Review: The Monster Squad (1987)

We're getting the band back together

During my first watch of The Monster Squad, I started looking at my phone. Deepest apologies about this, for those of you who were antsy for a thoughtful, deep-dive Brianna Zigler Take on the 1987 fantasy/horror family film co-penned by Iron Man 3’s own Shane Black, and directed by the guy who helped Black scribe the 2018 Predator remake. A few months ago, I received an email with a body consisting only of the words “The Monster Squad (1987).” It was a to-the-point response to a call I’d posted on Twitter over the summer, where I had encouraged subscribers of this newsletter to offer up suggestions on what they’d want to see me write on eventually. Related: rest assured, all other people who have sent me suggestions. I have read them and have included most of them on my list of pending newsletter topics.

But with Halloween approaching, and a desire to do a string of horror film reviews in celebration of my favorite holiday, I figured now would be as good a time as ever to finally conjure up that brief email suggestion of The Monster Squad — a film that was a box office and critical flop upon release, but has since garnered a passionate cult fanbase among horror fans after it ran on cable and was subsequently released on VHS. I deleted the email already, so I don’t remember which of you sent it to me. Sorry about that, too.

Anyway, I had arrived at around the halfway mark when I felt subconsciously compelled to start googling information about Stranger Things. I looked up whether we’re getting a new season (we are, insanely), when that new season is going to premiere (sometime next year), and the ages that the child actors are now (I thought for sure they were all in their twenties by this point). Then, post-movie, I hopped on Letterboxd to peruse the thoughts of my peers on the inimitable The Monster Squad.

It was there that I stumbled upon a terse review from my good friend and fellow film writer, Isaac Feldberg. He described the aforementioned nostalgia-suckling Netflix series as “riffing on [The Monster Squad] to a near-legally indefensible degree.” For some reason, the connection between the ‘80s-inspired show that arguably catalyzed the entire entertainment industry’s fixation on mining money out of an empty fondness for the past, and this particular film about a group of monster-loving kids who have to save the world from classic Universal horror icons, was only in the back of my mind. It manifested passively, out of the malaise I felt during a montage where the children do wacky things with their new friend, Frankenstein’s monster (Tom Noonan), set to an indistinguishable ‘80s pop song that even stumped my Shazam app.

The Monster Squad follows a group of kids who call themselves, wouldn’t you know it, the Monster Squad. No, it’s not the name of the monsters themselves, but the name of the kids. Little bit of misdirection there, huh? They’re a handful of pre-teens united by their obsession with classic horror monsters, led by Sean (Andre Gower), Sean’s best friend Patrick (Robby Kiger), Horace (Brent Chalem), and newcomer Rudy (Ryan Lambert) — a cool older kid who stood up for Horace one day, as the latter was being tormented by bullies at school. Meanwhile, Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr) — who is real — assembles a team of hair-raising compatriots in order to retrieve a precious amulet that’s been lost to him, consisting of the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster (though he quickly betrays his brethren).

For now, the amulet remains hidden within a mansion in American suburbia, placed there many years ago by the famous vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing’s apprentice. And by sheer happenstance, Sean comes into possession of a diary written by Van Helsing. It holds within its pages the incantation that can banish the monsters, with the help of the same powerful amulet that Dracula seeks. Otherwise, if Dracula gets his hands on it, he can rule the world. Thus, the Monster Squad takes it upon themselves, as allegedly the most qualified people to do so, to retrieve the amulet, recite the incantation, and banish Dracula and the monsters for good.

The Monster Squad isn’t really worth writing much on, so I’m not going to write too much on it. I feel bad talking more negatively or flippantly about a film on my newsletter which purports to boost underrated films and series and people, in order to allow for further reevaluation. But them’s the breaks of letting my subscribers suggest I write about stuff and then actually following through with it. And on the surface, The Monster Squad does seem like something I’d be into. I was totally expecting to enjoy an 80-minute film about classic Universal monsters teaming up, based on the potential for Halloween vibes alone. But aside from the monsters themselves, the film has no association with the holiday. Why not capitalize on the premise and make your film that’s about Universal horror monsters take place on or adjacent to Halloween? Then at least if the film is boring — which it is — it’s at least got good vibes.

The film is absent of the more interesting, talented or charismatic child actors that populated the other film this one is so clearly desperate to ape the success of: The Goonies (the biggest name to be found in The Monster Squad is Manhunter’s own Tom Noonan), which had released two years prior. Thus, the kid characters are mostly kind of annoying, aside from eager sister Phoebe (Ashley Bank), who is adorable. The plot sort of drags on and on as we reach the ultimate showdown between the kids and the monsters. The genre is billed as "horror-comedy” but it isn’t funny, save for what amounts to a few snarky one-liners here and there.

This is the biggest issue with the movie for me: that it’s incredibly earnest for such an absurd premise. Before I’d started the film, I was really banking on the writers exploiting the inherent absurdity to more comedic effect. But when the movie opens with a Very Serious flashback sequence involving Van Helsing attempting to banish Dracula, I knew I wasn’t going to have any fun. I guess that was just the way the ‘80s were — how were you gonna make a movie about a group of spunky kids in suburban Americana teaming up to stop monsters and not try to imbue the same tone as E.T? Reagan’s America was a dark time.

The best things about The Monster Squad are, 1) its PG-13 rating, which is something that sets it apart from its predecessor, The Goonies. This makes it so that the children can actually talk how pre-teens talk and curse more extensively (something that was seen as a similarly welcome relief with Stranger Things, where the kids are even allowed to say “fuck”). And the rating also lets some more…questionable aspects slide by, for what is ostensibly a family film. These were the parts that I really enjoyed. The previously noted, lighthearted montage of the kids hanging out with Noonanstein is immediately followed by a scene in which Dracula reveals three young women he’s kidnapped and has been holding prisoner in a closet in the mansion.

There’s a scene where the Wolfman, after having been brutally dismembered, is able to supernaturally pull all his dissected body parts back together. And at the climax, Count Dracula calls Phoebe, a five-year-old girl, a bitch, which genuinely made me hoot. The second best thing are the practical effects, the bat transformation and werewolf transformation sequences not topping something like An American Werewolf in London, but still fun, impressive, etc.

If I had seen The Monster Squad when I was a kid, honestly I probably would have liked it. It’s the sort of movie I would revisit and look back on with fondness but have no patience for, because everything about it would have entranced my child brain. It’s like how Space Jam was once my Citizen Kane, but when I tried rewatching it over the summer I could not even get to the halfway mark before feeling suicidal. As a person now burdened with the mind of an adult, I can’t watch something like The Monster Squad and not have a million questions about all the inane little details and coincidences rattling around, driving me to insanity. Why are all the horror movie monsters so close by this one specific town? If there was a guy living in this town who was a werewolf, why didn’t he create any issues prior to this situation? How is Frankenstein real if he was created by Mary Shelley in 1818? Did Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff know that they were actually acting in bio-pics?

As a smooth-brained child, however, these questions would have been nonexistent. All that would matter would be that Dracula and the Wolfman and the Mummy were teaming up, and that a band of spirited adolescents were there to save the day. Ah, youth.*