The 80’s. I seem to reference the neon decade just about every other article but, I swear, this time it’s not without merit. You see, it was the age of Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers…the slasher’s were to horror what superheroes are for summer blockbusters now. The Monster Squad brought back the OG’s in full with Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, even the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and put them in a story that most kids could relate to. Think of this like Stand by Me meets Van Helsing, a group of outcast friends brought together by their mutual love for monsters meet in a tree house to surround themselves with their obsession. Of course, since we are following a formula here you must add in the little sister who no one wants around but later plays a central role, and the leather jacket and ray-ban wearing bad boy who, in this case, befriends the kids because their tree house has a good vantage point of the hot girl’s bedroom. Unfortunately for them, they are about to be thrust right into their own horror movie after the main character, Sean, is given an old diary that his Mom got at a garage sale. Since it’s written in German they must face the biggest real-world fear that they’ve known to this point and consult “Creepy German Guy”, a reclusive old man that has become the neighborhood boogeyman. Lucky for them the old man isn’t so much evil as he is helpful and kind, UNlucky for them he translates the diary to reveal that once every 100 years a balance is struck between good and evil that can allow for the resurrection of Dracula. VERY unlucky for them is that it was exactly 100 years ago when the balance was last met…oh, I left something out, in order to come back Dracula needs to sacrifice (I think) a virgin in the form of Sean’s little sister. So yeah, fun times all around. The unlikely group must band together and destroy evil before Dracula regains his immortality and Sean’s sister is lost.
Where to start, well I suppose the obvious place is the Monster’s so let’s start there. I mentioned earlier how it took some stones to put the “Universal Monsters” in this movie right in the middle of the slasher craze. They were the old guard, your grandpa’s monsters, and therefore no longer cool….hell; even Zombies didn’t fare too well in the 80’s. Now, obviously, this is a movie for kids so I just assumed that’s why it worked, the kids think they’re watching Monsters like the teens but at the same time won’t loose to much sleep at night. This would have been exactly how anyone would would have seen it before the film was made, but they weren’t expecting Duncan Regher to turn in one of the top 3 versions of Count Dracula. Regher’s Dracula didn’t even need to do anything drastically different with the visual aspect of the character (I’m looking at you Gerard Butler in Dracula 2000), he walked in with the Tux, the cape, even the amulet/necklace thing and still he was able to bring the scary back to everyone’s favorite Count. Though Regher’s Dracula is the stand-out, every single monster brought something real to the table. The Mummy, long known as one of THE most boring monsters…well he’s still kind of boring but he at least looks a little more macabre, the vastly underrated Creature from the Black Lagoon looks the part perfectly and has one of the best entrances in the swamp scene, Wolfman…sporting one of the creepiest Wolfman faces I've seen to this day (the mask was modeled after FX legend Stan Winston’s face) and is the recipient of the movie’s most memorable line “Wolfman’s Got NARDS!”. Then there’s Frankenstein. I go with Dracula for top seed but it wasn't an easy choice to make, Tom Noonan’s portrayal of the misunderstood gentle giant is the most sympathetic to date and honestly it’s perfect. The pain you see in his face when they show him a Frankenstein Halloween mask is one of the first scenes I remember having an emotional effect on me. This film never for a second lets you think that Frank likes where he is or that he isn’t being used, you actually genuinely feel for the guy.
The cast is about as generic as they come for the 80’s. You’ve got the cool kid, the fat kid, the little sister, and the two best friends of which one is slightly “cooler” than the other. Next add in a cheesy Principal, a cop for a Dad and a hot blonde, bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees and viola, 80’s cast ala mode! This is one of those movies that makes me hate when people down a movie for being formulaic, anyone can think of something weird and different to do, but not everyone can use the same template as everyone else in a crowded room and come up with something that sticks out as unique. I can’t put my finger on exactly why they stood out, maybe it was turning the cool kid stereotype to 11 and hitting play or nicknaming the fat kid, “Fat Kid”, which we all know is probably the most realistic portrayal of middle school bully creativity ever shown on screen. Whatever the reason, the crew sticks with you long after you leave the theater. Oh, lest I forget, the awesome 80’s montage! Spotlighted in the “preparing for battle” montage is cool kid making supplies in shop class, apparently in a 1980’s shop class you could make both wooden stakes and silver bullets during class without anyone giving a shit.It’s through this movie that I realized my love of the classics and for that I owe The Monster Squad a ton. The thing about horror since the mid-70’s, no matter how good the movie, is the lack of depth. I don’t mean that in terms of character arc or anything like that but in the richness of the subject’s history, the lore. I know people credit giving the bad guy a deep background as the reason most prequels suck, but it’s actually not that they gave him a background but when they did it. If you create a character like Freddy or Jason and tell just a tiny bit about how they came to be these horrific monsters then the audience will fill in the rest, so when you do a remake/prequel the audience is destined to dislike it to some level even if only subconsciously. They’ve filled in the blanks themselves by then so by telling the full story, even if it’s the original writer telling the story (see: George Lucas), on some level your disagreeing with the audience and no one likes to be told their wrong. However, if you have a monster with some depth and history from the onset you can do just about anything with them and the audience will eat it up…at least until it gets silly *ahem*Seed of Chucky*ahem*.
