Fred Dekker Rules.
The Monster Squad arrived on Home Video February 10th, 1988 – for $89.98 – after getting staked with an August 14th, 1987 theatrical release.
It’s hard to believe there was a time when The Monster Squad was just one in a flotsam of 80’s films with only a single domestic VHS release. A faint, sinking video store memory trapped under the collective weight of The Goonies and The Lost Boys. Maybe you’d heard of it. Maybe you hadn’t. If you blinked in ’87, you might’ve missed its TV spots and ads. Maybe you caught it on cable? Maybe? But if you were the kind of die-hard monster kid who liked to hang out in the Horror section well before you were allowed to rent any of those titles, this was the movie you’d been waiting for.
It had everything: ILM-caliber effects, suburban kids with BMXs, a honeycomb hideout, a ragtag creature-busting A-Team, and every classic Universal monster that could comfortably skirt copyright. It was funny, it was scary, the kids talked and acted like real 80s kids, and it taught an entire generation one of the most important scientific truths of the modern age: the Wolfman, in fact, has nards.
And yet, The Monster Squad wasn’t an instant classic. It didn’t get the high-gloss fanfare of an E.T. or a Gremlins. It came and went, a casualty of bad timing and box office indifference. But like any good boogeyman, it didn’t stay dead. Fred Decker and Shane Black’s monster mashup lurked in store-bought previously-viewed tape collections and cable-recorded airings. It whispered through late-night message board conversations. And over the years, something happened – it turned from a long lost relic into a cult phenomenon.
Fred Dekker should’ve been Spielberg for us kids who grew up reading Fangoria and building Aurora model kits. But Hollywood has a way of eating visionaries like that alive. By the time the nostalgia machine caught up with Monster Squad, the industry had already moved on. Still, the movie endured. Because some flicks aren’t about trends or ticket sales. Some flicks are there for the 12 years olds who like to stay up too late and realize that the best movies aren’t always the ones everybody talks about. They’re the ones you and your friends never forget.
Here’s to Fred and the gang, Also, a toast to the brave young man who proved the Nards theorem. His name… was Horace.