universal studios' failed monster musical 

I’m part Romany and first of all, no part of the heritage is rooted in Spain, so idk why she speaks Spanish?? Second, voodoo is also in no way related to Romany culture!!!

The weirdest thing about the Romani stereotype is how out of place it is on _The Creature of the Black Lagoon._ Did the Universal monters films had Romani characters on them? Yes, but they appeared in the films set in Europe like _Dracula_ or _The Wolfman,_ not in a film set in the Brazilian rainforest (I mean, there are Romani communities in Brazil, but not in the jungle)

The Gillman does have a motivation, he’s mad that humans are invading his natural habitat. He’s a nice guy, but if you came home and found 6 guys having a big party in your living room, how would you feel? Also, the effects are incredible.

This musical tripped and fell down a flight of stairs so that The Shape of Water could run.

if you want a really enjoyable horror musical, look at Starkid's The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals or Black Friday it's sequel

if your wondering, at 7:20 the flash of text says: "If you comment something along the lines of "the Monster Mash isn't a party it's a dance," I want you to know that I think you are objectively wrong. It is both, and it's also song, album, and film. Monster Mash as a term is much more inclusive than you are allowing it to be. This isn't the kind of discourse Bobby Boris Pickett would want, be better!! You are enabling the Transylvanian Twist to resurge, don't let it"

I LOVE the sequence of Kae swimming in the air over the audience, genuine shame that idea is so wasted on this musical.

To think that Broadway legend Katrina Lenk was in a short-lived cheesy horror musical at a theme park...we all gotta start somewhere I guess

THAT DREADLOCK WIG ON HER IS A FASHION FELONY. these are art crimes fam

Happy to see you're actually doing more theme park musicals. I'd love to see you talk about "Rogers: The Musical", which was made for Disney California Adventure as a full 30 minute stage musical

til all five famous Monster High Parental Figures™️ were popularized by Universal

why does this modern woman dress entirely in fifties clothing and talk in a halfway there transatlantic accent. and why is she SLAYING those belts as she pretend swims seriously i’m glad she won a tony she puts the darn work in

That pre-show warning feels like a callout to Floridians. Bad Florida joke aside: this whole musical feels like a mess & is VERY tasteless. My brain just has so many questions & I know things are bad with a story when I have try fill so many plotholes in with my imagination. The whole thing feels like it was originally meant to be set in the Everglades or some other swampy section of the southern US then somebody reminded the writing staff that the story takes place in the Amazon & they only copy-pasted the location change without any edits to the rest of the script. Like, why does the crew of the boat speak Spanish instead of Portuguese (the main language spoken in Brazil)? Are they from a neighboring country? Are they in Peruvian section of the river? The writers' decision to sanitize the plot this way, by implying that Kay is 100% down to "get some fish", is just so weird. Why is Kay automatically thirsty for Gill? Hypnosis? A love of abs no matter who or what they're on? There are so many better ways that they could have gone about empowering Kay & creating a sympathetic monster at the same time, no romance between them necessary. What is even going on with Captain Miranda? It's clear that this character's ethnicity was an afterthought, just like this entire musical. I can believe a Romani character speaking Spanish because there are some pretty decent sized populations currently living in Latin America (most notably Argentina) but Voodoo is a massive stretch due to Romani cultural taboos. It's also not just that: Voodoo is primarily practiced by the descendants of Africans in the Caribbean. Where would she even have learned it from? My hypothesis for what happened is that she was originally meant to be black but the suits saw what was going on in the media at the time with Disney's "Princess & the Frog" and they wanted to distance themselves from that backlash...by being completely offensive to a different minority with less of a media presence. It's also interesting to note that on Wikipedia, she's listed as being an "Amazonian woman" (which means that whoever wrote the page was just as confused as the rest of us). The "modern" references were also really jarring because they made me keep questioning what time period this was even set in. It's like they weren't even confident that they could keep people's attentions for longer than a minute & expected that to entertain the kids for a bit as a running gag but like most jokes from this musical, they fell painfully flat. Can't really say much about the rest of the characters because they're just there, being sexist towards Kay sometimes & being painfully bland/unfunny. Then again, this was a 25 minute show - there's only so much you can do in that amount of time. Could it have worked with more time & some rewrites? Who knows? According to Wikipedia, the theater caught fire before they could transfer the musical back so, that's why they opted to reconsider their business (& hopefully life) choices by not continuing it all on a different stage. Though speaking of curious things: there's a Neocities page dedicated to the Creature from the Black Lagoon that has the entire musical cast list + replacements. As your videos have shown, being a theater performer inside of a theme park is really not an easy job so, I do hope that they all went on to work on things that they enjoy. P.S. Can't wait to see whatever mess the Spiderman Musical was. Has there ever been a good Spiderman Musical?

