A hideous creature (played by Predator performer Kevin Peter Hall) emerges from closets to kill innocent people; aspiring reporter Clark (Donald Grant), scientist Dr. Pennyworth (Henry Gibson), youngster 'Professor' Bennett (Fast and Furious star-to-be Paul Walker) and his mother Diane (Denise DuBarry) attempt to try and work out what drives the monster and how to stop it.Given its suggestive title and San Francisco setting, I thought that Monster in the Closet would have some kind of gay agenda, but apart from the fact that the (presumably male) creature carries off handsome reporter Clark at the end, instead of the girl, the film doesn't really explore any potential homosexual subtext. Instead, this silly Troma film concentrates on what the studio specialises in: dumb comedy and even dumber horror, with a smattering of topless female nudity (courtesy of middle-aged MILF Stella Stevens). It's all extremely daft, the gags weak and the monster a hilarious z-grade rubber creation with an Alien-like extendable mandible, but it's reasonably undemanding fun for those who enjoy schlock.From a technical standpoint, the film does rise above the usual Troma output, with smart editing and plenty of impressive fluid camera movement (including what I believe to be Louma crane shots), so much so that I was surprised to see that director Bob Dahlin didn't go onto bigger and better things (on the contrary, this was his only ever movie as director). The film also benefits from a cast of familiar faces that includes Donald Moffat, Claude Akins, John Carradine, and Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas in her movie debut.4.5, rounded up to 5 for managing to show Stella Stevens in the shower, not once, but three times!

Meek newspaper reporter Richard Clark (a likable performance by Donald Grant), spunky college biology professor Diane Bennett (a charming portrayal by the pretty Denise DuBarry), Diane's precocious little squirt son (a very young and then unknown Paul Walker), and eccentric elderly scientist Dr. Pennyworth (a wonderfully flaky Henry Gibson sporting white Einstein hair) join forces to figure out a way to defeat an ugly, hulking, and predatory beast (Kevin Peter Hall in a funky rubber suit) that comes out of people's closets and kills them. Writer/director Bob Dahlin neatly concocts a witty and affectionate parody of choice cheesy 50's low-budget creature features that unfolds at a constant brisk pace, maintains an amiable tongue-in-cheek tone from start to finish, and possesses a certain sweet-natured sensibility that's impossible to either hate or resist. Moreover, Dahlin tosses in a pleasant romance between the two appealing leads for good measure and in an amusing twist on the standard genre convention makes the monster gay so it can abduct the male star instead of the female main character. The game cast have a field day with the blithely goofy material, with especially stand-out work from Claude Atkins as the hard-nosed Sheriff Sam Ketchum, Howard Duff as sensitive and devoutly religious priest Father Finnegan, Donald Moffat as the gung-ho, profanity-spewing General Trumbull, Jesse White as crusty newspaper editor Ben, and Frank Ashmore as Richard's slick'n'smarmy rival Scoop. Popping up in nifty bits are Paul Dooley, John Carradine (as a cranky cane-slinging old blind guy), and the ever-lovely Stella Stevens (in a nice send-up of the famous shower scene from "Psycho"). Ronald W. McLeish's polished cinematography boasts plenty of snazzy zoom-in close-ups and smooth tracking shots. Barrie Guard's perfectly cornball hum'n'shiver score does the robustly generic trick. An immensely enjoyable romp.

~Spoiler~ Monster in the Closet is another dumb horror/comedy that is neither funny nor scary. This one is from Troma, but it looks a little glossier than what the studio normally puts out. I say that because of the cast and the creature design. I've never heard of the leads, but some of the supporting cast are rather famous. Henry Gibson, Claude Akins, John Carradine, Donald Moffat, Paul Dooley, and Stella Stevens are some good character actors to have in a project like this. Also featured are a young Paul Walker and Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson. I bet they don't even remember this one, and wouldn't admit to it if they did. Kevin Peter Hall (Predator) is playing the titular closet monster. The plot is simple: The monster comes out of the closet and kills people and nothing or no one can stop it. There are many attempts at humor, but most of it is just boring. It all ends in a silly finale where the world has to destroy their closets. The movie was apparently filmed in 1983 but didn't get released until 1987. I wonder why?

This was sort of a cute movie, nothing too great.It starts off with a pre-credits sequence of people getting dragged into their closets, or walking into their closets, only to be attacked by something. We don't see the attack, since the camera takes a side view of the open closet door, and we hear screaming and cartoonish monster eating noises, as clothing is tossed out of the closet. John Carradine has a small role as one of these people, and blind man violently smashing his cane around his apartment looking for his guide dog (who the monster hung on the closet door).We then meet a reporter who looks a lot like Superman's alter-ego Clark Kent, complete with big black-rimmed Clark Kent eyeglasses. He's named Richard Clark. He got his job at the paper through nepotism, and only does obituaries, but her wants something more. The lead reporter "Scoop" gives him a three-week old story about the people dying in their closets as a laugh.Clark befriends a young boy at the police station while waiting to talk to the chief there. The boy is a bespectacled small version of himself, perhaps. He's doing some kind of experiment recording all different kinds of sounds, while his mother - a teacher at the local college, where some of the deaths occurred - talks to the chief, explaining how the bite marks found on the victims are somewhat consistent with snake bites. Clark angers the bespectacled mother by having let the boy have a chocolate bar. Everyone, including the mother, calls the boy "The Professor."Clark also meets an Albert Einstein-looking Nobel Priza-winning professor at the college, and gives him a claw he found at one of the crime scenes. We also see that the mother becomes speechlessly, motionlessly smitten with Clark every time he takes his glasses off.They soon see the monster, who starts coming out of closets. There are elements of "Alien" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to the monster and their attempts to communicate with it.This movie could be appropriate for children, although be forewarned that there is a brief topless scene. A bit surprising for a PG-rated movie, but not altogether without precedent. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985) had a lot more. The scene it occurs in is one early in the movie, and comically spoofs the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.