Baron Boris von Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) creates the means of ultimate destruction and summons all of earth's monsters (except one) to his island castle in order to announce his discovery and his retirement as leader of the Worldwide Organization of Monsters, a role he plans to pass on to his clueless, human, nephew Felix. This leads to a number of the monsters and Frankenstein's assistant, Francesca, scheming to get their hands on the secret formula for themselves.
Mad Monster Party (1967) was created by the same people that brought us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other beloved holiday classics. Like Rudolph, Mad Monster Party was created using stop motion animation on miniature sets with characters designed by Jack Davis. There are also a number of musical numbers.
Unlike Rudolph, and most of the other Rankin/Bass classics, Mad Monster Party has never won me over. I love stop motion animation and think it's a perfect choice for this film. I love the character designs and the sets too. I just think the characters themselves and the story (written by Harvey Kurtzman and Len Korobkin) are a bit flat and uninteresting, especially for a feature length movie that was clearly padded out to extend its running time with several scenes in the middle that serve no other purpose. This is similar to my reaction to A Nightmare Before Christmas. Both of these movies feature lots of things that appeal to me and I feel that I should love them, but I don't. The biggest problem here is that Felix is such an unlikable dweeb that it's hard to root for him and harder to believe in the romance that develops between him and Francesca.
I'm a big fan of Rankin/Bass, but as much as I want to love this movie, it just doesn't do much for me beyond the visuals.
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