Monsturd (2003)
Monsturd (2003)
Starring Paul Weiner, Beth West, Dan Burr, Brad Dosland, Dan West, Rick Popko, Hannah Stangel
Directed by Rick Popko & Dan West
Expectations: My expectations were flushed before I even considered watching this.
I’m not going to beat around the bush, this is one big piece of shit. Monsturd tells the touching story of a prison escapee who falls into the wrong vat of goo and emerges as a giant shit monster. I’m getting ahead of myself though. First, the movie sets itself up as a fairy tale with a little girl waking up from a bad dream. Her father comes to check up on her and when he proposes to tell her a calming story, she refuses and tells him a story of her own. The story of an evil doctor employed by DuTech who unleashes a shit-storm of bad vibes on the town of Butte County, CA by dumping a shitload of toxic waste into the sewer system. When the escaped convict gets trapped in the sewer and falls into the goo he is reduced to nothing more than a bloody skeleton. OR SO THEY THOUGHT!
A man and his wife fight over cleaning the toilet. The wife insists that the husband gets his ass down there and cleans up his own shit. He does so, but as he’s plunging the toilet the shit monster comes up behind him and murders him. The scene is truly awful and laughable but not as funny as you might expect. When the cops come to investigate they see the calling card of the convict, a written message on the bathroom wall. It says, “Don’t Get Caught With Your Pants Down!” in, you guessed it, shit.
As the film goes on, the cops and the FBI agent working with them figure out that there really is a shit monster lurking around town. They advise everyone in the town not to use their toilets, instead to shit in buckets or whatever else they can find. But this is where the problem truly lies. Tomorrow is the day of the annual Butte County Chili Cookoff! You can’t expect people to go without using the facilities when there’s bowel-burning chili to be judged.
The acting, directing and lighting are all equally awful. There’s not really any gore in the movie which is a supreme disappointment as these little movies can usually get away with more hardcore gore than a mainstream picture. It is not to be though as the focus here is firmly on shit. The film was shot on a camcorder and for a camcorder movie it’s better than I expected it to be. That isn’t saying a lot but it was good enough to watch the whole thing. I’m a bit more masochistic than most when it comes to shitty horror movies though, and this is easily the most full-of-shit movie I’ve ever seen. Never before has a movie lived up more faithfully to its name. This one is truly a Monsturd.
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Silver Emulsion 
Damn. I really hate when movies piss away a great premise like this. If you’re going to be making THE shit monster movie, you’d best not fuck it up. It’s almost as if the filmmakers are patting themselves on the back for coming up with the concept, but then they realize that they have to shoot a movie to go along with it. Too bad.
Hey Silver Emulsion,
Sorry to hear you didn’t like our flick. We knew when we were making it, it wasn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. With our limited resources (a budget of about $3,000) we tried to do the best we could with what we had. I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of “indie” shot on video features, which look like they were shot in their parents’ back yard over an extended weekend. We could very easily have taken that approach, but, instead, we took two years to piece the thing together (of course everyone involved in the project had day jobs, so we didn’t have the Hollywood luxury of shooting over the block of three or four months). Still, I understand the value of “Monsturd” haters… It nicely offsets the people who love the movie (and we do have champions out there), which forces more people to have to watch it for themselves to see what all the hoopla’s about. It’s nice to see that after more than six years since this movie’s come out people are still talking about it, and that alone speaks volumes. Thanks for taking the time to watch and review it… And if you didn’t like “Monsturd,” you might want to stay away from its sequel, “RetarDEAD.”
Sincerely,
Rick Popko
(Co-Writer, -Director and -Producer of Monsturd and RetarDEAD)
Hey thanks for stopping by! Your movie is definitely better than most of the camcorder horror movies I’ve seen. I generally turn them off after 30 minutes or so, but I watched the whole Monsturd. As much as I didn’t like it, I can appreciate the dedication that you guys put into it and with a budget of only $3000 you pulled off some good stuff. Love the shit monster costume and the premise is right up my alley, but I thought it could have been a lot better.
Yeah it starts off pretty good, but there isn’t enough to keep it going through the whole movie. For me, it would have been much better as a short.
oh so MANY movies that could be 20-30 min shorter…
I just had to imagine that the filmmakers here had a good time making this, especially the scenes for the first 20 minutes or so.
Shorts.
Yeah I’m sure they had a great time making it. I can imagine the first time the shit monster costume came on set it was quite amusing.