After I saw and loved Night of the Creeps, I decided to watch Fred Dekker’s other feature length movie that was not RoboCop 3, The Monster Squad. Unlike Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad is clearly a movie directed to pre teen boys, i.e. it is a movie for kids (the other f word and bitch are used, but otherwise, it is pretty harmless).
The Monster Squad is about a group of boys (and one of the boys’ little sister) who meet in a tree house to obsess over classic monster movies. Suddenly real life meets their obsession when those classic monsters invade their town, led by Count Dracula, who looks better than, but is also meaner than Bela Lugosi, to bring darkness upon the world so he can rule it. Apocalypse! The boys receive Van Helsing’s diary from one of the boy’s mom and decide to stop them.
The Monster Squad has a handful of promising, textured moments, but unfortunately there were not many, and once they appeared, they never returned. First, the elderly next door neighbor, who initially frightens the boys, is my favorite character and played by Leonardo Cimino. The boys ask him how to say something in German. Unfortunately he knows how to translate the phrase because of firsthand experience. The interior design of his home reveals more to the older members of the audience than the boys. One of the kids says, “Man, you sure know a lot about monsters.” He replies, “Now that you mention, I suppose I do.” Chills because it roots The Monster Squad in the real world and further promulgates my theory of why movies seem to favor Jewish survivors of the Holocaust as vampire hunters.
Second, there is initially an undercurrent of family instability and marital discord despite love due to work obligations, but wrapped up too neatly by the end. The Monster Squad stresses that the work obligations are not worth the sacrifice because the father is less successful than his son at solving the town’s problems.
Third, there is a suggestion that some of the monsters have not forgotten their humanity. Frankenstein’s Monster feels more like Spielbergian emotional manipulation a la E.T., but the poignant portrayal of the Wolfman by Jon Gries as an unwilling accessory is understated and unfortunately underutilized.
Finally The Monster Squad’s Dracula is genuinely an awful man instead of a romantic hero. He loves taunting people with his powers, is really excited about killing kids, does not think twice about casually killing people in the most effective manner available, including explosives. Dracula is better than you and he knows it. Don’t let his dated wardrobe fool you.
I have no idea what happened, but The Monster Squad probably was a better movie in concept. The Monster Squad probably made itself more appealing to kids for commercial reasons and was a real miss with The Mummy and The Gill Man (think Creature from the Blue Lagoon). I know that adults can like movies marketed to kids, but The Monster Squad is really juvenile circa 1980s. The Monster Squad does not work, but if you don’t mind panning for gold and losing 88 minutes of your life, give it a chance. You may love The Monster Squad in spite of its dominant flaws.