Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Monsters Inc."

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

For this edition of Did You Know?, I wanted to take a look at one of my personal favorite animated movies - that being PIXAR's 2001 release, Monsters Inc.

The fourth movie made by PIXAR, Monsters Inc. has always been my favorite of the bunch. I've always loved rewatching the film, howling with laughter at the antics of Mike and the fast-paced humor. It's quite possibly the funniest of PIXAR's films, and certainly one of their most iconic. I remember seeing the film's 3D re-release in theaters back in 2012, then going to see the prequel, Monsters University, twice the following year.

And now, since Halloween is a few days away and, y'know, the film starts monsters so it technically qualifies as a Halloween movie, I'd like to share with you some things that I'm guessing you didn't know about it. Then again, maybe you did. But I'm going to post this anyway. Let's get started!

1) Before John Goodman was cast, Bill Murray was offered the role of Sulley. He was interested, but the producers couldn't get ahold of him since he'd replaced his team of agents with a 1-800 number, so they assumed he didn't want the part.

2) The filmmakers went through a couple different designs for Sulley. They considered making him a skinny monster with tentacles, they considered giving him glasses, they considered giving him five eyes, all kinds of things were considered.

By contrast, Mike didn't go through that many redesigns, but they did consider giving him fur, or at least a goatee and hair on the top of his head.

3) It took a while for them to decide on having Sulley be the top scarer, too. Early drafts of the script had him as a janitor, a scare assistant (like Mike is), and a scarer who couldn't scare anybody.

4) Art directors Tia Kratter and Dominique Louis helped figure out how Mike and Sulley should look. "For Sulley, I did about sixty paintings suggesting what the fur might look like," according to Kratter. "We had collected all kinds of samples and were looking at llamas, yaks, sheep, goats and bear fur. We decided on a kind of matted fur. It was really important to Pete to keep the character playful. He didn't want Sulley to look mean in any way. We really wanted him to be a big lovable bear. After reviewing versions of Sulley that looked like fruit stripe gum colors, a leopard and a giraffe, Pete decided to go with a blue-green color with purple dots."

As for Mike, he was originally going to be orange, but John Lasseter pointed out that he looked like a piece of fruit with arms and legs. They also considered making him purple or red until they finally decided on green, feeling that it worked best with Sulley's blue-green color.

5) Boo was also hard to pin down. At one point she was going to be an eight-year-old boy named Raymond. They eventually decided to make her a girl, and then made her younger because they felt it would make her more dependent on Sulley.

6) Y'know Ted, the gigantic monster who clucks like a chicken? Originally, in response to Sulley's greeting him, he was going to roar like Godzilla. The producers asked permission from Toho, Godzilla's film studio, to use the roar, but Toho turned them down.

More concept art for the film.

7) Mike is named after Frank Oz's father, Mike Oznowicz.

8) John Goodman and Billy Crystal recorded their lines together, which is uncommon in theatrical animated films.

9) The Abominable Snowman... I'm sorry, the AGREEABLE Snowman... says that the local village has tough kids, sissy kids, and kids who climb on rocks. This is a reference to that iconic Armour hot dogs commercial.

10) The scene at Harryhausen's initially culminated in the CDA blowing the place up. Then 9/11 occurred before the film's release, and they changed it to the restaurant being put under a force field.

11) The filmmakers considered calling the film "Hidden City". As a reference to this, early in the film you see a café called the "Hidden City Café" - which doubles as a reference to an actual cafe that was located near PIXAR's original headquarters in Point Richmond, California. Disney Legend Joe Grant is the one who came up with calling the film "Monsters Inc".

12) If you look closely, you can see posters for Disneyland attractions at certain points in the movie. For example, next to the aforementioned Hidden City Café is a poster for the Storybookland Canal Boats...

And in the room of the kid Mike entertains at the end, there are posters for Rocket Jets and the Sailing Ship Columbia.

13) Boo was voiced by toddler Mary Gibbs. The crew followed her around with a boom mike as opposed to trying to get her to sit still in a recording booth. If they wanted her to laugh, they used sock puppets.

14) Speaking of which, Boo's actual name is Mary as well, as evidenced by the signature on her drawings (look very closely at the bottom-right corner):

15) According to Lee Unkrich in the DVD commentary, Ms. Flint (the Bonnie Hunt-voiced character we see at the beginning) was originally going to have a larger role in the film.

16) A good chunk of the scarers at Monsters Inc. are named after PIXAR employees.

17) So, uh... how exactly DO those closet doors work? According to Pete Docter in a June 2005 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, "John [Lasseter] laid down the rule that 'no magic' in PIXAR's animated features. Actually, you're allowed one magical thing that the audience will buy and beyond that everything ripples out logically from there. For our one magical thing it was the door that transports Boo from her closet to a fantasy factory run by monsters. We just put on this veil of technology that explains it all."

At one point, poor Mike was stuck as Randall's scare assistant. Also, I'm kind of glad
they got rid of Randall's collar and bow tie... it makes him look a bit too much like
Wally Gator, and I can't imagine most kids being afraid of somebody that looks like
Wally Gator.

