Stars: Andre Gower, Stephen Macht, Tom Noonan
Director: Fred Dekker
As this is my birthday week, I decided to choose a fun film that mixes horror and comedy very well. It is also the second film in this blog to be created by Fred Dekker, who deserved a much better career than he got.
Brief synopsis:
We get a brief prologue involving alternate versions of several Universal Monsters and Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing is attempting to banish the monsters to a wormhole using an amulet that keeps the balance of good and bad in check. This can only be done every 100 years. Van Helsing fails.
We flash forward a hundred years to meet The Monster Squad. These pre-teen friends have great imaginations and love horror films. They also get in trouble quite a bit at school because of their love of horror films. However, their knowledge is about to come in handy as Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Gill Man are all headed to their little town.
Spoilers below (you have been warned):
Shawn, the leader of the squad, lives with his Mom, cop Dad, and little sister Phoebe in a nice little house with a treehouse in the back yard. Mom and Dad are having marital issues due to his father’s job and Phoebe wants to be a part of her older brother’s group but he rejects her every time she asks. The other members of the group back Shawn up. There is his best friend Patrick, chubby Horace, teenage rebel Rudy, and little kid Eugene and they are all well-versed in movie monster lore. Shawn’s mom finds a diary from Abraham Van Helsing at a garage sale and buys it for her son. Unfortunately, the diary is completely in German and Shawn cannot read it. While the group is trying to figure out the diary, Dracula sets up shop at an abandoned house. This house is where the amulet from the prologue has been hidden. Dracula cannot reach it as it is guarded by a multitude of crosses. He also has Frankenstein’s monster with him as well as the Mummy with the Gill Man hiding out in a local lake. A man who was recently attacked by a werewolf and was presumed dead kills the coroner and escapes as well.
Frankenstein’s monster escapes as he does not want to hurt anyone. Phoebe ends up finding him and they become friends. The boys approach the house of a man they call the “scary, German guy” to get his assistance in helping with the diary. Turns out that he is a kind man who dealt with real life monsters in the Concentration Camps. He serves them dessert and translates the information about the amulet and how today is the only day in 100 years where the amulet can be used to stop the monsters. The kids thank him and run home to find Frankenstein’s monster with Phoebe and he tells them about where the amulet and Dracula are. They go to the house and retrieve the amulet after escaping from the Wolfman, the Mummy, three women Dracula turned in his brides, and Dracula himself.
Working with Scary German Guy, they discover they need a virgin to read the incantation to open up the worm hole. The blackmail Patrick’s teenage sister, who claims she is a virgin, into doing it. Meanwhile, the others attempt to escape from the monsters. Rudy kills the Mummy by using an arrow to attach one of his bandages to a tree while he is hanging on to their car. He disintegrates after he is unwrapped. Dracula goes to Shawn’s house and blows up their treehouse. He then blows up Shawn’s dad’s cop car, killing his partner. Eventually, everyone ends up in the town square. Horace kills the Gill Man with a shot gun. Rudy shoots the Wolfman with a silver bullet. The man thanks Rudy for releasing him from the curse before he dies.
Patrick’s sister does the reading but nothing happens. She reveals that she did sleep with her old boyfriend but that doesn’t count. Eugene asks if Phoebe is a virgin and Scary German Guy begins coaching her through the spell. Unfortunately, Dracula arrives on the scene and grabs the little girl by the chin, lifting her up and threatening her. Frankenstein’s monster saves her and throws Dracula onto a fence, impaling him. Phoebe finishes the spell and the wormhole opens up, dragging the remains of the monsters into it. Dracula is only mostly dead and manages to grab Shawn, attempting to drag the boy into the wormhole with him. Van Helsing appears from the wormhole and stakes Dracula, saving the boy’s life. The wormhole doesn’t close after Dracula enters it and they realize it is because Frankenstein’s monster is still in this world. The monster says goodbye to Phoebe and allows himself to be taken into the wormhole which closes as soon as he goes through it. Shawn’s family reunites with each other, apparently all marital issues forgotten with the events of the night. Eugene had asked for help from the Army and they surprisingly show up to help. Shawn explains that they have already taken care of the monsters. When the head of the regimen asks who they are, Shawn hands him a business card and says, “We’re the Monster Squad”.
My thoughts (with spoilers):
Is this the best film to start 1987 off with? Maybe not but I do enjoy it and it goes with the podcast I am dropping soon for the film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Both films are comedies that hold up surprisingly well and they also do the one thing so many horror-comedies mess up – they keep the monsters scary. Too often, films will make the monsters the butt of the joke. In both these films, the way people react and how they deal with the monsters are where the humor is found. The monsters are always scary.
Take for instance Dracula. This Dracula is scary and dangerous. He does not care who is in his way, he wants to get the amulet and take over the world and will do anything necessary to compete this goal. You are scared for the kids. When he grabs Phoebe by the chin and slowly pulls the little girl up until she is eye-level with him, you worry that he will just snap her neck. He screams in her face and all of this is done in a two-shot so you see both of them clearly. He is not screaming at an empty spot, that five-year old is really there. That increases the terror for everyone. You relax when Frankenstein’s monster finally saves her.
The kids are believably bratty and funny. Shawn whines about not being able to see a new movie because he has to babysit. He and his sister have a believable love/hate relationship. She wants to be a part of her brother’s club and exploits but he wants something of his own. The other kids are also good, not Goonies-level good, but still good. Andre Gower and Ryan Lambert, who played Rudy, do a podcast about horror films and attend conventions to keep this film in the horror community circles.
The script is fun and tight and so quotable. As a kid, I howled with laughter when Horace kicks the Wolfman in the balls and Horace says, “Wolfman’s got nards.” “Band-aid breath” also sticks out. Dekker and his co-writer Shane Black started this script when they were in college so it feels like the way kids would talk. The film only runs about 90 minutes so it is an easy watch and accessible to most kids once they reach 4th or 5th grade. Check is out.
More films from 1987 to check out:
Good Morning Vietnam – The late, great Robin Williams is amazing as Adrian Cronauer. Cronauer is a DJ in the Armed Forces Radio Service during the Vietnam War. Not really historically accurate but still an early show of his ability to switch from comedy to drama in a split second.
Three Men and a Baby – Remake of a French farce about an abandoned baby and drug smuggling. Weird combination that obviously worked for American audiences as it was the highest grossing film of 1987.
Moonstruck – Cher is glowing as a young widow discovering love again in this touching comedy. Admittedly, hits me a little harder as someone who was widowed in my thirties but it is not only touching but funny. A must watch for anyone who loves movies.