Previously: Sam overrelated to a dude who ate people.
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Monster Movie
Kirsti: Yes, that title is a terrible attempt at sounding like the Count from Sesame Street. First things first: this post has almost no gifs because 90% of the gifs for this episode are of one particular scene, and I’m sure when we get there you’ll guess what it is.
Marines: I’ll help the cause by adding this in response to the lack of gifs:
K: Bless you.
We open in black and white with an old school Warner Brothers logo. That’s followed by 1940s style put-everything-at-the-start style movie credits accompanied by monster movie style music. (M: FUN WITH CREDITS, MY FAVORITE.) When the credits end, we’re still in black and white. The monster movie music continues as the Bromobile drives through a storm and into Pennsylvania. Dean complains about the radio station, and switches off the music. Sam’s studying a file by torchlight as Dean gets excited about their case – there’s a dead dude with a gnawed on neck who’s drained of blood and a witness saying that a vampire did it.
Sam agrees that it’s weird but he thinks they should be focusing on the apocalypse rather than killing vampires. Dean says it’s time for them to “get back to tackling a straight forward, black and white case”. I see what you did there, Dean. Sam bitchfaces.
Cut to them arriving in a small town that’s VERY into Oktoberfest. Dean complains about Sam having seen a movie without him, and claims “you were in Hell” isn’t a valid excuse. (M: Lies. That’s the most valid excuse ever.) Then he dashes off to get a giant pretzel. Sam grins and shakes his head fondly. They eat their giant pretzels, ogle a hot blonde, then head over to talk to the sheriff. They introduce themselves as FBI Agents Angus and Young, which lets me break out one of my favourite tags: the fakest names in fakeonia.
The sheriff takes them to see the victim, and talks about how terrible it is. Except it turns out he’s talking about the impact on tourist season rather than a girl dying. Sam bitchfaces. Dean examines the dead girl, and she has Buffy-esque vampire marks on her neck. He’s hella confused, and he and Sam exchange a look. Dean asks about the witness, and the sheriff says he’s not very reliable.
Back at the Oktoberfest bar, the boys head up to the hot blonde from earlier, who’s working behind the bar. We get an awkward shot of her cleavage as Dean reads her name tag – Jamie – and Sam says they’re looking for Ed Brewer, their witness. They show her their IDs, and she’s all “LOL REALLY??”. Dean leans in close and says he’s a rebel who doesn’t play by the rules. Sam smirks. Dean winks. Jamie looks sceptical. Good choice, girl.
Mari: Because the lines he’s feeding her are painfully bad. And because we know she’s going to definitely be all over him later, let us enjoy this fleeing moment of, “OMG STOP.”
K: Agreed.
She points them in the direction of Ed Brewer. He’s a weedy little dude with an awful pencil moustache, drinking out of a giant beer stein. He complains that no one believes him and now he’s the town laughing stock. The boys tell him that they believe him and they’re used to weirdness. The spooky monster movie music starts up again as Pencil Mo says he left the bar just after midnight and cut through the park on his way home. He thought he saw a couple kissing, but the girl was struggling, and the guy was biting her neck.
Sam asks Pencil Mo to describe the attacker, and he says “Oh, he was a vampire“. Dean asks for clarification, and Pencil Mo says he looked like old school Dracula – all fangs and slicked back hair and satin cape. The boys are all “the fuck??”, and Pencil Mo says the attacker even had the Dracula accent. He does an impression, then asks the boys if they believe him. They stare at him, speechless.
Jamie and her friend Lucy watch the interview and discuss Ed’s weirdness. Lucy blots her lipstick on a napkin and leaves it on the bar. Dean heads back to the bar and orders a beer from Jamie. Sam picks up Lucy’s napkin for no apparent reason and says that this totally isn’t their kind of case. Dean leads the way to a table as he agrees, but he thinks they should stick around because they already paid for the room, and the town is full of “beer and bar wenches”. Sam awkwardly adds that women don’t appreciate being called wenches. Really, Sam? Of all the misogyny in this show, THAT’S the one you pick up on? Okay. Whatever.
Dean yells “Hey, bar wench!” at Jamie and she tells him that his beer’s coming. Sam looks pained. Dean grins that Oktoberfest is awesome. Jamie brings the beer over, and Dean flirts. She shoots him down and Sam smirks. (M: Maybe it was the “hey, bar wench!” after all.) After she leaves, Dean says that he’s come to a conclusion: because he came back from Hell without any of his old scars or wonky broken-too-many-times fingers, he’s also come back from Hell a virgin. “I’ve been rehymenated!” he says. Sam cracks up, and says that’s beyond anyone’s powers. Dean insists that he has to rectify this immediately.
