If Transylvania 6-5000 was the perfect horror comedy for tweens and tweens at heart, then Stan Helsing is basically the teen equivalent, and all that entails. In other words, it's just that much more raunchy, trashy and sophomoric as the sort of thing a teenage boy would be into at that age, down to its juvenile obsession with girls, sex and boobs in general. In this film, it's not just men groping boobs- it's the girls as well. Because that's exactly the sort of thing a teenager- or a teen at heart- would write if they could make a movie at that age.
Perhaps needless to say, this won't be for everyone- the PC police need not apply to this one, to be sure. If there is a taboo to be broken, then you can rest assured it will be present and accounted for here. A random vampire stripper fantasy sequence? Check. Girls making out? But of course. Aren't-we-naughty-and-just-a-little-edgy gay jokes? Yep. "Wacky" cutaways to bizarre stock footage? It's here. The legendary Leslie Nielsen (Airplane, The Naked Gun trilogy) in drag? Sure- why not?
The plot, such as it is, deals with a video store employee, Stan (Steve Howey, of TV's Reba and Shameless) tasked with one last job before heading to a Halloween party: dropping off some videos to his boss' mother's house, which he only begrudgingly agrees to after his job is threatened. The problem is that she just happens to live in a gated community that is populated by a whole lot of weird people- and monsters and killers at seemingly every turn. Can Stan and his pals complete the task and more importantly, get out alive in the process? The answer is this movie.
Stan Helsing comes from one of the executive producers of the Scary Movie series, which should tell you right away the level of comedy we're dealing with here. Still, you know you're in trouble when the film literally has to spell out in the credits that it's a parody: as in: Stan Helsing - A Parody. Um, no shit. I kind of figured that out from the title, thanks. Though I would call this more of a spoof than a parody, really- parody as a word seems a bit too refined for what we get here.
For those few who don't get the joke, it turns out that Stan is, in fact, a descendent of the legendary Van Helsing, aka the man that brought down Dracula himself back in the day. Back in 2009 when this film was made, the film Van Helsing was still relatively recent, so most filmgoers, and certainly the ones this was being marketed to, would have gotten the reference, but it was still a good five years past, so I guess the filmmakers wanted to hedge their bets and make sure everyone knew what they were in for. That they felt they had to isn't a great sign.
Also not a great sign- the fact that what was probably the biggest name in the film (outside of Nielsen, who basically just has a glorified cameo), Kenan Thompson, isn't even on the poster, as seen above. I double-checked, and Thompson was indeed already on Saturday Night Live by this point, and had been for several years, so it wasn't as if he was just known to a select audience for, say, All That, Kenan & Kel or Good Burger.
Indeed, Thompson remains the movie's biggest name to this day, and that actually includes Nielsen, who is probably lesser-known to a younger generation than he is to those of us who grew up in the 80's or before. I mean, I get that the movie's called Stan Helsing, but damn, can't a brother even get on the poster? Hell, even most of the killers are on there, for God's sake. For shame.
Well, as it turns out, he's easily one of the funniest things in it, which granted, isn't saying that much, but still- he almost single-handedly makes it worth seeing at least once, so that's saying something. Granted, he doesn't have that much to work with here, but I can almost guarantee the majority of funny lines he has in the movie he probably made up himself, and he probably did it on the spot just riffing. It's that SNL/improv background- you can just tell he's making a lot of this up as he goes along, and wisely, the filmmakers let him go for it.
Another notable name in the cast is hottie Desi Lydic, who thankfully went on to bigger and much better things via MTV's entertaining teen series Awkward- she was the wacky guidance counselor that could use a lot of guiding her own damn self- and, more recently, as a correspondent on the Trevor Noah-led incarnation of The Daily Show, which remains her prime gig to this day.
She also made a bit of history as one half of a lesbian couple on the Disney Channel's Good Luck Charlie. This also wasn't her first crack at a spoof, having made her film debut in the similar Not Another Teen Movie. While that was just a bit part, she's front and center here, as Thompson's character's love interest, a ditzy masseuse and former stripper. It's a standard issue bimbo role, TBH, but Lydic admittedly gives it her all and goes for it with gusto, which is more than can be said for some actresses in comparable roles.
Still, she probably doesn't rank it high on her resume, nor should she, given that one of her most memorable scenes involves her being willingly ravaged by a rat. (A normal one, not a monster one, for those with visions of Gnaw or Rats: Night of Terror in their heads, lol.) I did get a kick out of the fact that she just randomly changed outfits throughout the film, thus implying that she had a bunch of alternate sexy Halloween costumes at her disposal and couldn't resist trying them all on for size.
