The Monster Squad

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🎙️ EPISODE 375: 10.28.21 I feel like I need to pepper this review with a little backstory and framework. **clears throat** I was pretty much a gigantic scaredy cat in my youth and, in many ways, I still am today :) What I'm saying is horror movies were never my bag. Even into my teen years, I mostly avoided them. I love them now, for the most part, and I appreciate them in a way I just never would have as a kid (mostly technical things like practical effects, etc.). But I spent my time in the 80s and early 90s doing basically anything else to avoid having to watch even relatively lightweight stuff like Critters or Poltergiest with my older brother and friends. But there was one exception: 1987's The Monster Squad directed by Fred Dekker, a classic PG-13 comedy-horror that was just NOT scary enough for my tastes.

That's not to say I wasn't scared. I was pretty scared the first couple times I saw it. We had this on VHS so I watched it enough times to know when to blur my eyes so I wouldn't have to see the Wolfman's detached body parts reassemble. But now — NOW! — I love seeing the the Wolfman's detached body parts reassemble! Oh the March of Time and it's many magnificent splendors and mysteries!

Ultimately, the horror is pretty mild, and they clearly spent the bulk of their PG-13 content budget on having little kids say "shit" and making homophobic insults (although, those were still probably 'free' in 1987). The most striking thing, however, rewatching this as an adult, was how impossibly little there is by way of a "plot" or a "story," normally things I feel are fairly important to a film, but am willing to make an exception for here. There is a flashback to olden times to begin the movie wherein we see Van Helsing failing to banish Dracula and co. to "Limbo" (more on this in a bit). Then, all of a sudden, for some reason, Dracula (as a bat) attacks a plane that is carrying Frankenstein's body and overwhelms its pilot, The Sopranos' own Richie Aprile...


Drac also summons the rest of the Universal Monsters gang: the Mummy from a museum, the Wolfman who is just some random guy played by Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon from... the black lagoon? This is all happening in this extremely small town, mind you, where we meet our protagonists, the — you guessed it — "monster squad," who are just a couple of Grade A nerds + a random bad-ass older kid named Rudy. This is the town where Drac's glowing magic amulet is hidden and I guess it's taken him this many 100s of years to find it? IDK! Who gives a shit! There are several gay and welfare and anti-Communist Cold War panic jokes in the first fifteen minutes in case you didn't know this was a mainstream 80s movie. It's awesome.

And while of all this is very comical (for a variety reasons) and occasionally very bad (for a variety reasons) it still manages to congeal into a highly entertaining package. It's worth watching or rewatching at least once in adulthood. For example, this is a killer back-to-back sequence: titty joke -> dog puts his paw on the kids' hands...


This inexplicable, incredibly serious Holocaust reference which, umm, how exactly was a child supposed to figure it out (!?)...


And it's always when funny when a little kid swears...


What's cooler than making silver bullets in junior high shop class and hiding them in your Marlboro box? ...


I could pull so many clips, to be honest. This is a very specific kind of Horror Lite meant to appeal to many demos and ages. By its very nature, it was likely never going to work because of this. But its enjoyment comes through in the folly which is thinking that it can. This was the movie for me, a kid who didn't like horror. And it still shines for a lot of the same reasons (eg., I can ironically snicker at the "Wolfman's got nards" line instead of being genuinely amused by it). Sure, it's wholly plotless, but it has a superb pace. Shit just starts happening and keeps happening til the end of the movie, right up to when Dracula calls the little sister a "bitch" (!) before Frankestein gets his ass and sends him and flying into the "Limbo" portal which said little sister has opened by A) being a virgin (😬), and B) reading some magic German poem that the Holocause survivor helps her recite...


And they finish with the literal army showing up and a novelty rap song written specifically for the film/describing the film's 'plot'...


I mean, they should've ended on a freeze frame, but other than that I don't have a ton of complaints. It's The Monster Squad!

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 374 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 376 ⫸

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