Cut to the woods under a full moon. A wolf howls, and the camera pans around to show us a couple necking in a car. The wolf howls again, and the girl freaks. The guy tries to claim that blue balls are real and he’ll die if they don’t boink. I want to punch him in the dick. (M: Take those medical consequences, tremendodouche.) The girl looks grossed out but kisses him anyway. Meanwhile, we see a wolfy figure walking towards the car. It makes me miss Oz… (M: OZ! Why would you do that?) (K: SORRY.) The girl pulls away again, and the guy insists that there aren’t any wolves in Pennsylvania. The werewolf smashes the window and drags him out of the car. Some squelchy noises let us know that he’s dying a gross death as the girl screams. Fade to black.
Mari: He definitely doesn’t need to worry about death-by-lack-of-sex anymore, though. So there’s that.
K: Small mercies blah blah blah GOOD RIDDANCE, JERK.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys interview the girl. She clearly gives zero fucks about her dead boyfriend because she’s drinking a huge slurpee. They ask what did it, and she says it was a werewolf. Totally not a Supernatural werewolf. The old movie kind. The boys are hella confused and leave her to her slurpee.
They head to the morgue and examine the dead boyfriend. Based on their reactions, it’s super gross. But it can’t be a REAL werewolf because the heart’s not missing. The sheriff walks in and informs them that they did some super fast testing, and the hairs found on the body are wolf hairs. The boys exchange eyebrow raises laden with meaning before Dean announces that he’s getting a headache.
They head back to the bar for burgers and beer, and discuss how this case is super weird and nonsensical. Jamie brings them free beers and tells Dean that she gets off work at midnight. We get another random shot of Lucy blotting her lipstick before Jamie walks away and Sam eyerolls a little.
Cut to the Canonsberg Museum of American History, which is surrounded by swirly dry ice. Inside, a security guard is on the phone, talking about how they’ve just gotten an unexpected delivery in the form of a mummy case. He turns away as he talks, and obviously the lid slides off and a mummy appears. “Holy mother of crap!” the guard shouts. He draws his gun and shoots at the mummy, but nothing happens. It lifts him by the throat and it’s curtains for Mr Security Guard.
Sometime later, the coroner takes the body away as the boys investigate the sarcophagus. Sam finds a sticker on the inside, and announces that it’s from a movie prop house in Philadelphia. Dean says this goes perfectly with the adorably tiny bucket of dry ice he just found inside. “A mummy with a good sense of showmanship,” he snaps. (M: But clearly not good with the details. Gotta remove those stickers, man.) He realises that he’s late and bails to meet Jamie, leaving Sam to deal with the mummy situation.
We cut to Jamie, waiting outside the bar as fog swirls around her. She checks her watch and sighs, then walks off. There’s a fluttery noise behind her, and she turns to see a dude looking very much like Bela Legosi’s Dracula standing behind her. “Goot eevnink,” he says. She makes a “WTF?” face, then runs. He flings his cape around him and follows. She finds herself in a dead end, and rummages through her handbag as Dracula says he’s been watching her from afar for months and his passion knows no bounds.
He calls her Mina, and says she’s the reincarnation of his beloved. She maces him. He swears in a very American accent as she runs. He follows. Jamie collides with Dean, and Dracula makes a super grossed out face when he sees Dean there. Dean’s all “The fuck?!” and Dracula tells him not to swear “in the presence of my bride“. Dean punches him in the face. Dracula hisses, his fangs out. They fight as Jamie runs.
Dracula pins Dean against a wall, and calls him Mr Harker. He leans in towards Dean’s neck. Dean grabs his ear and yanks. It comes off in his hand, and I throw up in my mouth a little. Dracula runs and Dean looks grossed out for a second before following. He’s just in time to see Dracula jump over a gate and disappear into the night on a Vespa. It’s kind of hilarious.
Mari: The cape whipping behind him really sells it.
K: Truth.
Fade to black. Or, more accurately, an old school “Intermission” slide.
After the Not Commercial Break, Sam finds Dean and Jamie in the bar and asks if they’re okay. Dean says he thinks he knows what’s going on, and hands Sam a folded towel. Dracula’s ear is inside. He tells Sam to touch it, and Sam makes “I’m doing this but I hate you for it” face. Realisation dawns on him – they’re dealing with a shapeshifter. Dean pulls Dracula’s medallion out of his pocket, and shows Sam that it features the same sticker for a Philadelphia special effects place.
Dean informs the slower individuals amongst us that all three creatures – Dracula, the mummy and the werewolf – are the same dude, and they have to stop him before he finds new movies to pick from. Jamie looks at them in confusion and says “So, you guys are like Mulder and Scully or something, and The X-Files are real?“. Dean chuckles then gets bitchface as he says The X-Files is a TV show and this is real. She doesn’t look reassured.
