Monster On A Plane

An airplane takes off... and there’s a monster on it.

In October, I went to Trieste, Italy. A port city in the far northeastern corner of Italy, Trieste is a mix of Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Slovenian influences set hard up against the head of the Gulf of Trieste in the Adriatic Sea. Known as the “City of Coffee,” it was considered to be the end-point of the maritime leg of the famous trade route known as the Silk Road, and was an important deep-water port owned by the House of Habsburg, an aristocratic family that was as powerful as it was inbred. Now, it's just a nice little seaside city, and in October, it had a film festival called the Trieste Science Fiction Festival.

While I was there, I saw several films. Monster On A Plane was one of them. I watched it at midnight on Halloween night.

Professor Singh smuggles a mysterious and dangerous creature from an exotic land onto a flight bound for Germany. During the flight, the monster escapes, and well… it starts eating the ridiculous caricatures that make up the passengers, from DJs to Mean Girls to sexy stewardesses to german tourists, no one is safe from the monster on the plane.

Before the beverage service can even begin, passengers begin to be bloodily munched one by one. Luckily, sexy stewardess Nathalie (yep, it’s Nathalie, not Natalie) answers the Call Button to save the plane. But then she experiences an unexpected bit of turbulence, and even more shit hits the fan, when she discovers that one of the passengers is a ruthless serial killer!

Will our sexy hero be able to return these seats and tray tables to their full upright position before the monster gets them all? You better make sure your seat belt is securely fastened low and tight across your lap, and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you, or in the overhead bins, because shit is about to get bumpy here in the unfriendly skies...

So, yeah... if we’re being honest, Monster on a Plane is a pretty bad film. The writing is atrocious, and the acting is even worse, which make a lot of the German accents sound like crazy parodies. The whole thing was clearly filmed in one single warehouse. Every facet of it is bad and cheap. So cheap. If I had to guess, Monster on a Plane probably had a budget somewhere between $2.15 and $7.75.

BUT…

Monster On A Plane is fine with that.

In fact, it embraces it. It leans into it. It doesn’t try to hide it. It has fun with it. I mean, we're talking about a film where the monster farts out hallucinogenic gas before it kills, so it’s fair to say that it's not a serious film.

Monster on a Plane also uses practical effects for its prosthetics and make-up, instead of a lot of CGI, and that is great, because nothing looks worse than cheap CGI, and nothing makes a bad/cheap film more fun than some good splatter. I also liked how the airplane exterior stuff was all miniatures too, and how the smaller monster is an animatronic puppet, which was fun, and the larger one is a huge puppet, the kind that needs to be carried by a puppeteer. That's always cool.

So big thumbs up for all of that.

And yeah, sure, it's true, it all looks… kinda of shitty, but that’s the fun part for these kinds of films. It’s clearly a low budget film, but it's also clearly creative and engaged. The practical effects are time and effort up there on screen, that's artists working with what they have and making the best of it. That's an in-the-trenches dedication to the craft that you don't see in a lot of films anymore. True "let's shoot this mother fucker!" energy. You gotta love that.

In the end, it’s all bright and loud and wild, and ridiculously acted. It's all the classic cheap movie stuff you love to see, and under the right circumstances, that's nothing but a good time.

Which is good news, because Monster On A Plane is definitely not a deep film by any means, and like I said, it's not a good film either, not by any stretch. It’s not something I’d recommend you go out and watch by yourself. Not because it’s that scary or anything, because it's definitely not, but because the real charm of this film can probably only truly be found while in the company of primed and ready (and probably a little drunk) midnight audience.

Peppered with obvious homages to 1980s classic films like Gremlins and Indiana Jones and Critters, amongst others, all while playing off a tradition created by the sadly boring and best forgotten movie, Snakes on a Plane, Monster on a Plane can be a pretty good time, despite having the general level of quality one can find in a 1980's "story" porno, except without the sex or nudity.

BUT…

Should you ever get the chance to watch Monster On A Plane with an excited (and probably a little drunk) midnight crowd on Halloween Night while in Italy?

Seize that chance.