Day 10: The Monster Squad (1987)

A Month of Horror

I have always wanted to do a marathon of "HORROR" throughout the month of October, one where I would revisit a new horror movie every day from the first to the thirty-first.  I will revisit the classics as well as new entries into the canon.  There are many movies that define this time of year, and I hope to showcase 31 of them this month...

October 10: The Monster Squad (1987)

There are many movies that played a key defining role in my youth.  For some strange reason, Corey Feldman made appearances in most of them ("The Goonies", "Stand By Me", "Gremlins", and the previously re-viewed for this column "The Lost Boys") but one that he didn't feature in, was Fred Dekker's "The Monster Squad".

This movie spoke to my heart as a youngster.  I grew up with a guy named Craig and he was one of the greatest friends you could have because he, just like me, knew that monsters were real.  They lurked in the drakest corners of our neighborhood, under our beds, and in the shadowy depths of the forest that lined my backyard.  We were positive that they were out there, and the determination of a young imagination is enough to make even the most translucent spectres become corporeal.

The beauty of "The Moster Squad" is that it brought back a sense of that magic.  In this movie, Universal Pictures classic monsters (the Wolfman, the Mummy, frankenstein's monster, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon) band together under the leadership of Dracula to bring evil back into the world.  A quick note, this is not a Universal picture, so the monsters do look slightly different.  Being set in the modern day (at the time anyway) only made it that much more radical.

With a tight and referential script by Shane Black (who would go on to become one of my favorite screenwriters), "The Monster Squad" tells the story of a group of monster-obsessed grade school kids who band together and use their knowledge of classic monster lore to combat Dracula and his evil minions.

The only problem, as with many '80s films, is that they need to find a virgin in order to enact the spell they discovered in an old Van Helsing journal they find.  Truly a classic '80s dillema, but one they are able to surpass in true Monster Squad fashion.

It is a whimsical story (through the gauze of nostalgia, at least) that shares many of the common themes and traits of my favorite films of the '80s.  The fact that it veers so close to my own personal version of how those days were for me makes it that much better.  Definitely worth a trip down memory lane for this one.

Tomorrow, I intend to wreck my eyes with a bit of a foreign language treasure.