Web Video / Musical Hell

Greetings, mortals!

A Video Review Show created by Christi “The Diva” Esterle in 2012, Musical Hell is hosted by Diva, a demon With An F In Evil who has been shuffled off onto a small expansion shelf somewhere between the third and fourth circles of the Inferno. There, her job is to evaluate and punish the sins of the worst movie musicals ever created. The series posts once a month to RVT, RT Gomer Productions, and its own site.

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Musical Hell runs in tandem with ‘‘Know the Score,’’ a Lighter and Softer companion piece that discusses soundtracks, film and stage musicals, theme songs, and any other form of “dramatic music” that happens to strike Diva’s fancy.

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Musicals on which Diva has passed judgement:

• Annie (2014)
• The Apple
• At Long Last Love
• Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
• Burlesque
• Camelot
• Can't Stop the Music
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• A Chorus Line
• A Christmas Carol: The Musical
• Christmas is Here Again
• De-Lovely
• Descendants
• Descendants 2
• Disco Worms (Crossover with Archer Slam-BAM)
• The Fantasticks
• From Justin to Kelly
• Geppetto
• Glitter
• Grease 2
• Happily Ever After
• High School Musical (Crossover with DJ Soundbite)
• Home on the Range
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
• I Kissed a Vampire (Crossover with Jess World)
• Jekyll & Hyde
• Jem and the Holograms
• Joyful Noise
• In Search of the Titanic
• The King and I (1999)
• Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return
• A Little Night Music
• The Lorax
• Lost Horizon (1973)
• Love Never Dies
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Mame
• Mamma Mia!
• Man of La Mancha
• The Music Man (2003)
• Nine
• The Nutcracker in 3D
• Paint Your Wagon
• The Pebble and the Penguin
• Pete's Dragon (1977)
• Peter Pan Live!
• The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
  • The Phantom of the Opera (1991)
• Phantom of the Paradise
• The Pirate Movie
• Pokémon Live!
• Popeye
• Portal 2: The Unauthorized Musical
• The Princess and the Pea
• RENT (Crossover with Rufus Reviews)
• Repo! The Genetic Opera
• The Return of Captain Invincible
• Rhinestone
• Rock-A-Doodle
• Rock & Rule
• Rock of Ages
• Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998)
• Sci-Fi High
• Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire
• The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue
• Sextette
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Shock Treatment
• The Singing Detective
• Sleeping Beauty (1987)
• Spiceworld
• Stage Fright
• Strange Magic
• Sunday School Musical
• The Swan Princess Christmas
• The Swan Princess: A Royal Family Tale
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• The Ten Commandments: The Musical
• Thumbelina
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On
• A Troll in Central Park
• Walking On Sunshine
• The Wiz
• Xanadu
• Phantom of the Paradise

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Musical Hell provides examples of:

• Accentuate the Negative: The series premise is identifying and punishing the “sins” of its subjects. Inverted with the “Saving Grace,” which highlights positive elements that shine out in spite of the rest of the film.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Diva will admit it from time to time. On a higher note, there are the "Saving Graces".
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Probably to be expected in this case.
• All There in the Manual: In a response to a comment on her review of Legends Of OZ Dorothys Return, Diva established that Musical Hell is located "on a small expansion shelf somewhere between the Third and Fourth Circles." Due to changing times, the Inferno has had to develop new space to accommodate modern sins like texting while driving, playing Face Hunter decks in Hearthstone, and of course, terrible musicals.

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• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Religion has been used as a justification for violence, bigotry, sexual oppression, and worst of all, faith-based knockoffs of pop culture. Also, Diva lists among the things representing the dark side of the holidays... fruit cake.
• Artistic License-Contract Law: In Phantom of the Paradise, When Swan is getting an inebriated Phoenix to sign a contract, Donna argues that the fact that Phoenix's aforementioned inebriation counts as being under duress, making said contract null and void. Diva counters that it's not like the movie would know that.
• Berserk Button: Descendants ends up pushing one of hers, with their rap a ccappella cover of Be Our Guest.

