The Monster Squad The Universal Monsters Movie That Universal Didnt Make

The monster squad the best monster movie ever

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What do you get if you take the Goonies and
the Universal Monsters and mask them together. You get the
Monster Squad. One hundred years ago, legendary monster hunter Abraham
van Helsing failed to banish Dracula and his minions to limbo.
Fast forward to present day small town, America, where a
group of monster loving kids came across Van Helsing's diary

(00:23):
and learned that Dracula is back, searching for a powerful
amulet that could plunge the world into eternal darkness. The
Monster Squad quickly realized that the monsters from the favorite
movie is Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Gilman, and
Frankenstein's Monster are real and are threatening their town. This
movie was directed by Fred Decker and written by Shane Black,
who saw this movie as a tribute to the Universal

(00:45):
Monsters by having them return in the nineteen eighties to
take over the world. But Universal turned down the opportunity
to make this movie, so redesigns that to be made
to the characters to avoid legal issues. But there is
no mistaking that these guys are the Universal Monster, even
if legally they had not. First, we have Dracula played
by Duncan Rigo, who is in my opinion, one of

(01:06):
the best Draculas in the history of vampire movies and
is actually considered to be one of the best Draculas
ever by the fans, and in my opinion, he is
definitely underrated. I can't say this enough. He is a
great Dracula and his costume is amazing. It looks a
lot like Bela Lugoses and Christopher Lees combined, and it's
got this beautiful red color on the inside of the

(01:26):
cape which really pops on camera, and this count Dracula
as style. He also drives a jet black hearst which
looks a lot like Ecto one, but black. I like
to call it the Dracula Mobile. He kind of feels
like a pulp comic book version of Dracula, and I
love this interpretation. He's called calculated and actually pretty scurry
in certain parts, and I actually think a lot of

(01:47):
the cast members in this movie found him scurvy as well.
There's one particular scene where he picks up the youngest
member of the monster squad, Phoebe, and he shows her
his bloodshot eyes, and he opens his mouth and shows
her his fangs, and the screen that comes out of
that little girl was actually real. She screamed in real life,
he actually scarred her and the actor felt bad about
this afterwards. And he also has all the usual powers

(02:10):
in this movie, like changing into a bat. In fact,
one of my favorite scenes in this movie is where
he is shot whilst he is a bat, and then
we see him injured in this disturbing half man half
bat form, which looks so scurvy and creepy, and the
monster movie makeup on this is amazing, and it reminded
me of some of the costumes used in the nineteen
ninety two release of Dracula starring Gary Oldman, and also

(02:30):
reminded me a little bit of the transfermation scene in
American World with in London. And you may be interested
to know that Leamnison very nearly played the part of Dracula,
but as we know, it never happened. But even though
I think he would have been a pretty good Dracula,
I honestly think that the actor they'd picked was just
perfect for this role. He is such a good Dracula.
I can't say that enough. And then we have the

(02:52):
wolf Man, who was truly the torture soul in this movie.
He goes through some stuff believing me, such as being
blown up with dynamite, and he still comes back to life,
is resurrected, and then of course he gets kicked in
the nerds. This Wolfman looks quite terrifying. Granted it's not

(03:13):
the best werewolf mask of all time, but it's also
not the worst. Unlike the universal Wolfman, this Wolfman has
a protruding mouth and wolf ears on top of his
head and eyes that are spread slightly apart. And Stan
Winston was responsible for the designs of this movie, and
it said that when he was designing the Wolfman, he
was looking in a mirror. So the Wolfman kind of
as a look of Stan Winston in some ways. And

(03:36):
I love the transformation scenes in this movie. Sometimes they're
pretty simple, where you're just stirring at the guy's boot
or the hand. But there's also a scene in a
phone booth where he spits out some bil. There's a
few cuts and you see the makeup change between each cut,
and then the werewolf smashes out of the phone booth
and it is quite unnerving to watch. It's very very cool,
and the transformations look painful, and I think in any

(03:59):
way globill film. The transformation should always look painful. And
then we had the Mummy, who is the classic bandaged
up version. The actor was actually very finished slender, which
made his portrayal of the Mummy that extra bit convincing.
The Mummy is quite slow, but he is persistent and
he will get you eventually and likes to hang out
in kids' closets for some reason. And one of the
best scenes is where he literally comes undone. Frankenstein's Monster

(04:23):
was played as a friendly giant. He befriends Phoebe, the
youngest member of the Monster squad. His portrayal is very
much like his Universal counterpart, a little bit more chilled out, maybe,
and he has painted a more fleshy color rather than
the green color that Universal used on the posters for
their movies. And they also moved the bolts on his
neck to his head. And then we had the creature

(04:44):
from the Black Lagoon, who is called Gillman in this movie,
and I think he had one of the more impressive costumes.
It was gross, it was wet and truly looked like
a walking fish man and man, this guy was brutal.
In one scene, he straight up crushes a guy's head
between his hands. Pretty violent for a kid's movie, wouldn't
you say that is a monster lineup? But I want

