The Monster Squad
All actors and roles (10)
All team (56)
Short description
The Monster Squad is a 1987 American action comedy fantasy film about a group of young friends who run a club devoted to monsters. Their hobby becomes a matter of survival when Count Dracula arrives in their town, bringing Frankenstein's monster, a werewolf, a mummy and the gill-man with him. The creatures are hunting for a powerful amulet that would let them dominate the world, and the children, renaming themselves the Monster Squad, are the only ones prepared to fight back, using what they have learned from monster movies along with advice from an eccentric older acquaintance.
Fred Dekker directed the film, his second feature after Night of the Creeps in 1986 and before RoboCop 3 in 1993. He wrote the screenplay with Shane Black, and Jonathan A. Zimbert produced. The cast includes André Gower as Sean, Robby Kiger as Patrick, Stephen Macht as Del, Duncan Regehr as Count Dracula, Tom Noonan as Frankenstein and Brent Chalem as Horace, among 22 credited cast members and 56 credited crew.
Released in August 1987, the film runs 82 minutes and was made for about 12 million dollars, earning roughly 4 million worldwide. It drew moderate audience ratings of 6.9 on IMDb from around 39,000 votes and 6.7 on TMDB from about 665 votes, while a critics' rating of 6.1 from 29 reviews places it somewhat below the viewer scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director Fred Dekker, the first screenplay written by Shane Black was far too monumental. At the beginning of the film, during the storming of Count Dracula's castle, Van Helsing was supposed to appear accompanied by numerous zeppelins and hundreds of riders. Dekker stated that the cost of this scene alone would have exceeded the entire film's budget.
- Liam Neeson received a fee for a role in a film he never actually played.
- The scene in which Count Dracula lifts the heroine, played by five-year-old Ashley Bank, into the air and she screams, was shot in one take. The actor playing Dracula, Duncan Regehr, tried not to wear red contact lenses or fake fangs when Bank was nearby, because it all frightened her. Before filming this scene, director Fred Dekker asked Bank to scream as loudly as possible. She asked, “When exactly?” to which he replied along the lines of “you’ll know when,” and began filming. The girl let out a piercing scream when Dracula opened his eyes.
- The facial features of the Werewolf bear a resemblance to those of Stan Winston, the director, producer, actor, and screenwriter (1946-2008).
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