  Sin Card: DID YOU JUST

• Bigger on the Inside: From her Spice World review:
  "Even if these gals were Elvis, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyoncé and the opposition's kid all rolled into one, I still would not believe that's the inside of their bus, unless there's a Time Lord spice somewhere in the mix.
• Big Red Devil: Diva is drawn as a female version of one. The Legends of Oz intro even notes all the characteristics that build the trope.◊
• Bizarre Human Biology: In the review for Glitter, Diva makes the off-hand comment during the closing that the film "makes me sick to my three-and-a-half stomachs".
• Call-Back:
  • Diva brings up Pierce Brosnan's lack of singing talent, first touched upon in the Mamma Mia! review, a few times, notably in the Grease 2 review ("Ugh, it's like an entire chorus of Pierce Brosnans!"), as well as when she touches upon The Bee Gees' lack of acting prowess in the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band review.
  • During the Rock of Ages review, exactly ten episodes after her review of The Pirate Movie, Diva feels like she owes an apology towards the Pirate King and his attention-grabbing crotchpiece when she gets to Stacee Jaxx's introductory scene, in which he's seen with an even more outlandish crotchpiece.
  • Sometimes Diva will say something is the "worst * I've ever seen, and remember, I've seen this" Cue clip of a similar clip from a previous review.
• Catch-Phrase: "Greetings Mortals, welcome to another session of the infernal court in Musical Hell~ I'm Diva, your judge, jury, executioner and— [title that relates to whatever musical she's reviewing]"
  • Signing-Off Catchphrase: "The Infernal Court in Musical Hell is now adjourned." (with added words such as "thankfully" if it was a particularly terrible musical)
• Caustic Critic: While she will give a musical credit in the form of Saving Graces if she likes something in it, and she's not as brutal as most, her angel counterpart Donna calls her out on being harsh towards certain musicals even if they're energetic and harmless.
• Christmas Episode: Six so far: Mame (though only one sequence/song in it involves the holiday, it's "Close enough for government work"), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — The Movie, The Swan Princess Christmas, The Nutcracker: The Untold Story, Christmas is Here Again and Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
• Classically Trained Extra: One of the main sins of Spice World was its criminal misuse of a supporting cast far more talented than the leads, including Roger Moore, Richard E. Grant, Bob Hoskins, Meat Loaf, and Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien.
• Cliché Storm: Burlesque jams in so many overused clichés that she lets the audience fill in the blanks.[invoked]
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Even outside the Infernal Court for Musicals - Diva says that High School Musical was only used in Hell to punish suicide bombers and texting while driving.
• Creator Cameo: Paint Your Wagon has Diva struggling to find a word to describe Lee Marvin singing. Cue Christi Esterle on Jeopardy! saying "What is monotonous?"
  Diva: Thank you, unbelievably intelligent and attractive mortal!
  • Not a direct one, but as pointed out and shown in this video, Diva was given a brief break from her job in March 2016 due to Christi winning a trip to New Zealand in said episode.
• Crossover: Along with the ones listed in the episode list, Diva helped JessWorld review Across the Universe (where her sin routine was cut by the other), Ursa in the Stuff You Like episode on Portal 2's Greek mythology, and tormented DJ Soundbite's alter ego David Green into a Glee review.
  • She also did one with That Long Haired Creepy Guy, during the latter's retrospective of Jem and the Holograms.
• Curse Cut Short: The final line of Annie leads Diva to react with "Oh, for f" before "The Veredict" interrupts the profane tirade.
  • Also, in the "crowd sourced recap of the original" in 'Tentacolino'', DJ Soundbite ends it, and starts a "WHAT THE" before he is cut back to Diva.
• Dance Party Ending: At the end of the King and I episode, complete with Creator Cameo.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Diva marked down The Nutcracker in 3D for this, pointing out that the fantasy world was inexplicably more depressing than the real one... despite the fact that the film is set in central Europe right around the time the Nazis and other tyrannical governments were rising to power in real life.
• Deadpan Snarker: And how. Her MHTV videos shows Diva honoring this trope in full force.
• Designated Hero: She considers Hubie to be this in her review of The Pebble and the Penguin. First, he's attracted to Marina for some rather shallow reasons, which makes him come off as no better than Drake, who doesn't make any pretenses about why he wants her for his mate. Then he pesters Rocko, openly mocks his dream, and lies to him.
