Stan Helsing

Stan Helsing (A Parody) | Parody | rated R (A,L) | starring Steve Howey, Kenan Thompson, Diora Baird, Desi Lydic, Leslie Neilsen | 1:48 mins

Slacker video store clerk Stan Helsing (Steve Howey, Reba), whose number one rule is to not get involved, along with his ex girlfriend (Diora Baird) and two friends (Keenan Thompson and Desi Lydic) make a detour to his mom’s house to drop off some porn before going to a Halloween party. After running over a dog in the street, they stumble into a small town that was once burned to the ground in a fire and is now haunted by 80s movie monsters. Stan is confused for legendary monster fighter Van Helsing as the only man who can slay the monsters.

What tha… ok, I thought I was pretty safe avoiding the scene-specific parody works of Andy Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. Stan Helsing is a parody – as it pronounces itself in text as large as the title card itself just in case you thought this was going to be a Michael Moore documentary. The question is, what is it parodying? There is no genre or style or type of movie that it is going after. Horror? Maybe. 80s monster movies? Maybe. Then what about them? Stan Helsing‘s gripe – they exist. It doesn’t parody a genre, it isn’t a scene specific parody, the movie literally just dresses people up as various movie monsters and has them appear in the scene together. They don’t even kill anybody if memory serves. They just kind of stand around.

And yes there names have been changed ever so slightly in that obnoxious way these movies do that protects the movie from copyright and pretends to be a joke. Although I’m still flumoxed as to how the movie got away with using the name Van Helsing. Would anyone that had any rights to the Van Helsing comics really sign off on this? And the costumes have various quote/unquote “funny” additions to them like Freddy Kruger with a Flava Flav clock around his neck or Hellraiser‘s Pinhead with syringes in his head. Syringes. Get it? I don’t either. The script seems like something that was thrown up during a drunken frat night trading sex jokes at Penn State. Probably seemed funny at the time under the heavy influence of alcohol.

The funniest thing going here is Steve Howey’s perennial bandanna, an unintentionally cheesy attempt to hide his receding hair line. The performances are terrible, namely Kenan Thompson who you’d think could parlay his SNL work into anything else and Leslie Neilsen (seriously, how the hell did he get talked into this?) who spends the duration of the film in a dress. I actually have a suspicion that Desi Lydic playing a walking blonde joke might be the most talented one in the movie. There are a few upskirt gags, at least two scenes laboring on toilet humor sound effects and references to movies like The Blair Witch Project (1999) that are all so dated and beaten into the ground that it begs the question if the movie had been sitting on the shelf for 10 years before being spit out onto video store shelves. There is no audience Stan Helsing serves. Maybe one that will sit and watch Diora Baird do anything.

But again, I’m probably trying to make sense out of something that is complete nonsense. Stan Helsing is absolutely rancid. A cringing attempt to be “funny” and make a quicky buck from the parody audience. A blood-boilingly stupid waste of time that is less a real movie and more a cardboard cut-out of one. Maybe even worse then the scene specific parodies, which is a phrase I never thought I would say. Avoid like the plague.