Honourable Mentions: Monster Night

This was a 2006 kid’s film directed by Leslie Allen and Lorenzo Doumani and follows the plight of the Ackerman family one Halloween Night.

The Akerman’s are dad George (Robert Carradine, Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire), Mom Clair (Vanessa Angel, Vampires: Out for Blood) and the kids Issac (Jake Thomas), Dana (Taylor Dooley) and Vincent (Joss Saltzman),

cheesy family

They have moved up to LA because Dad has a new job and have taken up residence in a spooky old house. The clean-up process gives us the impression that as well as been odd (in an idiosyncratic/eccentric) way the family are also typically cheesy smaltzy. The film concentrates on Issac going to Zombini High School – no clue in the name then – and falling for Jessica (Nikki Griffin), who happens to be with Jock Brock (Matthew Lawrence).

mini Hugh

Long story short, the Dean (Bob Thomas) is evil and is searching for immortality. To do this he needs to gather the thirteen souls of the zodiac. The thirteenth sign being tied to the 29th February – Issac’s birthday. He is left to babysit his siblings, when Brock and his pals turn up to party at Issac’s house and Vincent (who is five and dressed like Hugh Heffner) picks up a couple of girls for strip poker. In a moment that is left unexplained, Issac thinks Vincent has vanished and ends up with Dana, Jessica and Brock in a secret passage.

Musett Vanda as Morticia

The film is then their trip through a haunted Halloween, with the school teachers allegedly on their side and helping them, though they seem to lead them deeper and deeper into trouble. One teacher not helping them is Morticia (Musett Vander, Transylmania) maths teacher and vampire.

cbs

We see her as a teacher at the school, early on, but in her vampire form she only appears late on in the film and only for a very brief moment. She does take on a crap bat form, which is fashioned in cgi and, when in human form, manages to exude an air of the dominatrix. Indeed she even does this in class.

vamp form

When she reveals her full vampiric side it is a corrupt, decaying look with fangs. Luckily the kids have had chemistry lessons with voodoo priestess Miss Mammajamma (Marcelle Larice) – though Issac calls her a physics teacher – and as well as showing them the chemical basis of water she taught them about holy water. Jessica noticed that Morticia had no reflection in her make-up mirror and so throws holy (mineral) water over her. The vampire glows and explodes.

The film was fairly pants, the logic was left at the door as the film meandered through encounter after encounter. Not brill but it did have a vampire in it for about five minutes max. The imdb page is here.

;)Q