Wednesday, October 22, 2014

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Monster Squad (1987)

Directed by Fred Dekker and co-written by Shane Black, The Monster Squad is a horror comedy film that acts as a humorous love letter to the Universal monster movies. Sean Crenshaw and his best friend Patrick are monster movie fanatics. Along with their portly friend Horace, junior high bad boy Rudy, Sean's little sister Phoebe, and little Eugene they come together in Sean's treehouse and talk about monsters. 

But when Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, and The Mummy come to their small town to retrieve a mystical amulet that will allow them to take over the world, Sean leads his friends into action to defeat the forces of evil.  

The Monster Squad is probably one of the silliest, cheesiest films I have ever seen. The story suffers from serious lapses in logic, its tonally confused, and has to be one of the most 80s films to come out of the 80s. 

However, none of that matters because The Monster Squad is just all kinds of awesome. 

On paper, The Monster Squad should be god awful. However, the film manages to achieve a special level of silliness that causes the film to loop back into the territory of awesomely entertaining. Its like Dekker and Black kidnapped a horror fanatic, dissected that fan's brain, found what every one of us has dreamed about, and filmed it. The Monster Squad is basically The Goonies for horror geeks.

The Monster Squad is a film that every horror fan should see at least five times. Its perfect Halloween marathon material and is filled with heart and fun. This movie, like the Wolf Man, has 'nards. 

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