18) Sulley's supervising animator was John Kahrs, who shares Sulley's easy-going personality. "My first instincts were to make sure that Sulley wasn't going to be some monkey or gorilla," he said. "He's not a Mighty Joe Young guy and he doesn't walk on his knuckles. He walks upright and he's more like a powerful bear than a gorilla. The challenge was to think of him as not some heavy lumbering guy but rather as a more energetic character with a lot of confidence. The scene where Mike is coaching him with the 'scary feet, scary feet' routine was a big turning point for me. I started thinking of Sulley as a guy in football training camp. It turned my whole world around and gave me a new perspective on him."

19) What PIXAR movie would be complete without a few references to previous and upcoming PIXAR movies? You probably already know that Jessie from the Toy Story movies and Nemo from Finding Nemo are among the toys Boo owns. But Nemo makes at least one other cameo in the film, too - he's hanging up on the wall of the trailer home that Randall is banished to.

A clownfish can also be seen as part of the mural behind the sushi chef at Harryhausen's, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be Nemo or Marlin.

Oh, and that trailer home? It previously appeared in A Bug's Life. In both movies, the iconic Pizza Planet Truck is parked next to it.

20) Two of Monsters Inc's main characters are a big, hairy monster and a toddler wearing a t-shirt. Fur and clothing were, at this point, very difficult to do in CGI. As a result, David Baraff and Andy Witkin, two members of PIXAR's Tools Group, created a new Dynamics System (using a program called "FIZT") to understand the physics of each situation and simulate the movement of the hairs and the clothing. Technical leads Michael Fong and Steve May implemented these programs and determined how to apply them to the characters. This was to free up the animators to focus on, y'know, animating the characters and not have to worry about how the fur and clothing move.

May said, "For Sulley, not only did we have to model and render each individual hair - almost three million in all - but we had to make it move like it would in the real world. We had to dynamically simulate this movement. This meant adapting it for all lighting situations from dark to bright-lit rooms and a variety of environmental conditions including fog, snow and rain. Boo's hair presented similar challenges for our group."

Another big problem, according to Fong, was collisions. "When Sulley's running through the hall and brushing up against all sorts of things, that makes it pretty hard for us," he said. "When he goes to grab something or puts his hands together, does the hair spring back or move in reaction to what is touching it? One of the innovations we came up with allowed us to control the direction and flow of the hair along with the length. Instead of simulating every single hair, we came up with a way to indicate the movement for key hairs or representative samplings. The surrounding hairs would mimic their neighbors and give the pattern of movement that was desired."

21) Pay attention to Randall in the commercial for Monsters Inc. seen near the beginning:

He's clearly not happy to be there.

22) Color is an important thing in an animated movie. The backgrounds in Monsters Inc. - the city, the factory, etc. - were painted in more muted, cool colors to make sure the monsters are the most colorful thing in Monstropolis.

23) According to Pete Docter, one of the biggest challenges the folks at PIXAR faced was coming up with a reason as to why monsters scare kids. "For a while," he said, "We played with the idea that it was like a Broadway show and monsters entertained each other by scaring kids. That evolved into the whole business idea, which seemed pretty ripe for humor."

Concept art for the film's climatic door vault sequence. When are they gonna build
a ride based on that scene in Disney World?

24) Harryhausen's, the sushi restaurant, is named after stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. In addition, the restaurant's chef being an octopus with six arms is a reference to a film that Ray worked on, 1955's It Came From Beneath the Sea - which featured an octopus that, for budgetary reasons, only had six arms.

25) Randall's threat to personally put Fungus through the door shredder is a reference to Steve Buscemi's role in the film Fargo.

26) On the film's first DVD release (don't know if it's on more recent DVDs of the film as well or not), there's a featurette called "The History of the Monster World", part of a timeline that Bud Luckey produced during the film's development, when they were still figuring out how this monster world worked. Here's the story that the featurette tells:

Once there was a land with two primitive tribes: the Mans and the Mons. The Mons tried to make friends with the Mans, but the Mans hated the Mons because they were small, hairy, had bad breath and smelled bad. So they frightened them away and drove them out to sea. The Mons swam and swam until they arrived at an enchanted island. They ate the strange fruits and veggies on the island and, as a result, they became hairier, their teeth became worse, and they started to smell horrid. In addition, they discovered that if they ate the same things that the animals living on the island ate, they would take on some of their characteristics (for example, one monster eats the same thing that a wild boar eats, and gains a boar's snout and tusks). And by eating some pods, they became bigger. Then one day, a Mon looked at himself in a reflecting pool and scared the heck out of himself. This gave him an idea... he gathered the others and suggested that they sneak back over to the place where the Mans live and scare the heck out of 'em - you know, give them a taste of their own medicine. So they did. And they found the act of revenge so sweet that they decided to keep on doing it. This act is known as "monsterizing".

Now, is any of this still canon to the finished movie? Not sure. Just figured it was worth including here.

27) Have you seen the Looney Tunes cartoon "Feed the Kitty"? Remember the scene where the dog thinks the kitten is being made into cookie dough? The scene in Monsters Inc. where Sulley thinks Boo is going through the trash compactor and keeps having over-the-top horrified reactions is a reference to that.

Here's a piece of concept art for that scene, which shouldn't be as funny as it is.

28) This actually isn't the first time that John Goodman, John Ratzenberger, and Jennifer Tilly have all lent their voices to the same production - that would be an obscure cartoon called Pigs Next Door, which premiered before Monsters Inc.'s release.

29) According to production designer Harley Jessup, the Monsters Inc. factory was envisioned as "sort of a 60s era modernist building" - the idea was that the original turn of the century factory had been torn down and the one we see in the film was put up during the heyday of the baby boom.

