From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "Monster Movie"

...what? Yeah, I could have saved this for Horror Month 2023. There's one more thematically appropriate coming up.

Last time, we were left on a sour note as Jack Montgomery succumbed to the beast within and lost everything to his nature as a rugaru, leaving Sam's fate in the near future in question.

This time... shenanigans at Oktoberfest!

We do have an interesting break from formula as our opening credits are done up like a 1930s-40s Universal Monster Movie and, yes, the entire episode is in black and white. A gothic melody, all strings, plays as the Impala passes a sign reading "Welcome to Pennsylvania"... or is it Transylvania? Dean makes a comment about the music on the radio sucking before shutting off.

The boys have a case, a victim who insists that they were attacked by a vampire. While Sam is more focused on the impeding end of the world, Dean is happy to be getting back to form: the Winchester Boys tackling a black and white case. 

Arriving at Oktoberfest 2008, Dean gets the then-newest Indy movie spoiled for him by the fact that Sam saw it while he was in Hell and the boys munch on a pretzel while Dean catches the eye of a pretty blonde. The boys end up locating the sheriff, who takes them to the morgue to check out the body of the deceased. Sure enough, they find two puncture marks in her neck. The sheriff points them in the direction of a man named Ed Brewer, the witness, but says he's not reliable.

At the bar, the boys ask the blonde - Jamie - and Dean attempts to lay on the schmoozing, which Jamie seems amused by, if not unbelieving - about the location of Ed. She does point them in the direction and they find him nursing an overly large tankard of brew. When he's convinced that they actually believe him, he relates the story - he came upon a woman being bitten by a vampire, insisting that he looked exactly like Dracula... right down to the accent.

"Hey, have I got something in my teeth?"

Jamie and another waitress - Lucy - talk for a bit, the other waitress wiping her mouth on a napkin. Sam picks it up seemingly on a whim. Dean once more takes a pass at Jamie, but he makes another swing and a miss. Dean theorizes that Castiel resurrecting him means that, in addition to all of his previous wounds being healed, his virginity has been restored to him. Clearly, it's the only explanation for... this.

As Sam calls it a night and Dean goes to make another (unsuccessful) pass at Jamie, we cut to a teenage couple making out in a car under the full moon. There is a howling, and a very canine-esque creature is clearly stalking them. Just when the boyfriend insists that there aren't any wolves in Pennsylvania, the werewolf grabs him and pulls him through the car window.

The next day, Sam and Dean are interrogating the young woman as she nervously sips from a big gulp. Like Ed before her, she insists that the assailant was indeed a werewolf just like out of the old black and white movies. The boys go and check the body, finding the boyfriend has indeed been cut up into chunky giblets just as the girl had described. The sheriff reveals that the tests were done on the hair found on the body... and it was indeed wolf hair.

The boys commiserate over some brews as they try to figure out just what it is they are dealing with. We've seen werewolves previously, and they don't leave hair behind or have any hair really during transformations. This has to be something else. Oh, and Jamie finally tells Dean the time she gets off work.

Elsewhere, at the Canonsburg Museum, more gothic strings play over a scene of a security guard contacting his superior about an Egyptian sarcophagus that apparently just showed up with no notice and no documentation. As he walks away for a moment, the lid slides aside and a mist rises from it... as does an... honestly really, really cool looking Mummy that strangles him.

When Sam and Dean investigate, they discover that the sarcophagus isn't some ancient artifact, but from a prop house and a bucket of dry ice for the mist effect. Realizing he's running late, Dean leaves to go meet up with Jamie.

Jamie herself starts to leave when she's met by... Dracula, who has taken a fancy to her, proclaiming her to be his Mina. She responds by macing him. He breaks character for a moment, allowing Dean to catch up and get into it. Dracula declares Dean "Mr. Harker". The two fight after Dean tells Jamie to book it like a librarian, Dean managing to rip off Dracula's ear. When the vampire escapes, he leaps over a fence and gets onto a moped to drive away...

The entire Mummy scene is just icing for me. I love it.

We then get an Intermission.

Sam catches up with Dean and Jamie at the bar, Dean revealing the ear and having worked out that it's a shapeshifter. The ribbon, too, has the same label from the prop house. Sam explains the importance of Jonathan Harker and Mina from the Dracula novels and movies, thinking that it's part of "Dracula's" plan to reenact his favorite movies. Jamie hits on Ed as who would potentially be the shapeshifter, although she's skeptical of it. Sam goes to investigate and then the episode gets... philosophical, just a bit.

