The Worst Witch
DEFINITELY worse than the tape you're reading about now.
Corey Haim's Video Diary
Not just worse than the tape you're reading about now. The worst tape you'll EVER read about, period.
This one's going to blow you away. I've located a lost treasure - a movie that's gained cult status despite the fact that there's only a few copies left in existence, revolving around the real-life antics of a certain plush doll put out by AmToy in the mid-80s. My Pet Monster stars in A Live-Action Videocassette, and yes that's the real title, proving anyone who's ever said that they've 'seen it all' very, very wrong. This sixty-minute fiasco hit the shelves in late 1986, failing to spark much consumer interest, but quite successful in getting the six kids who saw it to sway towards atheism. I know it's probably the sort of thing people aren't meant to see, but I can't help myself. This is comedy of the highest order from start to finish, and because the tape is such a rare find, I've gone through the trouble of creating eight different video clips for you to torture yourselves with.
Before we begin, it'd be a good idea for you to become better aquatinted with My Pet Monster's general lore, so go back and read my article on the famous toy by clicking here first. Essentially capitalizing on the proven successes of My Buddy and Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, My Pet Monster catered to a more testoseronish audience by looking real evil and coming complete with a break-apart set of orange handcuffs. While he was a popular entity for a while, the guy obviously wasn't ready to tackle the wild world of live-action television programming. See for yourself...
Max is your typical grade school kid, assuming that all the other grade school kids you've seen are uglier than howler monkeys repeatedly smacked face-first by a shovel and have bellies larger than one of those giant, inflatable balls people with bad backs have to sit on when they're at the computer. I don't mean to come down so hard on youthful innocence - I just wish they'd chosen an example of youthful innocence that looked more youthful and less like donkey ass. Maybe I'm coming off a little too cruel here, but honestly - you didn't have to sit through this. I assume that the film's rarity is due to Hi-Tops Video pulling it off the market after everyone who saw the thing started mailing bombs and man-eating tigers to the kid who played Max.
Anyway, Max and his sister, Melanie, are spending the day at the museum on a school trip. Everything's going as expected - the students are totally disinterested in the many ancient clay pots and urine-soaked tapestries, instead opting to spend the afternoon shooting spitballs and laughing at completely inappropriate times. Evil Curator, the film's main villain, rounds the kids up so he can tell them all about his greatest career achievement. Apparently, Evil Curator unearthed three mysterious, demonic statues said to have the power to turn people in MONSTAAAAAAAAAS!
I assume you can guess where this is going. After Evil Curator completes his long-winded soliloquy about dusty, man-transforming statues, the students head off to the museum's gift shop to buy rock pencils. Except Max. See, poor Max dropped his half-eaten apple, and he's gotta stay behind to pick it up. Though you're technically not supposed to eat within the museum's display halls, Max was really hungry. This was evidenced by the thunderous 'stomach growl' sound effects played at full-blast while Max was walking to school. As the World's Ugliest Boy bends down to fetch his lost fruit, he makes eye contact with one of the statues, and something magical begins to take place. Uh oh...
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In a sea of lightning, wind and voodoo, Max transforms into a MONNNNSTAAAAAA! Jesus Christ - all they had to do was fashion a costume based on a plush toy, and they still managed to get it wrong. Melanie states the obvious, (you're a monster!) and the siblings try to figure out what to do now that Max is stuck inside some god awful Chuck E. Cheese understudy's bodysuit.
Max retains his ability to speak English, but he's also gained the powers of super-strength and sonic-hearing. Pretty fair tradeoff. Whenever Max speaks, they slow down the frame rate to make the Muppet's mouth movements match his words. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if everything else on the screen didn't slow down right along with him. To offset that, there's some scenes with the Max Monster utilizing his super-speed, a power illustrated by them simply playing parts of the film in fast-forward. Sadly, Max Monster doesn't look all that fast when the guy he's chasing also seems to be running at 300 miles per hour.
Evil Curator, vindicated by the monster's appearance and wrought with greed, seeks to kidnap poor Max and use him for his own profit. Thus, the movie has a villain. Melanie leads her monstrous brother out of the museum before Evil Curator can find them, taking us to some spectacular scenes where a midget in a fuzzy blue-dyed bear costume hops behind faux Mona Lisa paintings. As the video clips that follow this review will show, all of the action is accompanied by a series of dialogue too awful to hear without having an aneurysm.
Max, now reverted back to his almost-human form by means he's not yet privy to, discusses the potential problems of randomly transforming into a beast with his sister. Melanie think he's being too hard on the idea, citing the plus sides of having super strength and no hole to shit out of. Eventually, Max's stomach growls and he turns back into the monster. They still aren't able to put two and two together, so Max Monster hides in his bedroom before inadvertently scaring his older brother's girlfriend's dog to death. I'm serious - check the clip down below.
Then it just goes on and on. And on. The family, minus the parents of course, sits in Max's bedroom to think up a battle plan. Max knows he can't exist in the world if he's going to transform into a blue demon at random intervals. Worse yet - Evil Curator is secretly hunting the boy, plotting to lock poor Max in a cage and sell him off to the gypsies. For an ugly eight-year-old, there's a lot on this kid's plate.