30) Pay attention after the scene where Mike throws a sock at the CDA - Boo is only wearing one sock! The reason? That sock Mike threw at the CDA was one of Boo's.

31) To promote the film, Kmart stores put up gigantic Sulley standees and conducted a drawing for one lucky winner (one per store) to take the standee home. There were also Doritos 3Ds with Sulley on the bag dubbing it a "Monster Colorz" flavor... because if you ate 'em, they'd turn your tongue blue. Kind of like those Shrek Cheetos that turned your tongue green.

Sources:
- https://www.cinema.com/articles/724/monsters-inc-production-notes.phtml
- https://transformco.com/press-releases/pr/1642

For more fun facts about Monsters Inc., I recommend watching this video. Also, check out Monsters At Work on Disney Plus.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper"

When hinges creek in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls... it can only mean one thing. That you're on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. But there's a very good chance that you're riding it on Halloween. And that, my dear friends, is what we call a lousy way of saying that Halloween is near. Which you probably already know, because I've already reviewed two "spooky" cartoons due to it being the Halloween season already.

Halloween is the time for watching stuff about monsters. You know, skeletons and werewolves and vampires and ghosts. There's no better time of the year to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas or ParaNorman or whatever. So it should come as no surprise that when Universal decided to make a movie about Casper the Friendly Ghost, they chose to release it... in May. Maybe they were saving October for the release date of another film, I dunno.

Casper did reasonably well at the box office and some good reviews... keyword: SOME. It currently has a fifty-percent "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there are still a lot of people who like it. I mean, why ELSE would Freeform always air it at least once around Halloween? As for me, I remember watching it when I was younger, then never watching it again (unless watching the Nostalgia Critic's review of it counts) until 2015, when I decided to give it another watch. And, honestly, I really didn't like it.

Well, anyway, despite making at least $287.9 million at the box office, the film wasn't successful as Universal had hoped, so that put the kibosh (no pun intended) on there being a sequel. It did get some prequels a couple years later, though. But anyone who wanted to find out what happened to the characters AFTER the movie as opposed to BEFORE it had to settle for watching The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper.

The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper premiered on FOX Kids in February 1996, lasting for a total of four seasons. Developed by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, the writers of the original film, the show focused on the misadventures that Casper (voiced, like in the film, by Malachi Pearson) got into alongside his obnoxious uncles Stretch (Joe Nipote), Stinky (Joe Alaskey), and Fatso (Brad Garrett in the first two seasons, then Jess Harnell in the third and fourth), ghost psychologist Dr. Harvey (Dan Castellaneta) and his daughter Kat (Kath Souice). New characters include Casper's teacher Ms. Banshee (Tress MacNeille), his cousin Spooky the Tuff Ghost (Rob Paulsen), and Spooky's girlfriend Poil (Sherry Lynn).

Is the show any good? I remember watching one or two episodes of it years ago and finding it okay. If nothing else, it can't be any worse than the movie, right? Then again, the show apparently focuses more on Casper's uncles than it does Casper himself. There's one episode where they point this out by having Casper ask why the show is called The Spooktacular New Adventures of CASPER if it's more about his uncles, to which Stretch says, "Merchandising." As someone who found Casper's uncles grating in the movie, that does not exactly fill me with confidence.

Regardless, let's watch an episode of the show and see if Casper's new adventures are really "spooktacular" or if the only thing scary about this show is how bad it is. Each episode consists of at least two (four at the most) segments. We'll be watching the fourth episode. First segment - "Rocket Booster".

The episode starts off with Kat in a bad mood because her homework assignment "totally tanks". Were people really using "tanks" as another word for "stinks" in the 1990s? Is that an example of 1990s slang that I didn't know about before?

Something you'll notice about Kat is that she looks absolutely nothing like the live action Kat in the movie. Also, Kath Souice sounds absolutely nothing like Christina Ricci. I believe this stems from the fact that, like most cartoons based on live action movies, the showrunners didn't have the rights to Christina Ricci's likeness.

"Say, Kat, did you dye your hair? I could've sworn it was brown in the movie..."

Kat's assignment is to write an essay about the Apollo 13 astronauts as though she was actually there. What grade is she in? She doesn't look old enough to be a high schooler, nor does she look young enough to be an elementary schooler, and I don't remember ever having to write something about Apollo 13 when I was in middle school.

Casper tells her that he can tell her all about Apollo 13 because, believe it or not, he was actually there. Seeing as there's no mention of Casper on the Apollo 13's Wikipedia page, I'm pretty skeptical. As is Kat. Why, next you'll probably be telling me that Goofy was part of Buzz Aldrin's crew or something.

"That's one small step for goof, one giant leap for goof-kind, a-HYUCK!"

It all started, according to Casper, when he flew down to Florida in 1970 to get baseball player Wedgie Johnson's autograph. Unfortunately, when Wedgie actually SAW Casper, he wet his pants at the sight of the g-g-g-g-GHOST, hit the autographed ball into the air with his baseball bat for some reason, and ran away screaming.

You'd think Casper would be used to this sort of reaction by now...

The ball flew all the way through the open door of the Apollo 13 shuttle, and when Casper shows up to get it back, he winds up scaring a news reporter. Initially, it's not funny because they just did this exact same joke ten seconds ago. But then the reporter actually blasts off like a rocket (get it? 'Cause they're at a rocket launching?) and it becomes hilarious.

