From the tender young age of nine up until fifteen I went through a lot of changes; everything from the sound of my voice to my tastes in music fluctuated wildly throughout those six formative years. In spite of all the changes I experienced one thing remained the same, which was the giant "Monster Squad" poster that was posted in a place of honor on the wall facing my bed. I spent a ridiculous amount of my youth simply starring at that amazing piece of art. When I finally took it down, those many years ago it was in fear that the girls that were finally coming over to my house might not think the Wolfman or Frankenstein was as cool as I did. I sure wish I still had that poster now, because if there's one thing I've learned in the twenty years since Fred Dekker's amazing film first ran in theaters, no girl's as cool as "The Monster Squad!"
Perhaps my love for "The Monster Squad" stems from the fact that I was at the perfect age to enjoy this movie when it first flopped in theaters. I can still vividly recall going to class a few weeks following its summer release. I had just begun attending a new school, and while introducing myself to the class I told them my favorite movie was "The Monster Squad." Much to my surprise nobody in my fourth grade class had ever heard of it. I went on to inform the entire classroom that the film had inspired me to start a monster squad of my own and anyone willing to apply could meet me behind the portable classroom by the blacktop where the kids that had speech impediments went when they were mysteriously pulled out of class three times a week. To my shock no applicants showed up, just a handful of classmates that threw dirt clods at me and cemented my place as "the weird kid" in class. But that was what made the members of "The Monster Squad" so identifiably great, they too were misfits and outcasts and they went on to save the whole world from Dracula. And with that thought in mind I realized that no matter what, I'd be alright, but if any big baddies did arrive in my suburb, those jerks that hefted the balled up bits of earth at me where on their own.
When "The Monster Squad" initially showed up into theaters at the tail end of the summer of 1987, hardly anyone took notice. In those days kid oriented horror was few and far between. R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Harry Potter" were still decades away and just two years prior the Senate was having hearings looking into the possible satanic influences in everything from heavy metal lyrics to Saturday morning cartoons. Proving the fact that all great movies will find their audiences, through the end of the eighties and on into the early nineties, "The Monster Squad" built a strong and devoted audience in the children and parents that were lucky enough to rent the video or view the countless showings on HBO.
"The Monster Squad" tells the tale of club made up of six adolescents (yes, I'm counting Phoebe the feeb as a member, "or else it's prescription!" ) that form a club based on their love of all things monster related. They draw pictures of monsters, read books about monsters, watch monster movies and after Drac and his crew come to town, fight monsters! Shortly after Sean (Andre Gower), Patrick (Robby Kiger), Fat Kid…I mean Horace (Brent Chalem), Rudy (Ryan Lambert), Eugene (Michael Faustino) and the forcibly included Phoebe (Ashley Bank) form their horror themed organization the biggest baddie of the horror world shows up in their sleepy town. Not only has Dracula himself arrived in their hometown he didn't come alone. He's brought with him some muscle in the form of Frankenstein's Monster, an underwater tech guy with The Gilman (named such since Creature from the Black Lagoon's copyrighted), some more muscle when the moon's full in The Wolfman and finally a steady supply of gauze from The Mummy. Why have all these ghouls shown up in the same place at the same time? Because the town houses an amulet that will help them rule the world of course! Conveniently enough for the squad it's also the town where Van Helsing's diary containing the way to defeat them can be found by somebody's mom at a garage sale. Armed with the unreadable diary but unable to prove the monsters' existence to anyone in their family the kids enable the help of their neighborhood's Boo Radley. By using his native tongue the man the children dubbed "Scary German Guy" assists them in deciphering the diary and helps in the attempt to stop the monsters and their nefarious plan.
"The Monster Squad" came out a mere two years after the Spielberg produced "Goonies" cleaned up at the box office. While comparisons between the two are hard to deny, "Squad" creator's Fred Dekker's film is simply better than the overdone flick helmed by Richard Donner, Chris Columbus and that guy that hasn't made an entertaining film that didn't include a whip or a killer shark. While "Goonies" drowns in the lake of schmaltz that all things Spielbergian crawls from, "The Monster Squad" is charmingly honest in its portrayal of childish awe and never talks down to its audience. Even the revelation of "Scary German Guy's" past as a holocaust survivor is treated with a careful hand that has never been seen attached to either of the wrists of Spielberg himself. This is not surprising due to the ham-fists that generally reside there.
