A fun addition to Arrow Video’s Halloween run-up, this cult classic from 1987 should have been so much more. A gang of kids versus the deathly gothic forces of evil under Dracula’s command is a strong concept. With script duties handed to Shane Black, fresh from his precocious debut writing Lethal Weapon, it should have screamed ‘winner’.
But it wasn’t, for reasons painfully obvious in a box set that’s both a celebration and autopsy of the comedy horror.
It’s a fictional suburb that Dracula drops into (from a plane with the preserved body of Frankenstein’s Monster), where a group of school friends form a club over their joint obsession with Universal Horror-style monsters, led by Andre Gower’s Sean Crenshaw. As the infamous vampire draws out local horrors—Gill-man from his lagoon, the Wolfman into the full moon, and an Egyptian mummy from a museum—the Monster Squad could be the last chance to stop him from seizing his destiny. It’s going to be tough, though. As the prologue tells us about Abraham Van Helsing and his followers’ attempt to stop him a century before, they “blew it”.
The MacGuffin at the heart of the story is a gleaming green amulet, hidden in the burbs by Van Helsing’s acolytes, which regulates the forces of good and evil. It turns out it weakens every 100 years, which happens to be tomorrow! Should the Prince of Darkness get his pale mitts on it, it would forever tip the balance in evil’s favour.
Nothing like high stakes, as Dracula never said. While The Monster Squad has fun paying high-concept tribute to cinematic horror, with some lovely takes on monsters (especially the copyright-dodging design twists from Stan Winston Studio), it doesn’t live up to its full potential.
Shane Black’s scripts are always a treat, even if there’s only a brief flash of his usual brilliance. Several jokes have aged badly, particularly the extended skit and the plot point about virgins, but the major problems seem to lie elsewhere. Director and co-writer Fred Dekker’s movies wouldn’t exceed the peak of this and 1986’s Night of the Creeps, although he would write with Shane Black again on 2018’s The Predator. On the disc, the 4K print screams mid-80s picture, but it struggles to improve a picture that’s often a bit soft. That, combined with a choppy edit, doesn’t help us fully enter the scary suburbs or cobwebbed crypts, partly because it’s got to get a move on: a whole castle-full of classic movie monsters has to be foiled in a fleeting 82 minutes.
In that time, The Monster Squad struggles to introduce itself—it could have done with an extra set-piece or comedy skit. On release, the lack of much under the bandages didn’t help it fight some Hollywood coincidence. The Lost Boys, which came out a couple of weeks before, took 10 times as much.
It also suffered compared to The Goonies, which had conjured the kind of charisma, depth, and fantasy The Monster Squad was crying out for two years before. Being saddled with a PG-13 rating was the death blow, especially given that Dracula (Duncan Regehr, running a slick Brit spin on Bela Lugosi) doesn’t even get to use his fangs.
Still, there’s plenty to keep horror aficionados amused. The mummy’s dispatch is an unravelling treat, while other monsters meet fates befitting their gothic roots. In the role of Frankenstein’s Monster, Tom Noonan breaks a spell of menacing roles, including 1986’s Manhunter, to fill out the role with some Boris Karloff pathos.
This squad never achieves the memorable bond we all expect from its setup. A clear sign of that is that where The Goonies had Chunk, The Monster Squad has Fat Kid. But this set highlights the bond that has far outlived the film. Another appeal of picking up the limited edition is Wolfman’s Got Nards — a 2018 documentary from Andre Gower that runs longer than the film it analyses, from box-office fall to cult rise. The Monster Squad is still a fun time as much as a bit of a missed opportunity, not least because plans for a 21st-century remake proved cursed. Most of all, this release is a fascinating glimpse at the enduring power of 1980s cinema.
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Limited Edition Special Features
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Francesco Francavilla
- Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by critics Sean Abley, Priscilla Page, Justin LaLiberty and Johnny Mains
Disc 1 – Feature and Extras (4K Ultra HD)
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original lossless stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary with writer/director Fred Dekker and “Squad Members” Andre Gower, Ryan Lambert and Ashley Bank
- Audio commentary with writer/director Fred Dekker and director of photography Bradford May
- Monster Squad Forever, a feature-length 2007 documentary on the making of the film
- Archive featurette with the SFX team, featuring interviews with John Rosengrant, Steve Wang, Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, Lindsay MacGowan and Tom Woodruff Jr.
- Archive interview with composer Bruce Broughton
- A Conversation with Frankenstein, a vintage 1986 featurette
- Deleted scenes
- Animated Storyboard sequence
- Trailers and TV spot
- Image galleries
Disc 2 – Wolfman’s Got Nards (Limited Edition Exclusive Blu-ray)
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation of Wolfman’s Got Nards, a 2018 feature-length documentary co-written and directed by The Monster Squad star Andre Gower
- Original lossless stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- In the Goddamn Club, More with Fans of The Monster Squad
- Blood Bath music video
- Deleted scenes
- Extended interviews with Fred Dekker, Shane Black, Adam Goldberg and Seth Green
- Archive interview with Andre Gower & Henry Darrow McComas
- Podcast audio interviews with actors Ashley Bank, Tom Noonan, Carl Thibault and Michael Reid MacKay
- Trailer
The Monster Squad is out on Limited Edition 4K from Arrow Video on 12 October.