Okay, here's where things really start to get weird. There's this whole giant subplot going on involving Rod (Max's older brother) trying to fix his girlfriend's poodle before the big dog show. Instead of going where he was told, Rod chooses a cheaper route and leaves the dog off with some suspicious characters. The kids soon learn that the dog groomers are planning to kidnap Tippy and enter her into the dog show themselves, and really, how could they let that happen? So what if Max keeps turning into a monster - there's a God damn blue ribbon and Rod's chances at scoring at stake.
Melanie and Max take a stab at trying to rescue poor Tippy, but before they're able to complete the mission, Evil Curator rears his evil head once again to lay claim on Max's confused and often-furry soul. Before we have a villainous triumph, Max mutates and uses his super-agility to escape. The real coup this time around is the head-on view we get of his transformation process...
MONNNNSTAAAA!
Back at Max's room, things are looking pretty grim. The poodle is still being held captive by a pair of psychotic pet groomers, and Evil Curator is still hoping to add a live monster to his collection of artsy artifacts. And, as Max notes, he's even uglier in his human form anyway. Nothing is going right, but poon-obsessed Rod refuses to give up on rescuing his galpal's puppy wuppy. The annual dog show is coming up, and after learning that the bad guys were going to enter Tippy themselves, the kids hatch a plan. In order to get into the dog show, they're going to need a dog. Horned, 5' blue demons might not pass off as 'dogs' in everyday life, but everyone's always so preoccupied at those dog shows. Entering Max Monster into the competition, the kids are free to search for the villains on a quest to rescue Tippy. I'm not sure why Tippy the Poodle ended up being the movie's focal point, but I don't think I'm all that appreciative for it.
Tippy, spray-painted pink and renamed to something more non-petite, wins the competition and the 20,000 dollar grand prize check. Weston's local dog show had some serious change at stake. The kids aren't fooled by the disguise, and after getting a bunch of the other pooches to attack Evil Curator, Max Monster heads off in hot pursuit of the bad guys.
Okay, okay okay, I can't for the life of me figure out why this video was ever filmed. I mean, it's clearly awful beyond comprehension, even if it was only going to be marketed towards little kids. I don't think many of the little kids I know would be able to stomach this thing, much less were they going to beg their parents to buy it for 'em. They appeared to be setting things up for a regular television show, which not surprisingly never came to fruition. Even stranger: most, if not all of the actors cast here also supplied the voices for the My Pet Monster cartoon, another ill-fated venture that raised six eyebrows before getting shoved under the rug forever. There's virtually no information on this show available anywhere - check around, you'll rarely find even a passing reference. It exists in a parallel universe, only occasionally making appearances in our realm on online auction outlets and at backwoods yard sales. Despite that, many people claim to have at least heard of it, but let's not rule out the possibility of those people just not wanting to look unschooled to the ways of stuffed animal-to-video crossovers. I liked My Pet Monster a whole lot more before I had to watch him strolling around a dog show staged in a barn.
Max manages to halt the villains, causing their car to stall before ripping the doors off and eating the keys. Yup, he eats the keys. The police show up to take care of business, and nobody seems to care that the day's hero is this big blue asshole who eats keys and claps for himself.
Melanie and Max wax philosophical about their adventures, debating whether or not Max's secret powers are a good thing or not. No, they never find a way to keep him from going all monster on us for good, instead deciding that saving a poodle and destroying a car was good enough for one day's work. There's just one more loose end to tie up, though. Whatever happened to Evil Curator?
Well, here you go...
Admonishing his statues for giving the power to a virtual nobody, Evil Curator begs to be branded with monster abilities as well. Just before bringing himself to tears, the largest and most devilish of the statues lights up and begins shooting raging red lightning out of its eyes. Evil Curator, swarmed with electricity and black magic, lets out a maniacal laugh as the film ends. You might find it a little strange that a kid's movie ends in this manner, but remember what we're dealing with here.
Overall: A+. If you're into the kind of crap written about here on the site, this will surely be one of your faves. It's incredibly hard to find, and most of these grails sell for over thirty bucks. As fun as My Pet Monster's Live-Action Videocassette is to laugh at, it's not worth thirty bucks. No worries - check out the following video clips to tide yourselves over until people stop paying so much for the tape. They're all in Windows Media format, each approximately 1 MB. I curse myself for wasting all this bandwidth on something so stupid, but your lives will never be complete until you've seen My Pet Monster scare a poodle. Enjoy.
VIDEO #1: OPENING CREDITS My Pet Monster rips off Nintendo's graphics and riffs. For no apparent reason.
VIDEO #2: 1st TRANSFORMATION Check out how much lightning a granite statue can siphon if it really, really wants to.
VIDEO #3: DOG'S DEATH My Pet Monster scares a poodle to death. The poodle, incidentally, turns grey when it dies.
VIDEO #4: 2nd TRANSFORMATION Lucasfilm eats their hearts out at the sight of these impressive special effects.
VIDEO #5: STUPID VILLAINS In this clip, the bad guys share plans for their ill-gotten riches. Real psychotic like.
VIDEO #6: MONSTROUS DISGUISE My Pet Monster wears it all in an effort to conceal his appearance. Great dialogue, too.
VIDEO #7: MY PET HERO Watch him demolish a car and eat a set of keys in a manic fit of heroism.
VIDEO #6: CREEPY FINALE My Pet Monster's nemesis calls for a new power. Ha!!