• Designated Villain: Mentioned by trope name in respect to Benny the landlord from RENT, who is portrayed as a puppet of the corrupt establishment for wanting the heroes to pay him the rent they legitimately owe him.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male: At Long Last Love got a sin for this.
• Ear Worm In-Universe: The ones found in Mamma Mia! are especially vexing, as is “Wonderful Christmastime”, which turns up in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — The Movie.
• Early Installment Weirdness: Diva is more haughty and superior-sounding in the first few installments, before her harried Punch-Clock Villain persona was established. Christi herself finds Diva being Ear Wormed with ABBA songs in Mamma Mia! a Establishing Character Moment for the way she wanted to go.
  • Speaking of Mamma Mia, she notes in her commentary that this was before she introduced the "Saving Grace", otherwise she would have put "Slipping Through My Fingers" in that category.
• Ending Fatigue: The last and greatest sin of Can't Stop the Music was the fact that its entire last third consisted mainly of, to quote Diva, a "self-congratulatory victory lap" for the main characters.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Frequent, noted by terse and at times profane sin cards ("SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?") and possibly Diva falling into Angrish.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Diva can get rather repulsed by some of her subjects, especially movies that are lazy, cynical cash grabs.
  • While acknowledging that his film adaptation of A Little Night Music was terrible, Diva couldn't bear to condemn Hal Prince.
  • The ending of Glitter features, for the first time, Diva getting genuinely angry at a film, arguably to the point of Christi Esterle herself breaking character. Specifically, she was incensed by the fact that the film blames the heroine's breakup with her psychologically abusive boyfriend (and his subsequent murder at the villain's hands) on her, with Diva stating it's in the running for the worst film she's ever reviewed due to this.
  • In her Annie (2014) review, Diva took a moment to call out those whose gripe with the film was the title character's Race Lift... before hammering it with a great deal of criticisms of her own.
  • Diva was shown to be disgusted with the producers of Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return financing the film using a pyramid scam. She delegated their punishment to the Eighth Circle.
  • When confronted with Michael Jackson saying "is today the day you're gonna help me get down from here?" in The Wiz, Diva asks her bailiff if there's any joke she could make that wouldn't be overdone and/or "tasteless even by our standards".
• Evil Counterpart: Inverted with Donna, the angel who heads Musical Heaven introduced in the review of Portal 2: The Unauthorized Musical.
• Evil Laugh: Mostly done by Diva in the crossovers, aside from when she sees The Phantom of the Opera (2004) is the next assignment.
• Evil Is Petty: “I’m a demon. I don’t do fair.” Best example when Diva forced the guy who plays DJ Soundbite to review Glee as retaliation for the High School Musical crossover.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: invoked If there's a bad guy in a weird and/or stupid outfit, you can bet she'll comment on it.
  • She's not impressed with some of Erik's outfits in The Phantom of the Opera (2004). For example, she says he's dressed like "Skeletor The Gay Blade" during "Masquerade".
• Fallen Angel: It's heavily implied at the end of Portal 2 that Diva may be one and that she may have a way back.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: If she's feeling lazy, she'll just condemn those involved with the current offender to this.
• Foil: Donna, the angel host of "Musical Heaven". Even the name, as Diva and Donna are both terms for opera singers.
• Foreshadowing: In the session for The Pirate Movie, Diva points out that Mabel "dresses like a reject from Xanadu", the same Xanadu she ended up taking on sometime later.
  • The second episode, Lost Horizon, shows posters for films in the 1970s "dark age of musicals", all of whom wound up reviewed (Mame, At Long Last Love, The Wiz and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Twice, in the very first episode with a Long List of reasons the relationship won't last, and in Sunday School Musical with "the other side's" disavowed list (along with said movie, there is Jack Chick, al-Qaeda, "those Osmond fools" and "that weird bit in Ezekiel with the flaming wheel").