that being Katrina Lenk is insane to me

If I was allowed to make a creature of the black lagoon musical it mostly be a lot screaming and gurgling followed by automatic refunds to the whole audience

As I watched the synopsis, I thought, "This show really wants to be Little Shop Of Horrors, doesn't it?" Then you got to the part where the dead characters came onstage to sing the finale. (Unfortunately, it looks as though this left out one of the most important aspects that made Little Shop as great as it was--genuine heart. Though it poked fun at its source material here and there, it never tried so hard to TELL us it was funny, and treated the main characters seriously.)

“annoyingly in depth review”? this is exactly the content we wanted my friend

I really want this man to review The Phantom Tollbooth musical. I had to do it as a kid and MY GOD was it weird. Or The Starmites, that shit was weird too

My hyperfixation/special interest is musicals based on unexpected things. And the Gillman is my favorite universal monster. The fact that this exists just makes me short circuit 🤣

Max, do you like Starkid musicals at all? I am commenting this super early so if you talk about The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals later on in this video I am so sorry but it's one of the genuinely good uses of the medium to create horror; not just the live theatre genre but the musical genre specifically. It's kind of metatextual in its horror but very effective for it.

The monster mash is indeed a party. And yes I replayed a few frames over and over again to be able to say this

Fun fact: John Carpenter almost remade Creature From The Black Lagoon back in the 80's, but the project never got off the ground. However, you can find the movie's screenplay online, I've read it and it's really confusing.

I'm sorry... Why is Kay played by TONY AWARD WINNING ACTRESS, Katrina Lenk!?!?!?!?! Edit: Turns out this was discussed later in the video. I should wait to finish the video before commenting.

27:15 I can say with 100% certainty that THIS version does not take place in Brazil, firstly because the characters that deal with voodoo have nothing to do with our culture and secondly, all the characters that speak "another language" are speaking in Spanish , not in Portuguese, which is our language...

From the Finding Nemo Musical, illegal Hamilton, the TikTok musicals, to this video, I’m glad I subscribed to your channel. I love musical theatre and theme parks, which you create a great blend of in content.

Sondheim loved cramming period appropriate pop culture references in his songs, as did Cole Porter. See “I’m Still Here” and “You’re the Top”, respectively. The problem isn’t the references per se, but the overall quality of the writing.

Like other people have said in the Comments, Star Kid’s HatchetField Trilogy is in my opinion some of the best horror musicals, and I’d highly recommend them to anyone wanting a spooky good time, especially sense its technically cosmic horror/eldritch horror which is a different genre for musical theater to have but they do it like so well its amazing :)

Ahh, a perfect Halloween watch! Although, having seen the off-Broadway revival of Carrie, the horror element does work a lot better when it’s in an intimate space rather than presented as a big sprawling megamusical. (Btw, if you ever decide you want to do a video on Bad Cinderella and want an audio recording of the last Broadway performance to listen to, I can hook you up.)