Casper follows the rocket into outer space, and we get the "Casper accidentally scares someone" joke AGAIN. If you're going to recycle a joke, at least spread it out a little. The ball hits a big red button that causes one of the oxygen tanks to fall off. Why would whoever built this rocket put a button that releases the oxygen tank when you push it? That seems like a really dumb idea to me.

The oxygen tank explodes, and the astronauts are panicking because they LIKE being alive.

They're also unbelievably incompetent, seeing as they think THIS is gonna bring the
oxygen back.

One of the astronauts makes a reference to Forrest Gump. Because... hey, that movie exists, right? Houston tells them to locate the oxygen tank toggle, but it takes the astronauts a few seconds to find it despite Casper pointing it out to them.

So... is this going to be most of the episode? Just the astronauts being morons and Casper having to walk them through every single step of surviving?

"Duh, which button do I press? Could it be the one that the random giant green arrow
is pointing to?"

Casper makes a bunch of unfunny jokes ("I don't think he realizes the gravity of this situation." Nyuck nyuck nyuck...) and we get the "Casper accidentally scares someone because he's a ghost" gag AGAIN. That's FOUR TIMES they've done this joke. FOUR TIMES. It's really getting repetitive.

So Casper fixes the oxygen problem, but there's still a damaged heat shield they have to worry about. If they enter the earth's atmosphere with it, they'll be roasted like a Christmas goose. And, okay, I did like this joke:

Awfully casual about being burned alive, aren't you, Mr. Astronaut?

Casper acts as a makeshift heat shield, saving the astronauts from becoming Kentucky Fried Spacemen.

We cut to Kat reading her essay to the class, and predictably, nobody believes her claims that a ghost saved the Apollo 13 (she really should've expected that). The teacher gives her an "A" in creative writing but tells her that she'll have to do her science report over. Casper gets back at him by pulling his pants down. Yes, kindhearted Casper the Friendly Ghost pantsing somebody. Not exactly in-character, but at least it results in a Woody Woodpecker cameo.

"I knew I should've worn my Chilly Willy boxers!"

The class laughs, and the teacher nervously backs out of the room. "Now THAT'S a moonwalk!" Kat quips.

Next segment...

Oh, goody, it's Casper's annoying uncles. They're giving Casper a hard time for not being scary... okay, I'm calling bullcrap. In the first segment alone Casper scared four people without even intending to. It's a Running Gag in the original cartoons that people are scared of him despite how friendly he is.

Casper tells his uncles that he CAN scare people, he just doesn't WANT to. "Listen, Bulbhead," Stretch snaps, "You couldn't be scary if you were Tori Spelling's shopping budget!" Ha ha ha, pop culture reference. But then Casper actually DOES scare them by... playing a record of some woman singing in a foreign language? Huh? I straight-up do not get the joke here.

The third segment begins with Casper talking about how lucky humans are that they don't have to scare anybody. So, I'm guessing this episode is gonna have Casper going all Ariel on us and wishing he could be a human. While he's complaining, he winds up getting some of Kat's makeup on himself. And, if he adds some ears, that'll give him the appearance of being a human. More or less, anyway.

"I'm a real boy!"

He puts on some clothes, turns his... tail-like whisp thing into legs, and presto! He looks like a normal, everyday human being. He heads into town, for once NOT scaring anybody, not even the Arnold Schwartzenegger parody who's here so that the episode can make tired Arnold Schwartzenegger jokes. He walks into a store called "McNeil's Deals" (perhaps a reference to Tress MacNeille?), only for the owner to forbid him from touching anything or else he'd have a lawsuit on his hands if Casper got hurt. Then he decides to go to the movies.

What do these two actors have in common? Hint: they were both in a 1995 movie
that this show takes inspiration from.

Alas, he isn't allowed to go see the movie he wants to because it's rated PG-13. Fortunately, he has a backup plan - go to the local soda shop for some ice cream.

He looks eerily like Caillou, doesn't he?

I expected the joke here to be that Casper, being a ghost, can't eat human food (probably with some cliched "it goes right through me" punchline), but nope, he guzzles it down with no problem. Then he gets the bill, and since he doesn't have the money to pay for it, he winds up getting tossed out on his butt (assuming that ghosts HAVE butts, I mean). Then a runaway piano (it makes sense in context, trust me) runs Casper down, resulting in all the people he encountered in his human disguise thinking that he's been killed. The moral of today's story is to be proud of what you are. Unless you're a human boy, in which case it sucks to be you.

What's the Verdict?

Well, it was better than the movie, I'll give it that. I still didn't care much for it. Not only does Casper sound way too old for a character that's supposed to be a little boy ghost, they made him waaaaaaaay too snarky and easily-aggravated. I don't think it's in-character for Casper, whose entire shtick is that he's a total sweetheart despite being a ghost, to crack jokes at somebody's expense like he does with the astronauts. The jokes are mostly unfunny pop culture references. I suppose that's to be expected since the writers worked on Animaniacs. The animation's pretty good, I'll give it that. But as a whole, it's not an awful show, it's just very blah. I don't think the Animaniacs style of writing (pop culture references and characters being snarky) fits Casper very well.

Side note, there was apparently an episode of the show that parodied Space Jam. No, really. It had Casper and his friends playing basketball against ghostly versions of the Warner Siblings. Unfortunately, that episode doesn't seem to be online yet. I feel the urge to watch it just to see how ludicrous it is.

