In both commentary tracks for the DVD, Dekker acknowledges the fantastical elements made popular by Steven Spielberg, yet Spielberg's own characters in the films he wrote, directed, or produced, existed in a world with sappy emotions, and desexualized, if not formal behaviour besides the kids, even Frankenstein gets some latent jollies when he looks at the picture he mistakenly took of a panty-clad girl from the kid's Peeping Tom camera setup. Monster Squad also bears the smart-ass dialogue and cop elements that would form the core of Shane Black's second feature film script, Lethal Weapon, including marital bickering between the cop husband and annoyed wife/mother, and lowbrow insults traded between detectives at the crime scene – defining aspects of the buddy copy genre.Įxactly what's made Dekker's film a fondly remembered classic is hard to quantify: the monsters, the camaraderie of the kids in the treehouse, or the nutty humour that aimed local, and low, Wolfman's nards and all. ![]() (Dante's humour is also tied to cartoons, giving his films a strong sense of absurdity, and moments grounded in classic Warner cartoon logic.) Like the Abbott & Costello films (which added the Invisible Man and Boris Karloff in separate installments), actual plot logic wasn't really important, and Dekker and Black's script skirts over a lot of plot holes in the final act to ensure the end battle happens with all characters in the town center – something not dissimilar from Joe Dante's own nostalgia trips, although his tributes are derived from bug-eyed monster movies and suburban life infiltrated by seething, slimy, furry, prickly, or robotic evil, and reflect his own (and slightly older) generational standing. It's that patented Rascals view in which any problem can be solved with simple deduction, and that's pretty much how the kids manage to stop Dracula and his newly revived monsters – the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon – from opening some vortex that'll bring badness into the world. cities, you could also tune into any TV station using a portable radio if not to listen to TV, than to add an extra speaker in an era where stereo TVs cost about $2,000.) Monster Squad does follow the Rascals logic, albeit on a smaller scale: there are bullies, weird neighbours (scary German Guy), nicknames (Fat Kid), annoying younger siblings, and a world where cheap entertainment is easy to be had, even in the suburbs unlike Poltergeist, which is set in the newly built, secular monster home suburbs of California, the Monster Squad kids still live in older fifties and late sixties homes where you could sit on the roof at night, and watch a distant drive-in movie using binoculars, and listen to the soundtrack with your portable AM radio tuned into the drive-in's speaker channel. ![]() ![]() Tom Holland's Fright Night (1985) was aimed at an older demographic weaned on local late night movie showings, with cheesy hosts or hostesses dressed as pseudo-vampires or some affable cross-mix, whereas in The Monster Squad, writers Fred Dekker and Shane Black wanted to update the Abbott & Costello opus with the camaraderie of the Little Rascals, a beloved collection of street kids who solved mysteries, built their own go-carts, and pulled explosive pranks on each other when not convening at their local plywood and driftwood clubhouse in the grubby, dusty suburbs of Los Angeles. ![]() Languages: English Dolby 5.1, English Dolby 2.0ĭisc 1: Audio Commentary #1: Director/co-writer Fred Dekker and cast members Andre Gower, Ryan Lamber, and Ashley Bank / Audio Commentary #2: Fred Dekker and Cinematographer Bradford Mayĭisc 2: 5-part Making-of documentary: "Monster Squad Forever! (87:57) / Interview: "A Conversation with Frankenstein" (8:33) / Deleted Scenes (8:18) / Animated Storyboard Sequence for Final Battle(1:40) / Still Gallery (5:13) / Original Theatrical Trailer and TV Spot / O-sleeveĪlongside teen comedies and boneheaded action films from the eighties, there's also a devoted following of that decade's self-mocking horror films - the product of filmmakers enamored by the classic Universal monsters from the thirties and forties, and what's increasingly regarded as the most impressionable monster movie of all: Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein (1948), which gathered the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Mummy into one big goofball romp with the studio's popular comedy team.
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