Monster Musicals (3): Young Frankenstein, Monster High, Xena, and more!

Many monster stories mix together elements from multiple genres…

Other pages in this series:

27 Monster Musicals (Pt 1): From Addams Family and Spirited to Wicked and beyond
27 Monster Musicals (Pt 2): From King Kong and the rock band KISS to Beauty and the Beast and more

Continuing our series celebrating musicals about monsters, we’ve got more titles for the list—including behind-the-scenes info about Universal Monster parody Young Frankenstein, the staging of Shrek, the 2022 live-action musical fantasy Monster High: The Movie, a Scooby-Doo vampire musical, the stop-motion classic Nightmare Before Christmas, the stage transformation of Toxic Avenger, a musical episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, the supervillain ruckus Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and a rockin’ house party episode of The Munsters.

Scroll for more info about these—and click to our other pages for our big list of monster musicals, including stage productions, movies, TV episodes, and cartoons! Our whole list ranges from big shows like Wicked and movies like Anna and the Apocalypse to more obscure examples like Bat Boy: The Musical and TV episodes like that one from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Got any “monster musical” favorites you think we should add? Let us know in the comments below the series’ first page…

Monster Complex uses Amazon affiliate links.

19 Shrek

Shrek The Musical has music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. The show is based on the 2001 animated movie Shrek, plus details from Shrek 2, Shrek Forever After and William Steig’s 1990 book Shrek! The original Broadway production opened December 2008 and closed January 2010. It was followed by a tour of the United States and a British production June 2011 to February 2013. The show has been staged across the U.S., in Brazil, UK, and Ireland, Australia, and in other international locations.

Shrek, a media franchise inspired by Steig’s 1990 picture book, includes four computer-animated films, two television specials, and the spin-off movie Puss in Boots. The series primarily focuses on Shrek, a bad-tempered but good-hearted ogre, who begrudgingly accepts a quest to rescue a princess, resulting in him finding friends and going on many subsequent adventures in a fairy tale world.

The Monkees classic pop song “I’m a Believer,” which was originally played as the audience left the theatre, was added to the musical’s score on October 2, 2009, and sung by the entire company at the end of the performance.

Buy Shrek the Musical stuff from Amazon

20 Monster High: The Movie

The 2022 live-action musical fantasy film Monster High: The Movie is the latest media appearance from the Monster High franchise. Clawdeen Wolf is a half-werewolf half-human biracial girl. As part monster, Clawdeen has spent her life in the world of humans hiding from people. On Clawdeen’s 15th birthday, she receives an invitation to study at Monster High, a high school for monsters her mother used to attend. Her father warns her that she must hide her human side, because humans are considered monsters’ biggest threat and only “true monster hearts” are allowed in the school.

The movie is directed by Todd Holland and features songs written by Joshua Silverberg, Justin Gray, Leland, Lindsay Sweat, MacKenzie ‘Kiki’ Leigh Halliday, Max Corwin & Todd Holland.

The videos below include a trailer for the movie, and a music video for one of the songs.

Monster High started as an American fashion doll franchise that hit the market in 2010. Following the dolls and web series, the brand grew to include other stuff for kids like toys, clothes, books, comic books, stationery and more. These stories focus on teen children of famous monsters from monster movies, folklore, and mythology. The characters have appeared in all kinds of media.

Review

“Monster High: The Movie retreads familiar themes from high school musicals that came before, but the spooky twist adds a fun layer that could make for an excellent gateway to a budding monster kid. Some of its effects won’t impress grown-ups, but its target audience won’t mind once Harris, Balagot, and Damasen start exposing their monster hearts in song and dance.” (Bloody Disgusting)

Find Monster High stuff at Amazon

21 Toxic Avenger

The Toxic Avenger started out as a 1984 superhero dark comedy splatter film. Virtually ignored when first released, The Toxic Avenger grew a cult following over the years.

The 2008 rock musical The Toxic Avenger, based on the movie, features a book written by Joe DiPietro, music by David Bryan, with lyrics from both. It is a comical take on a number of themes, including superhero stories, pollution, disability, politics, and the idea that New Jersey is inferior to other places.

Since its first showing in 2008, it has been performed around the world. In 2018, a film of The Toxic Avenger musical was released.

An Off-Broadway production in 2009 won the Outer Critics Circle Award for “Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical.” A Toronto production in 2010 won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for “Outstanding Performance by a Female in a Principal Role – Musical” for actress Louise Pitre.

Find the Toxic Avenger musical’s video and album at Amazon

22 The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

The 1993 musical stop-motion fantasy film The Nightmare Before Christmas features the king of Halloween Town—who discovers Christmas Town, and his attempts to bring Christmas home wreaks havoc.

Watch the video below for the song “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas…

The musical features songs and a motion picture score from Danny Elfman, who gained fame as singer-songwriter for the band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s. Since becoming a composer of scores, Elfman has composed more than 100 feature film scores, plus music for TV, stage productions, and the concert hall.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, produced by Tim Burton, started out as a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was an animator for Walt Disney. When it eventually made its way to film, the final product was directed by Henry Selick, with a voice cast that included Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.

23 Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire (2012)

Scooby-Doo takes on a musical! The Mystery Inc. gang attends a vampire festival in which a real vampire appears to disrupt the festivities. Things go from bad to worse when the vampire chooses Daphne for his bride. The 2012 direct-to-DVD animated musical comedy horror film Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire is the first of the films to be a musical.

