“Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer”

Title: “Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer”
Running time: 90 min
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Rated: R – [horror violence and gore, not to mention language]
Cast: Trevor Matthews, Robert, Englund, Rachel Skarsten
Director: John Knautz

To the attention of all hack/slash horror-comedy movies: If you loved “From Dusk till Dawn” and still watch it for nostalgic reasons, there is a new movie in town. “Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer”. Now if you stop at other review spots for movies, you will certainly read a far better description of what’s so good about it, but I will say it in the simplest most understandable way “It Rocked!”.

If you have paid attention to my complaints about the movie industry, you would have noticed that watching a movie is like playing tag in a mine field: “Tag! You’re…BOOM!” and your brains are scattered to fertilize the land. I am quite uncomfortable with what to expect and when you can’t trust even high profile Oscar products, then the situation is really miserable. But fear not, for B movies are coming out of the shade with the promise NOT to suck. Or at least I hope so. “Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer” doesn’t woo you with a mysterious, misleading and pretentious title. It’s plain and simple and you get what you see. The movie poster is a 1000 word summary of the whole movie.

Jack Brooks (Trevor Matthews) is a plumber with anger management issues after his parents have been eaten by a forest troll when he was a small boy, who has to deal with the sudden transformation of his science teacher at night school (Robert Englund) in a monster that spreads this makeover procedure among students. As we all know Robert Englund is an institution in the horror industry, giving nightmares to people back in his Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I never expected him to be hilarious and so skilled with physical comedy and he definitely gave one hell of an over the top performance to keep me laughing. The lead male also did pretty well as a neurotic individual, though the name Trevor Matthews doesn’t ring any particular bells.

Gore and violence is pretty much what you got back with “From Dusk till Dawn”, but with even less special effects. There was no animation or CGI. I think that rubber and synthetic slime doesn’t scare anybody, but I certainly loved it for the entertainment value. Makes me wonder why we and the movie industry wanted special effects at all. It seems we can do pretty well with what we can model.