Movies - The Monster Squad

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	Movies - The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad is a comedy/horror film written and directed by Fred Dekker that was released by Tri-Star Pictures on August 14, 1987. The film features the reunion of a number of classic monsters, led by Dracula (Duncan Regehr) and including Frankenstein's monster (Tom Noonan), The Wolf Man (Carl Thibault), The Mummy (Michael Reid MacKay), and The Gill Man (Tom Woodruff Jr).

The Monster Squad is a group of young teenagers who idolize classic monster movies. After the club leader is given the diary of the legendary vampire killer Abraham Van Helsing, he and his friends get the local (who is a Jewish Holocaust survivor) to translate it from German to English.

The diary describes, in great detail, an amulet that is composed of concentrated good. One day out of every century, as the forces of good and evil reach a balance, the otherwise-indestructable amulet becomes vulnerable, and can be destroyed. The next day of balance falls within a couple days, at the stroke of midnight.

If the kids can get ahold of the amulet (which is inconveniently buried in a stone room under a house that the monsters occupy) before the day arrives (the aforementioned room is littered with holy symbols such as crucifixes, thus preventing the monsters from simply taking it), then they can use it in conjunction with an incantation written in Van Helsing's diary to punch a hole in the universe and cast the monsters into Limbo. But, if the monsters can obtain and destroy the amulet, then the world will be ruled by the forces of evil.

With the assistance of the friendly Frankenstein Monster (who defects from the monsters) and the Scary German Guy, the kids prepare to rid the Earth of the monsters, or die trying.

The monsters' makeup and design differs from the original films that The Monster Squad draws from, as Universal Studios still owned the trademarks to those designs and would not allow the filmmakers their use. In all comparison, however, the designs which appeared in the film are produced utilizing what was then modern day technology to bring them to life, and so have a somewhat more striking visual appearance, particularly in the cases of the Frankenstein Monster and the werewolf costumes. Dracula's basic appearance in Monster Squad isn't entirely dissimilar from his universal studios incarnation, though there are enough differences that Universal was not able to sue over trademark infringement.

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The Monster Squad was also the name of a television series that aired on NBC from 1976-1977. The series starred Fred Grandy (who also starred in The Love Boat) as Walt, a criminology student working as a night watchman in a wax museum. To pass the time, Walt built a prototype "Crime Computer" in a mummy case near an exhibit of legendary monsters. When Walt plugged in his Crime Computer, "oscillating vibrations" brought to life the wax statues of Dracula, the Werewolf (who referred to himself in one episode as "Bruce W. Wolf," the "W" standing for "Were"), and Frankenstein (named "Frank N. Stien" in the opening credits). The monsters, wanting to make up for the misdeeds of their pasts, became crimefighters who used their unique abilities to challenge and defeat various supervillains. In most episodes, Walt would send the monsters out to investigate crimes and fight the villains while monitoring the activities from the wax museum via the Crime Computer; presumably this was because his job required him to be at the museum at all times.

The show was comparable to the 1960s Batman
TV show in that the villains were often exaggerated camp villains much like the ones in Batman, in keeping with the "superhero" tone of the series. Also, the Squad had their own customized van, and each monster had a "utility belt" with a communicator device used to keep in touch with Walt, who apparently created them for the monsters to use.

An later, unrelated animated television series by Hanna-Barbera Productions, Drak Pack, had a similar premise.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Monster Squad ]

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Movies - The Monster Squad

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