The Monster Squad

Instead of dancing around cult classics and talking about their sequels I should really talk about an actual classic itself.  And correct me if I’m wrong but this is one isn’t it?  I mean it’s from the 80’s and in this day and age that seems to be reason enough.  Oh and it has kids in it.  That cements it.  A kids (ish) movie from the 80’s, pure classic.

A spry Fred Dekker fresh off of Night of the Creeps made this picture with the anticipation that it was going to be a huge hit.  It looked like his shit was lining up and that this guy was going places.  Then The Monster Squad fucking tanked and no one wanted to hire him to be a professional ass wiper.  I want to say that’s a shame because I like both Night of the Creeps and this film but I know better after watching Robocop 3.  Although, Dekker is credited for coming up with the story for Ricochet which was pretty good.  And If Looks Could Kill was kind of a fun movie.  I dunno.  I’ll see how I feel after this piece.

The plot’s fairly simple and involves a group of kids in their early teens that have this monster club where they hang out and discuss politics, global economics and how they can bring peace to the Middle East.  Nah, I’m just kidding.  They quiz each other on monsters and peep on the girl next door while she takes her clothes off.  Sounds more productive than how I spent my teenage years.  Anyway, when real monsters come out the woodwork these kids decide to fight them because they know how to kill them from watching the movies.  And that shit always sort of sometimes works.

Even though the story is simple the characters, especially the villains, is what makes this interesting.  Dracula is the leader of the gang and that makes sense because he’s supposed to be a pretty smart fellow.  Duncan Regehr (I don’t recognize him from anything but he was in V) plays the role really well partly because he has the look and partly because he brings a Shakespearean elegance as well as tragedy to this version.  I guess that’s because he actually is a Shakespearean actor.  You can tell that every look, movement and way in which he delivers his lines is deliberate.  Regehr allows the human behind the monster to come through at times but also allows the monster to completely take over when it’s necessary.  He knows how to be stoic which goes a long way.  I mean he’s an evil vampire but because he encounters a few problems while he’s carrying out his plan to take over the world (or something like that) it gives him a very slight vulnerable side.  And that’s just enough to show he’s not perfect and in turn relatable on some level.  I actually felt sorry for the guy when it’s evident that he’s not going to get a lot of support from the other monsters he recruited to help him and that these kids seem to be a worthy competitor.

Tom Noonan (Last Action Hero, The House of the Devil) plays Frankenstein and he’s one of two heartbreaking monsters that’s conflicted with who he is and what he’s doing.  Dracula reanimates him but he doesn’t really have any thoughts of his own so when he encounters the kids they’re able to turn him around and teach him how to be human again.  Frankenstein knows he’s a monster and grabbles with that because I think he knows he’s an outsider with these kids but he doesn’t want to go back to Dracula who’s just using him.

The wolf man is the other tragic monster.  His story isn’t as relatable as Frankenstein’s but I think it’s a little more interesting.  When the guy is human he tries to tell the cops that he’s a werewolf and that he needs to be locked up or he’ll hurt people.  When he turns into a wolf he’s a totally different creature that only wants to kill.  This makes me feel really sorry for him because it’s something he can’t help or cure.  I’m not sure if it’s that he doesn’t know how to fix his problem or that he needs to be a werewolf when somebody shoots him with a silver bullet which wouldn’t be possible for him to do himself.  I mean how do you deal with a situation like that?  No one believes that you’re a werewolf and if you do ask for help you could be putting many people’s lives at risk.  Not to mention you now have Dracula on your ass wanting you to help him in his global domination (or would that be damnation?) scheme.  Shit man, you’re fucked.

The creature from the black lagoon and the mummy also make appearances but they’re kind of useless and we never get to know them.  I guess those ones don’t have a human part left in them so a character study would a little boring.  That’s fine because between Dracula, Frankenstein and the wolf man there’s plenty of interesting villains to go around.

The idea for this film was to bring together all the classic Universal monsters in a modern movie and as a side effect introduce them to a new generation.  And if you go strictly by that goal then they achieved their mission.  But what’s really cool is how the monsters are treated.  This is a picture that respects them and wants to explore them.  There are layers to these versions and I dig it.  Some of the most interesting scenes are the ones with the monsters just hanging out with each other and we see how they play off of each other.  Like there’s one part where Dracula’s trying to find where this amulet is that he needs to take over the world and he has the wolf man in tow and Dracula’s rambling on about how Van Helsing was a fool to try and stop him and the wolf man nods excitedly along.  It’s kind of a touching scene because Dracula and the wolf man are both into the idea of world domination and we’re witnessing a bonding moment between them. 

I also like that the filmmakers went for the standard look for all of these monsters (Dracula wears a suit and cape, Frankenstein has green/brown skin with black raggedy clothes, the wolf man wears jeans and a ripped shirt, etc.) because even though it’s what we’ve seen ever since these characters were introduced there’s also a level of comfort.  There’s something satisfying and reassuring about seeing these creatures the way you always think they look.  Recognition and familiarity is a key reason why this movie works.  We all know these monsters and have seen countless versions of them over the years and this picture gives them to us in the most typical way but there’s just enough of a twist put on them (i.e. making them human and wrestling with who they are) that it strikes just the right balance.

This film shouldn’t work as well as it does.  I’m not a big fan of clumping several known villains together because it almost always comes off too silly and farfetched that these characters would actually associate and get along with each other.  But they really did a good job with this one.  Apart from the monsters interacting with each other they pull off some other really cool moments in this thing.  Like the part where the kids are surrounded by Dracula, his vampire brides and the wolf man gets pretty intense, the wolf man transformation scene in the phone booth was done very cleverly and I love that he yells to the police detective over the phone, “he’s (Dracula) gonna kill your son!”, and probably the most badass part in the whole movie is the dolly shot of Dracula walking slowly towards the little girl who has the amulet and he kills cop after cop on his way.  The filmmakers even bothered to show us our boy hero’s parents fighting which tells us that this is the reason why he retreats into monster movies.

I guess Fred Dekker isn’t so bad after all.  If he ever makes another movie I would be curious to see it but it doesn’t look good for him.  On the DVD extras he says (in a deadly serious and depressing tone) that this film ended his career until he got the chance to direct Robocop 3 and then that ended his career again.  Hopefully the third time’s the charm.

Even though this is technically a kids movie it is rated PG-13 and I think adults would get a kick out of it, especially if they grew up watching the old Universal monster pictures from the 30’s and 40’s.  It also has the balls to compare these fictional creatures to the Holocaust (there’s an old man that helps the kids out and we discover that he was in a concentration camp).  That’s a film with confidence and also something that kids probably won’t understand.  But aside from that strangely out of place reality check this one is sort of like Scream meets The Goonies.  I think it’s better than The Goonies too.  It’s not for everyone and I have the feeling that it’s a love it or hate it kind of experience.  If you can get over some goofy stuff like that Dracula drives a hearse with a chrome skull hood ornament and hurls dynamite when he gets really pissed then you’ll probably get into the rest of it.  If that last sentence sounded totally stupid to you then you should avoid this one.

One last thing, don’t get fooled by the 20^th anniversary edition DVD cover.  It shows a kid carrying a huge knife and a bandolier filled with some heavy duty ammunition but neither of those are in the movie.  I prefer the original poster where the kids are hanging out on the front of Dracula’s hearse looking all tough while the monsters’ menacing faces are lined up in the background.