert I. Gordon's "Tormented" (great spook show material). Otherwise, you can spend hours unlocking this disc's secrets.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Monsters Crash the Editing
Review: This DVD is so hard to navigate, it's nearly unwatchable, and extremely frustrating. The viewer is promted through a series of arcade-type mazes and must click on pictures within each scene to view chapters. Chapters aren't named, so even getting to "Monsters Crash the PJ Party" feature is major undertaking. In two chapters, "Monsters Crash..." shows while an old radio show plays over the feature. In two others, the viewer is shown still clips of instructions that are meant to pull off a gag stunt on a city-wide basis - - "How to Bury Someone Alive," and something else. Neither stunt would fly in todays modern scene. Instructions could probably be found on the net in 2 minutes, while getting to them via the DVD would take more like 50 minutes.

I used to think Director Ed Wood's "Plan 9 Form Outer Space" was the worst movie ever made, but "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party" has given me pause for thought.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Disappointing DVD nearly redeemed by feature Tormented
Review: This DVD package overall was a big letdown. Some of the Spook Show content is interesting, mainly the coming attractions trailers and poster/still gallery, and the Monsters Crash Pajama Party short is good for a few cheap laughs. But most of the rest of it, other than the feature Tormented (which almost seems thrown in as an afterthought), is utterly dispensable. At least I think so, since there is no background material or context given as to what most of it is or what its significance might be. That's maddening enough, then add to that the fact that nothing is listed by name in the menus; if you're looking for anything in particular, you have to randomly click around to find it, hoping to remember where you found it last time. Apparently other reviewers found this "fun"; I found it merely tedious and frustrating. Then Something Weird adds insult to injury by plopping their (crappy-looking) logo in the lower corner of all the "extras," annoying the viewer/consumer even further. SW obviously doesn't "get" DVD; we don't want to pay twenty bucks to have to sit and look at corporate logos; yeccchh!! And I had always thought they were a pretty cool company.
OK, to be honest, I bought this disc partly just to get a halfway-decent (I hoped) copy of Tormented anyway. (Was this flick shown a lot at 1960s spook shows? Again, no context or information as to why it's on this disc.) While no classic, Tormented is schlocky fun, and interesting if only to see producer/director Bert I. Gordon (creator of such squeaky-clean SF fare as Attack of the Puppet People and Earth vs. the Spider) working in sleazy "Adults Only" mode. Richard Carlson, usually the whitebread hero in these things, also plays against type as a philandering creep, a jazz pianist who allows his well-stacked mistress Vi (Juli Reding) to fall to her death after she threatens his upcoming marriage to Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders). Gordon inflicts his annoying daughter Susan (she gets second billing!) on us as Sandy, Meg's daughter, compensating somewhat with some cool modern jazz on the soundtrack. Sharp-eyed (and -eared) TV addict viewers will recognize the faces and voices of blind Mrs. Ellis (Lillian Adams) and Frank Hubbard (Harry Fleer) from their bit parts in hundreds of other movies and TV shows. Some of the "special effects" (e.g. the footsteps) are inexcusably cheesy, and the attempt to make seaweed an object of horror fails miserably. But I love the surreal (and fairly well-done) sequences of Vi's disembodied hand and head haunting Carlson, and B-movie veteran Joe Turkel (The Killing, Blade Runner, Cycle Psycho, The Shining, etc., etc.) is a scream as the jive-talking slimeball blackmailer. All in all, plenty of cheesy, trashy fun for bad movie aficionados.
Unfortunately, SW Video again underwhelms with the quality of the source print. Although the grayscale, sharpness, and detail are acceptable, if unremarkable, there is nearly-constant light to moderate speckling and spotting, recurrent light vertical scratching, several messy reel changes, and a number of annoying jump cuts, particularly during the finale. At least they leave their stinkin' logo off the feature! Right now if you want this movie on DVD it's this or Madacy's Drive-In Double Feature version (which I have not seen but can probably be assumed is even worse based on other discs of theirs I have seen). This is probably the better deal even at the higher price since you get the Spook Show stuff with it, but it's hard to endorse purchase of this disc, considering all its flaws, unless you're really dying for the content. Four stars for the movie Tormented, three stars for the Spook Show content, two stars for the disc design, authoring, and overall quality. Note to Something Weird: pick up a few recent Anchor Bay or Image releases and see how DVD is done.


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