Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Answer Is...(4)

Congratulations to YeamieWaffles and Pat Hatt for winning yesterday's Take a Guess Challenge! I've never had two winners before, but you two both know your stuff! Congrats again.

The answer to yesterday's post is:
Fred Dekker's 1987 cult comedy/horror classic, The Monster Squad.


So what is The Monster Squad? Well, imagine The Goonies on steroids. Instead of dealing with crooks and pirates, The Monster Squad kids battle the unholy forces of evil! They're not a bunch of sniveling pussies either. No, the sassy middle school punks from Monster Squad, use foul language, raunchy humor, weapons, explosives and like to look at naked chicks with binoculars, voyeur style. And while Sloth did look kind of gnarly in The Goonies, he's got NOTHING on the awesome creatures in Monster Squad. The film features all the original Universal Studios monsters from the 1930's, re-imagined by Stan Winston and updated for the Reagan era. I first saw this film in either or 90' or 91'. The point is, I was extremely young. My aunt recorded it off HBO one night using fancy VCR technology. I cherished that tape for the next two decades.

swag
So the film follows a group of pre-teens who like to hang in their tree house and talk about monster films/comics and other geeky sci-fi shit. Seems innocent enough, until Mother Fucking Count Dracula comes to town. Dracula starts rounding up a posse, consisting of some jailbait lolita vamps, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster and the coolest looking Creature from the Black Lagoon (aka the Gill-Man) ever. Strange things start happening, people start dying, 2,000 year old mummies vanishing from museums. You know, weird shit. With all the grownups head's firmly up their own asses, it's up to the members of the Monster Squad to save the day!

Sounds cheesy I know (and it partially is), but this flick is way more mature than it should be. First, the monsters are pretty hardcore. Dracula and the Wolf Man tear through more cops than I can count. Every time you see a dude in a Sheriff hat he's only moments away from getting his ass kicked. That, and they're also trying to kill a bunch of children. Like legitimately kill the fuckers. Dracula evens TNT's their tree house! Second, the kids get away with saying and doing some stuff that simply would not fly in a modern PG-13 movie. Case in point:

Ok, that wasn't so bad. Just a cutesy five year old hanging with a giant zombie, using a little profanity.
The rest of the squad is bit more frank. They curse, vandalize & blackmail their little hearts out and it's oh so amusing. This might sound crazy, but I think the Monster Squad gang was an indirect influence on South Park. Watch this movie a few times and I think you'll agree with me.

my personal hero: RUDY
Like most 80's popcorn flicks, Monster Squad is rife with ingenious one liners. That clip above where little Phoebe calls her brother's gang chickenshit. There's Rudy, the ultimate badass this side of The Man With No Name, valiantly heading into battle saying:
                                             "I'm in the goddamn club aren't I?"
And how could we forgot the moment where Fat Kid kills the Gill-Man and proudly clarifies what his real name is:


So there you have it. The Monster Squad is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. I watched that VHS tape my aunt gave me for 15+ years until I found a bootleg rip of the film on DVD in the mid 2000's. Then, in 2007, the film was finally, officially released on DVD in a special two-disc 20th anniversary edition. I'm still reeling with excitement in case you can't tell!

Here's the clip from The Monster Squad that features the horribly awesome Michael Sembello song from the previous Take a Guess challenge. This is montage of the squad preparing for their coming battle against the monsters is perhaps my favorite 80's montage of all, 2nd only to Rocky IV's training in the snow sequence.


This year, spend your Halloween with The Monster Squad, and kick anyone dressed as a werewolf in the balls =)

22 comments:

  1. If it wasnt for halloween, very funny. I remember this movie I think atleast few scenes.
    I am going to watch this movie again.
    Thanks for dusting my memories.

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  2. It's good to see I'm not the only one who's seen this bad boy before, I love this film so much. Like the commenter above me I'm also going to need to watch this over Halloween for the first time in ages, and at least for now I'm going to head over to your other post to give the song you posted another listen, it's a shame it was never released officially, I'd love to download it for nostalgia purposes!

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  3. I haven't seen this movie, which would explain why I didn't get it, but it looks kinda fun. Might check it out.

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  4. Yeah it was a great flick, just fun to be had my all and you have to get up pretty early to fool me at movies..haha

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  5. Oh my days i had forgotten all about The Monster Squad... hahaha and perfectly timed with Halloween, I'm finding this on the internet ASAP.

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  6. huh, i might have to check this movie out.

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  7. It's surprising to me how well this looks right now. I would watch the hell out of this movie right now, and I won't be nostalgiaing.

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  8. Dammit I knew I knew the music, "Wolfman has nards".

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  9. waahhh... i wanna win prizes too. and these movies, cant quite recall any of em

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  10. I have this on tape too! I watched it once (buying it at a thrift store) and haven't watched it since! But you've inspired me so I'll be watching it on hallowe'en when me and my girlfriend hang out in our garage with the rest of our house dark so no trick or treaters show up!
    And is it just me or did the actor playing Frankenstiens monster look like the actor who played the featured zombie in the Day of the Dead movie from 1985?

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  11. Oh The Monster Squad lol, had totally forgot about this film, haven't seen it in ages.

    Congrats to both of you btw.

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  12. Wolfan's got Nads! Congrats guys!

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  13. You connection you draw to South Park is interesting.

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  14. I had forgotten about this! :P

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  15. I never watched that.

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  16. :) Such an awesome movie. I actually hadn't seen it in years, but loved it growing up.. thought "Hey I'll buy it and let the kids watch it"... Yeah, I had forgotten how unsuitable it really was, so they have yet to see it, but one day... As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to watch it this weekend for sure. :) Have a neat Halloween weekend MR. Oh,and Rudy was always my favorite too. :)

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  17. I've seen parts of this movie but never all the way through. I should get around to that. I think "Monster House" is a film of a similar vein albeit animated.

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  18. This movie is on my "to watch" list for quite some time now. Ever since I've heard about it on Cinemassacre.com.
    Thanks for giving me more reasons why I shouldn't miss it. :)

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