Editorials
Maximum Monster Mash: Joining the ‘Mad Monster Party?’ This Halloween
Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass were, and to many still are, the undisputed kings of the holiday special. Their innovative stop-motion films, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970), and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), are mainstays of the Christmas season and have been endlessly influential and often parodied for generations. Perhaps lesser known but deserving of the same esteem is their 1967 animated film, Mad Monster Party? (yes, the question mark is part of the title), the ultimate musical monster mash extravaganza for the ages. Over the years since its release, it has slowly become a cult classic that has been sought out by Monster fans the world over. Where else, after all, can you find every classic monster imaginable from across time, film studios, and various copyright entanglements all in one place? And in creating this gem, Rankin-Bass captured lightning in a bottle.
The mid-1960s were the watershed moment for Rankin-Bass, with all the elements that would make them such a creative force coming together. Conceptual artist Jack Davis, who joined the company soon after Rudolph aired, brought a fresh and distinctive look to the specials, and specifically the monsters in Mad Monster Party? Though drawn from the classic look of the Universal Monsters (and a few others), Davis gave them a unique style that evokes the original movies while augmenting the look into something appealing for all ages. When these designs were paired with the storyboards of Don Duga, who beautifully captured the Expressionistic style of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang with the classic monster template set by Tod Browning and James Whale, there was magic in the making. With a very funny script by Len Korobkin and Harvey Kurtzman, the film was ready to be brought to life.
Not long before the making of Rudolph, Rankin discovered the Japanese stop-motion animation company MOM Productions. Rankin was thoroughly taken with their work and, with some direction from himself and Bass, dubbed it “AniMagic.” Of course, stop-motion had been around for decades and had changed very little since the pioneering work of Willis O’Brien (The Lost World, 1927; King Kong, 1933) and Ray Harryhausen (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, 1953; The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, 1958; Jason and the Argonauts, 1963). Rankin saw the potential of using stop motion on television to stand out from the crowd of traditionally animated series and specials. This, combined with creative stories, unique designs of the characters, and artful execution, worked like gangbusters.
The creative team was rounded out by composer and songwriter Maury Laws, who first joined the company for The Daydreamer in 1966 and continued to work with Rankin-Bass for many years. His songs, with lyrics by Jules Bass, capture the fun of the era and the spirit of the holiday featured in each special. For Mad Monster Party?, Laws and Bass wrote the Bond-esque main theme sung by Ethel Ennis doing her best Shirley Bassey, “You’re Different”—the Monster’s Mate’s ode to her man, “Mr. Mummy”—performed by a Beatle-haired band of skeletons called Little Tibia and the Fibula, “It’s Our Time to Shine,” the love song “Never Was a Love Like Mine,” and the earworm “Stay One Step Ahead” sung, or rather spoken in rhythm, by the star of the film Boris Karloff.
Karloff was still the biggest horror star in the world in the late 1960s thanks to a resurgence courtesy of Roger Corman, Mario Bava, and the Grinch, for whom he had provided voices the year before. Also receiving star billing was comedienne and television pioneer Phyllis Diller, credited as “The Monster’s Mate” but never given a name, though the Frankenstein Monster itself is given the name Fang. Gale Garnett was brought in to voice the female lead, Francesca, Dr. Frankenstein’s secretary. All the other voices in the film were provided by the incomparable Allen Swift, a master of celebrity imitation, along with providing plenty of original voices. In Mad Monster Party?, he provides Felix with the voice of Jimmy Stewart, Yetch with Peter Lorre, and Dracula with, of course, more than a little Lugosi, along with unique voices for most of the other monsters.
The film itself is a monster lover’s dream, packing its 90 minutes with more monsters than arguably any other movie ever made, surpassing even the classic Universal Monster mashups like House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), while clearly looking to them and the Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters films for inspiration. The story is simple. An aging Dr. Boris von Frankenstein (Karloff) sends out invitations to all his monster friends to announce his greatest discovery, and they all congregate at his castle. Among the guests is Felix Flanken, the Baron’s klutzy nephew, whom Frankenstein plans to make his successor as Chairman of the Board of Monsters Incorporated, the worldwide council of monsters. Dracula, the Monster’s Mate, and Francesca each feel they are best suited to follow in the Baron’s footsteps and seek to sabotage Felix. It all culminates with Francesca falling in love with Felix and the monsters joining forces to capture the couple, but they are foiled by the arrival of royalty—King Kong.
Of course, Mad Monster Party? is less about plot and more about the madcap monster fun to be had along the way. Some of the most memorable moments include a monster food fight, a series of nocturnal rivalries between snoring roommates, and a picnic between Felix and Francesca that leads to Dracula losing his fangs in a tree. Joining in on the fun are the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Gill Man, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Mummy, and Yetch, Frankenstein’s Peter Lorre-inspired servant. On top of all this is a whole army of zombies dressed like bellboys. It is all truly inspired madness.
By Arthur Rankin’s own admission, the pacing is bogged down at times as the original script was lengthened to feature length due to the success of Rudolph. Even in these padded sequences, such as the zombies flying airplanes and the Chef Machiavelli sequence, are still a lot of fun and well executed. At times, they are reminiscent of Abbott and Costello or Marx Brothers routines that do not necessarily forward the plot but supply plenty of good laughs.
Though still best known, and probably always will be, for their Christmas output, Rankin-Bass made specials to last year-round, including two more Halloween specials in 1972, Jack O’ Lantern and Mad Mad Monsters, both of which are traditional hand-drawn animation features. In Jack O’Lantern, made for the television series Festival of Family Classics, a leprechaun changes himself into a pumpkin for the winter. He comes to life as a kind of scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head and helps a pair of children scare off witches and warlocks. Mad Mad Monsters is an official follow-up to Mad Monster Party? in which the monsters attend the wedding of the Frankenstein Monster and his Bride at the Transylvania Astoria Hotel. Allen Swift returned to voice the monsters, but the absence of Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller, along with the traditional rather than stop-motion animation, all make for a very different experience.
All told, there is nothing quite like Mad Monster Party? It is perfect entertainment for the whole family during the Halloween season. It is a “barrage of jokes” kind of movie, many of which hit, though some admittedly don’t, and some of them go by so quickly that it may well take multiple viewings to catch them all. I first came to the movie as a Frankenstein completist but have found myself returning to it time and again and enjoying it more each time. It may not reach the heights of the very best Frankenstein and monster parodies like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Young Frankenstein (1974), and The Man with Two Brains (1983), but few films can. And if you love monsters, Mad Monster Party? is second to none for sheer volume of monster laughs and mayhem.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
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