How low can the genre-spoof genre go?

Low enough that -- unlike, say, Date Movie or Meet The Spartans -- they now actually put the word "parody" in the title so you know you're supposed to be laughing.

All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, of course.

Indeed, by including references (I hesitate to call them "gags") about Scary Movie (the director was that movie's exec producer), the genre has now eaten itself. Stan Helsing: A Parody is actually a parody of parodies, genetic drift to the point of pointlessness.

A directorial debut from the white guy who wrote Soul Plane, Stan Helsing opens at an "alternative video store" called Schlockbuster, where our titular hero (Steve Howey) is a stoner-slacker counter-jockey, trying to get off early so he can join his girlfriend (Diora Baird), his best friend (Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson) and his slutty date (Desi Lydic) on a rendezvous with the baddest Halloween party in town.

It is at the video store that the closest thing to a workable joke flies by -- a special counter for returns of The Ring, where bodies pile up.

It's there, as well, that we meet a bunch of cheesy clones of Freddie Krueger, Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies, Chucky from Child's Play (played by a "little person," who's still way too big to be a doll) and Michael Myers from Halloween. Seems they're hunting down Stan because he's the unknowing heir to "monster-hunter" Van Helsing (although, since Van Helsing was the vampire hunter in Dracula, it's odd that Drac wouldn't be among them).

The "funny?"

Let's see. Freddie has Swiss Army knives, lipstick and other tchatchkes on his fingers, Pinhead has pub darts in his scalp. Later on, when we meet the Leatherface character from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he wields ... wait for it... a lawn-blower that blows people's clothes off!

Laughing yet? Well, maybe the many noisy toilet gags will be your speed (amazingly, Leslie Nielsen -- who famously owns his own practical joke "fart-maker" -- takes no part in these in his drag role as a waitress in a karaoke bar). Or maybe you'd find it hilarious that Michael Jackson runs an ice-cream truck out of which he sells rainbow-coloured "Rockets with balls."

So it is that our heroes set forth on a series of ostensible "adventures," including running over a sociopath's beloved dog, getting stuck in a town overrun by monsters (and whose citizens may or may not be dead, I think), taking refuge in a church run by a flaming gay priest and (the guys) having a fantasy tango with a bunch of vampiras.

The climax: An utterly witless karaoke battle-royale between the monsters (who do a Village People spoof) and the humans (um, I'm really not sure who they're spoofing).

Apparently written on the fly, Stan Helsing doesn't know where it wants to go at any given time, but we're glad, in the name of all that's Holy and Unholy, that it finished eventually.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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