Jamie thinks it's terrible that Dean gives up his life for this terrible responsibility. Dean counters a bit, saying that he used to feel that way but after Hell (him calling it a "near death experience" a "very near" one), but things have been different. He helps people, saves them, and that makes it worth it to him. It's his mission, his calling, his reason for being. A mission from God. This seems to get Jamie all hot and bothered and the two are soon enough making out... and Lucy walks in on them. She attempts to leave, but Jamie awkwardly invites her to stay for a drink... and I can't tell where Dean is annoyed or he's trying to wrangle a threesome out of the pair.

Sam, meanwhile, gets to the theater and we get that powerful organ music playing as he walks in to find the player silhouetted against the projection screen. He walks backstage, finding Ed at the organ in a muscle tee and tighty-whities. When Sam confronts him, he figures out that he's not the shifter after not being able to tug his ear off.

At the bar, Dean and Jamie fail their Constitution saving throws as Lucy has apparently drugged the booze. Lucy being another form of the Shifter. Dean menacingly grabs a bottle to "skin [her] myself" before falling unconscious.

He awakens in Lederhosen and strapped to a gurney in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. "Dracula" greets him, waxing poetic about a painting about "Bride #3", who he took the shape of for Lucy. The Shifter gets his big monologue explaining his motivation - life is small, messy, and complicated. Movies are big, sprawling, and grand, and he has chosen elegance. When Dean mentions what happens to the monster at the end of every monster movie, the Shifter declares his intent to change the rules. The monster wins, the monster gets the girl, and the hero gets electrocuted... which he plans to do with a comically oversized lever before the door bell rings.

Dracula has a humorous exchange with a hilariously apathetic pizza delivery boy. Say what you will, but I snort laughed.

Sam gets back to the bar, finding lipstick on a napkin and the broken bottles and working out that Lucy is the shifter.

"Okay, so the safety word is Victor."

Jamie awakens in the master bedroom to find her new host and a new dress. The Shifter attempts to get Jamie to play along with his games, but she is resistant... until he has an enraged outburst.

Sam breaks into Lucy's apartment, gun in hand, and begins to properly sweep the area.

The Shifter, interesting, breaks out of his "Dracula" persona as he admits he did not want to scare Jamie. When Jamie insists that the movies aren't real, he retorts that "real" for him was his father beating him for being what he is. He's been rejected time and time again by people for who he is, until he found the classic monsters - ones who were strong, who were feared. He's tried to emulate them. Jamie rightly points out that all that's really done has made him lonely... and a ruckus from afar gets his attention. The Shifter knocks Jamie out when she calls out for Dean.

Sam, meanwhile, breaks in and saves Dean from becoming extra crispy. Up in the master bedroom, the Shifter throws Sam "Van Helsing" through the wall and he and Dean get into a tussle... only for - of all people - Jamie to have gotten Sam's gun off the floor and shot the Shifter twice with silver bullets. Stunned, he nonetheeless resigns himself to his fate, flopping back into his chair and declaring that:

"Perhaps, this is how the movie should end..."

In the next scene, Dean and Jamie are making out - clearly having had some nice, wholesome, "thank God we're alive" sex. The boys commiserate over how life would be nice if it were like the movies, like the Shifter wanted. When Dean says, if he were going to do it, he wouldn't do the Monster Movie vibe, Sam nails him on exactly what he would do - Porky's II.

Dean says his guess was lucky. 

A fun episode and one that the cast and crew clearly had a lot of fun doing.
Lots of love for the classics on full display!

And that was Monster Movie, which is some seriously much needed levity after how absolutely dark Metamorphosis got. Rather than going for the full on dark tone, the episode embraces some of the goofier aspects and is playful about its subject matter. It's meant to be a send up to the old Universal and Hammer Horror Films and it shows, even down to it all being in black and white for the entire thing. I had a weird Mandela Effect occurrence upon rewatch when I thought that the show would go to color during the wrap up, but it did not. It's black and white from the first frame to the last.

The Shifter is played by none other than that great big space asshole Captain Shaw aka actor Todd Stashwick, who I am ashamed to admit took me longer to recognize than it should have. Stashwick does magnificently as 'Dracula' and plays up the comedy very well indeed, but also the more vulnerable side of the character. We don't get much about his backstory, but we know from what we do learn that he has an origin very much in line with a lot of the original gothic villains - tragic and sorrowful, a monster by circumstance rather than choice. In the end however, as Dean puts it, the monster always gets what's coming to them at the end of the movie. The whole thing is honestly just a fun time and a breath of fresh air and it's the perfect fare for spooky season.

Next week, we'll be returning to form. A sickness is rising and Disturbed is not here to save us from it. Dean catches a ghost disease that literally scares those who get it to death and Sam has to race against time to stop him. Next time, we're all going to catch Yellow Fever.

...which sounds problematic, but isn't. Not exactly. Trust me.