• Fun with Subtitles: Diva occasionally likes playing with how she names the sins.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: "Hell", for obvious reasons, is "here". Any blasphemous complaints use demonic replacements such as "Beelze H. Buub"... with the exception of "Opposition Damn It!"
• Guilty Pleasures: Repo! The Genetic Opera, Jekyll & Hyde, RENT, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are ultimately acknowledged as such, with the last of these being the first movie to receive two Saving Graces.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: "What the Here?" among many others. Sometimes, inverting the side ("Speak of the angel..."). It backfires when Diva calls Donna "goody two hooves", as she replies "I don't have hooves!"
• Hypocrisy Nod: Diva does one whenever she complains about credits or post-production.
• Idiot Ball: Such moments are highlighted, usually with Dot Warner saying "Whoa, dumber than advertised!". If it's unbelievably stupid, the Face Palm scene from The Naked Gun 33 1\3 will play afterwards.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Peter Pan Live leads to Diva Drowning My Sorrows in tequila. She starts the next episode hungover and with Donna having opened the case. Later, Beauty and the Beast: the Enchantment Christmas reveals the court's emergency protocols (a cocktail drink) and 'dire emergency protocols' (a bottle of scotch).
• Infernal Bureaucracy: Naturally. It is Hell, after all.
• I'm Going to Hell for This: Subverted, of course.
  I'm in Hell already, I can use that joke.
• Ironic Hell: Her punishments tend towards this, with a side of Cool and Unusual Punishment.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Eventually counts the myriad puns in Rock and Rule as a sin after one too many of them.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: “Greetings, mortals, welcome to another session of the infernal court in Musical Hell. I’m Diva, your judge, jury, executioner and [something pertinent to that episode’s topic]."
• Minion with an F in Evil: She tries, but she’s not very good at it. She even identifies with a character in Happily Ever After precisely for this.
• The Mockbuster: Her very first episode discusses on this, given The Legend of Titanic is one for the James Cameron movie. On "Musical Hell TV," she's done full-length commentary/snark tracks for four mockbusters, The Secret of Anastasia, The Secret of Mulan, The Secret of the Hunchback and Beauty And The Beast.
• Monster Clown: Diva offhandedly comments in her Home on the Range review that "all clowns are demons in disguise", and that she attended clown college, receiving high marks in cannibalism.
• MST: Musical Hell TV, which ranges from music videos to mockbuster animations.
• Obligatory Joke: "Gaston" in The Legend of Titanic. Also defied, as Diva finds too easy to use Monty Python and the Holy Grail clips on Camelot... before being basically forced to use "GET ON WITH IT!".
  • Also on the topic of Monty Python, Diva lampshades her reference to the Spanish Inquisition sketch in her Man of La Mancha review in a similar manner.
• Oh My Gods!: “Sweet Lucifer!”
• Overly Long Name: “Diva” is a pseudonym; her true name is apparently two hundred and sixty-seven syllables long.
• Pet-Peeve Trope: Diva's biggest ones are Idiot Plot and Third-Act Misunderstanding, which more often than not, leads to a sin. invoked
• Punch-Clock Villain: Diva is ultimately just a demonic bureaucrat doing her job.
• Rage Against the Author: Once Diva finds out A Troll In Central Park is a Patreon request:
  Stupid high-end mortal, don't know where she gets off her cheap editing software and her Jeopardy! money...
• Really 700 Years Old: According to the intro to Rock of Ages, Diva is a "child of the '80s...well, 2080s...BC...it's close enough."
• Reassigned to Antarctica: According to the Musical Hell site, Diva isn't sure if reviewing bad musicals is their punishment or hers.
• Record Needle Scratch: Heard as Diva's attempt at watching the original The Music Man changes to the 2002 ABC remake ("OK, who is messing with my video files again?").
• Review Ironic Echo: Her review of Love Never Dies gives us this gem:
  Erik: I want to know what you think.
  Diva: Heh, you asked for it.
• Rule of Seven: As Christi notes in one of her commentaries, Diva usually tries to note seven sins per film, appropriately enough. However, films may rack up more sins, with particularly abominable works earning as many as ten.
• Running Gag: The review of From Justin to Kelly has Diva wrongly assuming the movie's over, only to be corrected by her bailiff.
• The Scottish Trope: God and Heaven are "the opposition", while Jesus is only referred to as "the opposition's child".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Spice World breaks Diva, who goes on to leave early and skip work the next day... Only for it to manifest anyway by shifting her screening of The Music Man with the remake.