I’m sorry but am I the only stunned by the fact that Tony Award winner and first female Bobbie in Company KATRINA LENK is Kay???? Also while the Romani part is questionable it seems like they actually wanted to make her an Afro-Caribbean stereotype (the “dread lock” type hair, the facial markings and the voodoo doll are giving discount Tia Dalma from POTC) but the actress was white and they were like ‘well we can’t say she’s black so let’s make her a -insert ethnicity that is perpetuated as being mystical-“ almost like a solution to the problem… when in fact the problem was the entire premise of the character.

My mom and I went to the Special effects show during one summer break, it showed the animatronic parts for American Werewolf of London

Peter FISH working on the water-creature musical

It's an amazing day when max provides us with unbearably agonizing content and forces it down our mouths!

It feels like they’re trying to do the phantom of the Opera during the duet but failing poorly

OMG, I loved this show. I had season passes those years when I was younger, and I watched it every time I went. I probably saw this at least 5-6 possibly 10 times.

When I was in first grade I was in a weird production of Peter Pan called Peter and Wendy where all the Lost Boys AND all the pirates get adopted by the Darlings at the end. I was Cloud Number One(of sixteen) and we sang a completely irrelevant song about thunder. It was fun!

You should check out The Toxic Avenger: the musical. It’s kinda like this one where its based on a really bad cult horror movie but they adapted it knowing it was a bad movie and they leaned into it and that’s where the comedy comes from. Also the music was written by David Bryan, the keyboard player of Bon Jovi.

Why does the creature sound like Joseph walker as Voldemort

Tis the spooky season and I'm on my hands and knees begging for anyone to talk about Tanz der Vampire. There are variations in so many different languages, but none top the insane atrocity that is the broadway showing Dance of the Vampires. The jokes, the costumes, the music oh my gosh it's my favorite trainwreck and I say that with total endearment.

if universal had made the Dark Universe all musicals maybe it would’ve taken off!

Honestly, the thing of her falling in love w the creature after being kidnapped, I feel like it could be a Phantom of the Opera parody (in a better musical, that is), since in the original book and the 20s film adaptation of the Phantom, as soon as Christine realizes her "angel" is just a creepy mofo in a basement, she is just in complete "get the fuck out" mode. The reciprocity is a musical original, so, yeah, I think the Creature Musical kinda missed the point of making a good parody of another famous musical adaptation of a classical horror icon.

The red herring joke was actually funny to be fair

My guess as to why the captain got change is being a lot of Universal Monster movies (by a lot I mean 2. 3 if you include sequels) having some type of Romany / "Fortune Teller" character. Dracula with the village people where they advise Renfield not to go to Castle Dracula and (which I know is a stretch however those same costumes would later be used in) Wolf Man with the characters of Bela and Maleva. And wolf man doesn't let you forget it even after Lugosi's one scene as Bela whenever another character refers to him the majority of the time he's called "Bela the Gypsy" (which is the movie's words not mine). And Maleva's name is never mentioned except for the credits. When it isn't the rare instance of a character saying she was Bela's mom it's "The old gypsy women" It could also be that Wolf Man and Creature are both monster films in the sense of there's a human like animal as the monster so that was thrown in. Whatever it is, still a horrible change

I was listening to the end of the video and slowly went, "wait is that... Tom Lehrer?.." poisoning pidgeons in the park is a good upbeat spooky song.

The Gillman's motovation is that they are encroaching on his space. It's a nature vs man conflict.

The raggedy Ann and Andy community asks you make the raggedy Ann and Andy video.

This musical was my introduction to creature to from the black lagoon as a kid watching random vids on RU-vid. The movie is now my fav classic horror film, so it’s really funny to think that is is how I got exposed to it.

