The Monster Squad

"Wolfman's got nards!"
—Fat Kid Horace

The Monster Squad is a 1987 film directed by Fred Dekker and written by Shane Black. The film follows the exploits of a group of genre-savvy kids who seek to stop Dracula -- and a host of other infamous monsters -- from finding a mystical amulet and bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.

The film was an out-of-print classic for a long time, but was given a new spiffy DVD release in time for its twentieth anniversary (with a Blu-Ray release two years later). The makeup and special effects work on this film is a lesser-known effort of the late Stan Winston (who is better known for the frighteningly realistic puppets from classics as the Terminator and Jurassic Park films).

Not to be confused with the Saturday morning TV show.

Tropes used in The Monster Squad include:
  • Action Prologue
  • Adult Fear: "I will have your son."
  • Affably Evil: Dracula can come across this way when talking to his fellow monsters, particularly Frank and the Wolfman. But when he's dealing with people...
  • All Boys Are Perverts: When not discussing monsters, most of the time spent in the treehouse is spent trying (in vain) to snap a picture of the Girl Next Door undressing.
    • Only Rudy (and by accident, Franky) takes the pictures, since the boys aren't old enough to have those kind of feelings yet (they don't really understand what a virgin is), and one of them is said girl's brother!
  • All Germans Are Nazis: Teased with the Scary German Guy, but he turns out to be a concentration camp survivor. So apparently Germans are Nazis except the Jewish ones.
  • Artifact of Death: The Amulet may be concentrated good but it's just as dangerous to innocents as to monsters, as the opening scene shows us.
  • Ask a Stupid Question

Patrick: He's not a virgin, stupid!
Patrick's sister: Did you ask him!?

Sean: You guys... Dracula might be here too.
Patrick: Aww, man! Fat kid farted!
Fat Kid: Did not!
(the entire club started arguing)
Sean: Goddamn it, will you SHUT UP?! Didn't you hear a word I said?

Dracula: Give me the amulet, you bitch!

  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Scary German Guy.
  • Fan Service: The girl in the window (and how!)
  • Five-Man Band
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: After getting shot mid-flight, Dracula finally decides to stop fooling around and murders a bunch of cops without even breaking stride.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Scary German Guy mentions how he knows about real monsters. Then as he closes the door, you can see a concentration camp tattoo on his forearm, which many kids would not recognize, but parents would.
  • Gentle Giant: Frankenstein.
  • Gilligan Cut: "Two-thousand year old dead guys do not get up and walk away by themselves!" Cut to the two-thousand year old dead guy, walking away by himself.
  • Groin Attack: The kids have an argumet about whether the Wolfman has "nards." A groin attack reveals the truth of the hypothesis.
  • Haunted Castle: An actual castle, then a gothic mansion, complete with Trap Door.
  • Heel Face Turn: Frankenstein, again.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • "Hey You!" Haymaker: "Hey, asshole!" *Wolfman turns around* "You looked!" *WHACK!*
  • Homage: The scene with Frankenstein and Phoebe by the pond is a Shout-Out to the original Frankenstein movie, when a little girl attempts to play with the monster by a lake. In this film, it ends much better for the little girl.
  • Improvised Weapon: Fat Kid uses a slice of pizza (heavy in garlic) to scar Dracula.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: For the longest time, bootlegs were the only way to see the film, as many networks had long stopped showing the film and it was out of print on VHS. In 2006, the film was shown in several independent theaters across the US, which led to a campaign for a proper DVD release of the film. In 2007, a two-disc DVD was finally released in honor of the film's 20th anniversary; it features a brand new commentary by the film's director and several of the cast members, a five-part documentary on the film's creation and its eventual cult following, and - of course - a brand new remastered version of the film. And, to put icing on the cake, it only took two years after that for the Blu-Ray, which shows the film in extremely good HD and retains all the extras from the DVD, most of them in HD.
  • Kids Are Cruel: If one were to take a drink whenever the kids made an anti-gay or anti-fat joke, you'd be very soused by the credits.
  • Kill the Cutie: The peasant girl in the opening scene.
  • Lampshade Hanging: "How does that dog get up here anyway?"
  • Magic Pants: Wolfman has these so you don't see his "wolf dork"; they can also reassemble themselves.
  • Match Cut: Rudy's first spit take, then a rock thrown in the pond.
  • Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Scary German Guy.
  • Monster Mash
  • Monstrous Transformation: Occurs twice with the Wolfman. The second wolf-out happens inside a phone booth.
  • Mood Whiplash: A major problem with the film is that it doesn't really know if it wants to be a tongue-in-cheek Monster Mash or a family friendly adventure film with little horror-flavor thrown in. This leads into awkward moments where the level of gore/body count doesn't really match with the general mood of the scene and funny moments are followed by serious ones with little to none time catch breath in between.
  • Nothing Can Stop Us Now
  • Odd Friendship: Rudy's first line in the movie has him state that Horace is his friend. Makes one wonder how a goofy, nerdy fat kid and the school's coolest badass became friends in the first place.
    • Given the follow-up scene where Horace introduces Rudy to his friends it's likely that they weren't friends until that point, and that Rudy got involved simply because he just hates bullies and claiming friendship with Horace would ensure that the bullies would leave Horace alone after that point.
  • Offhand Backhand: A cop attempts to stop Dracula during the climax. Dracula just punches him in the face and keeps walking.
  • Opening Scroll:

One hundred years before this story begins, it was a time of darkness in Transylvania, a time when Dr. Abraham Van Helsing and a small band of freedom fighters conspired to rid the world of vampires and monsters and to save mankind from the forces of eternal evil.
They blew it.

E.J.: Hey Fat Kid! Good job!
Horace: "My name..." (pumps shotgun) "...is Horace!"

"And yes, Wolfman still has nards."
—Fred Dekker, from the DVD insert
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