Well, it’s finally Halloween and with so much scary material out there, it makes one wonder what to review. In my search, I found there is one DVD that is perfect for a Halloween party or if you want something interesting you’ve never seen. The DVD in question is called “Monsters Crash the Pajama Party”, and the film itself is exactly as it sounds. Some girls decide to have a slumber party in a seemingly deserted house. However, unknown to them, there is a mad scientist who has been conducting experiments to create monsters (by “monsters” the film means people in gorilla suits of course.
Technically this is more of a featurette because it’s only about forty minutes long, but this is a piece of cinema history. Back in the 1950s-60’s, some theaters started to experiment with different gimmicks. Some of the famous gimmicks were actors planted in the audience, the ill-conceived smell-o-vision, how one movie theater installed a giant walking skeleton puppet for scares, and probably the strangest of them all, 3D glasses. It also shows off little scenes that come from certain films that used these gimmicks or a skull talking that came from other weird and unusual movies of the era.
Of course, these aren’t the only things in the DVD since there are two other long segments built for party atmospheres. The two things in question are, a montage of old radio spots with posters for films and some film trailers for theater exclusive events. These really set the mood for a fun party and give some fun insight into practices that theaters used back then. These features show a time when some theaters took chances and had fun while doing it even if it was for a short time. With the addition of commercials now in front of films, it makes one wish for a time when movie theaters experimented in how to get people into seats.
However, there is an annoying problem in how the DVD is structured to access this material. You access these things by moving on the direction pad on the DVD remote and clicking on something in the background. However, you don’t know what you’re going to click on until you press enter and something may or may not highlight. This can get annoying if you want to bring up something to show your friends. There is also the problem of quantity of material.
If a person were to look at all the stuff excluding the big three featurettes, a person could see everything in about forty five minutes. Yes, there is a space limitation of how much material that you can place on a DVD, but there could have been more things. However, there is a funny but annoying thing that comes with the DVD. The DVD comes with a pair of red and blue 3D glasses, without something to put them on your ears. Somehow you have to keep these things on your face without them falling off, and they only work with one thing in the whole DVD.
Overall, this is a very well thought out DVD that shows off old gimmicks of a bygone age of films. This is for people who want something silly for a Halloween party or don’t want to be burnt out by serious scary movies. While there are some problems with selecting things from the DVD menus, this is a very good purchase. You can buy this film from Something Weird Video’s website for about $10.