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[Fred] Is Monster Squad a cult movie?

I think a cult movie is a movie that...

is appreciated in a way that people don't necessarily predict.

But ultimately movies are good or bad

and they're accepted or they're not,

but I don't know What a cult movie is,

so I sure don't know if this is one.

[light dramatic music]

So, I was at a sleepover party at a friend of mine's house,

uh, when I was probably 12 or 13 years old,

and we watched, uh, Raising Arizona

and it's... to this day,

one of the most influential films I ever saw.

It fundamentally changed what I thought movies could be

and got me hooked on the Coen brothers as filmmakers.

Probably the first movie that had a huge impact on me

was King Kong,the original.

It was the first movie that sort of, for me,

created a world within that

137 frame,

the whole world was in that frame

for an hour and a half or however long it was.

And that was... That was magic to me.

In my teen years, it was probably, uh, Enter the Dragon.

- I told John Saxon of... - Oh, really?

...I... I was so excited to work with John

because I saw Enter the Dragon and it blew my mind.

I think my favorite movie growing up was Wizard of Oz

because it was the only movie that played annually,

every year at Thanksgiving.

So I got to see it ten, 15 times.

James Bond and... and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

You know, I would show up first in line,

sleeping bag, whatever. Anything with monsters.

I saw Chuck Russell's The Blob,

and I left going "I want to be a director."

I think my favorite movie of all time is Back to the Future,

and it's really the first time

that I went to the theater as a kid

and going "I'm watching, like, a masterpiece,

this thing is ripping my mind apart."

Well, Exorcist for one because I'm Catholic.

For me, when I was in college, it was Suspiria.

It was, like, "Ever seen this movie?"

And people would watch it and their minds would be fucking blown.

Halloween, I would watch with my dad

on VHS, over and over again.

It would scare me to death.

Jaws is my favorite movie of all time.

It's, like, I just love following into that world

and Monster Squad was one of those movies.

Top five, I would have to say our Monster Squad...

...Monster Squad...

...Monster Squad.

- We love The Monster Squad. - We love

- The Monster Squad. - We love it.

One of our all times favorite movies when we were kids.

If my four-year-old could be here,

he would, he just watched the movie Saturday.

He loved it, absolutely loved it.

I love it so much, it changed my life, it just...

I wanted to be part of that world, and I feel like I am now,

and, um, it is an absolute stone classic.

[inspirational music]

[André] The Monster Squad is a 1987 film

about a group of kids

that have to fight the classic Universal monsters.

And the squad is really a, a group of misfits,

you know, led by Sean,

with Patrick, and Horace, and Eugene,

the cool kid Rudy, and the little sister, Phoebe.

And the squad has to fight Dracula,

Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy,

Gillman and the Wolfman.

Well, as the lead in The Monster Squad, that experience

certainly changed my life, and over the years,

I became interested in telling the story

of how it impacted others.

[man] How many here have seen The Monster Squad?

- [woman] Yeah! - [crowd cheers]

[André] The films in the '80s were so special

because they were a reflection of what was going on in culture.

And it was one of the first times

that kids were really included

in everything that was going on.

And I think those really made a deep impact

on the kids that were coming up at that time.

And now those are the... those are the creatives of today.

They inspired and led to so many other creative outlets.

An example of that is a 30 second animation

- with some bunnies explaining what The Monster Squad is. - Okay,

- second way to kill a vampire... - Come on, let me in the club.

- Found it at a garage sale. - Van Helsing's diary.

- We got to find the amulet. - Now can I be in the club?

- [bunnies scream] - [mommy grunts]

- [werewolf growls] - Wolfman's got nards!

The amulet!

- Suck on this. - Hey, asshole!

You're not a virgin.

[bunnies grunt]

Is she a virgin?

[growls] Thank you.

- [yelling] - [gun fires]

- [screams] - Hold us.

- [hisses] - [soft screams]

[fleshy squeak]

Don't go away!

Bye!

I don't know, to sum that whole movie up.

- In one s... - Because it's kind of been my whole life.

This is our Rocky Horror.

Monster Squad is a classic.

I guess it is kind of a kid's film.

