Monday, June 2, 2008

Wolfman's gots nards...

The 1980's/early 1990's provided us with a plethora of movies to worship well into our adulthood - Rock and roll High School Forever, Don't Tell mom the Babysitters dead (I totally had fantasies about this premise playing out in my life...but for A- My parents never went out of town and for B- Our babysitters were all 18. Until I was 12, and then I was the babysitter. For free. But I digress) The Goonies, Ect. But none - NONE compared with the cinematic genius that was: The Monster Squad.
Vampires. Werewolves. Virgins. A scary German guy. I LOVED this movie. I was pretty sure I could make a silver bullet after seeing this movie. A brief overview:

You have your group of kids have this secret club called, duh, The Monster Squad. You have your neighborhood creeper, Scary German Guy (he had a name, but we'll just call him SGG).



You have your "hot" older brother character, Rudy :



...In retrospect, not so hot after all...

Your Fat kid, Horace:


(Who, incidentally died of pneumonia in 1997. Sad.)
Your adorable, sweet little sister, Phoebe, and a couple of other kids that apparently aren't important enough for me to remember. And then you have your monsters:

Count Dracula (who I always thought was kind of hot, but never wanted to admit it...):



Frankenstein (BOGUS...bogus...)



The Wolfman ...




Some weird fishy guy, and a few others.

THE PLOT (nutshell version):
The kids find the Diary of legendary vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing - which, alas, is in German. Which NO ONE speaks, except of course, SGG. So they go over to his house (he ends up being a nice old guy, not a crazy German serial killer) and he feeds them pie and translates the diary. Then there's this weird moment where you realize He's a holocaust survivor. Or, if you're 12 like I was when I first saw this movie, you have no idea why they show the number tattooed on his forearm. I thought all of Germany tattooed their old people for about 5 good years.

So, there's this amulet that is supposed to be "concentrated good"...so they use the diary to find it...and "One day out of every century, as the forces of good and evil reach a balance, the otherwise-indestructible amulet becomes vulnerable to destruction" (yay wikipedia). That "one day" just happens to be the next day...so you know what that means. A kick ass 80's montage! They make some silver bullets out of mom's silver wear, find a "virgin" (an older sister of one of the kids)...and somehow we figure out that the Fishy guy monster likes Twinkies.

All this time Dracula and his minions are organizing to take over the world for the dark side or whatever, and yada yada, they can't get to the amulet because it's in a room littered with Crucifixes and other anti monster paraphernalia. They wait until the kids get a hold of it, and then they take it...er...something (too much vodka consumed in my lifetime to recall this part of the movie...).

So, the kids and the Virgin Big Sister rally to read this page out of the diary that will reopen a portal back to hell or whatever, and it doesn't work. That's when Big Sis admits to being a slutbag and yells "Well, Steve...but he doesn't count!!" So, they swap her out for Phoebe, the little sister, and SGG helps her read the diary page, and all of the monsters go back to hell for the next 100 years. Woot.

FUN LITTLE TIDBIT:
Duncan Regehr, the guy that played Dracula - is a former figure skater/karate champ...now he's an artist. A really bad one. Like...




Please ask me what this painting is called. Please. Ok, since you asked...The Magic Cock. FOR REAL.
Good times. Thank you, Monster Squad.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

being infatuated with my own genius, i feel compelled to comment on yours. this is by no means a classic. monster squad was/is WEAK. it is slow and linear and highly predictable. It was merely a synthesis of the horror genre and did nothing to expand the ranks of horror innovation. [This time 3 for the price of one is a rip-off][And the fish guy?!? Not even the same league as Dracula!] Why not the Lost Boys for a classic of 80's quasi-horror? or Gremlins for that matter? In short, you two must have grown up in Albuquerque where a TV is the exception rather than the norm, to nostalgically reflect upon this film. I suggest you go back in time and watch yourselves watching this movie in your footsie pj's Lobos sweatshirts, and come to terms with the cultural poverty you grew up in. May got have mercy on your souls.

Dilly Dally said...

May got have mercy on your soul? What the hell does that even mean? You come in here, dump all over a childhood gem, and then don't even have the decency to proofread? Weak, D-Dawg.

Unknown said...

i thoroughly dump on your childhood gem and all you can come up with is a spelling error? weak, t-loke. weak. you madam, have been pwned.