Jamie asks who the hell Mina is, and that combined with Dracula calling Dean “Mr Harker” lets Sam join the dots to the actual Dracula book. To be honest, Mina was sufficient for me, but whatever. Elle Woods got a better LSAT score than Sam, so clearly we’re both smarter than him. He also earns himself a gold star, so that’s something.
Sam says that Dracula’s clearly fixated on Jamie and must have been around her before. Jamie’s grossed out and pours herself another drink. Dean asks if there’ve been any weirdos taking notice of her. She points out that it’s Oktoberfest and she’s a bartender.
Then she changes her mind and points the finger at Pencil Mo, saying he moved to town a month ago and Lucy swears he has a crush on Jamie.
Mari: Such a great trope. “Is there anyone who would want to hurt you?” “No! No one! …well, there is that one guy.” TV investigators should just start asking, “besides the no one that wants to hurt you, is there anyone who would want to hurt you?”
K: That would certainly speed up the investigation process, yes!
Dean asks where Pencil Mo lives, and Jamie says she doesn’t know but he’s the projectionist at the old movie theatre. Sam sets off to investigate, leaving Dean to look after Jamie.
Cut to sometime later. Jamie’s joining dots on the whole Monsters Are Real thing, and I kind of feel like we should add that phrase to the drinking game. She also joins the dots on Dean not actually being in the FBI. She says that it must suck giving up his life to traipse across the country hunting monsters, and Dean says he used to think that way, but since he had a near death experience, he’s realised that he saves people and it gives him warm fuzzies.
Jamie sits down next to him as he talks and the tinkly piano tinkles. Then he says that he’s on a mission from God, and I headdesk. Jamie asks if being on a mission from God means that he’s celibate, and they kiss, quickly jumping on the train to Makeout Central. But they’re interrupted by the lights snapping on. It’s Lucy, who’s come to grab a bottle of booze from the bar. She’s unconvincingly apologetic for interrupting, (M: Mostly unconvincing ’cause she just stands there and never leaves.) and Jamie tells her to stay for a drink. Dean seconds the invitation, but with a side of “I HATE YOU” face.
Meanwhile, Sam’s at the old movie theatre, accompanied by the strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Incidentally, if you’ve only ever heard the opening few bars that Hollywood loves so much, do yourself a favour and go listen to it because it’s an amazing piece of music. I may have just taken a 10 minute break from recapping to listen to it again…
Bach Break over, let’s resume. Sam heads inside and pulls his gun out. He sees Pencil Mo behind the screen playing the organ and creeps back there to find that he’s actually pretending to play Bach while sitting at a Casio keyboard in his underwear. He spins in surprise and Sam slams him up against the organ, the gun in his face. He says he knows what Pencil Mo is, and tries to pull his ear off. Pencil Mo screams in pain. Sam makes “Oh shit, I fucked up” face.
Back at the bar, Jamie’s filling Lucy in on the events of the evening. Lucy blots her lipstick again and Jamie suddenly gets super drowsy. The two events aren’t related, they just happen back to back. Lucy asks if Dean’s a black belt, and he’s woozy too. We see from Dean’s perspective that everything’s spinning. He suddenly hauls back and punches Lucy in the face. She falls to the floor as Jamie gets all “WTF?” before passing out.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Dean says. Lucy smirks and shoves her jaw back into place. Dean kicks her in the face. Lucy rolls to her feet as Dean gets dizzy again. He smashes the whisky bottle and threatens her with it, but she swims in and out of focus. He collapses to the floor, unconscious. Lucy stands over him with a smug smile on her face. “And…scene,” she says as she stomps on his head. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, we’re in something that looks very much like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. Dean’s chained to a table and is, for inexplicable reasons, now dressed in lederhosen. I will never not find this hilarious.
Mari: I’m pretty sure everyone involved in making the decision of dressing Jensen in lederhosen will never not find that hilarious.
K: Highly likely.
He comes to and is super unimpressed by this turn of events. There’s a picture of a woman who looks like Lucy on the wall, and Dracula appears to talk about how gorgeous she is. Apparently she’s Wife #3 from a back-in-the-day Dracula movie, and that’s why he chose her form for when he’s out in public.
Dean’s totally grossed out by everything about the shapeshifter, and points out that he’s not REALLY Dracula or any of the other monsters. Dracula punches Dean in the face and says that he chose the movies because they’re elegant and simple, unlike real life. Dean shouts that what he did to the people he killed wasn’t elegant, and asks if he realises what happens at the end of every monster movie.
