Some movies sneak up on you. Others charge in with a cape, a torch, and a crossbow. The Monster Squad, Fred Dekker’s gloriously goofy 1987 cult classic, does the latter. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t even knock. It just storms into your childhood memories, kicks The Goonies off the treehouse ladder, high-fives Dracula, and asks if you’ve got any spare garlic. To say The Monster Squad was formative for me is like saying Frankenstein’s monster was mildly misunderstood; it doesn’t capture the scope of it. I didn’t just watch this movie as a kid. I absorbed it. I metabolized it. I quoted it until friends and family grew concerned. I wanted to live in it, or at the very least, loiter near its set with a fake amulet and a convincing fog machine.
The premise? Pure 1980s alchemy. Imagine The Little Rascals grew up reading Stephen King and watching late-night horror flicks with their cool uncle who probably owned a fog machine. These kids; Sean, Patrick, Rudy, Horace (RIP, legend), and Phoebe the Feisty; aren’t just playing pretend. They’re forced to go up against the Mount Rushmore of Universal Monsters: Dracula, The Wolf-Man, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, and a delightfully slimy Gill-Man, all back in suburbia for one last supernatural hurrah.
There’s an ancient amulet involved, a diary in German, a scary old man with a heart of gold, and a virgin who, spoiler alert, might not technically qualify. It’s chaotic, occasionally scary, and utterly endearing.
As a kid, this movie was my secret clubhouse. Not literally; I didn’t have a treehouse with horror movie posters, but I had a VHS tape so worn out it looked like it had been dragged through Dracula’s lair and back. I watched it so often, I knew the dialogue better than my Hebrew School prayers. (“I’m in the goddamn club, aren’t I?” deserves its own Oscar, by the way.) And though I lacked an official club, my father and I shared a bond through this movie. He was the first adult I knew who treated my obsession with monsters not as something to outgrow, but as something worth geeking out over. The first time we watched it together, we both looked at each other and said, “Why don’t we have a squad?”
That moment is seared in my memory; partly because it was so heartfelt, and partly because it was followed by a deep debate on whether or not Wolf-Man really has nards. (He does. Science has confirmed it.)
Watching it now, well into my 40s, I’m astonished by how well it holds up. The costumes and makeup; crafted by none other than Stan Winston; are practical and effective. No CGI nonsense. Just latex, shadows, smoke, and a whole lot of commitment. The scene where the Wolf-Man explodes into body parts, and those parts slowly squirm their way back together? Still a masterclass in suspense, puppetry, and childhood trauma.
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But what truly gives The Monster Squad its staying power isn’t the creatures. It’s the kids. They’re funny, flawed, and real in a way that doesn’t feel manufactured. These weren’t Disney Channel models with mousse in their hair and perfect teeth. These were kids who probably smelled a little weird and said inappropriate things. They were my people.
Fred Dekker, alongside co-writer Shane Black (yes, that Shane Black of Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang fame), distilled the magic of growing up in a world where the line between reality and fantasy was so thin, you could punch through it with a stake. It’s a coming-of-age movie wrapped in wolf fur and mummy bandages. Beneath the rubber masks and silly one-liners, there’s a very real, very tender story about friendship, belief, and the power of a well-placed silver bullet.
So why does The Monster Squad still matter? Because it reminds us of a time when being a kid meant you could save the world, or at least your neighborhood, if you had enough comic books, some wood stakes, and a German neighbor with a dark past and access to a virgin.
I don’t play many sports now. (I didn’t then, either, unless you count “sprinting to the TV to catch the start of Tales from the Crypt.”) But I still collect horror memorabilia. I still talk about monsters. And I still believe that, had I lived in that sleepy 1980s suburb, I would’ve been there in that treehouse, swearing allegiance with a Crayola-signed contract and watching the skies for vampire bats.
The Monster Squad didn’t just give me a movie. It gave me a blueprint. For the friendships I wanted. For the stories I told. For the kind of grown-up I hoped I’d become; the kind who never really stopped being a kid, who still carries garlic in case of emergency, and who proudly, unironically proclaims: “Wolfman’s got nards.” And so do I.
