31 Days of Halloween - Day 13 Movie 1

I bet you were expecting "Friday the 13th." The truth is I watched "Friday the 13th" a couple of months back, and could not believe how amateurish it was. Tom Savini's contraversial effects, which I remember so vividly from seeing this way back when, were more suggested than shown. I had no desire to revisit Camp Crystal Lake.

So what did I watch instead? "The Monster Squad" (1987). The 80s are, I think, the decade from which movies ended up looking most dated--even the good ones. I think it's the film stock more than anything else, including hair styles. This movie, essentially, "Goonies" meets the Universal Monsters was a lot of fun. A group of 12 year old, and younger, kids who are really into monsters discover that Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon as well as Dracula's three brides (and all of this amazingly in a Tri Star, not a Universal movie. What was Universal's legal team doing?)have invaded their town, and that they are the only ones able to stop them. The movie has a lot of cute, funny moments and pay-offs, and the homages to the original movies are on-spot as well, right down to the armadillos and opossums (this is the third post this month mentioning them) in Dracula's castle.

As my friend Rob, says, this would have been the perfect kids movie if the language and sexual references had been taken out. They seem a little out of place here anyway. Maybe the producers felt compelled to get a PG-13 rating. It's certainly not scary. The monsters are not very threatening. Like what seems to be most of the movies of this era, it has a really cheesy song by Michael Sembello over the end credits.