Its rare that you find a movie from the 50s that has a reboot that is somehow MORE racist than the original. I dont know how they managed that

STOP I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS MUSICAL FOR YEARS 😭😭 the first time I went to Universal and Disney in my life was when they had this musical!!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I'VE RANDOMLY SUNG "CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!" IN MY LIFE SINCE THEN?? 😂I really enjoyed seeing it at the park, so I'm happy other people are talking about it after I thought it was a fever dream for so long. I really want to see it again even if it isn't very good! 👍

“What is Spider-Man rocks?” Crap. Crap is the answer to that question.

its a great day when max spreads us and fills us with new content 😍

Am glad RU-vid recommended this to me. On a early comment about theatre having trouble doing horror I think they are looking at it the wrong way. Because I think wrestling shows aspects of how it can work using violence and illusions to have people be scared for the victims against the slasher and that isn't even talking about other horror like dracula. And I think it can even work for musicals too just it is way way harder. To me Sweeney Todd is a horror musical not just because of the killing and subject matter but it uses music to have even more horror. They have that screeching whistle when there is a death and I grew to fear that coming more than the actual visuals because it is so upsetting on the ears. Having a show with wonderful musical performances have something that also grates your ears and last the perfect time to make you wish it would stop but not having you go away is such good work

Talk about American Psycho the Musical next. You need to.

As someone who LOVES the classic universal horror monster’s and all related media, this has gotta be such an exciting video for me

maxwell please i am getting down on my hands and knees BEGGING you to cover the raggedy ann musical. truly changed my life

I’m going to pretend that Guillermo Del Toro watched this and got so mad he wrote Shape of Water

My favorite part about these videos is that since i am not a theatre kid anytime you bring up some sort of random musical i have to stand there and say "excuse me what?" but i have to ignore said off hand remark about American psycho the musical so i can take in your content

I love these musical videos so much! Very fun to listen to while drawing

You should absolutely 100% check out IT the musical, maybe even make a video about it but just check it out in general. It’s probably my favorite stupid little small musical production I love it so much. It’s a jukebox musical parodying the 2017 and 2019 IT adaptations and it’s actually fucking hilarious

I have seen the original! My friend is a movie collector with questionable ways to spend money, so I've seen every Classic Universal Monster movie with him.

22:41 - the existence of shape of water means yes, there was an audience

i literally was binging through all your videos again this week and had just sat down to have lunch when this posted thank youuuu

Okay, but the actors really sing their heart out, and they did a good job with that.

What a waste of exceptional set design. With such bombastic stage wizardry, they probably could've just did an abridged retelling of the original film with musical numbers. Phantom of the Opera did that and people ate that shit up.

the way gill-man moves on stage reminds me of TMNT stage shows, like I wouls not be surprised if that guy has played a ninja turtle at some point in his career

i cant wait for the spiderman musical vid :)

Hearing that kay went on to win a tony is nice and reminds me of how james from the pokemon live the musical also went on to win awards. it's Andrew Rannells of Falsettos's Whizzer Brown and the book of mormon's elder Kevin Price. sometimes doing these bombs lead to greater things.

to this day, i can't believe i saw katrina lenk in both creature from the black lagoon (the mic failed mid-performance and the creature sang with a handheld mic which added another level of camp) and the company revival

it's tech week for the play i'm in and this video is just what i need to distract me tysm max

:0 a friend sent me this and told me you mention looking into the raggedy ann musical! obviously i'm biased but i think a video about the show from your perspective would be so much fun

Have you ever looked into the weird legality of the Bridgerton musical?

As an aussie i was also wondering why he sounded vaugely australian 😂

You should totally do a Spiderman musical video with Spiderman Rocks and Spiderman Turn Off the Dark

great video! also, rag dolly mention!!! id love to see you review that musical, it's a fav of mine

Keep these coming!! So fun! Love your takes

Great work, max! Keep it up!

This might be a bit of stretch, but since this musical doesn’t seem to be bothered by character derailment… why not have Mark and Kay as unhappy partners in this adaptation? It would at least justify Kay being so cold toward her supposed love interest; maybe Mark could have treated Kay like a trophy wife, so her motivation would have been “I want somebody who actually values me as a person” and not just “catching feelings out of nowhere as the plot demands it”. I could see David working more as a comic relief sidekick in this rework too, maybe a cowardly assistant who Mark forced along for the ride. As for Miranda… she literally could have been replaced by ANY character archetype and it would have been better, as long as they ditched the racial stereotypes. I’d personally rewrite her as more of an “ominous narrator” character who seems to know more than the others do, an maybe as a more serious character to balance out how exaggerated everyone else acts. And maybe write out all those egregious pop culture references too while we’re at it.