It was a gateway drug, so...

There's no movie better than this.

Everybody's seen Freddy, but not everyone is a member of The Monster Squad.

I saw the film at the premiere in 1987.

When did I first experience The Monster Squad?

That would be opening night

at the Core Multiplex, 720 show.

- My entire family went. - The first time I saw

Monster Squad, I was actually in the theater,

and then it was kind of the weird thing where I would note,

then I would talk to my friends at school

and be like, "Yeah, and Monster Squad,"

and they'd be like, "I don't know that one."

I've said this to many, many times before,

- I'm going to say it again. - Okay.

This is my favorite movie

to screen for University students.

[Mike] So I meet people and I tell them,

"Yeah, I teach film studies at the University."

And they say, "Oh, you must teach

Citizen Kane and Casablanca,

you know, Hitchcock."And I say,

"No, have you heard of Monster Squad?"

How many of you, again,

have never seen Monster Squad before tonight?

- [André] Wow. - How many of you had never heard

of Monster Squad before tonight?

You are welcome.

[students laugh]

On the whole, they... They get it.

They understand that if they're taking this movie too seriously,

then you're not watching this movie correctly.

Where you do get some interesting push back

is there are sections of the film that remain very politically incorrect.

[Mike] I want to talk about political correctness.

If we were to remake Monster Squad,

what would we have to change?

There's some slut shaming, uh, with the older

- sister who's... - You're not a virgin, are you?

[Mike] Automatically ineligible from saving

the world because she's had sex.

Well, Steve,

but he doesn't count!

Doesn't count?

Fat shaming.

Oh, man, fat kid farted. Oh, God!

- Did not! - [kids speaks at the same time]

I think Horace gets called a faggot at some point.

What did you say, faggot? What did you say?

So, there are... there are certain things in there

that you can feel the room quiet down a little bit.

I think if it would be made today,

the leader of the squad would probably be Phoebe,

that has to convince a bunch of weird boys to join her.

- And... And there would... - It would be more multi-ethnic, probably.

...probably be a funny scene

to decide who's going to read the spell.

The Rudy character could be like, "I'm out."

[chuckles]

They've had really good experiences.

They clap and they cheer, and...

Those are the ones who understand.

They come back and they say that was one of the best ones we did.

Here's how I know that their appreciation is genuine.

The real compliment is, "I can't wait

to introduce this to my friends."

Because their friends are as unlikely to have seen this film

as they were, walking into my class.

[inspirational music]

[monsters growl]

[werewolf howls]

The Monster Squad was a... An original script in 1985.

I was really, really lucky. I went to UCLA,

wanted to be a film major.

They wouldn't take me,

but I thought the girls were cute

and I loved the campus, so I said,

"I'll be an English major.

I can do that."

And I fell in with this crowd,

and Shane was one of those people.

We were both young, I was 25, he was 26, something like that.

[Fred] He wanted to be an actor. He was a Theater Arts major.

He was mostly into reading Pulp, uh, Fiction.

I started writing screenplays and he said, "What are you doing?"

I said "I'm writing screenplays." And he goes, "Oh,

was it... what are y... How's that?"

I said, "Well, it's easier than writing a novel

because it's shorter."

So he said, "Well, let me try."

And I said, "Listen,

I want to do The Little Rascals

meet the Universal monsters."

He goes, "Okay." [chuckles]

[Shane] It was ignorance in a way

that led to, I think,

the enthusiasm of that first draft.

So we broke the story together.

Eventually we came up with sort of an outline.

I don't even think it was written, I think it was just in our heads.

It wasn't applying a screenwriters template

or, you know, going off of a book by Sid Fields.

It was just, "I'm going to do this pretty much the way

I've set out to and just see what happens,"

and the experiment was a very good one for me.

[loud white noise]

[Fred] The seed for the movie, and I'm ashamed to say it,

was really spending too much time in my youth watching TV.

They would run the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

They would run Dracula, Frankenstein,

you know, all the old monsters.

[Fred] As the Universal monster rallies went along,

they got cheaper and worse and worse.

