11/3/2023 0 Comments Monster squad soundtrack reviewIs that midnight Pacific time? Why does Dracula drive a hearse with a silver-skull hood ornament? How did he get it and when did he learn to drive? It begs the response - does it matter? Dracula drives an awesome car! The amulet can be only destroyed every hundred years at midnight. And his counterpart, Duncan Regehr as Dracula, emotes a hint of Hannibal Lecter nearly three years before Hopkins would so classically define the term "sociopath." Certainly, there are things about the film that any critic worth their salt in cinema could stab a stake through, but here those elements appear almost purposeful. Especially effective is Tom Noonan in full-Frankenstein form, crafting a likeable - in fact, loveable - character out of a terrifying legend. ![]() Each of the performances - from the amiable children to the evil Dracula to the sympathetic Frankenstein - combine just the right amount of realism and homage - of camp and class - so that we, as viewers both young and old - are still able to relate to our heroes and villains. The final element holding the film together remains its cast. Fortunately, the special effects in Monster Squad stand time's often harsh, often unforgiving test and remind us where some of our most revered FX-gurus cut their teeth. It's the reason why people still know and understand the name "Harryhausen." It might not be modern, but it's our root-system, and those of us old enough to have been raised on the fold between practical and digital are lucky enough to have been instilled with a healthy respect for both. It's refreshing to travel back to a time - just on the cusp of the digital era - and see hand-crafted model work and physical effects at their finest - The Wolfman's lupine design the Stan Winston Gillman suit the ordinary flotsam and jetsam sucked into a swirling portal nearly as convincing today as something designed by a computer. ( Personally, for my money, I'd like to see the old-school creatures kick the new-school creature's ass.) With Monster Squad, it's a pleasure and a joy to relive the moments that captured us as children, even if they're generally less frightening or if the effects aren't as grandiose as those churned out daily by today's studio pictures. Or how The Mummy - bound in dusty, centuries-old rags - would fare against his magical, sandstorm-brewing counterpart of 1999. Or how effects-veteran Stan Winston's version of The Wolfman might tangle with the modern-day, eight-foot-tall, completely-CG Wolfman so terribly executed in recent films like Van Helsing. One wonders how the old-school Dracula - with his slicked-back hair and free-flowing red-black cape - might react to the Euro-trash, post-Anne Rice nosferatu of today. It's fascinating, now, watching this film in a time when the classic monster has been virtually replaced by either supernatural, slasher icons or ridiculously parodied versions of themselves. ![]() Written by Fred Dekker and a young Shane Black ( Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), the film paints a nostalgic portrait of the fears we all shared as children - the common knowledge that when our parents left the room, the monsters under our beds - or locked inside our closest - started to shift and scratch that our only friend in the midnight hour was the nightlight in the corner of the room. ![]() The 100-year clock ticks down in 1987 and finds our pre-pubescent heroes - a misfit band of junior-high monster geeks - battling the real-life versions of the creatures that paper the walls of their clubhouse - Wolfman, The Mummy, Gillman (or, the Creature from the Black Lagoon), Frankenstein's monster and, finally, Dracula himself. Every hundred years the forces of evil are capable of destroying a powerful amulet and shifting the cosmic balance in their favor. The story is as simple and archetypical as the plots of the movies to which it pays homage. The original Buffy, this skillful combination of whimsy and legitimate suspense revives the old library of Universal monsters and pits them against an everyday band of troubled pre-teens, who are - or, rather, were - in every way a reflection of our childhood ourselves. Looking back on it today, The Monster Squad - for all its purposeful plot holes and subtle, stylistic nods to the campiness of its subjects - still holds up delightfully well more than two decades later.
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