You just know Peter was hired for this project purely because of his name.

Milicent Patrick was the artist who designed Gill-man, there's a great book about her called 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘓𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘯 by Mallory O'Meara. Worth checking out if you want to hear about a woman's career in the film industry in the 1940s-1960s.

If you haven’t picked a musical topic for Christmas yet, can you look at Rover Dangerfield? 🐶

It's very funny seeing people discover this travesty of a musical considering Charlie Callahan of Theme Snark covered it in his Universal Studios retrospective 8 years ago... the trauma of this show is truly intergenerational.

15:24 THAT IS TONY AWARD WINNER KATRINA LENK!! ........ I am so shook. Edit: okay, I made it to 34:11, I'm glad it got addressed. We need to make a support group for the survivors of these kinds of shows. Sherie René Scott (of the teenage mutant Ninja turtles musical) and Andrew Rannells (of pokémon live) can lead the sessions.

I would actually like to see you make a 2 and a half hour rant about something rotten.

I'm incredibly hung up on the fact that the so-called romani fortune teller (who's ethnic group resides mainly in europe) apparently uses voodoo (an afro-caribbean religion) ?? lol

I actually saw this, but back then I didn't know much about Universal and was just mad I was there instead of Disneyland. All I remembered was the cringy opening spiel and the girl swimming on ropes. In fact for a while I wondered if I had fever dreamed it cause nobody ever knew what I was talking about, but now hearing it only ran for 4 months that makes sense.

They had a failed monster movie cinematic universe AND a failed monster movie musical? How quaint.

The worst musical ever is Love Never Dies. It's chockablock with mall goth clichés. (It doesn't get any more played out or less edgy than Coney Island "freaks.") The plot is dumb. The music is like if in a community college music program tried to write a musical in the style of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The staging is way more lavish than it needs to be, but also incredibly cheap looking at the same time. (Think like live show at Disneyworld.) The worst part is how seriously it takes itself. Like, "my soul is a dead black abyss" teen angst poem level takes itself seriously. The only redeeming quality is that my husband and I both laughed uncontrollably when Christine died. We were both weeping with laughter it was so bad. Belting out "Love Never Dies" during a campy protracted death scene? Comedy gold. I'm sure there are middle aged mall goths from flyover who love it, but I can't imagine it has much of an audience beyond that.

If you're ever doing more bad horror musicals, you should look at the terrible Nosferatu "rock" opera, it's a fascinating trainwreck of a show

The fact that Katrina Lenk? Is in this show??? Is insane to me????

As a Brazilian, the biggest plot twist was learning the creature is an Australian.

Just because phantom of the opera did well as a musical doesn't mean any of the others will.

Hey! I work as an entertainment tech at Busch Gardens in Tampa, FL. We used to have a show called Fiends for Howl-O-Scream (our version of HHN) and it was quite honestly a fever dream of Dr. “Freakenstein” and sexy maids. Would love to see your opinion of it lol

I think making the monster talk is just so weird

5:32 "film dork" we really need to jettison "geek" or "nerd" & replace it with the breezy retro "dork"

I love these musical videos, please keep them up! Could you maybe eventually do a video on ride the cyclone, if you have any thoughts on it? (A musical that came out 16 years ago, how relevant). Good video as I said :]

The Transylvanian twist resurgence is inevitable

I hope next month In order to get into the spirit of the biggest holiday if November, he should make a video on Black Friday

Bro said Spiderman musical and I went into a nervous sweat and said “WHICH ONE!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

The best stage production is the ghost story Woman In Black so when done well a horror play is incredible.

Some horror musicals I find rlly enjoyable are the hatchetfield trilogy musicals from team starkid The guy who didn't like musicals, black friday, and (in my opinion, the best outta the 3) nerdy prudes must die :3

You are such a doll! So happy to have found your channel!!!