As a kid I remember being so excited for the end of the week when the WWF's "Saturday Night's Main Event" would be on. It's offerings of larger-than-life heroes such as The Junkyard Dog and Hulk Hogan taking out the baddies would concrete my love for 80's wrestling forever and it's this un-ironic adoration of that time that made me enjoy Monster Brawl more than your average person. Just imagine watching your favourite WWE show only replacing the steroid-infused brawlers with such mythical creatures as Frankenstein and the Wolfman and you get the idea. You definitely have to come into this in the right frame of mind to enjoy it, which is why I found all the negative comments about it online to be perplexing - just what the Hell were you expecting?

Directed-written by Jesse Thomas Cook (Scarce), right from the get-go we know what we're in for. Everything is structured to play out like a television broadcast starting with a pair of over-the-top commentators (Dave Foley, Art Hindle), some flashy graphics and stats for each participant, and even legendary wrestling manager Jimmy "The Mouth of the South" Hart who's playing himself and basically gets to spend the entire movie surrounded by a pair of hot girls in bikinis. What makes this different from your usual wrestling show is that it takes place in a secret graveyard and that it pits the undead versus creatures - where else are you going to see a mummy face off against a lady vampire?

And that's really the basic plot of Monster Brawl. There's not much else going on within its 89 minutes. They have seen fit to pepper in snippets of each monster's past about how they became the way they are and their invitation to the tournament - my personal favourite being the swamp monsters which is staged to look like your typical nature show you'd see on Discovery Channel. We also get amusing statistic screens, pre-match interviews, and a whole lot of Mortal Kombat-like exclamations ("Fantastic!!") from a disembodied voice while our combatants pummel each other. There's also a zombie invasion in the finale to deal with but it's almost like an afterthought.

Monster Brawl is such a fun idea and I found myself smiling more than once. I loved the old school make-up effects design, its campy vibe, and the dopey humour but kind of question the decision to make this a feature length effort as it definitely gets a little tiresome by the end. This probably would have worked even better as a sixty minute short. Most of the cast consists of various real-life wrestlers (and Jason David Brown taking on no less than four roles!) but we get some recognizable faces as well. The always great Lance Henriksen supplies the narration, Foley ("The Kids in the Hall") pairs up well with great Canadian character actor Hindle (The Brood, Black Christmas) who gets to spend most of the movie gruffly commenting and pounding back booze, and aside from Hart's appearance they've also brought in Kevin Nash to play the Army colonel manager of our zombie wrestler. Also on hand is the gigantic Robert Mailett (he was "Kurrgan" in the WWE) playing the Frankenstein monster. I definitely enjoyed getting to ogle Rachelle Corbeil as our dark-haired ring girl.

With Scarce, Cook delivered a surprisingly entertaining cannibal flick and for a follow up he's gone away from the depravity of that flick to the utterly ridiculous. Granted, one of the first things I thought about before pressing play on this was how similar it sounded to 1989's Arena (a wacky b-movie from producer Charles Band about intergalactic boxing matches) but if you're a fan of wrestling, especially the 80's ilk I mentioned above, and are willing to put your brain in check, there's no doubt you'll be entertained by the silliness that is Monster Brawl. (Chris Hartley, 3/11/15)

Directed By: Jesse Thomas Cook.
Written By: Jesse Thomas Cook.

Starring: Dave Foley, Art Hindle, Robert Maillet, Jimmy Hart.