Copyright slashfilm
Felix accidentally avoids being murdered several times throughout the movie and proves to be fecklessly charming. Indeed, Francesca eventually falls for his aw-shucks innocence. The film eventually climaxes with the arrival of "It" and a few other shocking character revelations besides. "It," I should note, is not Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's 1986 novel "It," but it does resemble another famous movie monster. "Mad Monster Party?" is a hoot, and large portions of its 95-minute runtime are devoted to monsters just sort of hanging out. The skeleton band is a highlight, as it watches the monsters dance. Because the film was shot in stop-motion, the characters themselves have a toy-like quality, making "Mad Monster Party?" feel like an eight-year-old's monster fantasy. There's something so delightfully pure about it, as though Halloween is finally being understood. "Mad Monster Party?" arrived only five years after the release of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's novelty ultra-hit "The Monster Mash," and it visualized a fresh truth about monsters: Not only do they all know each other, but they regularly get together for beastly bailiwicks. Fun trivia: "Mad Monster Party?" marked the final time Karloff played a character associated with "Frankenstein." He had been doing so for 36 years prior. Rankin/Bass made an animated pseudo-sequel to "Mad Monster Party?" in 1972, titling it "Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters." It's a much less interesting 43-minute TV special. Little needs to be said about it. Of note, Rankin/Bass also teamed with Toho to produce Ishiro Honda's 1967 live-action kaiju movie "King Kong Escapes," the film where King Kong fights Mechanikong, his robot duplicate. Those guys knew their monsters.