Further reading:
- Platypus Comix's review of the show

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Hotel Transylvania: The Series"

It took me years to actually sit down and watch the first Hotel Transylvania movie. I thought it was okay, but that it could've been much better. Too much stunt-casting, not taking enough advantage of the "spooky" setting, a bit too cliched... it wasn't awful, though. I've seen far worse animated movies.

But despite its being one of those "you love it or you hate it" franchises (see also Cars, Ice Age, Despicable Me... geez, there are a LOT of animated movie franchises like that), it was successful enough to warrant a sequel. And then another sequel. And then another that Adam Sandler didn't come back for. And in between the second and third movies, a TV show.

Hotel Transylvania: The Series, a coproduction between Sony Pictures Animation and Nelvana, premiered on June 25th, 2017 on Disney Channel in the United States. Odd, seeing as Disney had nothing to do with the Hotel Transylvania movies, but eh. It received two seasons, making for a total of ninety-seven episodes (well, technically fifty-two, but each episode actually has two "segments" so...).

Now, I will say that the movie WOULD make for a great TV series - you've got all sorts of monsters running around the hotel, there's definite comedic potential there. There are a lot of storylines you could do about Dracula running the hotel, maybe with episodes about Mavis and Johnny exploring the world or the monsters teaching Johnny about their way of life. And what did we get? A show with barely any Dracula, very little of his friends, and no Johnny because the show is actually a prequel to the first movie. Here, Mavis (voiced by Bryn McAuley as opposed to Selena Gomez) is 114, which is the vampire equivalent of a fourteen-year-old. Dracula (David Berni) has to leave the hotel to do some business at the "Vampire Council", so now his sister Lydia (Dan Chameroy) is in charge of the hotel. Mavis and Lydia don't quite get along. Replacing Dracula's friends are Frankenstein's son Hank (Gage Munroe), Blobby [the green JELL-O guy]'s daughter Wendy (Evany Rosen), and a mummy named Pedro (Joseph Motiki) who I don't think is supposed to be Murray [the mummy voiced by Cee-Lo Green]'s son but still looks a lot like him. None of these characters were in any of the movies... which I guess means Frankenstein and his wife just abandon their son at home while they vacation at the hotel? That seems like lousy parenting.

Is the show any good? I don't know. Let's watch an episode and see if it's worth a watch or a pile of, as Dracula would say, bat poop. We'll be watching the sixth episode. Segment 1 is called...

How many times have we seen that pun in a cartoon before? With a cliched pun like that for a title, I'm not egg-specting much substance here.

We start off with Mavis and her friends talking about how her father is apparently the worst gardener ever, because none of his plants are alive. Well, actually, it's not Dracula's fault - Mavis promised him that she'd take care of his plants while he was away. Problem is, she waters them with ACID RAIN. Apparently Mavis is a few sodas short of a six-pack.

"I don't get it. I totally have a green thumb!" she complains. Hank does too... which is likely the result of gangrene. And yes, we get a close-up shot of it.

Eugh...

Mavis comes up with a scheme to prevent her dad from finding out that she can't take care of a plant to save her life - get new plants from Quasimodo's garden. Then we're suddenly treated to CHATTERING SKULLS IN OUR FACE! No, really. Suddenly chattering skulls. I'm guessing that was meant to be a transition, because after that we see Mavis and Wendy in Quasi's kitchen.

"Les poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons!"

Mavis' "get new plants to replace the ones my father trusted me with" plan is interrupted by the discovery that Quasi plans on smashing a giant egg with a hammer. She's all "You can't smash that egg!" and declares that she'll raise it to prove that she is responsible. And the "prevent father from knowing that she's failed epically at taking care of his plants" thing that was her initial plan? Never brought up again.

What an egg-cellent plan you've got there, Mavis.
(See, I can make cliched egg puns, too. It's not hard)

Quasi warns Mavis that the egg is rotten and will eat her when it hatches. But Mavis insists that eggs don't eat vampires and takes it back to her room. We get some shenanigans involving Quasi trying to poach the egg, none of which are particularly funny.

I'm a little unsure as to whether or not Mavis knows how eggs work. One minute she's claiming that Quasi didn't give it the chance to "be an egg" and insisting that eggs don't eat anything, which seems to imply that she doesn't know eggs hatch into living animals. But now she's sitting on it like a chicken to keep it warm...

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. A vampire's faithful, one hundred percent."

Then Lydia's pet chicken... yes, she has a pet chicken. Because, hey, chickens are funny, right? …enters the room and shows Mavis the proper way to sit on an egg. After that, Mavis starts pushing it around in a stroller and her friends suggest playing a game called "Egg-Sport" which consists of kicking the egg around until it smashes. Predictably, Mavis is not fond of that idea.

Question: how does a being made of green slime grow hair?

But then the egg hatches, revealing itself to be... an egg with dragon feet. Sort of a prehistoric version of Sheldon from US Acres.

Well, this is a letdown. I was expecting something far more monstrous.

How exactly is that thing supposed to eat Mavis? Y'know, like Quasi said it would
when it hatched? It doesn't even have a mouth...

We get a montage of Mavis teaching the egg (who she's calling "W-egg-sley" now, by the way) how to swim, write, etc. But eventually the egg leads Mavis into Quasi's kitchen, lures her into a gigantic soup pot, and begins to make stew out of her. Wow, we went from "Mavis thinks she's now a mother" to "Prehistoric Sheldon wants to eat Mavis" pretty quickly, didn't we?