As great as all the child actors amazingly are, what truly sets the film apart from other kid friendly horror films is the excellent cast acquired to play these famous monsters. While all of the creatures are based on the ones seen in the old black and white Universal horror films, the film had to take some liberties by altering their looks to avoid a letter from Universal's legal team. The end result was the iconic look that these monsters will be remembered for by anyone born after 1970. As Dracula, Duncan Regehr brings a fearfully elegant version of the king of vampires to the screen not seen since Christopher Lee last donned a cloak for Hammer studios. For some, choosing to play Frankenstein's Monster in a kid friendly film might seem as an odd choice to follow up his career defining role as the serial killer "The Tooth Fairy" in 1986's "Manhunter." None the less, Tom Noonan gives a shockingly honest version of the cobbled together creature that comes to find that he has much more in common with the children that he was sent to destroy than the monster that ordered him to do it. While the final three villains were all played by actors in costume that did great jobs, their parts were mostly memorable due to the remarkable work done by the great Stan Winston and his studio. While all three looked amazing it was the stand out job done on "The Gillman" that looked better than anything on the screen back in 1987 and still looks far more "alive" than anything done with computer today. "The Monster Squad" is the film that started my life long love of monster movies and all things horror. Girls will come, girls will go, but great horror movies last a lifetime, especially once they're finally released onto DVD!
Perhaps my love for "The Monster Squad" stems from the fact that I was at the perfect age to enjoy this movie when it first flopped in theaters. I can still vividly recall going to class a few weeks following its summer release. I had just begun attending a new school, and while introducing myself to the class I told them my favorite movie was "The Monster Squad." Much to my surprise nobody in my fourth grade class had ever heard of it. I went on to inform the entire classroom that the film had inspired me to start a monster squad of my own and anyone willing to apply could meet me behind the portable classroom by the blacktop where the kids that had speech impediments went when they were mysteriously pulled out of class three times a week. To my shock no applicants showed up, just a handful of classmates that threw dirt clods at me and cemented my place as "the weird kid" in class. But that was what made the members of "The Monster Squad" so identifiably great, they too were misfits and outcasts and they went on to save the whole world from Dracula. And with that thought in mind I realized that no matter what, I'd be alright, but if any big baddies did arrive in my suburb, those jerks that hefted the balled up bits of earth at me where on their own.
When "The Monster Squad" initially showed up into theaters at the tail end of the summer of 1987, hardly anyone took notice. In those days kid oriented horror was few and far between. R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Harry Potter" were still decades away and just two years prior the Senate was having hearings looking into the possible satanic influences in everything from heavy metal lyrics to Saturday morning cartoons. Proving the fact that all great movies will find their audiences, through the end of the eighties and on into the early nineties, "The Monster Squad" built a strong and devoted audience in the children and parents that were lucky enough to rent the video or view the countless showings on HBO.
"The Monster Squad" tells the tale of club made up of six adolescents (yes, I'm counting Phoebe the feeb as a member, "or else it's prescription!" ) that form a club based on their love of all things monster related. They draw pictures of monsters, read books about monsters, watch monster movies and after Drac and his crew come to town, fight monsters! Shortly after Sean (Andre Gower), Patrick (Robby Kiger), Fat Kid…I mean Horace (Brent Chalem), Rudy (Ryan Lambert), Eugene (Michael Faustino) and the forcibly included Phoebe (Ashley Bank) form their horror themed organization the biggest baddie of the horror world shows up in their sleepy town. Not only has Dracula himself arrived in their hometown he didn't come alone. He's brought with him some muscle in the form of Frankenstein's Monster, an underwater tech guy with The Gilman (named such since Creature from the Black Lagoon's copyrighted), some more muscle when the moon's full in The Wolfman and finally a steady supply of gauze from The Mummy. Why have all these ghouls shown up in the same place at the same time? Because the town houses an amulet that will help them rule the world of course! Conveniently enough for the squad it's also the town where Van Helsing's diary containing the way to defeat them can be found by somebody's mom at a garage sale. Armed with the unreadable diary but unable to prove the monsters' existence to anyone in their family the kids enable the help of their neighborhood's Boo Radley. By using his native tongue the man the children dubbed "Scary German Guy" assists them in deciphering the diary and helps in the attempt to stop the monsters and their nefarious plan.
