---
title: "Mad Monster Party? (1967) review"
description: "I couldn't believe this movie ended with a nuclear holocaust on an escaped zoo animal, but it really did. What a choice."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/mad-monster-party/
---

![A still from Mad Monster Party? (1967)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/mad-monster-party/backdrop.webp)

# Mad Monster Party? (1967)

Oct 24, 2025 | Rated 2.5 out of 5 | Dir. Jules Bass

I couldn’t believe this movie ended with a nuclear holocaust on an escaped zoo animal, but it really did. What a choice.

This is basically Hotel Transylvania but without Adam Sandler, with worse jokes, moving much slower, and featuring incredible stop-motion animation instead of CGI. The Rankin/Bass stop-motion work is genuinely impressive - you can feel the craftsmanship in every frame. These puppets have so much character and the animation holds up remarkably well for 1967.

But the pacing is rough. The jokes don’t land as often as they should. It meanders in ways that modern kids’ movies would never get away with. You can tell this is from an era when family entertainment moved at a very different speed.

That said, it was still a fun cozy Halloween movie. There’s something charming about its creaky old-fashioned approach to monster comedy. It’s got that vintage Halloween aesthetic that just works for October viewing.

Just don’t keep your expectations too high. This is more of a “put it on in the background while you’re carving pumpkins” kind of watch than something that demands your full attention.

Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/mad-monster-party/)

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Karlsson

I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side.

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