Remember that kid at school who was always clowning about and goofing around trying to entertain everyone? Remember how underneath it all he was actually fairly smart and probably had something to say for himself if he could just stop telling knob jokes for long enough? Monster Man is that kid. It is crass, dumb, loud and irritating but not completely stupid and sometimes surprisingly enjoyable.

Obvious references to countless much better films withstanding this is an oddly original piece of work. The plot, characters and incidents that occur to them have all been seen many times before but somehow Monster Man manages to re-present them all in quite a pleasing way. The premise of the seemingly unstoppable truck chasing the car along deserted freeways is clearly a straight lift from Spielberg’s Duel while the actual design of the truck is pretty much the monster truck version of the Creeper’s van in Jeepers Creepers. The sexy hitchhiker they pick up and then vie over is also pretty much mandatory for any movie of this type. There are also the obligatory creepy rednecks and old geezers who seem to know more than they let on. Through this fog of cliché and stereotype however are some shining beacons of originality. The road kill motel scene is truly something new to cinema, whether this is a good thing or not will depend on your limits of decency – it’s very sick, but damn funny too. The scene where Urich’s character is trapped in a crushed car against a dead mutilated body is also disgusting but hilarious (think of a horror version of Chunk trapped in the fridge with the corpse in The Goonies) and best of all fresh. There are frequent moments like this peppered throughout the movie and they succeed in helping the viewer to like it even against their own better taste and judgment.

This is not to say that it doesn’t have its flaws because it does, lots of them. The opening ten minutes or so are almost excruciatingly aggravating and seem to be deliberately ostracising the audience from the two main characters. They bicker and babble incessantly about a load of back-story which has no real importance (though it is good to see characters with a bit more flesh on them than the usual archetypes found in these sort of films). By the time the craply named title character appears in his big old rusty death machine you are practically praying for our heroes’ speedy execution.

Fortunately things do pick up from here and though the two protagonists never really stop being annoying they do improve and become almost likable for whole minutes at a time. The whole movie continues this general trend of being irritating but strangely charming at the same time. Ultimately this is an enjoyable and silly horror romp which re-treads a lot of old ground but occasionally shows us something new. Like that annoying kid at school however, you always get the impression that it would be so much more likable if it just stopped acting so dumb.

7/10

Review By Matt Compton