The Monster Squad is a kids’ horror-comedy-adventure film released in 1987. The movie was directed by Fred Dekker, who also brought us Night of the Creeps, and written by Dekker along with Shane Black, who also penned Lethal Weapon, The Last Action Hero, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. (Black also directed two action-comedies that people don’t talk enough about, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys.)
The story follows a group of kids – Sean, Patrick, Horace, Rudy, and Eugene – who are obsessed with horror movie monsters. They form The Monster Squad, a club where they get together and read comics, talk about movies, and just generally enjoy each other’s company since they’re mostly seen as outcasts at school. Little do they know that Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolf Man, Gill-man (AKA The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and the Mummy are gathering in their hometown on a mission to find a long lost amulet. The amulet is the only thing keeping the darkness in the world at bay, so Dracula is hellbent on destroying it on the one day this century that it’s vulnerable. Once the Squad becomes aware of his plan, they fight back as well as a bunch of pre-pubescent kids can.
LEGACY…?
If you’ve never heard of The Monster Squad, you’re not alone. The film was a major flop when it was released in August 1987, bringing in only $3.8 million on a $14 million budget. It was hampered by a PG-13 rating, preventing it from reaching it’s primary audience of tween boys, and was released just a few weeks after the premier of another horror film that held a sexier appeal, The Lost Boys. The film was just a little too twee for older kids and just a little too scary for the younger set, so it was pulled from theaters soon after release. However, once it made it’s way to home video and cable TV, it began to find it’s audience, and a cult following grew.
I was pretty aware of what movies were coming out in 1987, but even I barely remembered The Monster Squad. And at 12-years old, I should have been the target audience for this movie. It wasn’t until years later, when I got online, that I heard fans speaking highly of it and I decided to check it out at the ripe old age of 28-ish. But upon seeing it, I wished I’d been made aware of it back when I was 12, because I was instantly in love with the film. Squad is absolutely the kind of film I would have watched over and over again as a kid had I even known it existed.
As I said, the film has developed something of a cult following among Gen X and Millennials. Enough so, that, in 2018, a documentary was released chronicling the making of the film, as well as showcasing the fandom that made it an underground hit. In fact, my friend, Shawn Robare, arguably the internet’s biggest Monster Squad fan, was one of the people interviewed for the film! Shawn probably has one of the most extensive Squad collections of dead media, posters, and other ephemera in the world, so it was really cool that he was asked to be involved.
MY SQUAD STUFF
Because I got a late start on my Monster Squad fandom, I don’t really have much in the way of memorabilia. But I do have a few official – and unofficial – Squad items to show you today.
I’ll start off with one of the most recognizable deep cut (but iconic) images from the film, the “Stephen King Rules” shirt worn by Sean. My wife made me a couple of these shirts – one for me and another for my son – back in 2016 to wear around Halloween.
This is the kind of thing that a fan of Squad will instantly recognize! Needless to say, I wore this shirt many times in the St. Louis suburbs and never got a single comment about it. Sadly, the shirt was a cheap brand and shrunk too much in the wash, so it eventually found a new home at Goodwill.
Back in 2022, Terror Vision released The Monster Squad score as a special 3-record set, as well as on a special red cassette tape. I picked up one of 400 copies of the tape and was lucky enough to receive a Monster Squad trading card designed by Shawn Robare! Years before, Shawn had designed digital trading cards and Terror Vision asked him to create 10 cards for this special release of the score. Because I bought the tape, I only got one card, but had I purchased the records, I could have gotten all 10. Still, I was very happy to have the score and a piece of nostalgia created by a friend of mine in my collection. Oh, I forgot to mention, it also came with an 11×17 copy of the theatrical one-sheet.
My most recent Squad acquisition is a View Master reel set sold by Fright Rags, released just in the last few weeks. I’ve written before about a couple of vintage View Master reel sets in my collection, but these were the first modern reels I’ve ever really wanted. Of course these aren’t for the View Master, these are for the Fright Scope…
I didn’t drop the money for the Fright Scope – I only bought the reels – but it’s a really fun new collectible from a horror industry mainstay.
The packaging says that it’s been specially designed to be opened to enjoy the reels and then be resealed to keep them protected, but I’m just going to leave the staples intact for now. I’ve kept all the rest of my View Master reels in the package, I don’t think I’m going to change that now.
Sorry if those images look a little blurry. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or I just got a bad print, but the packaging almost looks like it’s two prints that are just a fraction of an inch offset from one another. But, either way, I love this design! It looks like something you’d find in the back of a 1970s Marvel monster comic book, right next to ads for X-ray specs and Sea Monkeys.
The production couldn’t get the rights to the actual Universal Studios monsters, so the amazing special effects team of Stan Winston Studios created their own, modern twists on the familiar monster faces.
Back in 2017, Target’s Halloween merchandise included some Universal Monster masks and costumes. We’ve all seen Frankenstein and Dracula masks, but the Creature from the Black Lagoon was a bit unusual, so I decided to pick it up and hang it on my wall. A few years later, Spirit Halloween put out some retro masks in a similar style, so I wound up buying the rest of the unofficial Monster Squad masks to complete the team. The designs aren’t the same as the Squad baddies, but it’s an homage and, seeing them all hanging up together, it’s sort of an “If You Know, You Know” situation. I’ll be honest, no one that’s seen them in-person has known. Monster Squad is a cult film through and through…
JOIN THE (GODDAMN) CLUB
If you haven’t seen The Monster Squad, it’s well worth checking out. There are a few lines that haven’t aged well (we were so homophobic in the 80s…), but other than that, it holds up pretty well for a kids’ movie from the 1980s. It earns it’s PG-13 rating with scares, mild cursing, and a few “adult situations”, but it’s nothing a teenager wouldn’t be aware of by that age anyway. If you have a kid that would be able to handle it, I can’t recommend it enough. And then check out the documentary, Wolfman’s Got Nards, and see how some famous fans, like Seth Green, creators Joe Lynch, Adam Goldberg, and Adam Green, as well as critics and everyday fanboys/girls alike have kept the film alive.
