Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 8: The Monster Squad

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 8: The Monster Squad

After the monster hits of The Goonies in 1985 and Stand By Me in 1986, 1987 needed it's own kind of monster hit starring a gang of kids. The answer is somehow simultaneously satirical, silly, sickening, stupid, and simply sublime.

I never even heard about this movie until a few years ago, and part of me feels like I really missed out by not seeing this when I was ten years old, but that's largely because this is a film that could really only exist in the 80's. They essentially took what made The Goonies and Stand By Me popular, boiled them down to their most basic elements, and then blew up those elements as big as they could. The result is a group of stock kid characters (the leader that they always refer to as "the leader", his best friend with no discerning personality, a fat kid who's name is literally "Fat Kid" until practically his last line in the movie, an annoying little sister, and a cool kid who smokes cigarettes and shoots guns), near-constant swearing, horrifically inattentive parents, shockingly realistic violence, and some unfortunately pervy behavior (a girl who constantly changes in front of her window is blackmailed with nude photos of herself that Frankenstein's monster accidentally took, it's a little uncomfortable).

While this does have all of the insanity that an 80's kids movie with all of the classic Universal monsters could possibly contain, it's got plenty of problems. For one, none of the kids can act. The Goonies and Stand By Me had exceptionally talented kid actors who almost all sustained careers well into their adulthoods. This is not the case with Monster Squad, with the only actor I even recognized being Tom Noonan (Frankenstein's monster). None of these kids had star quality, comedic chops, or any kind of acting chops. It doesn't help that the dialogue is pretty terrible, with the jokes typically only being funny due to the irony of hearing them in 2018, and anything resembling drama being far too over the top to take seriously. What's truly bizarre about the writing is that sometimes it's so lazy it feels like brilliant satire (calling the fat kid "Fat Kid" and giving the leader a shirt that says "Stephen King Rules" feels like a huge wink to anyone familiar with the popular tropes of that time), but I'm still going to call it lazy.

What does hold up genuinely is the production value, which from the moment the movie starts is staggeringly impressive, especially considering what I thought it would look like. The sets are great, the costumes are solid, and the practical effects are impressive even to this day (because the brilliant Stan Winston was behind them). The movie becomes all the more special because of all of the effort that was clearly put into it from a practical and visual standpoint.

There's a solid chance you'll hate Monster Squad. It's cheesy, messy, and at multiple points genuinely uncomfortable. But there's also a solid chance you'll love it, because of the production value and maybe even because of the reasons I listed that you'd hate it. If you go into it knowing it's completely insane, there's a solid chance you'll have the time of your life. I suggest taking that chance.