Again, how is that thing supposed to eat Mavis when it doesn't have a mouth? Has it
just not finished hatching yet or something?

Because Mavis is a moron, it takes her a few minutes to realize that the egg is, y'know, trying to cook her. Mavis turns into a bat and flees, but the egg sprouts wings and takes off after her. Blah blah blah, chase scene, yadda yadda yadda… this entire episode has basically revolved around one joke. That Mavis is a moron. Not only is it not funny, but I don't remember her being this ditzy in the movie.

Fortunately, Mavis is saved by a giant Venus Flytrap that she knocked off the ledge at the beginning of the episode.

"FEED ME, MAVIS!"

"I guess he WAS a bad egg after all. If only somebody had warned me!" Mavis laments, giving us Unfunny "Mavis is an Idiot" Joke #51. But won't Dracula be proud of Mavis for taking such good care of his venus flytrap... which promptly dies. I guess because it ate a rotten egg. Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaah...

I would like to point out that Futurama, Back at the Barnyard, and The Penguins of Madagascar all did the "dimwitted character tries to hatch an egg" plot much better than this.

Okay, next segment.

"Hotel Pennsylvania" begins with Mavis setting up gigantic cables to a nearby house's satellite TV, allowing her and her friends to watch "human TV" again. I guess monsters have their own TV shows as well, then? Are there monster TV channels that they're somehow able to prevent humans from watching? I'm curious now...

Anyhow, Mavis admits that her aunt Lydia will probably be really mad if she finds out that Mavis and her friends have been watching human TV. But because she's an idiot, she's willing to take the risk.

You've probably noticed the logo for Descendants 2 on the left-hand corner of the screen there.
Just ignore it, please. The less attention we give those movies, the better.

And what show do Mavis and her friends love to watch? Hotel Pennsylvania! Which stars humans who look a lot like Mavis and her friends. Who apparently live at a hotel. Predictably, this is lampshaded.

Plot twist - the guy who looks like Mavis is actually Mavis' half-brother!

But alas, Lydia's pet chicken... again, chickens are not automatically funny... spots them watching TV and tells Lydia. She is not pleased and forces Mavis to watch all of Adam Sandler's worst movies as punishment.

I mean, she's even voiced by somebody doing an Adam Sandler impression. The showrunners
were clearly inspired by Jack and Jill when they created this character.

Lydia declares that she got rid of every TV in the hotel, which means that they won't be able to watch the final episode of Hotel Pennsylvania. Pedro claims that if you don't watch every episode of a show, you get a sickness called the "Don't See-z Disease". Mavis claims that there's no such thing, but the hotel doctor vouches for Pedro.

Boy, the Missing Link from Monsters vs. Aliens has really let himself go...

According to the doctor, if a monster doesn't watch every episode of a TV show, they'll melt into a puddle. And apparently they can't just tell this to Lydia because... I don't know why. Then again, maybe she wouldn't believe them. The doctor straight-up admits that he's a quack, after all.

The good news is, the humans who live in that house from before are watching Hotel Pennsylvania at the moment, so Mavis and her friends sneak over and watch along from inside their car. But guess who's been following them?

Why didn't they just give Lydia a pet MONKEY, too, while they were at it? Monkeys
are the OTHER animal that people think are automatically funny but aren't, after all...

The chicken blabs to Lydia, who forces Mavis, Pedro, Wendy, and Hank to clean up after the Ceberus heads. Mavis figures out that the chicken WASN'T spying on them... perhaps it was already there for another reason? So they follow her as she sneaks over to the humans' house, discovering that she visits the humans to provide them with fresh eggs. How evil of her!

They tell Lydia about this, and she punishes the chicken. Surprisingly, however, Mavis and her friends feel bad about getting the chicken in trouble. But at least now they can sneak over to the humans' house to watch their stupid show, right?

Wrong-o, Chongo.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

After that, Mavis apologizes to the chicken for getting her in trouble and says that if they work together, they can both get what they want. But how will they get past Ceberus? Answer: by digging a tunnel. Well, THAT was remarkably easy...

So the chicken gets to hang out with the humans, and Mavis and her friends get to watch their show.

And it turns out that Lydia secretly loves Hotel Pennsylvania too. In the words of M. Night Shamalayn, WHAT A TWIST!

What's the Verdict?

Yeah, honestly, there's not much worthwhile here. They basically took everything that was good about the movie out and left everything that was bad about it in. No Dracula, none of his friends, no wit, no fun, no creativity... the fact that the show is set in a hotel for monsters is barely brought up at all, and we're just left with a generic show about a teenager and her goofy friends getting into hijinks. Mavis is not a very interesting character... well, maybe she was in the movies, but here she's just so flat and uninteresting. It doesn't help that they seemingly tried to turn her into Star Butterfly, reducing her intelligence to about five percent and making her constantly perky and annoying. Her friends are dull. They have no individual personalities and are basically just there to be replacements for Dracula's friends from the movie. Very few of the jokes land. The animation is mediocre. Even if you're a fan of the movies, I wouldn't recommend checking this out.

It's too bad, because like I said I think the films do have the potential to make a good spin-off TV series. Had they gone another route, this could've been... well, maybe not an AMAZING show, but at least watchable. Ah well...

