You’d
think monsters would be anti-social, but strangely enough, they can often be
found sharing haunted digs. This leads
to a bit of friction between the Mummy and the Frankensteins. Alas, the former pharaoh gets the worst of it
in Dawn Brown’s stop-motion animated short House of Monsters,
which
just completed an Oscar qualifying run at the Laemmle and should now have
plenty of festival action ahead of it.
One
of the drawbacks of being undead is dry itchiness of desiccated skin. Fortunately, there is a mad scientist in the
house to prescribe something for the Mummy.
Once quite the catch, he would like to put the moves on Frankenstein’s
Bride. Despite an assist from Dracula,
things turn out rather badly for him. No
worries. Classic monsters never die,
they just come back for revenge later.
Brown,
a frequent animator and special effects artist on Tim Burton films, is
something of a one-man band on House, serving
as writer, director, animator, and producer.
Animation enthusiasts should be duly impressed by the quality and rich detail
of Brown’s work here. It is easy to see
why she has been in such demand. In
fact, one might suspect her contributions have been the best part of many big
budget films she has worked on. While House is a complete, self-contained (but
admittedly brief) story, it could easily serve as a pilot or constituent episode
of a longer monster project in the future.
Also
an artist for Vampirella comic books,
Brown clearly understands and shares the enduring affection for these
characters. Indeed, you can never go wrong with the iconic undead scampering
about an old dark house. While never too
macabre for children, the real audience will probably be nostalgic adults who
read Famous Monsters of Filmland as pre-teens
and never outgrew their love of the classic Universal monster movies. (The opening title even evokes Ackerman’s
famous fan magazine’s type treatment.)