And the genius to me was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

[Shane] And what I think we liked about it the most was that

Abbott and Costello were funnier than they'd ever been.

[suspenseful music]

[gasps]

[Fred] To take those two guys

and then do the Universal monsters,

and play the monster straight,

even as a kid, I knew something very special was going on there,

because the monsters were actually scarier in that movie

than they are in the previous, like, three or four...

[chuckles] Universal monster movies.

So that was kind of our idea, that was the notion.

The basis for it was to create a story

that had Spielberg elements, but didn't scrimp on the idea

that what they're doing is real and, you know, he really stakes

a girl in the heart in The Monster Squad.

- [suspenseful music] - [arrows rattle]

[hisses]

[growls]

- [whimpers] - [Fred] So he wrote the first draft

mostly by himself,

I think I may have written a couple scenes,

while I was shooting and in post-production on Night of the Creeps.

[telephone rings]

- Really? - [Shane] We got a long draft,

had to cut it down a little bit for budget and things like that.

And it was, of course, a thousand pages long

and I had to cut it down to,

you know... [chuckles] a 102 or whatever it was.

[Shane] But the first draft, I thought,

was one of the better things I'd done. It was pure enthusiasm.

[Fred] And then he went off and wrote Lethal Weapon

and sold it immediately.

He sold it so fast that Lethal Weapon,

I think, came out before The Monster Squad.

It was a crazy time. Everything happened very fast.

I think Fred and Shane crossed the line.

Personally, I mean, I remember watching this as a kid.

Now, I'm in a dark movie theater,

I bring my brother Barry, he's like, "I don't want to see a kids movie,"

but my mom forces him to go with me,

and I haven't watched it in a while,

but, from what I remember,

it's burned into my brain,

it begins with a Batman ha...

Webbed hand.

And then, uh, there's a...

A vampire eating a possum,

and there's blood dripping down,

and then, all of a sudden, Van Helsing burst in,

and there're skeletons ripping out of the floor,

and I'm 11, and I'm terrified.

And I look at my brother and, like, "Maybe we should go."

And he's like, "No, we should stay."

That's what makes this movie so awesome,

like, that's burned in my brain

almost as a traumatic experience.

[Adam Green] And then, back here is...

the edit suite.

Which... this is basically... It's my high school bedroom.

I... I just, like, saved it.

Do you remember these? These were from when we were, like,

seven, eight years old,

these Universal monsters.

Instead of storyboarding, I acted out

action sequences with action figures for my DP,

and you'd, like, put cameras on them and stuff,

and, like, that's how we figure

- stuff out. - Not a bad way to do it.

Brittany has died a lot.

I was 12 when I saw Monster Squad.

So I was one of those kids

and you had this incredible script

where... where the kids actually spoke like kids.

And there were few movies that... that did that back then,

where it didn't feel like adults

writing what they think kids would sound like.

[André] In The Monster Squad, our dialogue and our exchanges

are there because that's how kids interacted with each other,

and they still do today.

Fred and Shane...

they were... they were kids that

were saying and acting the way I did in the 1980s.

It sounds like these writers were like,

you know, spying on me and my friends

because this is how we talk. This is how we sound

and this is the kind of language that we use.

[André] They weren't parodies of kids, and they weren't stupid,

and they... They weren't dumbed down,

like, they were very smart.

It's everything. It's the kids, it's the neighborhood,

it's the creepy guy in the neighborhood

that everybody thinks is a bad guy and who turns out

to be the most sympathetic character who saves the day.

It's all of these effortless jokes

about growing up and sexuality and...

W... without ever losing the innocence of being kids.

Like, it's such a good movie, man.

Th... the characters were the consistency

throughout the movie. If you have these characters

that you can put them in a drama,

you put them in a comedy, it just so happens

that they happen to be in a horror movie

or a sci-fi movie or maybe a mash-up of the two,

if those characters are compelling in any genre,

you can put them through anything you want, and we will care.

But you could tell that they sort of had that voice

of the generation in their minds.

They sort of knew, like,

"These kids are real kids, you know,

and we're going to take these real kids

that are maybe a little too real,

and put them in this, like,

crazy situation."