I don't want this post to end on a negative note, so here's Goofy singing "Monster Mash". See you next time!

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "AAAHH! Real Monsters"

Seeing as it's the Halloween season, I figure it'd be a good time to watch a cartoon that I recall scaring me when I was younger. Perhaps Nickelodeon's first foray into doing a cartoon on the creepy side.

AAAHH! Real Monsters was Klasky-Csupo's second cartoon for Nickelodeon (the first, of course, being Rugrats). It premiered on October 29th, 1994 and ran for four seasons. Inspirations for the show included Yellow Submarine and a Soviet film called Investigation Held By Kolobki.

As you can probably guess, the series focused on monsters. Specifically, three young monsters who attended a school where monsters learn how to scare people (it's kind of a proto-Monsters University, in other words). There's Ickis, a long-eared Charlie Adler-voiced monster whose use of arrogance as a cover up for his insecurities, combined with his bumbling nature, often got the monsters into WHACKY SHENANIGANS. There's Krumm (voiced by David Eccles), a flesh-colored monster that carries his eyeballs in his hands and really needs to trim his armpit hairs. And there's Oblina (Christine Cavanaugh), a candy cane-shaped monster with gigantic red lips and is the smart one of the bunch. Their teacher is the Gromble (Gregg Berger), a hot-tempered fellow who appears to have a fingernail for a nose.

As I've said before, when I first saw this show it kind of spooked me. The creepy music, grotesque character designs (combined with the grimy color scheme) and eerie theme music added up to something that rubbed me the wrong way. Of course, when I was younger I was also afraid of Rizzo the Rat. As in, the Muppet. Make of that what you will.

As a result, I've never rewatched it up until now, unlike with most of Nickelodeon's other 1990s cartoons. But I'd say that it's juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust obscure enough to qualify for a review on this blog (I don't think it's THAT lesser-known, but it never became as popular as, say, Rugrats), so today we'll be watching the fourth episode - "Monstrous Makeover" and "A Wing and and a Scare" (this is one of those "each episode is two segments" shows) - to see if my fears were justified, if the show is actually really good, or if the only scary thing about this show is how bad it is. This is AAAHH! Real Monsters.

"Monstrous Makeover" begins with Ickis attempting to scare a nurse at a hospital... and failing miserably at it. Instead of being scared, the nurse coos over how cute Ickis is. I'm a little iffy on this... if I were in a dark room and something that looked like Ickis jumped out and snarled at me, I'd probably be pretty freaked-out. He's hardly the scariest monster that I've ever seen, but he's about on par with somebody like Randall Boggs.

Those lips alone make him pretty freaky-looking.

While sneaking around in the air vents, Ickis discovers a doctor (John Astin) who works at the hospital and is apparently insane because he does things like giving somebody an extra nostril. But he isn't interested in that - he's interested in the nurse's mentioning "a waiting room full of frightened people". Frightened people that he can make even MORE frightened! "This is my lucky day!" he exclaims as he scampers off.

But when he gets to the waiting room, he discovers that those "frightened people" are in fact the doctor's previous patients. And, to be honest, they're far scarier than Ickis is.

Far, far scarier.

Seriously, Ickis, you want to scare people? Don't bother with the red eyes and the bearing of your fangs - just find a camera, take a photo of these folks and show it to anyone you want to freak out. Problem solved.

So Ickis has failed in scaring anybody, and the Gromble isn't happy with him. He laments to Krumm and Oblina that he's about as scary as a sack of flour, but all they have to do is give him a pep talk and he immediately becomes convinced that he IS scary.

Oblina suggests that they go aboveground so Ickis can make a few people wet their pants. First stop - a supermarket.

Krumm's pits are scarier than any of the monsters I've seen so far. I mean, not as scary
as those patients Ickis saw back in the hospital, but scary...

Unfortunately, the store is having a sale on little pink bunny dolls, and Ickis is mistaken for one of them and shoved onto a shelf. Then Ickis attempts to scare a baby, which shouldn't be too hard seeing as he does it no problem in the intro, right?

Even that baby is scarier than any of the monsters I've seen so far.

So, he could do it in the intro, but he couldn't do it here? I demand an explanation.

After that, Ickis attempts to scare some crazy person in a padded room. But despite the fact that this guy is apparently afraid of RICE (not an exaggeration, he's seriously afraid of rice), Ickis fails at scaring HIM too. Krumm and Oblina laugh at Ickis' epic failure because they're nice like that.

Ickis storms off, announcing that they won't be laughing when they see "the NEW Ickis", and Krumm and Oblina go scare a mechanic. While they're there, they see a report on the TV about everybody protesting the doctor from before's turning them into mutants. And guess who else is there? Ickis! He tells the doctor that he's seen his handiwork and he needs his help.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a plot point in this series that the monsters try to prevent human beings from finding out about their existence? Ickis has basically blown that cover off, hasn't he? Then again, the doctor doesn't seem too startled over the existence of a little magenta rabbit-like monster right in front of him.

Maybe he just thought Ickis was a really short person cosplaying as the Noid?

Fortunately, Krumm and Oblina show up just as the doctor is getting ready to perform a little plastic surgery on Ickis.

You ever notice that all of the monsters in this show have gigantic lips?

