On this highway, the roadkill is HUMAN!
Rating: 8/10
Running Time: 96 minutes
US Certificate: R UK Certificate: 18
Two old college friends are driving cross-country. Adam (Eric Jungmann) is a velcro-wearing, twenty-five year old virgin trying to stop Betty-Ann, the unrequited love of his life, from getting married to somebody else. Harley (Justin Urich) is along for the ride, hoping to coax Adam out of being a “wuss”, and to insult pretty much anyone that they meet on the way. But to prevent any confusion with writer/director Michael Davis' previous teen romcoms ('100 Girls', 'Girl Fever'), 'Monster Man' opens with the image of a living person's head being crushed in a vice – for Davis is taking the viewer on a hilariously bloody trip into the terrain of comedy horror.
Soon, in a backwoods landscape littered with roadkill, pentagrams and amputees, the low-brow buddy heroes find themselves playing cat-and-mouse with a hideously scarred monster man (Michael Bailey Smith) – whom they come to know affectionately as 'Fuckface' – and his fuel-injected, armour-plated monster truck. When their beautiful companion, the hitchhiker Sarah (Aimee Brooks), is seized by the pizza-faced killer, Adam follows him back to his charnelhouse cabin, where he meets the whole monstrous family, and all the pieces in this dead funny mystery finally fit into place.
Early in 'Monster Man' Harley tells Adam that the 'rosebud' in Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane' actually referred to Hearst's girl's pussy. Regardless of whether this is true or not, the comment positions 'Monster Man' as a 'Citizen Kane' amongst comedy horrors – and that it truly is, with enough giggles and grand guignol (AND pussy – although not quite in the way that you might imagine) to rank up there amongst greats of the genre like 'Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn', 'Braindead', and Cabin Fever. Justin Urich may be the late Robert Urich’s nephew, but his comic style (not to mention his appearance) is more closely related to that of Jack Black – and his Harley runs riot through ‘Monster Man’, a redneck-baiting, out-of-control id to Adam’s more anal-retentive ego. Their wise-quipping cameraderie is maintained throughout the film’s most over-the-top mayhem, bringing a freshness to horror scenarios that might otherwise seem overfamiliar from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre through Jeepers Creepers to Roadkill.
Gleefully, gorily daft from beginning to end, ‘Monster Man’ will have you grinning from ear to ear with all its severed limbs, crushed heads and a villain or two who stretch the convention of unkillability to absurd new extremes.
It's Got: The line "Im a corpse burrito, dude!"
It Needs: Hell, its got monster trucks - what more does any film need?
Summary
This big-trucking, redneck-baiting comedy horror is bloody fun.