People always automatically think about "Scary Movie" and "Young Frankenstein" when mentioning the only successful horror spoofs, but the surprisingly enough the 80's brought forward a handful of worthwhile comedies that have been long forgotten by now, like "Student Bodies", Pandemonium" (both covering the territory of teen-slashers) and "Transylvania 6-5000" (similar to this movie). "Transylvania Twist" is easily the best of them all. Oh, and please note that "Saturday the 14th" is NOT part of this list.
This spoof reasonably succeeds well where others – especially the nowadays ones – fail embarrassingly: a witty script and a wide selection of gags and parody elements that are both clever and laugh-out-loud funny. The story (something about a librarian traveling to Transylvania to find a book that belongs to the evil Count Orlok) is unimportant but that actually doesn't bother you, as the velocity of the jokes is incredibly high and most of them are truly imaginative and spot-on. The comedy highlights include, for example, a randomly pointless interlude song about a randomly pointless interlude song! You really have to listen carefully to the lyrics on that one; I swear you'll hurt your stomach laughing. There's also a downright fantastic collage of bit and pieces of Boris Karloff lines out of "The Terror" cut and edited into a conversation with this film's lead hero. Robert Vaughn receives top billing, and probably also a pay check that used up 50% of the film's budget, only to appear after more than an hour into the film. Horror cult icon Angus Scrimm has a delightful supportive role as Orlok's spontaneously vaporizing butler and, yes, there is a silly "Phantasm" tribute towards the infamous flying spheres. Sweet movie! Admittedly certain gags (like the game show of death, to name just one) feel a little overwrought and outstay their welcome, but those little flaws are easily forgiven.
This spoof reasonably succeeds well where others – especially the nowadays ones – fail embarrassingly: a witty script and a wide selection of gags and parody elements that are both clever and laugh-out-loud funny. The story (something about a librarian traveling to Transylvania to find a book that belongs to the evil Count Orlok) is unimportant but that actually doesn't bother you, as the velocity of the jokes is incredibly high and most of them are truly imaginative and spot-on. The comedy highlights include, for example, a randomly pointless interlude song about a randomly pointless interlude song! You really have to listen carefully to the lyrics on that one; I swear you'll hurt your stomach laughing. There's also a downright fantastic collage of bit and pieces of Boris Karloff lines out of "The Terror" cut and edited into a conversation with this film's lead hero. Robert Vaughn receives top billing, and probably also a pay check that used up 50% of the film's budget, only to appear after more than an hour into the film. Horror cult icon Angus Scrimm has a delightful supportive role as Orlok's spontaneously vaporizing butler and, yes, there is a silly "Phantasm" tribute towards the infamous flying spheres. Sweet movie! Admittedly certain gags (like the game show of death, to name just one) feel a little overwrought and outstay their welcome, but those little flaws are easily forgiven.