4.05 Monster Movie

Title	Monster Movie
Episode #	Season 4, Episode 5
First aired	October 16, 2008
Directed by	Robert Singer
Written by	Ben Edlund
On IMDB	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1222610/
Outline	A good old-fashioned vampire hunt becomes something much more bizarre as classic film monsters terrorize a town during Oktoberfest.
Monster	Shapeshifter
Timeline	October 2008
Location(s)	Canonsburg, Pennsylvania
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Synopsis

It's a dark and stormy night. The Impala crosses the border into Pennsylvania... or is it Transylvania? Dean is excited about a weird but straightforward vampire hunt. Sam is a little hung up on the approaching apocalypse. Dean reminds him that they can't save the world by themselves, at least not today, so it's better to hunt what they can until then.

Enter Oktoberfest in Canonsburg, replete with polka bands, very big pretzels and attractive barmaids. Sam and Dean pose as FBI to get Sheriff Dietrich to show them the body of the victim, 26-year-old Marissa Wright, who had come up from Larkin for the fest. The victim has two clean fang bites on her neck, a far cry from the damage inflicted by other vampires.

The boys head to the local beer garden to find the sole witness to the crime, Ed Brewer, who is notoriously unreliable but who insisted on being named a witness. Sam and Dean approach Jamie, dressed in a dirndl, who is skeptical of their FBI cred but who points them in Ed's direction. They find him nursing an enormous skein of beer. After some coaxing, he describes the crime and the assailant, insisting that a vampire "with the fangs and the slicked-back hair and the fancy cape and the little medallion thing on the ribbon" did it. Dean identifies the get-up as "like a Dracula," and Ed confirms this, "right down to the accent." The boys conclude that this is not their kind of case, but decide to stick around, since the hotel has already been paid for.

Dean, meanwhile, is trying extra-hard to pick up Jamie, who laughs him off. Sam asks Dean why he needs to "right some wrongs," and Dean reveals that when Castiel resurrected him, all his scars and disfigurations from years of hunting vanished, leading him to conclude that he is once again a virgin and wants to get rid of it while Sam is sceptical that an angel could make a person a virgin again.

Later that night, Rick Deacon and Anna-Marie are making out in the back seat of his car. The girl hears howling and is worried about wolves. Rick is worried about other matters and insists there aren't any wolves in Pennsylvania -- at which point two hairy arms break through the window and snatch Rick away into the gloom.

Anna-Marie describes their assailant to Sam and Dean as a classic Wolf Man-style werewolf, "with the furry face and the black nose and the claws and the torn-up pants and shirt." The state of Rick's body disgusts even the boys, who are impressed that something pulled a healthy man limb from limb, but puzzled by the intact heart, which other werewolves never leave behind. Sheriff Dietrich arrives to throw in another piece of confounding evidence: wolf hairs were found on the body. Sam and Dean decide the case has just gotten weird enough for them.

At the beer garden, Jamie tells Dean that she gets off at midnight, and that tonight doesn't have to be a girls' night out with Lucy, her fellow "bar wench." Meanwhile, a night watchman at the Canonsburg Museum of Natural History calls in to find out why someone left an Egyptian sarcophagus on the museum loading dock. While he's talking, the cover slides back, and a mummy rises from the tomb and kills the night watchman.

While investigating the museum, Sam discovers that the sarcophagus comes from a prop house in Philadelphia, while Dean reveals buckets of dry ice in the bottom. Dean realizes what time it is and hurries back to the beer garden to meet up with Jamie. Jamie, however, finds herself confronted with none other than the Dracula, who pursues her through the alleyways and declares his passionate love for her, calling her "Mina" and insisting she be his bride. Jamie sprays him with mace, just in time for Dean to show up to fight the Dracula, who calls Dean "Mr. Harker." Dean tears an ear off the Dracula, which is just as odd as the Dracula making his getaway on a scooter.

Sam joins Jamie and Dean at the beer garden, where Dean reveals that they've got a shapeshifter on their hands. Sam deduces that it must be someone Jamie knows, since the shapeshifter is fixating on her and assigning her a role from a classic film. Jamie wonders if maybe Ed is the suspect: Sam goes off to investigate Ed, while Dean stays behind to take care of Jamie.

Jamie and Dean talk about how monsters are real, and not at all like the movies. Jamie asks him if the life sucks, and Dean says that he used to think so, but since a recent "very near death experience," he's beginning to see it as more of a mission, and that saving people is pretty awesome. Just as Dean and Jamie begin kissing, Lucy walks in, and Jamie, to Dean's frustration, invites her to stick around for a drink. Over the course of the conversation, Dean and Jamie realize they've been drugged, and Dean figures out that Lucy is the shapeshifter. He collapses before he can fight back.

Sam, at the Goethe Theatre, discovers Ed playing the enormous Casio pipe organ. When he corners Ed and tries to rip off his "new" ear, he realizes that Ed is not their guy, and heads back to the beer garden, where he too figures out that Lucy is the shapeshifter.

Dean comes to in a mad scientist's basement, strapped to a generator and dressed in lederhosen. The Dracula reveals himself, tells Dean that his monster movie is going to end with the monster victorious and getting the girl, and then pauses Dean's imminent electrocution to pay for the pizza delivery. The Dracula then attempts to romance Jamie, in another room, by presenting her with a white gown and insisting that his terrible experiences growing up a freak have forced him to become like the great monsters of yore in self-defense.