It's the kind of thing

that Hollywood today dies for,

you know, this high concept idea.

Anybody who does these things

is... is operating partially subconsciously.

But there was a mythic cord, apparently,

in The Monster Squad,

that we may have tried for,

but didn't realize would resonate.

[calm inspirational music]

[car engine revving]

[tires screeching]

Taking the monster seriously

applies to our approach to the whole movie.

I mean, when we were casting, for instance,

if they had that kind of John Waters winky, Rocky Horror approach,

I just said, "Nice to meet you."

Duncan Regehr came in

and scared the shit out of us,

and I went, "Okay, that's the guy."

[Duncan] I knew that I had to fill some pretty big shoes.

I mean th... this character

has been played by some pretty wonderful actors,

but I wanted it to be

a character that was more sociopathic in nature.

So, less bestial.

I had the availability to approach this one

with some psychology to it.

And that was certainly part of the discussions that I had with Fred,

who was, at that time, more into the bestial side of it.

And I said, "We've got to find this other level

in order for it to work, in order to take this character

in another direction, retain the histrionics."

So he is arch,

but he's malevolent.

It was a question of finding some compromises

and there were certainly a lot of differences of opinion

about how things should be done.

But those things always work

towards making a better creative product in the end.

And that's what we did.

We also had Peter Hyams,

who was a, you know, a veteran and he was definitely

a... a wonderful guy to bounce ideas off of,

and it was very, very helpful to both of us to have him there.

The biggest drama on The Monster Squad

was that Peter wanted to fire me the first week.

And the reason was that, uh,

I wasn't shooting the movie

kind of in the way that he would have shot it.

He taught me some valuable lessons.

In my head, I see the movie and it may cut together,

but, if it doesn't,

I'm screwed because I haven't done enough coverage, A,

and B, and this is the important thing,

is that the entire crew understands

what the whole scene is.

And what Peter taught me was basically directing 101,

which is always start with a master shot,

so that the crew knows exactly what's happening

from the beginning of the scene to the end of the scene.

And once I got the lessons

on week two and he didn't fire me,

every scene in the movie I shot a wide master shot

and they're wide and they're beautiful and they look good,

but they're all big wide master shots and,

uh, you know, I think that set his mind at ease.

Take a drink for every master shot,

let's... but let's make it a drinking game.

Well, everybody always asks us what our favorite part of this movie is.

It's the final action sequence where we're doing the final battle.

We're on the back lot of Warner Brothers.

Uh, it felt like we lived in that town,

it was like, "This is epic, this is huge.

Like, this is... this is probably the biggest thing

I'm ever going to do."

[André] Even Fred to this day

says the last 20 minutes of this movie

are his favorite.

Peter left me alone for the...

More than the second half of the shoot.

The whole town square sequence, the finale of the movie,

uh, he completely left me alone.

That's my favorite part of the movie,

not because he wasn't there.

I'm just saying he... He gave me the keys to the car,

and I drove the car and I think I drove it pretty well.

The last reel in that movie is still my favorite thing I've ever done.

...eyes real big because you're scared that you're going to lose him.

- No, no, no, you're sad, you're sad... - No.

...No, no. No... And he's trying to go,

no, no... and you can say that.

- No, no... Be more sad... - No, no. [soft scream]

- ...be more sad... - No, no, no,

- no. - And then he goes.

And then you're real sad because he's gone.

But you still look at him b... Up at him

because you see him going in.

[mimicking cry] No...

- Good. - It was really just a lot of fun for me.

And because I brought my four-year-old there,

there were scenes where, you know,

where Wolfman beat the shit out of me in one scene,

and to see little Jesse look at me

with eyes like, "Oh, my God,

they're doing this to my father."

I think we went outside,

and Wolfman's parts started to come back together again,

and when I had my little kid

there looking at that

and seeing Wolfman's arm come and attach to his body.

He looked at me and he said, "Daddy, how do they do that?"

Most of the monsters were very cognizant of being human.

However, I was petrified of Duncan.

Because Duncan was just a man, and he had red eyeballs

because he wore red contact lenses,

and fangs, and that wasn't fucking normal.