"The Monster Squad" came out a mere two years after the Spielberg produced "Goonies" cleaned up at the box office. While comparisons between the two are hard to deny, "Squad" creator's Fred Dekker's film is simply better than the overdone flick helmed by Richard Donner, Chris Columbus and that guy that hasn't made an entertaining film that didn't include a whip or a killer shark. While "Goonies" drowns in the lake of schmaltz that all things Spielbergian crawls from, "The Monster Squad" is charmingly honest in its portrayal of childish awe and never talks down to its audience. Even the revelation of "Scary German Guy's" past as a holocaust survivor is treated with a careful hand that has never been seen attached to either of the wrists of Spielberg himself. This is not surprising due to the ham-fists that generally reside there.
As great as all the child actors amazingly are, what truly sets the film apart from other kid friendly horror films is the excellent cast acquired to play these famous monsters. While all of the creatures are based on the ones seen in the old black and white Universal horror films, the film had to take some liberties by altering their looks to avoid a letter from Universal's legal team. The end result was the iconic look that these monsters will be remembered for by anyone born after 1970. As Dracula, Duncan Regehr brings a fearfully elegant version of the king of vampires to the screen not seen since Christopher Lee last donned a cloak for Hammer studios. For some, choosing to play Frankenstein's Monster in a kid friendly film might seem as an odd choice to follow up his career defining role as the serial killer "The Tooth Fairy" in 1986's "Manhunter." None the less, Tom Noonan gives a shockingly honest version of the cobbled together creature that comes to find that he has much more in common with the children that he was sent to destroy than the monster that ordered him to do it. While the final three villains were all played by actors in costume that did great jobs, their parts were mostly memorable due to the remarkable work done by the great Stan Winston and his studio. While all three looked amazing it was the stand out job done on "The Gillman" that looked better than anything on the screen back in 1987 and still looks far more "alive" than anything done with computer today. "The Monster Squad" is the film that started my life long love of monster movies and all things horror. Girls will come, girls will go, but great horror movies last a lifetime, especially once they're finally released onto DVD!
From the tender young age of nine up until fifteen I went through a lot of changes; everything from the sound of my voice to my tastes in music fluctuated wildly throughout those six formative years. In spite of all the changes I experienced one thing remained the same, which was the giant "Monster Squad" poster that was posted in a place of honor on the wall facing my bed. I spent a ridiculous amount of my youth simply starring at that amazing piece of art. When I finally took it down, those many years ago it was in fear that the girls that were finally coming over to my house might not think the Wolfman or Frankenstein was as cool as I did. I sure wish I still had that poster now, because if there's one thing I've learned in the twenty years since Fred Dekker's amazing film first ran in theaters, no girl's as cool as "The Monster Squad!"
Perhaps my love for "The Monster Squad" stems from the fact that I was at the perfect age to enjoy this movie when it first flopped in theaters. I can still vividly recall going to class a few weeks following its summer release. I had just begun attending a new school, and while introducing myself to the class I told them my favorite movie was "The Monster Squad." Much to my surprise nobody in my fourth grade class had ever heard of it. I went on to inform the entire classroom that the film had inspired me to start a monster squad of my own and anyone willing to apply could meet me behind the portable classroom by the blacktop where the kids that had speech impediments went when they were mysteriously pulled out of class three times a week. To my shock no applicants showed up, just a handful of classmates that threw dirt clods at me and cemented my place as "the weird kid" in class. But that was what made the members of "The Monster Squad" so identifiably great, they too were misfits and outcasts and they went on to save the whole world from Dracula. And with that thought in mind I realized that no matter what, I'd be alright, but if any big baddies did arrive in my suburb, those jerks that hefted the balled up bits of earth at me where on their own.
When "The Monster Squad" initially showed up into theaters at the tail end of the summer of 1987, hardly anyone took notice. In those days kid oriented horror was few and far between. R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Harry Potter" were still decades away and just two years prior the Senate was having hearings looking into the possible satanic influences in everything from heavy metal lyrics to Saturday morning cartoons. Proving the fact that all great movies will find their audiences, through the end of the eighties and on into the early nineties, "The Monster Squad" built a strong and devoted audience in the children and parents that were lucky enough to rent the video or view the countless showings on HBO.
