Sometimes, all I ever hear about a movie is how bad it
is. That is, if I ever hear about the
movie at all. I hear how much people
dislike the movie, how it fails at everything it attempts, how unfunny any of
the jokes are, how the scares do anything but scare, how the drama is
weightless, the acting poor, etc. I
basically hear about anything bad about the bad movies. I’ll hear about how I should never see the
movie. I should never think about seeing
the movie. I should see something good
instead. But you know me. I’ll watch a bad movie any day of the week,
and many times I’ll enjoy it.
One of the movies that I’ve received this kind of
description about is Stan Helsing.
That’s right, Stan Helsing. I’m
not writing about Van Helsing. I’m
writing about Stan Helsing. It’s the
2009 Bo Zenga directed comedy about Stan (Steve Howey), a descendent of the
famous Van Helsing. One night, on the
way to a party, he stops for a movie delivery and gets trapped in a town full
of slasher movie villain knockoffs.
Along for the adventure with Stan are Nadine (Diora Baird), Teddy (Kenan
Thompson), and Mia (Desi Lydic).
I try to go into every movie with an open mind, but Stan
Helsing was a tough one to do that with.
All I had heard about the movie was negativity. Usually that doesn’t affect me in any way
whatsoever. If I hear overly bad things
about a movie, I still go in hoping to like a movie. That doesn’t matter. When I looked up the movie, my hopes started
to go down. It seemed to be a
parody/spoof film focused upon the slasher films that were popular throughout
the 80s and early 90s. That made me a
little bit worried because most of the movies in that subgenre have turned out
badly in the past fifteen years or so.
I’ve only liked a handful of the numerous spoofs released since the
first Scary Movie. They don’t make me
feel too confident in what I’m about to watch.
Watching Stan Helsing, I came to the realization that it’s
not quite the parody that I thought it was going to be. Yes, there are many references to pop
culture, and it has the same sense of humour as many of the other spoofs that
have been made in the past fifteen years.
I will say that much. But when it
came to the story, it didn’t feel like a beat-by-beat rip-off of another movie
with comedy added in. It seemed to be
its own thing, making a comedic sendup to the horror villains of decades
past. I appreciated that much.
That didn’t help make the first half of Stan Helsing good,
however. The humour that the majority of
recent spoofs and parodies share isn’t a kid of humour that makes me
laugh. They play upon the idea of what
is popular in the moment. The jokes come
from recognition rather than actually being funny. That’s a major problem when trying to create
a comedy that will age well and be remembered in future generations. It’s hard to make a memorable comedy when all
of the jokes are based on the pop culture fads of when the movie is made. The first half of Stan Helsing seems to be
trying to play upon the same sort of ground that other spoofs and parodies play
on. It’s all the setup for the horror
icons and the movies that they are from, though they couldn’t get the licensing
and had to change the names to joke names.
It feels like they are forcing in all of the pop culture references in
an attempt to get people to laugh out of recognition. This half of the movie is exactly what I
feared that the movie would be. It’s an
unfunny reference regurgitation machine.
Then I got to about halfway through the movie. The number of references being thrown into
the movie dropped exponentially. It
became more about the story and less about pop culture. It was about four friends stuck in a scary
situation. It was about the four of them
trying to get out of a little town safely.
It became a movie and not a series of unrelated half-jokes. The movie tightened up in a way I wasn’t
expecting and I ended up enjoying the back half. I laughed, I didn’t cry, and I had an
all-around good time.
The thing that most worked in the second half of the movie
was the performances. Whereas the first
half got bogged down in the setting up of all of the references, the rest of
the movie was able to let the actors shine in their roles. From Steve Howey as the reluctant hero that
had to go from being the slacker to showing his inner heroism, to Desi Lydic
playing an airhead who has gotten herself into too many sexual dangers, each
actor brought exactly the right ingredients to their role.
In the end, I’m not sure that I can agree or disagree about
whether Stan Helsing is as bad as people say it is, or if it isn’t. It has parts that are surely as dour as the
impression that people tried to give me.
There were also parts of the movie that I truly liked and would say make
the movie not the atrocity that people claimed.
I would watch it again. I’ll say
that much. That has to mean something.
Movies are all up to the opinion of the person watching
them. The opinions of other people
shouldn’t influence what you think of a movie.
The problem is that they do. In a
world where everyone can easily put their thoughts and feelings about anything
out on the internet, or in text messages, or anywhere, it’s hard to avoid going
into a movie without any impressions on what it will be like. Try as hard as you can, it’s nearly
impossible to prevent that influence.
Watching a movie can change these impressions. That’s what I found in this case.
There are some notes to make before I’m done:
- Ben Cotton plays one of the monsters in Stan Helsing. He was also in The Marine 3: Homefront, which we covered in the 30th post of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
- John DeSantis plays a monster in Stan Helsing. He was in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.
- Other parody/spoof films I’ve covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies include 30 Nights of… I don’t want to type it all and A Haunted House.
- Stan Helsing was suggested by @TheTalkingCan.
- If you have any suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, leave a comment. I like comments. Or you could tell me on Twitter. I do look there too.
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