Stan Helsing

I never thought I'd see a more depressing tagline than Date Movie's "from two of the six writers of Scary Movie" but that was before I saw the DVD package for Stan Helsing, which states, and I quote: "From Bo Zenga, the executive producer of Scary Movie and the writer and executive producer of Soul Plane." Wow. Just… wow. Shamelessly aping the Wayans Brothers' horror spoof he was indirectly involved with, Zenga not only makes the Wayans look like the Marx Brothers but also even makes Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer look competent ― at least in Meet the Spartans you could tell where the jokes were supposed to be. Set on a long Halloween night, four friends (Keenan Thompson, Diora Baird, Desi Lydic and Steve Howey ― Thompson and Baird miraculously escape with their dignity) run afoul of staggeringly half-assed parodies of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers (who inexplicably wears a yarmulke) and others. How bad is this movie? So bad that a video store called "Schlockbuster" counts as one of the better gags. So bad that there's a joke about a porn movie called Grazing Ryan's Privates. So bad that there are not one but two loud diarrhoea jokes. So bad that there's a throwaway gag where a Michael Jackson impersonator sells penis-shaped popsicles. So bad that poor old Leslie Nielsen shows up in drag. So bad that in the opening credits, "written and directed by Bo Zenga" is immediately followed by another credit saying, "a film by Bo Zenga." That laughably self-aggrandizing double-credit should tell you all you need to know about what went wrong: an egomaniac who thinks he's funny was allowed to make a comedy. The result is apocalyptically awful. DVD extras include a making-of documentary in which Zenga says, "You don't direct Leslie Nielsen, you just turn him loose." That's not all he didn't direct.