2020 October Horror Challenge #49: "Saturday the 14th"

 

This movie is a spoof sending up horror movies. There are a few different ways to make a movie like this. You could go the "Scary Movie" route and basically every scene is a sketch mocking a particular horror movie, or you could make a movie where the characters just act silly and ridiculous,  or you can play it straight like a real movie with a plot and storyline, but just pack it with jokes and references, like the Mr. Boogedy movies. That's what this movie does. It's kinda like a really long episode of The Addams Family mixed with The Munsters mixed with that movie "Little Monsters." I've heard about this movie a bunch of times and I always planned to watch it eventually,  but I didn't get a chance until now.

The movie is about a family that inherits a creepy old house when one of their elderly relatives dies. They decide to move in and live there, in spite of a bunch of weird crap happening, like monsters roaming in the yard or a shark in the bathtub. Another couple wants to buy the house, because they are vampires and they know that the house has a book hidden somewhere inside that controls all the evil in the world. They want 5he book so they can rule the world, and the only person who really bites all of this and knows about the book is that family's young son. Will he be able to convince his clueless parents that something terrible is happening before it's too late?

They should remake this movie with Eugene Levy playing the dad, he would do a great job, and I could totallysee him in the role. Richard Benjamin plays the dad in this movie, and he does a good enough job i suppose. He and his wife are totally oblivious for most of the movie. Jeffrey Tambor plays one of the ancient vampires who wants to control the book, and Severn Darden plays Van Helsing, who poses as an exterminator and moves into the house to help fight the evil (the family doesn't see anything weird about an exterminator moving in with them, because they're geniuses).

I think this movie would have been more fun if I'd watched it when I was a kid. It seems to be aimed more at kids. It is cute even now, but I would definitely have appreciated it more if I were younger. I might be too cranky in my old age, who knows. This is still a fun little movie though, not a bad way to kill an hour and a half.