• Shared Universe: Kinda. The show is set in Hell, which could be considered another dimension, but Diva does consistently interact with the Reviewaverse. It's more than likely the Hell of the Reviewaverse.
• Shout-Out: Monty Python clips are brought up in abundance.
• So Okay, It's Average: Diva was surprised when she found Rock and Rule to be this, and doesn't condemn the characters or production staff to anything, instead opting to order them to study self-help books.
  • Earlier, she also has this reaction to Repo! The Genetic Opera, concluding that it's neither as bad as its detractors say nor as good as it wants to be. To date it's the film with the least sins on the show, and was awarded its first-ever Saving Grace.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Throughout the Rock of Ages review, Diva constantly mispronounces Julianne Hough's last name like "how", when it's actually meant to be pronounced like "huff".
• Strawman Has a Point: invoked One of the things she sins Jekyll and Hyde for is setting up the hospital's board of governors as a bunch of stodgy, hidebound snobs who hamper Jekyll's research, even though they turn out to be completely right.
• Subverted Catch Phrase: Diva refuses to do the last part in Burlesque, feeling the movie doesn't deserve it, and is unable to do so in Sweeney Todd as everyone starts pushing her to do said movie. She also does a Blah Blah Blah version in A Troll In Central Park to get it over with quickly, and in "Tentacolino", after "Greetings, mortals!", she comments on the original episode, and how weird it looked after three years.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Expected from musicals who deserve an infernal judgment. A good indicator is whether Diva eschews the opening phrase or adds something to the closing one. The Sextette review downright starts with her saying "I'm not gonna lie, this review's gonna hurt".
• Tempting Fate: She decides not to punish The Apple and its makers because she finds it So Bad, It's Good and mockingly asks what her superiors are going to do about that. Cue the reveal of her next assignment: The Swan Princess Christmas. "Oh, me and my big maw..."
  • Diva makes this mistake a lot. At the end of the Phantom of the Opera review, she declares the movie to be the worst possible thing that could happen to the musical...then she sees her next case.
    Oh, fuck..."
  • Sweeney Todd is alright, better than the Disney knockoffs Diva usually gets assigned with. Then it's shown The Princess and the Pea is the next case.
    Why do I keep saying this kind of thing?
• Torches and Pitchforks: The mob from The Phantom of the Opera (1925) comes after her as she tries to explain Shock Treatment's complex relationship with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, ultimately deciding that it's best described as a Spiritual Successor. It doesn't placate them ("Oh, you people are impossible"), but she soldiers on with the review anyway.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: If she sees something exceptionally good about a musical she's reviewing, she'll list it as a "Saving Grace."
• The Unintelligible: Diva's bailiff.
• The Unpronounceable: As mentioned, Diva's real name is 267 syllables long... but even she can't pronounce "Terrance Zdunich."
• The Voice: Artistic representations exist, and she’s been known to manifest as a burst of flame or inside an inanimate object, but Diva herself is never seen onscreen. Christi herself said the two recurring clips listed on Idiot Ball are to compensate how Diva can't use facial expressions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In Diva's opinion, Gene Kelly's Old Master character in Xanadu would've made a much more interesting protagonist than Michael Beck's wangsty wannabe artist.
• Waxing Lyrical: The very first instance of her Catch-Phrase is "Judge, jury and executioner here, far, wherever you are".
• Wham Episode: The review of Portal 2: The Unauthorized Musical goes more in-depth about Diva's past and feelings towards her position than other episodes. It introduces Donna, head of Musical Heaven. Her interactions with Diva reveal that Diva used to have a lot more faith in musicals (and possibly that she is an Fallen Angel), implies that Diva wants to go back to that time but doesn't believe she can, and Donna encourages Diva to rethink her chosen path.
• World of Weirdness: Since the show's setting could count as the Hell of the Reviewaverse, yes. The Reviewaverse is weird. For one thing, it frequently interacts with Hell.

Know the Score contains examples of:

• Catch-Phrase: “Hi, I’m Diva from Musical Hell, and I know the score!”
  • Signing-Off Catchphrase: “I’m Diva, I know the score, and now so do you.”
• Lighter and Softer
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The opening theme is "O Fortuna".
• Public Domain Animation: The title sequence.
• Title Drop