Review- The Monster Squad (1987)

Directed by: Fred Dekker

Written by: Shane Black

Starring: Andre Gower, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht, Stan Shaw, Tom Noonan

Synopsis: Members of a monster fan club meet Count Dracula, Wolf Man, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Gill-Man.

Sometimes movies like these can have a charm factor that's irresistible, Army of Darkness for example. What drew me to watch The Monster Squad was that it had Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and the Wolfman teaming up. Seemed like B-movie inspired fun. It wasn't.

It didn't have self-awareness to have the charm factor. I thought that they were trying to embrace the cheesiness of older films with a similar premise. It embraces nothing and ends up being almost as bad as the B-movies but less entertaining. The intro text at the beginning of the film, which is part of the few moments of exposition that lets you know what's going on in the movie, implied a full on comedy and I was excited, but then it just turned into a mess. I will say though, that all the elements were there to make this movie good. It had competent actors (what's with 80s films and good child actors?), good production value, cool costumes, but it was written poorly. It had completely the wrong script.

Often, the movie went for a Spielbergian look. Cinematography mirrors ET and other Spielberg films, and many moments feel like they were trying to imitate Spielberg scenes and failed. I'm not sure why that's the angle they tried to go with either. Other times, they imitate Star Wars (Dracula's silhouette looking like Darth Vader) or older movies like the original Frankenstein, and those moments were neat.

As for why the story is bad, there are two major reasons. The first is that the film doesn't seem to really care about what the end goal for these monsters are. They just seem to be there to do something with a green talisman or something. They didn't really seem to have a plan other than to slowly walk towards the children (which, by the way, we never figure out why the monsters are attacking specifically the children.) The second is that the children jump the gun and try to save the day before they know anything bad is going to happen. They were ready to kill even before they met Frankenstein and asked the Holocaust survivor to translate his book he got randomly. It doesn't help that neither the monsters or the characters are interesting. The most characterization comes from the little girl and Frankenstein, but even that was just bare minimum. The lack of care in the made me not care or understand what's going on and I just wanted the movie to end about 20 minutes into the movie.

Also, there is a disturbing scene in this movie in which the kids need a virgin to say a ancient spell that well get rid of the monsters. They find a teenage girl and ask if she's lost her virginity, and she becomes frightened and wants to leave their treehouse but they threaten to share photos that they took of her while she was undressing by her window. And this scene was intended to be funny. I don't know if I can actually consider this a criticism because, as they say, times have changed, but it's funny of how unintentionally creepy this scene is.

It's riddled with bad stuff like Burger King product placement and the fact that the 'Wolf Man and Gill Man' are rip offs of The Wolfman and The Creature of the Black Lagoon, which are owned by Universal (this film was made by Tri-Star Pictures), but it's not worth mentioning them all. The movie is bad. I would recommend it if you're a big fan of the Universal monsters and B movies, or maybe if you want children under 7 to watch it. It's not really made for anybody else.

3/10