October 2 HMAD: Monster Squad

What scares
Andrew Goodridge?

He’s giving us a month to find out.

     Follow along with Andrew as he plans to get into the spirit of his favorite holiday by watching a different horror movie every day in the month of October.

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October 2

A kick of nostalgia right in the wolf-dork.

“The Monster Squad” (1987)
Directed by: Fred Dekker
Screenplay by: Shane Black and Fred Dekker

     I wish I had been more of kid when I was a kid.

     I suppose I liked toys and cartoons and sports heroes and pizza. But the boyhood fascination with monsters must have passed me by. I didn’t know a Gillman from a Wolf-man before I went to college. But, in the last several years, I’ve been making up for lost time. I’m finally part of that collective adolescent boy experience, where anything with fangs and gills and fur and claws is the end-all be-all of cool. I just had to wait until I was 27 to be 10.

     When I think of other adults’ houses, I usually picture them decorated like something out of a Crate & Barrel catalogue. They probably have fancy names for regular items – like “runner tables” instead of just “skinny desks” – and they use terms like “earth tone” to describe the fabric on their chaise lounge. Maybe they look for “inspiration” in modern art pieces for their upcoming bathroom remodel.

     I don’t do any of these things. I don’t think my shower curtain matches my bath mat. My couch is wonderfully comfortable, but it’s not so stylish and I imagine my first wife will make me get rid of it. I don’t have decorative plates hanging on the wall.

     What I do have decorating my wall, however, is monsters.

     The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Mummy. The Mole Man. The Metaluna Mutant. Both Frankenstein’s monster from “Frankenstein,” as well as Frankenstein’s monster from “Son of Frankenstein” (the aficionado will notice the subtle differences). Now that I’ve lived long enough to be called a “grown up,” I’ve finally discovered a fascination for monsters.

     I wish I would have been introduced to the wonders of monsters when I was little. If I had, I probably would have been just like the characters in “The Monster Squad” (1987), a nostalgic look back at a time I never knew. “The Monster Squad” is about a group of kids who are walking encyclopedias for monster trivia. “What’s the second way to kill a werewolf?” they quiz each other. They argue whether or not there really is a second way to kill a werewolf, until they get a chance to find out for themselves.

     Yes, monsters are invading their small suburban town, and these kids are the only ones who can stop it. Dracula is after an amulet of sorts, and he summons The Wolf-Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon to help him retrieve it. He looked around for The Invisible Man, but he couldn’t find him.

     “The Monster Squad” was co-written and directed by Fred Dekker, who made another 80s horror-comedy, “Night of the Creeps,” that will show up on this Horror-Movie-A-Day marathon at some point. Dekker has an obvious love for monsters and madmen made famous by Universal Studios in the 30s, 40s and 50s. He’s also got a keen ear for dialogue, and he writes the way 12-year-olds actually talk, which is partly why “The Monster Squad” couldn’t be made today (though I’m well aware of the proposed remake). The boys use surprisingly coarse language, the cool kid smokes, the protagonist’s parents are going through a bitter divorce, an old man (whose name is just “Scary German Guy”) is a Holocaust survivor, and the husky kid is referred to as, well, “Fat Kid.” Also, a special mention should be made of the genuinely scary and disturbing monsters designed by Stan Winston, whose name will pop up many times in the coming weeks.

     But all of these surprisingly adult themes and images in a kids’ movie make “The Monster Squad” the perfect fit for an adult trying to capture the spirit of being a kid. It’s also a great way to capture the spirit of Halloween, which, in Dekker’s eyes, is more about a love for the idea of the things that scare us, rather than the scares themselves.

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     Andrew Goodridge likes movies so much that he married one. He teaches Audio/Video production, Filmmaking, and Film & Television History in Fort Worth, Texas. He would one day like to have a Pug, or maybe a Bulldog.

Andrew Goodridge can be reached at goodridge@everythingnac.com