REVIEW: The Monster Squad

I absolutely love October. Thanks to Halloween, we get an entire month of candy and costumes and horror movies, all before Christmas begins to loom over us like the holly jolly monolith it is. To celebrate, I've decided to review something appropriately spooky each week of the month, starting with a cult gem from the 80's, The Monster Squad.

The plot plays out like a Goonies Halloween Special; a group of kids obsessed with classic monster movies come into the possession of the diary of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. The book describes a magical amulet with the power to cast the forces of evil into Limbo; naturally, the aformentioned forces of evil want to get their hands on it. Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr) assembles a crack team of creatures, summoning Frankenstein's Monster (Tom Noonan), the Wolfman (Carl Thibault), the Mummy (Michael MacKay), and the Gillman (Tom Woodruff Jr) to help him retrieve and destroy the amulet. Truthfully, the technical aspects of the story don't hold up in the slightest. Was the Wolfman just a normal guy before Dracula appeared, or did he always know he was a dormant werewolf? Why doesn't Dracula have an accent of any kind? Was the Gillman just hanging out in that lake for the past however many years until Dracula summoned him? He gives Frankenstein's Monster life and threatens the Wolfman with a silver cane, but why do Mummy and Gillman obey him? There's a lot to nitpick with this one, but if you're nitpicking The Monster Squad, then I'm afraid you've missed the point entirely.

This is by no means a profound or groundbreaking film; one of the protagonists is literally referred to as "fat kid" half the time and the magical amulet is about as oddly specific as a plot device can get. However, the picture more than makes up for it in sheer amounts of fun. Every little thing about this movie is totally endearing, from the surprisingly competent child actors to the classic look of the monsters. The special effects range from fantastic creatures made by Stan Winston to charmingly classic bats on strings. The set design takes us everywhere from suburban streets to Gothic haunted houses and castles. It's like if someone made a movie based entirely off of the Halloween decorations found in an elementary school classroom, it's just classic spooky fun. It manages to be a complete and utter 80's time capsule while feeling somehow timeless altogether.

The Monster Squad is just a delightful movie from beginning to end. While it doesn't have much to offer in terms of depth, I feel it's definitely worth its weight in fun. An often overlooked throwback from a time when childrens' movies were full of blood and swearing, The Monster Squad is an all-around good time; if you're looking for something more kooky than spooky this Halloween season, I highly recommend you give this one a watch.