And poor Ashley Bank,

when Dracula lifted her up,

I don't think anyone bothered to tell her that he was going to go,

"You bitch," and, like... [softly growls]

A lot of the movie was prepared

with those kids not knowing what was going to happen next,

so that they had a better sense of the reality it... of it as being reality.

And Fred pulled me over and he said, "All right, you're going to go on that wooden plank,

then, you know, it's going to rise up,

and he's going to say something to you,

and at some point in the scene, you're going to scream."

And being the actor that I am, I said, "When?

When am I supposed to scream? I follow directions, when am I supposed to do it?"

And Fred looked at me and he said, "You'll know."

[Duncan] You know, you get wrapped up into the...

The whole magic of, um,

the lights and the atmosphere,

the smoke,

the coolness of the evening.

And...

it sweeps you up and takes you with it really.

And that... th... that feeds you and forces it further.

Um...

And she was there for it,

you know, I didn't have a lot of work to do

because she was actually terrified.

His eyes were closed and his mouth was shut.

And they said action,

and he opened his eyes,

he opened his mouth, and he hissed at me.

- [screaming] - [hisses]

That girl can scream.

She scared me, actually, it was, um, it's the truth of it.

My first scream was so intensely afraid

that I don't think it was long enough.

Because the first time... [chuckles]

...she screamed and it scared the crap out of her

so bad that it took her breath out and she went, "Ye..."

[man chuckles]

[crowd laughs]

- And there was no scream... - [soft chuckles]

...so they had to do it again.

They said, "You need to scream longer."

And so, that second scream was the second take.

[loudly screams]

[hisses]

Phoebe! That's my daughter!

[scream continues]

Now, I think she turned out okay.

I don't think we, uh, we did any permanent damage,

but scaring the hell out of kids was... seemed like a great idea.

And then the laughs played against that in a wonderful way.

- [dramatic musical sting] - [soft howl]

Welcome to the mad... Mad house and the mess.

But this is... This is the fun part

- because this is where everything happens. - Mm-hm.

[André] We us... everybody is so used to seeing it,

- like, the finished product. - Yes.

I... I think I was 17 when Monster Squad came out.

I already knew I would dig it

because it's the monsters... It's the classic monsters,

but the local cinema had called me and had said,

"We're doing Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

Would you dress up as Freddy Krueger and,

you know, come in and scare the audience?" [mumbles]

It went down really well.

They used to call me and said, "Hey,

The Monster Squad it's coming in.

Will you do something for that?"

And I said, "Hell, yes.

No, I'd love to do that."

I played The Mummy,

I was a lot skinnier then.

And my other three friends were

Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman.

It was a really good big deal within

all the local press, it was fun.

Oh, these were my kits for, um,

a movie called The Shape of Water.

Oh, I've hear... I've heard of it.

After I did that and the pictures were paid

in the local paper, a company in London,

Weekend Television, contacted me

to do some makeup to one of their TV shows.

So, we're The Monster Squad is what this particular producer

saw when he brought me in,

ironically not to do monsters,

it was to do old age makeups.

So that f... pushed my career even further.

[Mike Hill] Yeah, this is a... well, you can see it's,

it's some applying thi... it's actually the very first applyings

that Doug Jones wore in The Shape of Water.

[André] So these weren't just mock-ups,

- these were actual... - No, these are the actual very first,

first day of shooting ones. And I know exactly

because Guillermo told me exactly where he wanted the spots.

[André] Yeah, because when he put that whole suit on,

- he's in the suit all day long. - Yep.

- And takes one hand off so he can have... - At lunchtime,

- so he can uses a bathroom. - ...some salad.

Actually, this is great stuff...

[André] What's interesting about

creature making is everybody in the modern era

of special effects and creature design,

we're all kids at one time and they saw these classic monsters.

And so, they really put that enthusiasm

into making their iteration of these classic monsters.

I'm Tom Woodruff Jr., I'm the co-owner and co-founder of a ADI.

I'm John Rosengrant and I'm one of the owners of Legacy Effects.

I'm Shane Mahan, another co-owner of Legacy Effects.