I think the doctor needs a new pair of glasses, because his reaction to seeing... however one would describe Krumm and Oblina is to assume they're reporters. Krumm knocks him out by forcing him to smell his stinky armpits, and then he and Oblina attempt to drag Ickis out of the room. Ickis is all "NO, LET ME GET THE PLASTIC SURGERY SO I CAN BE SCARY!", and then Oblina gets an idea - how about a little reverse psychology? She and Krumm start bad-mouthing Ickis and telling him that even if he DOES make himself look scarier, he'll never be a scary monster because he just doesn't have what it takes. Ickis gets mad, and when he gets mad, THIS happens:

Hey, wait a second! Why didn't he just do this before? Did he just not know until this episode that he could do that or something?

Well, anyhow, Ickis succeeds in scaring people and he's learned that he is, indeed, a scary monster. Huzzah. Next episode!

Ickis, Krumm, and Oblina are in... New York, I think (that's apparently where the show takes place) to scare a family making plans to go to Wisconsin. The only really noteworthy thing about this family is that the dad is voiced by Bill Faggerbake and the daughter is voiced by Kath Souice, so as a result I was picturing Patrick Star and Lil Deville whenever they opened their mouths. I do love it when a Nicktoon reminds me of another Nicktoon.

Oh, and the daughter might just be scarier than any of the monsters I've seen so far.
I'd say she's about on par with those creepy mutant patients from the prior episode.

Oblina gives some exposition: the Gromble has assigned them to scare the daughter because she's apparently really hard to scare - which isn't too surprising, seeing as she's pretty scary-looking herself - and they need the extra credit. They decide to hide in her suitcase, but the dad shuts it and carries it out of her room. Apparently they weren't listening when the mom and dad were talking about going on vacation a few minutes ago, otherwise they would've seen this coming. You'd think Ickis would've heard it at least, seeing how he has such big ears.

In fact, Oblina believes that they've been caught in some sort of monster trap that the humans set up for them. Isn't she supposed to be the smart one of the trio?

Also, that's one surprisingly pretty roomy suitcase.

It isn't long before the monsters are in the luggage compartment of an airplane, which apparently has some sort of dumbwaiter or something that lifts the suitcase they're in up to the part of the plane where the seats are. Also, this airline is really, really obsessed with cheese. A sign at the airport promises cheese on every flight, an employee wears a cheese hat, the in-flight movie has product placement for cheese... I'm guessing it's because it's a flight to Wisconsin. You know how much Wisconsin supposedly loves cheese. And what's the deal with airline food?

Eventually, Krumm finds an air sickness bag and gobbles it up, resulting in this:

Apparently, eating an air sickness bag causes monsters to turn yellow.

They spot the girl, and Ickis tries to scare her by... hiding in her dad's food. I'm not quite sure what your plan there was, Ickis...

Next, as the plane is flying through a lightning storm, the monsters disguise themselves as a flight attendant. Dunno where they got the outfit, but I like to think that they knocked out one of the plane's actual flight attendants and stole their clothes. They don't scare the girl, but they do scare her brother, so there's that, at least. Krumm's eyeballs fly out of his hands, and Ickis goes to get them.

"I've heard of rolling your eyes, but THIS is ridiculous!"
Also, Ickis at all concerned that somebody might see him?

The monsters, by the way, still don't get that they're on a plane. Ickis just assumes that the house they're in is moving. Oblina tries to scare the girl herself, only for the girl to mistake her for a seatbelt.

I like the girl's dopey expression here.

After that, the monsters say "To heck with it" and decide to get out of there. "We can come back when they don't have so much company," Ickis suggests. They find the bathroom and decide to leave via the toilet. The result: they're ejected onto one of the airplane's wings. Is that really where your waste winds up on airplanes?

Calling it, somebody on the plane is going to mistake Ickis for a gremlin.

Y'know, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have chosen an episode that takes place mainly on an airplane to review for this show. I already used all of my best airplane jokes in my Eek! The Cat review... which I haven't actually posted yet. I'll probably post it at some point in November.

"Sis! There's a gremlin on the wing of the plane!"
(Hey, if the show's not going to make that joke, then I see no reason why I shouldn't)

Anyhow, as Ickis is scaring the girl's brother (again) through the window, Krumm gets sucked into one of the turbines and somehow ISN'T chopped up like a salad. Instead, it causes the plane to lose altitude. Fortunately, Ickis and Oblina manage to get Krumm out of there before the plane can crash - and as an added bonus, they've scared all the passengers. Mission accomplished!

On the downside, the Gromble isn't happy because the passengers technically weren't scared by a monster but rather by the plane nearly falling out of the sky. "They're supposed to be afraid of MONSTERS, not AIRPLANES!" he shouts. "MONSTERS!" He's so enraged, he decides to punish Ickis, Krumm, and Oblina by forcing them to go through the "stuck in a suitcase being put on an airplane" experience all over again. "There must be a better way to travel..." Ickis groans.

FIN.

What's the Verdict?

I didn't know what to expect from AAAHH! Real Monsters when I decided to rewatch it, but you know what? It was honestly pretty good! I liked the characters, and the voice actors all did a good job. Of course, the show does still have Klasky-Csupo's trademark grotesque animation style, which works well for the monsters but results in some really ugly-looking humans. I think that's the one complaint I have, though.

Looking back on it, I can see why I was so freaked out by the show when I was younger, but it's hardly the scariest thing that Klasky-Csupo has ever given us. No, no. That honor goes to THIS terrifying thing:

If Ickis wants to be scarier, he should ask that logo for some pointers...