(05:04):
to give a special shout out to all the Dracula's
brides who are very, very creepy and scurry in this movie.
I'm not sure why, but Dracula's brides in any vampire
movie always give me the creeps and I found them
very unnerving, and in this movie it's no exception. They
are really really well acted out. And then we have
the Goonies sorry the Monster Squad fus. We have Sean Crenshaw,

(05:26):
the leader of the group. He is brave, he is smart,
and he is obsessed with monster law. Then we have Patrick,
Shawn's best friend, who is loyal and supportive. And then
we have Horace, who is Chunk from the goon is
more or less the bully kid who is pushed around
by the bullies and called fat kid, and he's even
called fat kid by his friends for some strange reason.
And this guy probably are some of the best scenes

(05:47):
in the whole movie, including Wolfman has nerds, and of
course a scene where he cocks the shotgun at the
end of the movie and shows the bullies that he's
not going to be pushed around anymore. My name is.
And then we have Rudy the cool older kid, leather jacket, sunglasses,
a meaning with a crossbow, looks like he's straight out
of the nineteen fifties rather than nineteen eighties for some reason.

(06:10):
And then we have Eugene, who tragically has his tunkey
stolen from the Gilman in one scene, last Stone might
be bastard. And then of course we have the glue
of the group, Phoebe Chann's little sister, who of course
befriends Frankenstein and is actually responsible for winning the day

(06:33):
at the end of the movie. Now, I've got to
say that the look and the feel of this movie
is such a treat. Like I said, it definitely has
Gooney vibes but also Gremlin's vibes in some ways, I feel,
and the set pieces are amazing, especially at the start
of the movie when Van Helsing storms draculus Castle. It
really did capture that universal monster feel and possibly a
little hammer horror as well. It really did look like

(06:56):
Dracula's Castle from the nineteen thirty one movie starring Bello Lugosi.
Of course, different in some ways in full color. But
as beautiful as this scene was, it is also one
of the scenes I had a little problem with. Now,
in this scene, we see the bride of Dracula, and
we also see a few skeletons rise up from the
ground and fight Van Helsing and his men, but we
don't actually have a confrontation between ban Helsing and Dracula,

(07:18):
which I thought was very strange. Also, were the other
monsters in this scene. Shouldn't they be here as well?
That would explain why Dracula is looking for them in
the modern day, But they are no word to be
seen at the beginning of the movie, which I think
was a mistake. Now, apparently there is a version of
this movie which was shown on television with an extra
whole four minutes that padded out the plot a little more.

(07:39):
There's actually a cut scene where Dracula is seen staked
at the beginning of the movie. He's dead, he's defeated,
but the guy guarding Dracula's body is approached by a
bride of Dracula, and he reaches inside and grabs the
steak out of Dracula to finish off the bride, and
Dracula is resurrected. From the Dead. I think this should
have been left in the movie. It would have made

(08:00):
it feel a little bit more padded out. But saying
all that, despite my issues with this scene, it is
still a very very cool scene at the beginning. I
only wish that we got a little bit more of it.
The Monster Squad was kind of aimed at kids, but
it did have a few profanities and violence and gore,
which as a kid, I won't lie I loved. The
movie had an age certificate of PG thirteen in the

(08:21):
US at a fifteen in the UK, but it strangely
portrayed as a family movie. But most parents probably did
not want their children watching vampire brides munching down on
the guts of an apossum, or getting shot with steaks,
were wolves getting blown into gross, bloody chunks, or hear
the kids in the movie talking appropriately about their teacher
and friend's sister want to tell you about the homos

(08:43):
and the people with heads. She doesn't speak German. All
she does is hang around and the guy's touch your kids.
Not to mention that count Dracula calls Phoebe, the youngest
member of the Monster Squad, a bitchused to be the embulaty.
There's also a scene where we see Rudy the cool kid,

(09:03):
kill some vampire brides and take out Wolfman with a
silver bullet, and I feel like this may have been
a little bit too much for a kid's film, although
I did appreciate that he looked shook up afterwards, so
the movie showed us that he wasn't happy about having
to kill them, but he did anyway. And then of
course we have Horace who blasts a bloody chunk out
of Gilman's chest, killing him instantly, and the leader of

(09:26):
the monster squad, Sean, sticks Dracula himself. He drives a
wooden stake into his art and it is quite violent,
and the violence probably went against the movie that and
poor marketing. Now is a personal story about this movie.
I had actually forgotten how gory this movie was and violent,
and I played it for my kids when they were
much younger than what they are now, and I had

(09:47):
to turn it off halfway through. I think it was
where Wolfman exploded into bloody chunks, where my little girl
decided it was time to check out. It was just
too much for her. It was violent, but I feel
it was a comic violence and go leaving it in
the strange middle ground have being too violent for kids
and maybe not violent enough for adults. Even though as
a kid I loved it and as an adult, I

(10:09):
still love it. And I'm not the only one. There
are so many Monster Squad fans out there who absolutely
adore this movie. The Monster Squad was considered a flop
on release, but it did rise from the grave, so
to speak, when it was released on home video and television.
The Monster Squad as a loyal fan following, and in
my opinion and many others, is one of the best
monster movies Universal never released.