Igor is a 2008 computer-animated horror comedy film directed by Tony Leondis from a screenplay by Chris McKenna. The film stars the voices of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Jay Leno, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Coolidge Arsenio Hall, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, and Christian Slater. It tells the story of the titular Igor who lives in the kingdom of Malaria where others of his kind serve as assistants to evil scientists. In trying to achieve his dream to become an evil scientist, Igor accidentally creates a sweet female monster named Eva.
Plot[]
The Kingdom of Malaria is a dark country where evil reigns supreme. It once was a peaceful land of farmers, until its environment was devasted by a mysterious storm that never ended and killed all of its crops, thus driving it inhabitants into poverty. In response, Malaria’s ruler, King Malbert, initiates a plan to save the country by blackmailing the rest of the world into paying them by threatening to unleash various doomsday devices upon the world, created by the kingdom’s best and most wicked scientists. There is also annual Evil Science Fair that takes place in an arena known as the “Killiseum,” where the inventions fight one another while being broadcast to the rest of the world. The scientists responsible for these inventions are treated as celebrities, while citizens with hunchbacks are treated as second-class, usually referred to by the derogatory name “Igor” and are often employed as lowly servants for these scientists.
One Igor, however, is a talented inventor and aspires to be an evil scientist himself. Among his inventions are his friends Scamper, a re-animated, immortal, nihilistic and suicidal rabbit, and Brain, an unintelligent robot with a human brain transplanted into a life support jar. Unfortunately, he must keep his talent a secret out of fear of being sent to the “Igor Recycling Plant,” especially from his master, the incompetent and somewhat tedious-minded Dr. Glickenstein. Meanwhile, another evil scientist, Dr. Schadenfreude, becomes immensely popular due to winning several Evil Science Fairs in a row. In truth, he always steals the prize-winner from other scientists before the fair with help from his shape-shifting girlfriend, Jaclyn, as part of his desires to overthrow King Malbert and rule Malaria as its new king.
One day, Glickenstein is visited by his “girlfriend” Heidi (who is actually Jaclyn in disguise attempting to steal his plans), giving Igor aspirations of romance. After throwing out Heidi, Glickenstein ignores Igor’s concerns of using better parts for his latest invention, which is a rocket ship that malfunctions and, as a result, explodes, taking Glickenstein with it. At this same moment, King Malbert arrives to visit Glickenstein and demand that he builds an invention that could defeat Schadenfreude, who Malbert fears will replace him as king due to his popularity. Unable to tell the truth of his master’s death, Igor hides it and, seizing his chance, boldly claims that Glickenstein is creating life, which greatly pleases Malbert, who proclaims that such an invention would make its creator the greatest evil scientist of all time. After the king leaves, Igor reveals to Scamper and Brain his project to create a huge and monstrous being from human remains.
With Brain and Scamper’s help, he assembles the giant, and adds an “evil bone” that will make it pure evil. It first seems his experiment failed but seconds later, the monster disappears, revealing to have come alive. They soon find her sitting above them. The creature roars at her creators and stomps away, escaping into the night. The trio give chase and find the giantess in a blind orphanage, playing with the children. At the same time, Schadenfreude and Jaclyn sneak into Glickenstein’s castle to steal his invention, but he not only discovers that Glickenstein is dead, but his Igor had created a living monster, which he believes will be his key to taking the throne.
Meanwhile, Igor manages to lead the giant back to the castle with flowers that she likes. There, he discovers that the evil bone he gave her was not activated, making the monster sweet, friendly and gentle despite being hideous. Igor attempts to activate the evil bone by commanding the monster to kill a fly, but instead she catches it and sets it outside. Igor tries to convince the monster that she is evil but fails as the gentle giantess misinterpreted it as “Eva,” thinking that’s the name he gave her. Igor later attempts to brainwash Eva into becoming evil by bringing her to a brainwashing salon. Brain also decides to get his brain cleaned and to watch TV but breaks the remote to his TV, so he takes the remote from Eva’s room and, in an attempt to change the channel, inadvertently changes the monster’s TV channel from a horror movie marathon to a talk show whose topic of the day is the history of acting. She ends up watching the talk show for several hours and upon leaving the salon, she can speak proper English and aspires to be an actress. Igor then reluctantly takes her back to the castle in their car, bemoaning his failures.
