Monsters in the Closet is a horror anthology straight from the imagination of the Snygg Brothers, who have had a career in the underground horror circuit for decades. Their hits include Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottenhell, Ant-Babe: The Tiny Bravenger, Erotic Survivor, and The Heaping Bouncy Breasts that Smothered a Midget. I have not seen any of these films. I had not actually heard of any of them until researching Monsters in the Closet, which, despite its parade of low-budget body horror and generally juvenile humor, never goes quite as far into smut as those probably do. That’s not to say Monsters is more mainstream in appeal: it will most likely appeal only to those dedicated enough to indie horror and gross-out graphics to give it a shot. Even then, like most anthologies, it’s a real mixed bag and, unfortunately, not one for which it’s worth going out of your way.
As with any good anthology, there is a framing story. In this case, it’s an In the Mouth of Madness-style thing, with a dead author’s horror stories coming to life when his audiobook is played.
The first story is a first-person zombie tale, “Please Kill Me Again.” One extra is credited as “boob zombie,” just to make it clear we’re dealing with tongue-in-cheek schlock here. It’s by far the film’s high point, with some clever action happening around the zombified main character. She’s confused, of course, as to why people run from her, and why she can’t stop killing. A few egregious vomiting bits aside — not a fan, personally, but it certainly serves the nasty aesthetic) — the gore is substantial and just fake enough to be fun.
Next up is “Home Improvement,” a domestic terror yarn about two yuppies who purchase a fixer-upper that drives them insane. It takes a bit too long to get going, and the final bloodletting doesn’t feel clever enough to have been worth it.
“The One Percenters” is the second-best short in the film, following a rich girl on a camping trip with her much poorer friends. Before leaving, her billionaire father tells her she isn’t like the rabble and shouldn’t leave her life of decadence just for a stoner with a good sense of humor. She rebukes him, but it plants a seed in her mind that bears murderous fruit. Soon the weekend outdoors turns into an impromptu Most Dangerous Game. The story is reasonably tense and comically bleak.
Last up is the worst of the bunch, “Frankenstein’s Wife,” a pseudo-sex comedy about Dr. Frankenstein trying to bring back his beautiful wife in increasingly ugly ways. It’s long, low-budget and never as funny as it wants to be. It’s a shame the anthology as a whole had to end with this, rather than something as concise and confident as “Please Kill Me Again” or “The One Percenters.”
Each of these stories is as small-scale as possible due to budget, and there is certainly some good fun among them. As a whole, though, the 80-minute anthology doesn’t stay above water. The framing story is prolonged and never feels on the same level as the better shorts, and the two bad shorts are really very lousy. But if you happened to find a copy of this on DVD at a horror convention in search of blood, guts, and bad taste, it would fit the bill.