Editorials
[TV Terrors] Remembering Joe Bob Briggs’ “MonsterVision”
Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some genre TV that took genuine approaches to creativity that became cult classics, and others that sank in to obscurity.
We begin… with “MonsterVision.“
- Aired from 1991 – 2000
- Aired on Turner Network Television
Once upon a time, cable television was an escape for various audiences that went in search of programming tailored toward them. The super stations though were a platform for whatever programming the networks could afford, allowing them to air blocks of movies and animated series that could fill time. Mornings on the USA Network saw airings of obscure kung fu movies, and on Saturday nights if you stayed up late enough you could entertain yourself with a classic horror or sci-fi film hosted by Joe Bob Briggs.
“Monstervision” was once mainly a creature feature programming block that aired late night with hosts Penn and Teller, but in 1996 it became a playground for the one and only Joe Bob Briggs. Briggs (real name: John Bloom), a very experienced newspaper columnist and satirist, was brought in fresh from The Movie Channel to host “Monstervision” after years on “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater.” After a short time the show became synonymous with Joe Bob, who used the platform to deliver his own off the cuff rants about society and instill priceless nuggets of information and trivia to his fans.
“Monstervision” came at a time when the internet was still in its infancy, so Joe Bob’s information was often fresh and surprising, as well as incredibly funny. Probably my all time favorite episode of “Monstervision” was the airing of “The Warriors,” where Joe Bob laid out a map of New York City and showed the trail of the Warriors from the Bronx to Coney Island. There’s even the time he was scolded by Anne Francis during a screening of “Forbidden Planet.” TNT “Monstervision” allowed the Joe Bob character to emerge from his trademark trailer and cop a squat on his lawn chair.
With his own beer in a koozy, he’d introduce the pair of movies for the night. Oftentimes they had their own themes, and they’d come on late. One week Joe Bob aired a Dracula night where he aired 1992’s Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” alongside Mel Brooks’ “Dracula Dead and Loving It.” He also had “Joe Bob’s Summer School” which allowed him to interview folks like Clint Howard, Linnea Quigley, and Roddy Piper. He also sat down with army veterans questioning the credibility of “Red Dawn,” as well as a pet psychic. He could also be found at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant while hosting “Willy Wonka” and even did remotes for Superbowl weekends, hosting movies like “The Longest Yard” and “Semi-Tough.”
Who can forget the all night marathon of “Friday the 13th” films, sans “The Final Chapter,” which was an especially hard pill to swallow for Joe Bob, who would constantly call out TNT during the marathon. Joe Bob always had a punk edge to him, which made it tough to work within the confines of TNT; the network was increasingly cleaning up its image for a more family friendly section of the audience.
That said, Joe Bob was able to skirt the censors, constantly pointing out the scenes that were cut for sexual content, and never held back on what he thought of specific movies. Watch as Joe Bob spends the entirety of “The Fog” mocking its premise, and harping on how Carpenter is just so much better than the film itself. He even visibly suffers through 1995’s “The Howling: New Moon Rising,” giggling most of the time out of sheer incredulity at the film’s awfulness.
Joe Bob was just such a refreshing part of the late night cable experience, because he often seemed to be working without fear of reprimanding from his superiors. This meant we were almost always given a crusty Joe Bob, and always assured a dirty or funny joke as the show drew to a close. Joe Bob basically kept his format and good old fashioned shtick even when TNT retooled Monstervision to “Joe Bob’s Hollywood Saturday Night.”
There, the concept of Monstervision stretched in to films like “A League of Their Own,” “Look Who’s Talking Now” and “Twins,” but Joe Bob never ran out of quips and comebacks. Without much preamble, Monstervision ended in 2000. “Monstervision” remained a favorite for years, with Joe Bob constantly re-visiting memories of filming the show for fans during conventions and various interviews. The show ended when TNT retooled its entire network in the early aughts; but though it was cancelled, it never died in the hearts of movie buffs.
With the internet age, it garnered a ton of retrospectives and tributes, and inspired a new wave of horror hosts that carried the torch for Joe Bob.
Is It On DVD/Blu-Ray? No, but the segments featuring host Joe Bob Briggs have been made available online, and the “Ice Cream Man” segments were made exclusively available to buyers of the Limited Edition of “Ice Cream Man.” After almost twenty years off the air, Joe Bob is returning for a movie marathon on the popular horror streaming service Shudder TV this Summer, and will surely breed a new generation of horror fanatics who have yet to learn about the horror gospel of Joe Bob.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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