Review of Stan Helsing (2009) by Darren C — 23 May 2012

It's Halloween night, and slacker video clerk Stan Helsing- along with his insanely sexy ex-girlfriend, best buddy and an exotic dancer/'massage therapist'- detours into a town cursed by the biggest monsters in movie history: Freddy (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Jason (Friday the 13th), Pinhead (Hellraiser), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Chucky (Child's Play) and Michael Myers (Halloween). But when Stan discovers that he's a direct descendant of the legendary monster hunter Van Helsing, the four have to survive a night of hell raisers, hockey masks, psycho dolls, leather faces, creepy hitchhikers, vampire strippers, killer karaoke, and lots of hot chicks kissing each other.

Stan Helsing is a parody of all the greatest horror movies ever made and it's actually quite surprising. The story is very bad, as you would have guessed, it's written quite badly and feels like it was written because it could. The characters weren't bad as they just parodied the stereotypical characters you normally see in horror movies- the main character who's pretty much a bad-ass, the main character's on-off partner, the funny best friend and the slutty friend. However, in saying that, they weren't written very well. The horror movie characters were okay too, the funniest being Freddy. The acting was below average but Kenan Thompson was comical as Teddy. The direction was below mediocre and the special effects were a step up from Disaster Movie and there are one or two funny scenes but other than that, an instantly-forgettable parody just like the others.

I had been waiting for a parody with all the horror movie legends in and this is the result. It's not really a bad parody but it's nowhere near good. The script is actually funny in a couple of places and Leslie Nielson makes for funny viewing but I'm afraid it's a miss. This had the potential to raise the parody genre from the pits of Hell which we have Seltzer and Friedburg to blame. The make-up is the worst thing about the movie but I'm pretty sure that it was deliberate so I dismiss it. Overall, funny on one or two occasions but they were quiet chuckles and not proper laughs.