Monsters Crash the Pajama Party



As part of their initiation into a sorority, five women are tasked with spending the night at a reputed haunted house. But unbeknownst to them, the house isn’t haunted…at least not by ghosts. It is however, secretly occupied by a mad scientist and his minions, who have covertly taken up residence in the basement. And, well, the doc needs more test subjects, so he might as well use the ones who oh so conveniently waltzed right into the parlor….



Monsters Crash the Pajama Party is a short American horror comedy from 1965. The film was made to to be part of the “theater spook show” circuit, which is sorta similar to the other cinema “gimmicks” of the era popularized by William Castle in the late 1950s, wherein he’d have certain chairs vibrate or skeletons would fall down from the ceiling at specified moments to try to give the audience an extra jolt. In the case of this film, it involved costumed actors “exiting” the screen to go into the audience and abduct a pre-planted “victim” to then bring back into the film. So it was kind of a form of interactive theater, and was meant to be part of a larger show. Hence the reason why it’s a short, and why it’s not meant to be taken at all seriously.



To put it simply, this is a very silly little film. Like, really ridiculous. The whole plot involves around a mad scientist whose sole goal appears to be to turn people into apes. Why? Er… Cause he’s mad, I guess? As well as obsessive compulsive, because he appears to have sewn “mad doctor” on all his lab coats so he doesn’t lose them. Oh, and also because there was a point in the 60s and 70s where people seem to have been unusually obsessed with monkeys and apes and I assume that the costumes were cheap to obtain. So giant ape people it is then. And I guess they wanted to get a lot out of that costume, because the entire opening credit sequence is narrated over scenes of the ape performing some of the film’s various technical duties. There’s also a lot of fourth wall breaking and some particularly dumb characters, like the police that supposedly investigated the house earlier that night, but somehow completely missed the giant science lab and creepy people hanging out in the basement? So yeah, the movie is purposefully goofy and is not meant to be taken seriously. But it’s all right, because it also knows exactly what it’s doing, so its silliness ends up feeling rather charming instead of annoying.







The acting, surprisingly, was actually a lot better than I expected, considering how the film started. I mean, the villains are a bunch of nutty doofuses, and the police are expectantly woefully incompetent at their jobs. But the ladies and their…boyfriends? Frat friends? Uber drivers?…are actually surprisingly decent and play things pretty straight. Like, we’re not talking Meryl Streep levels of believability here, but they were decent considering what kind of production they were in. Granted, the ladies main job seems to have been to slowly wander around the creepy house in their frilly night things (so it’s really more of a lingerie party than a pajama party?) and get abducted by people in gorilla suits, but they got a few quips in and looked appropriately terrified most of the time (though I think I caught at least one of them trying not to laugh), so kudos to them for doing their best.



The thing that’s going to make or break the viewer’s enjoyment though, is the humor, and it… Okay, it’s not great, and certainly not everything hits, but a couple things did genuinely get a couple of chuckles out of me, so I feel l can’t complain too much. The nosy neighbor who can somehow hear what’s going on some 2-odd miles away gets all the best lines (“Of course I’m sure, I read ahead in the script!”), especially since she was the one who got to cop an attitude with the police and get away with it, because all snarky little old ladies get away with that shit. And there were also a couple of good sight gags, like when one of the ladies unknowingly stepped on one of the goon’s hands, and then the hand gets pulled back for a second before reaching out again with a band-aid on the newly wounded finger. So I thought a few things they did were pretty good, but most of it is just silly nonsense, so that’s something to take into consideration.





Really though, Monsters Crash the Pajama Party is just a goofy, lighthearted little farce of a movie that’s just poking fun at old sci-fi and haunted house flicks. It’s the kind of film that’s not necessarily great, but is good enough for a quick distraction. Of course, your enjoyment of it is going to highly depend on your sense of humor, and sadly the film does lose a few immersion points, due to its lack of intended audience interaction. But if you can overlook that last point (or drink some whiskey or wine beforehand so you don’t notice), then this one isn’t so bad for a nice, quick watch.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party is available on a variety of streaming services.

Believe it or not, there is also a DVD of it out there, but sadly it is out of print. Which is a shame, because I’ve read that the extras and commentary are actually pretty good.

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