He's come to fix your plumbing...

#6 - Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer - 2007

Can a cult film be a cult film if it was purposely designed to be a cult film? While you ponder that tongue twister I'll go ahead and answer. No.

'Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer' tries to be 'Evil Dead 2' but without the feeling that there's a genuine madman at the helm. It has all the right ingredients, and all the best intentions, but it struggles to overcome what probably seemed like a great idea on paper.

The story is that a young Jack Brooks witnessed his Family get slaughtered by a monster when he was a child. Since then he's had anger issues and makes his living as a Plumber, with a forever annoying girlfriend. They take night classes taken by Robert Englund, who is forever destined to play bad guys. Even when he starts off as a good guy, you just know he's going real bad real soon. Anyway, Jack does some plumbing for Englund, unleashes something that posseses the former Mr Kruguer who then walks around doing possessed things like eating whole lettuces and throwing up on himself (Likely the product of said lettuce eating). Anyway, Englund soon turns into a Monster, eats some students and becomes some giant monster thing. Leading our hero through a gory 20 minute finale.

And that's it for Jack Brooks. It's a massive amount of build up for little payoff. Jack unleashes his inner anger and does indeed slay the fuck out of some Monsters. Admirable in intention, but lacking in execution. Still, Trevor Matthews is enjoyable enough as the titular character. Looking as he does like an angry Jason Lee. I half expected him to cross things of his karma list, that said, if Earl had 'Slay Monsters' as part of his list then 'My Name is Earl' would be better than it is today. Alas, sadly that's not to be. Englund is...well he's Robert Englund, you pretty much know what you're getting with him.

The film should be commended for it's use of no CGI at all. The Monsters are on the whole excellent, and give this film that B-Movie feel it was going for that you simply couldn't get with computer generated effects. Make no mistake, the film is certainly well made but it just feels like a feature length show-reel. Which is a shame because if they had hung a good script on this thing then they would have the cult classic they so aspire to create.