Podcast The Unmasked History of Scooby Doo talked with Christian Campbell, who co-starred in Scooby Doo! Music of the Vampire as the voice of Bram, leader of the vampire performance troupe. “This is the Scooby Doo world I enjoyed when I was a kid,” he said, “except now there’s music and people are being fabulous. It was good. It was good solid fun. And now I found, I’ve got nephews, I’ve got nieces, and they love the fact that they hear my voices in various cartoons.”

Buy Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire from Amazon

24 Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

In 2007, a major strike shut down Hollywood and a bunch of people found themselves with a lot of time on their hands. So, several of them got together and did the Internet musical comedy-drama Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

A mini-series originally shown in three acts online, the story focused on determined supervillain Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris); his rival, superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion); and their shared love interest, charity worker Penny (Felicia Day). By the way, the crew and actors also sang the musical commentary for the show. This video is the first act of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog…

The Dr. Horrible musical includes several people you’ve seen in other stuff, but this column would be a great time to talk about all the singing that Neil Patrick Harris does. We mentioned him already in part two of this series (when we talked about another supervillain he played through song).

Harris was also a guest on Glee, when he sang a crazy wonderful gunslinger duet of the Aerosmith song “Dream On.” In fact, he won an Emmy Award for that guest appearance as “Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.” You can watch the duet in the video below.

The actor also sang the fun song “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit” on the 100th episode of his sitcom How I Met Your Mother. He has also hosted the Tony Awards (the musicals award) more than once, and he starred in the title role of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway, for which he won the 2014 Tony Award for “Best Leading Actor in a Musical.”

Pretty good record for a supervillain.

25 Xena: Warrior Princess, “The Bitter Suite”

“You won’t believe your ears—Xena’s first all-musical adventure!”

This special 1998 musical episode of fantasy adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess, “The Bitter Suite” (episode 3.12), finds Xena and Gabrielle in the Land of Illusia, where they’re forced to let go of mutual grievances to escape alive. By the end of the episode, they learn to focus on their bond as partners.

The video playlist below includes the episode’s promo, a video commentary with the ladies, and several tracks from the score.

Xena musical episode “The Bitter Suite”

The 1995-2001 series Xena: Warrior Princess focuses on Xena (Lucy Lawless), a warrior in a quest to seek redemption for her past sins as a ruthless warlord by using her fighting skills to help people. Her best friend and traveling companion is Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor).

For the musical episode’s songs, all the music was composed by Joseph LoDuca, with lyrics by Pamela Phillips Oland, Stephen L. Sears, Chris Manheim, Dennis Spiegel, and LoDuca. The episode was directed by Oley Sassone, and written by Manheim and Sears.

One of the earliest examples of a musical episode of a non-musical TV show, “The Bitter Suite” led to a lot of other shows following Xena’s example. Including, funny enough, the Xena show doing this again. In fact, I’m going to throw in this bonus rap battle from episode 5.10, “Lyre Lyre Hearts on Fire”…

26 Young Frankenstein

Mel Brooks’ 1974 comedy film Young Frankenstein, directed by Brooks, and co-written by Brooks with star Gene Wilder, is a parody of Universal Pictures’ classic entries in the Frankenstein series, especially 1931’s Frankenstein, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, and 1939’s Son of Frankenstein. After the success of the 2001 musical based on Brooks’ film The Producers, Brooks decided to create a musical based on Young Frankenstein.

Featuring a book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, and music and lyrics by Brooks, Young Frankenstein follows Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Fronkensteen”) when he inherits a castle in Transylvania containing Igor, Inga and Frau Blucher. After discovering the secret entrance to his grandfather’s laboratory, Frederick decides to carry on the family experiments and creates a monster of his own.

Buy the Original Broadway Cast Recording

Buy the Original London Cast Recording

More from Monster Complex

27 The Munsters episode “Far Out Munsters” (1965)

As Monster Complex has pointed out several times, monster family show The Munsters show had a few episodes with some kind of performance—including stage magic, stand-up comedy, and singing. But the one we’re featuring on this list is an episode where a real-life rock band showed up and threw a party in the Munsters’ home.

On the 26th episode of the first season, “Far Out Munsters” (1965), the family rented their house to a rock band that threw a big party. However, the Munsters disliked their hotel accommodations enough that they returned and crashed the party. Once The Munsters showed up at the party, they also made some performances—including poetry recited by Herman and a ballad sung by Lily.

These videos offers some info about the episode, plus share Herman’s and Lily’s performances…

1960s sitcom The Munsters featured a family of monsters that considered themselves to be regular people. This episode included a guest appearance of The Standells, an American garage rock band sometimes referred to as a “punk band of the 1960s,” and said to have inspired the Sex Pistols and Ramones. The Standells are most remembered for their 1966 hit “Dirty Water,” which has since become the anthem of several Boston sports teams. For their appearance on The Munsters, the band performed the song “Come On and Ringo” and a version of The Beatles’ song “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Find The Munsters Season One on Amazon

Buy The Standells music on Amazon

27 Monster Musicals (Pt 3): From Young Frankenstein and Monster High to Xena: Warrior Princess and more