"The Monster Squad" tells the tale of club made up of six adolescents (yes, I'm counting Phoebe the feeb as a member, "or else it's prescription!" ) that form a club based on their love of all things monster related. They draw pictures of monsters, read books about monsters, watch monster movies and after Drac and his crew come to town, fight monsters! Shortly after Sean (Andre Gower), Patrick (Robby Kiger), Fat Kid…I mean Horace (Brent Chalem), Rudy (Ryan Lambert), Eugene (Michael Faustino) and the forcibly included Phoebe (Ashley Bank) form their horror themed organization the biggest baddie of the horror world shows up in their sleepy town. Not only has Dracula himself arrived in their hometown he didn't come alone. He's brought with him some muscle in the form of Frankenstein's Monster, an underwater tech guy with The Gilman (named such since Creature from the Black Lagoon's copyrighted), some more muscle when the moon's full in The Wolfman and finally a steady supply of gauze from The Mummy. Why have all these ghouls shown up in the same place at the same time? Because the town houses an amulet that will help them rule the world of course! Conveniently enough for the squad it's also the town where Van Helsing's diary containing the way to defeat them can be found by somebody's mom at a garage sale. Armed with the unreadable diary but unable to prove the monsters' existence to anyone in their family the kids enable the help of their neighborhood's Boo Radley. By using his native tongue the man the children dubbed "Scary German Guy" assists them in deciphering the diary and helps in the attempt to stop the monsters and their nefarious plan.
"The Monster Squad" came out a mere two years after the Spielberg produced "Goonies" cleaned up at the box office. While comparisons between the two are hard to deny, "Squad" creator's Fred Dekker's film is simply better than the overdone flick helmed by Richard Donner, Chris Columbus and that guy that hasn't made an entertaining film that didn't include a whip or a killer shark. While "Goonies" drowns in the lake of schmaltz that all things Spielbergian crawls from, "The Monster Squad" is charmingly honest in its portrayal of childish awe and never talks down to its audience. Even the revelation of "Scary German Guy's" past as a holocaust survivor is treated with a careful hand that has never been seen attached to either of the wrists of Spielberg himself. This is not surprising due to the ham-fists that generally reside there.
As great as all the child actors amazingly are, what truly sets the film apart from other kid friendly horror films is the excellent cast acquired to play these famous monsters. While all of the creatures are based on the ones seen in the old black and white Universal horror films, the film had to take some liberties by altering their looks to avoid a letter from Universal's legal team. The end result was the iconic look that these monsters will be remembered for by anyone born after 1970. As Dracula, Duncan Regehr brings a fearfully elegant version of the king of vampires to the screen not seen since Christopher Lee last donned a cloak for Hammer studios. For some, choosing to play Frankenstein's Monster in a kid friendly film might seem as an odd choice to follow up his career defining role as the serial killer "The Tooth Fairy" in 1986's "Manhunter." None the less, Tom Noonan gives a shockingly honest version of the cobbled together creature that comes to find that he has much more in common with the children that he was sent to destroy than the monster that ordered him to do it. While the final three villains were all played by actors in costume that did great jobs, their parts were mostly memorable due to the remarkable work done by the great Stan Winston and his studio. While all three looked amazing it was the stand out job done on "The Gillman" that looked better than anything on the screen back in 1987 and still looks far more "alive" than anything done with computer today. "The Monster Squad" is the film that started my life long love of monster movies and all things horror. Girls will come, girls will go, but great horror movies last a lifetime, especially once they're finally released onto DVD!
Perhaps my love for "The Monster Squad" stems from the fact that I was at the perfect age to enjoy this movie when it first flopped in theaters. I can still vividly recall going to class a few weeks following its summer release. I had just begun attending a new school, and while introducing myself to the class I told them my favorite movie was "The Monster Squad." Much to my surprise nobody in my fourth grade class had ever heard of it. I went on to inform the entire classroom that the film had inspired me to start a monster squad of my own and anyone willing to apply could meet me behind the portable classroom by the blacktop where the kids that had speech impediments went when they were mysteriously pulled out of class three times a week. To my shock no applicants showed up, just a handful of classmates that threw dirt clods at me and cemented my place as "the weird kid" in class. But that was what made the members of "The Monster Squad" so identifiably great, they too were misfits and outcasts and they went on to save the whole world from Dracula. And with that thought in mind I realized that no matter what, I'd be alright, but if any big baddies did arrive in my suburb, those jerks that hefted the balled up bits of earth at me where on their own.
