As a 80s child living in a house with both his mother and his grandparents, I grew up appreciating the Universal Studios horror creatures of the 30s and 40s. The Frankenstein Monster was always my favorite. I think because somehow I always understood that he didn't mean to drown little Maria in the lake or frighten his new bride. I understood that since he looked like a monster and was treated like a monster, he acted like one, even as nice as he tried to be. I'm what you call a Universal Monsters purist so when I see new Dracula, Frankenstein or Wolf Man movies advertised that don't treat the classics with respect, I don't go.

When I first saw the previews for this movie, I was about six years old and I begged my mother to take me. She did. You'd think even at that age, I would have been weary of the monsters in a plot which was basically Ghostbusters meets the Goonies, but oddly, it works pretty well. So well, in fact, that I had a bootleg VHS of the film from 1988-1996 that I think I wore out by 1993. I loved the fact that finally there was a modern-day Hollywood film which paid tribute to the Universal Studios classics and treated them with respect.

The basic idea is that Dracula arranges for himself and his gang of monster cronies, The Wolf Man, the Gill Man (Creature From The Black Lagoon), the Mummy and Frankenstein's Monster, to take up shop in California (I assume, the exact location is never stated) in a spooky mansion where an amulet which they have to destroy by the stroke of midnight to dominate the world resides, and a group of kids who love old monster films and are therefore experts on how to defeat them, set out to stop them by getting a virgin to read a magic spell from Abraham Van Helsing's diary to open a hole in limbo and suck the monsters through it.

The kids are basically, as one sarcastic reviewer put it, cousins of the Goonies, with the Mikey-esque leader Sean Crenshaw (Andre Gower, an impressive lead) leading the group which includes his best friend Patrick (Robby Kiger), the Chunk clone Horace, or as everybody calls him, Fat Kid, the teenage Fonzie Rudy, who, with his chain-smoking, sunglasses and leather jacket, looks suspiciously out of place with the other kids, and Sean's little sister Phoebe, who is more important than you'd suspect.

On the long overdue and excellent new DVD set, director/co-writer Fred Dekker reveals that he'd originally pitched Monster Squad to Universal Studios and they passed on the project (and yet they greenlit the ultimately inferior Van Helsing eighteen years later?), so when he found a distributor (Tri-Star), he and makeup man Stan Winston had to devise a way to create these creatures in a way which made them still be the creatures you loved in the old films but different enough to keep Dekker and crew out of court. And he did that perfectly. The monsters don't look exactly like they used to, but they all look close enough. But it's the performances of the two actors playing the main monsters that really make the creatures work. Especially since they didn't have the money to go after big stars (although Dekker also commented that an unknown Liam Neeson auditioned to play Dracula and was almost cast)

First off, Count Dracula is, naturally, the leader of the monsters and the main villain of the piece. He has to resemble Bela Lugosi, but he has to be very sinister, dark and menacing. Duncan Regehr is all of that. He looks like Lugosi, but he's also kind of got Christopher Lee and Frank Langella in his performance as well. But since I know the character so well, Dracula never scared me... Until Duncan Regehr came along. The moment you watch him pick up poor five year old Phoebe Crenshaw and hiss, "Give me the amulet, you b---h!" You will be freaked out, I guarantee it. Andre Gower and Fred Dekker said on the DVD Regehr has to be one of the top five Draculas and I totally agree.

Furthermore, I can remember that one of the actors in Van Helsing saying Shuler Hensley's Frankenstein Monster in that film breaks your heart. While I enjoyed Van Helsing since it was nice to see the creatures enter the new century under the company which made them, I cannot agree with this statement. Shuler Hensley, I thought, did OK, but he had nothing on Tom Noonan in this film.

As I said before, I always understood Frankenstein's Monster never actually hurt anyone intentionally unless they were really cruel to him. Most children understood that. Which is why in this film, Frankie meets young Phoebe for the first time and is so taken with her, he immediately defects from the monsters and befriends the kids, just as well because Dracula was naturally only using him. This is why Phoebe is more important than you realize, because her relationship with the Monster is the heart of the film. The DVD said Noonan never broke character in front of the children, and perhaps this is why his performance is so effective and why his Monster breaks your heart in a way Shuler Hensley could never even hope to.

I read reviews of this film which criticized Noonan's Monster for being too harmless. People, the heroes are children, Frankenstein's Monster doesn't frighten children, he had to be harmless.

The Wolf Man was good as well, always trying in human form to warn people about Dracula, but his performance was like a sideline thing. Same with the Mummy and the Gill Man (the latter I was never a big fan of anyway).

All the same whenever I cry out for Hollywood to make old-fashioned monster movies, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm hoping for. There were a bunch of plot holes for which a back story might have helped, but I always assumed they were deliberate by the filmmakers to mock the various plot holes of the nonsensical horror schlock of the 80s, in which case I say poke as many holes in the plot as you want.

If you like adventure, horror (REAL horror) and comedy, this movie is for you.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older