The Monster Squad (1987)

Talking to a fellow poster on a movie message board,I mentioned that my favourite version of Zorro is the New World TV series. At the same time,I sold a DVD for a family friend on Ebay. Taking a look at the case before sending it off,I was surprised to see that it starred Zorro! This led to me quickly joining the squad.View on the film:Looking every bit as debonaire as he did playing Zorro, Duncan Regehr gives a wicked performance as Dracula , whose given a regal stand by Reghr that causes the other characters to drop their guard, allowing Reghr to sink Drac's fangs into pulpy one-liners. Joining in the monster bash, Tom Noonan gives a child-like innocence to the foot-stomping Frankenstein's creature.Joining the squad with Shane Black making his screenwriting debut,co-writer/director Fred Dekker crisply builds upon his Horror Comedy origins of House,with Black's snappy dialogue. Black & Dekker show themselves to have been ahead of their time,thanks to the quick landing on the monsters,allowing the writers to fly past the set-up,to instead land wonderful tributes to Universal monster movies and Stephen King.Putting The Monster Squad up against a gallery of famous monsters, director Dekker impressively does not shy away in going for full-on horror,via Stan Winston's classic practical effects being shown at their very best,and the colourful use of matte paintings and red lights giving a pulpy atmosphere to the monster squad.

This movie was a lovely way to spend my Saturday night I enjoyed it from the begging. With slim references to Stephan King and Van Helsing this movie had a lot of great parts. Now the actors were amazing and the monsters look amazing for this movie to have been released when it was. I do believe this movie has not been given its proper dues as a horror movie for the whole family. I highly recommend this movie to any person who loves to have a good night with the family.

I remember going to see this on my birthday and...it was the coolest film I had ever seen...but then again I felt the same way about Batman, and Willow, and The Goonies, and Robocop, and so many other movies so....grain of salt there.Bit of a token here, like so many other kids in the '80s I was never censored as a child. And when it came to the old monster movies it was like parents went out of their way to make sure their kids saw them all. So my friends and I had a bit of background walking into this.That might have added to the appeal...or it could have been the fact that "Wolfman has nards" or just the fact that the mom was Mary Ellen Trainor and we knew her as the mother of the Goonies and Lethal Weapon and Romancing the Stone and she was sort of like the mom of the '80s so we had that family feel to it.She was everywhere wasn't she? At least she was in all the important movies that kids that were kids in the '80s watched. Emphasis on "important." And adventure horror comedy. Kids that grew up when I did loved horror-comedies, it has been a part of our souls since the days of Scooby-Doo. Scary and funny and perfect for little boys.It was "The Goonies" with monsters. Who wouldn't love it? Frankenstein instead of Sloth. "The Monster Squad" instead of "The Goonies" and a little girl instead of Chunk.It is a formula made for little boys, and, believe it or not, it aged just as well as The Goonies.

It's a shame that The Monster Squad hasn't gathered more of a cult following since it's such a masterful film that is great to get younger kids started into the horror genre. It's certainly one of the memorable films in my childhood that lifted my passion for horror along with the old classic Universal Monster films, Nightmare before Christmas, Godzilla, and so on. What is undeniable is that a script written like this will never appear in another movie for older children. The modern political correct nature of our world would squash this movie in a heartbeat, which makes this film more unique. There is an abundance of crude humor yet very funny that actually depicts kids being kids. Also a typical imagination of children and their idea of monsters such as Dracula, Wolfman, Gillman and Frankenstein's monster coming to life in their reality makes for a great movie. The Monster Squad defines 80's teen features and campy horror, a real treat for anybody to re-watch after years of enjoying the film or to watch for the very first time.