Rounding out the main cast is horror semi-regular Diora Baird, who has a tendency to rest on her considerable laurels- and boy, is this the perfect movie for it- but is actually a halfway decent actress when she gets a halfway decent role, which sadly, isn't as often as she probably deserves. Unfortunately, when you lead as eye candy- she hit the scene as a Guess model- you tend to get typecast as eye candy. She's perfectly fine here, but she doesn't have much to work with, so that's a relative term in this case. Perhaps it's more accurate to say she does what she can.
Her films include: Wedding Crashers, Accepted, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, My Best Friend's Girl, Night of the Demons (remake), Hot Tub Time Machine, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, Concrete Blondes and the delightfully-titled Young People Fucking. Aside from Crashers and Hot Tub, neither of which she has big roles in, she hasn't had a lot of hits- the TCM flick was probably the biggest she had a major role in- but she's relatively consistent as an actress, so she continues to work steadily.
She also has a solid amount of TV under her belt, including a recurring role on Shameless alongside her leading man here, Steve Howey; as well as guest roles on 2 and 1/2 Men, Law & Order: SVU, Psych, Angel from Hell and Cobra Kai. Some of you might also recognize her from music videos by The Black Keys, Garfunkel & Oates and Maroon 5, or as featured in Playboy and Maxim magazines, all of which highlight her obvious assets. She's gorgeous obviously, but I think with the right role, she could knock it out of the park- just look at what Lydic managed under similar circumstances.
Stan Helsing is pretty goofy, I'm not gonna lie, and it is definitely of its time- some of the humor is pretty cringe-worthy by today's standards, but it's also in keeping with what was popular at the time, which, in addition to the Scary Movie franchise, also included stuff like Epic Movie, Date Movie, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie... you get the idea. Basically, movies that were about as inventive as their titles.
I mean, don't get me wrong, some of these movies have their moments- I kind of liked Date Movie and Not Another Teen Movie but, and maybe I'm admittedly biased here, they just don't hold up as well as the stuff I grew up with, like Airplane, Top Secret, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Naked Gun, etc.
I think the trick is that all of those movies spoofed a specific subgenre and mostly played it straight, whereas a lot of the more modern incarnations tend to spoof specific movies and throw in an awful lot of then-current pop culture references, which tend to date the movies horribly. Because the older ones tend avoid that sort of thing, they've aged a lot better than the modern ones.
Still, I gotta say, I laughed more at this one than Transylvania 6-5000, both of which I watched back-to-back. I guess that means I'm stuck more in my teens than my tweens, which is probably for the best. Like I said, some of the humor here has not aged well, even though it was only ten years ago, so those easily offended might want to stick with Transylvania, even though it has its fair share of problematic stuff, too. Actually, you might want to skip both, really, on general principle.
That said, I was moderately entertained, and I can't say I was all that offended- though it takes a lot for that with me, TBH- even while I acknowledge that some of the writing and situations were absolutely dreadful, and I felt sorry for the ladies in particular during certain scenes, if not in general. I mean, they can't really say they didn't know what they were getting into if they read the script, so you can't feel THAT sorry for them, but still, they're just talented enough that you can't help but feel they deserve better, at the very least.
But the film does has its moments, especially for horror fans- there's some quick, fun jokes at the video store (the Ring one made me laugh in particular) that one can't help but wish there were more of throughout, and the Freddy Krueger character gets off some good lines and has some funny visual bits, with various sight gags involving his claws being replaced by various other items, sort of like an ad-hoc Swiss Army Knife, only with the likes of a toothbrush, bottle opener and even a tube of lipstick!
It's also worth a mention that the actor playing the Jason knock-off was actually the actor who played the real Jason in Freddy vs. Jason, Ken Kerzinger. And the actor playing the gay porn director is none other than the actual director, Bo Zenga, which seems about right. Zenga, incidentally, also wrote and produced Soul Plane, which was even worse than this film, as well as producing the halfway decent actual horror film, Turistas.
This remains his lone directing credit- and his last credit overall, which seems about right. I think this film was one of the last of the spoof craze of the 2000's, so, much like Van Helsing, the character, one could rightfully say that it helped put the final nail in the coffin of the much-derided subgenre. I mean, it's not the worst spoof I've ever seen, but it's certainly not one of the better ones, either. But if you're looking for a pleasant enough silly Halloween-themed horror-comedy, it's at least watchable, I suppose, if only for the main cast.
Check it out, if you're hard up enough for laughs, I guess. It's pretty ridiculous, but it gets the job done, more or less, even if you might hate yourself a little for laughing a bit too hard at the more off-color jokes. But hey, what do you expect from the writer of Soul Plane? 😜
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