While he is talking to Jamie, Sam finds the house and breaks in. He rescues Dean, and the two of them go to find Jamie, whom the Dracula has knocked out in a fit of rage. The Dracula calls Sam "Van Helsing," and fights both Winchesters. Yet in the ensuing scuffle, it is Jamie who fires Sam's gun, loaded with silver bullets, and at whose hand the Dracula concedes to die.

The next morning, Dean and Jamie take their time saying goodbye. Sam and Dean talk about how if they were going to live the movies, they'd choose something better than classic horror films. Dean says that Sam has no idea what movie he'd pick; Sam shocks him by guessing correctly: Porky's II. Dean grudgingly allows that it was a lucky guess.

Characters

• Sam Winchester
• Dean Winchester
• Jamie
• Ed Brewer
• Lucy/Dracula/Shapeshifter

Definitions

• Vampires
• Werewolves
• Shapeshifters

Music

"Toccata and Fugue in D minor," by Johann Sebastian Bach
played by Ed Brewer in the Goethe Theater when Sam discovers him

Live music at the Oktoberfest festivities by the Happy Schnapps Combo.

Quotes

Dean: Come on, man, it's like the good old days! An honest-to-goodness monster hunt! It's about time the Winchesters got back to tackling a straightforward, black-and-white case.

Jamie: No self-respecting bar wench lets herself get picked up by a customer on the first try.

Dracula:(to the pizza boy) Ah, you have brought a repast. Excellent. Continue to be of such service, and your life will be spared!

Dracula: 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.
Jamie: Lonely.

Trivia & References

Sam and Dean's FBI aliases, Agent Angus and Agent Young, refer to AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young.

The Happy Schnapps Combo is a polka band from Manitowoc, WI.

Dean: I have been rehymenated.

Sam: Please. Dean, maybe angels can pull you out of Hell but no one can do that.
Dean: Brother, I have been rehymenated. And the Dude does not abide.

"The Dude" is Jeffrey Lebowski, anti-hero of the 1998 Coen Brothers cult hit The Big Lebowski. "The Dude abides" is a popular catchphrase from the film.

The Goethe Theatre, where Ed Brewer is a projectionist, refers to the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of, among other works, the two-part tragedy Faust, which recalls Dean's deal.

Dracula: It was beauty who killed the beast.
This is the last line spoken in the movie King Kong.

The Shapeshifter refers to Dean as Mr. (Jonathan) Harker, to Jamie as Mina, and when Sam arrives at the scene, he calls him Van Helsing, all characters from the most popular gothic novel of all times, Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the novel, Dracula persues Mina, the soon-to-be-bride of young Jonathan Harker, who meets vampire hunter Van Helsing.

The portrayal of the Dracula character in the episode highly refers in looks and gestures to famous horror movie actor Bela Lugosis' iconic portrayal of Dracula in the classic movie of the same name from 1931. Among other things, the cloak, Lugosis speech pattern, and the way he holds his cloak to disguise his face are gestures used by Lugosi in "Dracula" and "Albott & Costello Meet Frankenstein". This also might be a reference to the Ed Wood movie Plan 9 from Outer Space- (sometimes called "The Worst Movie Of All Times" and somewhat of a cult hit amongs fans.) - which should have starred Lugosi. But Lugosi died before the movie could be filmed, and Ed Wood hired an actor who barely looked like him. He intercut silent scenes from Lugosi with scenes filmed with the new actor, who had to raise his cloak to conceal his face and the fact that he wasn't Lugosi.

The episode heavily references other classic horror movies besides "Dracula": The Goethe Theatre plays "The Phantom of the Opera", and when we see Ed Brewer bent manically over his piano, this is a reference to the 1925 movie. When we see Dean chained to a torture device in "Dracula"'s cellar, it's actually a reference to Frankenstein (1931). Other movies referenced are The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff (who also played Frankenstein's Monster in the aforementioned 1931 movie). (nn: Reference to the werewolf scene in the episode missing...)

Crazy Credits - The episode has an old-movie-like opening sequence with all the credits in a roll, as well as an "Intermission" screen with music, and a classical movie fade out (with a black circle closing in) at the end.

The whole episode was broadcast in black and white - in the beginning, Dean calls their current hunt a "black and white case".

When Sam approaches the stairs in the movie theater, a poster for the 1953 film House of Wax can be seen in the foreground. Jared Padalecki co-starred in the 2005 remake of this film.

Despite Dean's assertion in 1.02 Wendigo that he didn't "do shorts" - we see him here in lederhosen, albeit non-consensually. He also wears very tight shorts (described by Jensen as "nut huggers") in 4.13 After School Special.

Dean(looking at bite marks on dead girl): What the hell?

Deitrich: Hey, you got me. I mean, this killer is some kind of grade-A whacko, right? I mean, some Satan-worshipping, Anne Rice-reading gothic psycho vampire-wannabe?

Anne Rice is a gothic author who is most known for her series The Vampire Chronicles.

Minutiae

This episode was originally scheduled as the third episode in this season.

Fest sponsored by 97.2 Rock FM, "Classic Rock That Really Rocks!" and MG Premium Brew, a possible reference to executive producer McG

If not intentional the music from the episode is very reminiscent of the music used to sooth the Monster in Young Frankenstein.

Dracula's line "Do not use such language in the presence of my bride!" is probably a nod to the fact that, until the 1970's, actors were not allowed to swear in films.

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

• 4.05 Monster Movie (transcript)

Promotion

• Episode Promo 1: 4.05 Monster Movie
• Episode Promo 2: 4.05 Monster Movie
• Promo vids from Buddy TV
• Interview with Todd Stashwick (shapeshifter) by Eclipse Magazine