On the way back to the castle, Schadenfreude and Jaclyn chase after Igor in an attempt to steal Eva by using a shrink ray to shrink them all, only to fail and end up shrinking themselves. Igor and his friends nearly go over a cliff, but Eva saves them all, showing her appreciation of all life. When Brain rambles on about how he changed the channel for Eva’s TV, Igor attempts to kill Brain with an axe in anger for making his monster an actress. When Scamper sarcastically tells Eva they’re practicing for a play, Igor then gets the idea to exhibit Eva at the science fair while lying to her that the fair is an “Annie” audition with a few differences. While helping Eva, who tries to convince him that it’s always better to good than evil, no matter how much more successful evil is, with the “play,” Igor slowly starts to fall for his monster.
Dr. Schadenfreude takes Igor to his home, revealing he knows about Glickenstein’s death and Eva, and offers a compromise; if Igor gives him Eva to overthrow King Malbert, he will make Igor Malaria’s number one evil scientist. If not, he’ll reveal Glickenstein’s doom to King Malbert. Igor refuses and narrowly escapes. Later, Schadenfreude tricks Eva into coming with him by having Jaclyn (again disguised as Heidi) pretend to kiss Igor. As for Igor, he is caught by the King’s guards, having been exposed by Schadenfreude off-screen, resulting in the King angrily sending him the Igor Recycling Plant.
Brain and Scamper help Igor escape from the plant and learn that Mlabert had de deliberately killed Malaria’s crops with a weather ray the created the storm clouds so he could implement his “Evil Inventions” plan, thereby keeping himself in power. At the fair, Schadenfreude manipulates Eva into striking him, activating her evil bone and turning her into a mindless killing machine. He unleashes the monster on the Science Fair where she destroys the all the Evil Inventions whilst singing a rendition of Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Rushing into the arena, Igor tries to reason with the enraged Eva while Brain and Scamper power down the weather ray. Eva roars furiously at Igor until the sunlight begins to shine once again on Malaria, which permanently deactivates her evil bone, returning her to her sweet and gentle self.
Igor exposes Malbert’s lies to the public, telling them they do not need to be evil. The crowd boos at Malbert for his treachery before the damaged weather ray falls and crushes him to death. Dr. Schadenfreude attempts to take power, but Eva humiliates him. Malaria returns to its sunny peaceful ways, the monarchy is dissolved and becomes a republic with Igor as the president. Schadenfreude is then reduced to a pickle salesman and Jaclyn, who’s revealed to be a female Igor, loses her shape-shifting ability and becomes a pretzel saleswoman (while starting a relationship with Schadenfreude’s Igor), and the annual science fair becomes an annual musical theatre showcase. Igor reveals his plan to build a dog for Eva, remarking that they’ll just adopt if it doesn’t work out. Igor and Eva live happily together as Malaria becomes a better place.
Voice cast[]
- John Cusack as Igor, a short hunchback who aspires to be an evil scientist
- Molly Shannon as Eva, the hideous, yet sweet monster Igor makes using human remains, that aspires to be an actress, mostly based on Frankenstein’s monster
- Steve Buscemi as Scamper, an immortal, sarcastic and cynical zombie rabbit with suicidal tendencies
- Sean Hayes as Brain, an unintelligent sentient robot with a preserved human brain inside a jar
- Eddie Izzard as Dr. Schadenfreude, a fraudulent, flamboyant rival scientist that takes credit for other evil scientists’ inventions in hopes of becoming king of Malaria
- Jennifer Coolidge as Jaclyn/Heidi, Dr. Schadenfreude’s shapeshifting girlfriend who helps him steal other scientists’ inventions by posing as them using magic pills to appear as each scientist’s respective girlfriend. Her names are a pun on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Jay Leno as King Malbert, the tyrannical ruler of Malaria who turned their main export from crops to mad science after the storm clouds came, which later are revealed to be created by him
- Arsenio Hall as Carl Cristall, an invisible talk show host that wears anything but pants, based on the Invisible Man
- Christian Slater as Dr. Schadenfreude’s Igor
- John Cleese as Dr. Glickenstein, a tedious-minded and incompetent mad scientist with a prosthetic arm and Igor’s master
- Paul Vogt as Buzz Offman
- James Lipton as himself
External links[]
Igor on YouTube