“Ah, but this movie is mine. And in it, the monster wins. The monster gets the girl!” Dracula says. He then says that the hero will get electrocuted. Dean suddenly looks nervous as Dracula reaches for a big lever on the wall. He strains against his bonds. Just as Dracula’s about to pull the lever, the doorbell rings. Dracula excuses himself and dashes upstairs. Dean sighs in relief.
Upstairs, Dracula opens the door to the pizza guy. Dracula’s pleased with his service, and says his life will be spared if he keeps it up. Pizza Guy rolls his eyes and demands to be paid.
Sam heads back to the bar and finds it deserted. He rings Dean and there’s no answer. He leaves a message, then spots the broken bottle on the floor and Lucy’s lipsticked napkin on the table. He joins the dots pretty damned quickly. Back at Dracula/Frankenstein’s place, Jamie wakes in a fancy bedroom. Dracula’s there. He tells her to put on a pretty white virginal dress. She asks where Dean is, and Dracula says he’s resting. He demands that she put on the dress for dinner because they’re having pizza.
Mari: I know I always like to put on my best gowns when we’re having pizza.
K: It’s definitely the best food to eat while wearing white.
Jamie asks what the hell is wrong with him, and wants to know why he posed as Lucy and pretended to be her friend. Dracula says he had to know if she was the one. Jamie snaps that he could have talked to her, acted like a normal person. Instead, he became this. He yells at her to put on the dress. She reaches for it reluctantly.
Meanwhile, Sam sneaks into the house with his gun drawn. Back downstairs, Jamie’s wearing the dress. Dracula drops the accent and says sadly that he scared her and she’s the only one he doesn’t want to scare. Jamie tells him that the movies aren’t real. What follows is a speech that’s oddly painful for such a silly and generally lighthearted episode:
“”Real” is being born this way. Different. “Real” is having your dad call you “monster” — it’s the first time you hear the word. And he tries to beat you to death with a shovel. Everywhere I ran, everywhere I tried to hide, people found me, dragged me out, attacked me. Called me “freak,” called me “monster.” Then I found them. The great monsters. In their movies, they were strong. They were feared. They were beautiful. And now I am like them. Commanding. Terrifying.”
“Lonely…” Jamie finishes. He replies that he’s not lonely any more because she’s there. He goes to touch her face and she flinches back, saying that he’s a murderer, which might be why he’s lonely. He says it’s the other way around – he kills people BECAUSE he’s lonely, not that killing makes him lonely. There’s a noise from behind them, and Dracula spins around. Jamie screams for Dean, and Dracula backhands her. She ends up unconscious on the bed, and he looks horrified.
Meanwhile, Dean is still trying to get free of his bonds.
Sam walks in and helps him free before laughing over his stupid outfit. He hands Dean a silver knife, and they head over to a heavy looking wooden door. Sam tries to kick it down, but his foot goes right through. “Let’s go…” he says awkwardly.
Sam finds Jamie on the bed and rushes towards her. Dracula grabs him and throws him through a wall. Sam blacks out. Dean attacks, but Dracula grabs him and pummels him. “And you, Harker, now you die!” he hisses. Dean tells him to STFU, and glances at Sam’s gun on the floor. Dracula knocks him down, and suddenly he’s shot from behind. He turns to see Jamie holding the gun.
He says the shifter had a point and it would be nice if life was super simple, like in the movies. Although he insists that he wouldn’t pick monster movie nonsense. Sam grins and says he knows what Dean would pick. Dean insists that Sam has no idea. They bicker back and forth, until Sam looks his brother dead in the eye and says “Porky’s II“. Dean insists that it’s a lucky guess and Sam smirks as “The End…?” appears on the screen.
This episode is fun. And dumb. And fun. And occasionally laden with feels for the monster of the week, which is weird. It’s not one that stands up to being watched over the course of three hours, as happens when we recap things, but watched straight through? It’s definitely enjoyable, with plenty of Buffy nostalgia.
Mari: I don’t have much to add beyond that. I did get to watch it in one straight shot and it was just kind of 45 minutes of even, mindless entertainment. I feel like it would be an even bigger treat for fans of the monster movie genre, people who could delight all the more in the way the episode. It was cute that Supernatural did this as it definitely has influences of this genre, even if it recently has moved away from the “black and white” cases of the week and all that. Supernatural has been so rarely light hearted. I realize this is still an episode that featured multiple deaths, but come on. This episode plays on the whole theme of last episode, about having to deal with darkness inside, being seen as a monster and eventually becoming one, but certainly in a much different way.
Next time on Supernatural: Dean’s suddenly terrified of everything in one of my favourite episodes ever S04 E06 – Yellow Fever.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