When "The Monster Squad" initially showed up into theaters at the tail end of the summer of 1987, hardly anyone took notice. In those days kid oriented horror was few and far between. R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Harry Potter" were still decades away and just two years prior the Senate was having hearings looking into the possible satanic influences in everything from heavy metal lyrics to Saturday morning cartoons. Proving the fact that all great movies will find their audiences, through the end of the eighties and on into the early nineties, "The Monster Squad" built a strong and devoted audience in the children and parents that were lucky enough to rent the video or view the countless showings on HBO.
"The Monster Squad" tells the tale of club made up of six adolescents (yes, I'm counting Phoebe the feeb as a member, "or else it's prescription!" ) that form a club based on their love of all things monster related. They draw pictures of monsters, read books about monsters, watch monster movies and after Drac and his crew come to town, fight monsters! Shortly after Sean (Andre Gower), Patrick (Robby Kiger), Fat Kid…I mean Horace (Brent Chalem), Rudy (Ryan Lambert), Eugene (Michael Faustino) and the forcibly included Phoebe (Ashley Bank) form their horror themed organization the biggest baddie of the horror world shows up in their sleepy town. Not only has Dracula himself arrived in their hometown he didn't come alone. He's brought with him some muscle in the form of Frankenstein's Monster, an underwater tech guy with The Gilman (named such since Creature from the Black Lagoon's copyrighted), some more muscle when the moon's full in The Wolfman and finally a steady supply of gauze from The Mummy. Why have all these ghouls shown up in the same place at the same time? Because the town houses an amulet that will help them rule the world of course! Conveniently enough for the squad it's also the town where Van Helsing's diary containing the way to defeat them can be found by somebody's mom at a garage sale. Armed with the unreadable diary but unable to prove the monsters' existence to anyone in their family the kids enable the help of their neighborhood's Boo Radley. By using his native tongue the man the children dubbed "Scary German Guy" assists them in deciphering the diary and helps in the attempt to stop the monsters and their nefarious plan.
"The Monster Squad" came out a mere two years after the Spielberg produced "Goonies" cleaned up at the box office. While comparisons between the two are hard to deny, "Squad" creator's Fred Dekker's film is simply better than the overdone flick helmed by Richard Donner, Chris Columbus and that guy that hasn't made an entertaining film that didn't include a whip or a killer shark. While "Goonies" drowns in the lake of schmaltz that all things Spielbergian crawls from, "The Monster Squad" is charmingly honest in its portrayal of childish awe and never talks down to its audience. Even the revelation of "Scary German Guy's" past as a holocaust survivor is treated with a careful hand that has never been seen attached to either of the wrists of Spielberg himself. This is not surprising due to the ham-fists that generally reside there.
As great as all the child actors amazingly are, what truly sets the film apart from other kid friendly horror films is the excellent cast acquired to play these famous monsters. While all of the creatures are based on the ones seen in the old black and white Universal horror films, the film had to take some liberties by altering their looks to avoid a letter from Universal's legal team. The end result was the iconic look that these monsters will be remembered for by anyone born after 1970. As Dracula, Duncan Regehr brings a fearfully elegant version of the king of vampires to the screen not seen since Christopher Lee last donned a cloak for Hammer studios. For some, choosing to play Frankenstein's Monster in a kid friendly film might seem as an odd choice to follow up his career defining role as the serial killer "The Tooth Fairy" in 1986's "Manhunter." None the less, Tom Noonan gives a shockingly honest version of the cobbled together creature that comes to find that he has much more in common with the children that he was sent to destroy than the monster that ordered him to do it. While the final three villains were all played by actors in costume that did great jobs, their parts were mostly memorable due to the remarkable work done by the great Stan Winston and his studio. While all three looked amazing it was the stand out job done on "The Gillman" that looked better than anything on the screen back in 1987 and still looks far more "alive" than anything done with computer today. "The Monster Squad" is the film that started my life long love of monster movies and all things horror. Girls will come, girls will go, but great horror movies last a lifetime, especially once they're finally released onto DVD!
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