I'm Steve Wang.

I was hired by Stan Winston

back in 1986

to be the art director slash,

uh, builder of the Gillman creature

along with this gentleman here, Matt Rose.

Alec Gillis was my business partner here

and I actually worked for Stan Winston

for several years during which we did Monster Squad.

On Monster Squad, I headed up the team to create the Wolfman.

My responsibility was the Mummy.

[Tom] When Stan told us about the show,

"Monster Squad, it's got all these monsters."

And the first thing we heard was,

"And Universal said we can redo the monsters."

[tense music]

And those early monster movies

were really targeted for adults.

And they wer... came out during the Great Depression.

And they came out of a period of enormous economic anxiety,

a sense of fear, whether you were goin... you know,

whether your parents are going to put food on the table the next day.

We'r... we're both 20 years old. I'm standing there, like,

kind of, you know, like excited,

thinking, "Oh, my God, we're getting to build

the Creature from the Black Lagoon."

[tense music]

That was totally cool.

Stan then said, "No, Universal said no."

They put the hammer down fast on because they trademark those looks.

We could use the characters.

We just had to be careful not to recreate

the exact look of the old, uh, Jack Pierce makeups

because even then, they were using those at the theme park.

We were a little, you know,

crestfallen for a couple of days,

but then everyone rose to the occasion.

And so, what we had to do is adjust,

you know, make minor adjustments.

Okay, fine. You can't beat the cool out of this project.

[Shane Mahan] Stan actually drew and sketched by pencil

the characters themselves, so we sort of watched him develop these looks.

[Tom] When we were doing the creature builds,

Stan was always good about splitting up the work.

The great thing about Stan was

that he was incredibly supportive of these people

that he had hired because he trusted them.

And so, he gave them projects, in this case,

specific monsters that they had never done before and didn't even know if they could do.

"Alec, you're going to do the bat transformation.

John, well, you'll do the Wolfman.

Shane will do the Mummy, and Matt and Steve,

you guys will do the Gillman."

This was one of those jobs

where it really didn't matter which one.

It's like, "Oh, shoot, I got stuck with Wolfman."

I remember kind of looking to everybody and saying,

"Oh, so, how do y...

How do you guys make monster suits?"

And it was just silence.

And then it kind of dawned on me.

"Oh, let the newbies figure it out." [chuckles]

[calm music]

[John] We got to present a lot of Wolfmans

to end up with the final one.

We got to do the Werewolf of London,

and the whole transitions in the phone booth

were, you know, doing some old-school laying hair on

an... and uti... utilizing some prosthetics and teeth

I'd made, and contacts.

In the final one, y... you know,

I kept saying, "Stan, let's get some

of the Oliver Reed the Hammer look into it, too."

That's kind of the lighter brown fur with the different patterns.

- [Shane Mahan] Torn shirt. - [John] The torn shirt.

The white... whitish kind of torn shirt.

Our Mummy is completely different,

that was a choice of mine because I th...

I thought we already had a big lumbering monster,

so let's make the Mummy little.

[Shane Mahan] The real mummies,

if you go to a museum,

they're very diminutive,

they... they're very small, thin people,

and maybe that'd be a good contrast to Tom Noonan and... and it sort of worked out.

[Fred] And Tom Woodruff, who I just worked with on the Predator,

always wanted to play the monster as well as make them.

He's creating and making the Frankenstein's monster's applications

for Tom to wear on his face and head,

and he gets to be in the Gillman suit.

Playing Gillman was a...

It had its own challenges, a little bit different from the makeup.

Once he was in that suit, he couldn't really get out.

That Gillman suit is really a one-piece,

full-length bodysuit that you get glued into,

and he's in there for 12, 15 hours a day.

To the very first day that I was glued into the suit,

we did the work in the lagoon,

and it was a cold night.

During lunch, I remember,

I just went to the dressing room.

I laid down and actually fell asleep.

You're not eating, and you're not drinking anything.

I remember waking up during that lunch break

and nobody was with me.

I think you only had two little peepholes

to actually see out of in that... In that helmet part.

I didn't know where I was, I just felt like my body was completely locked,

and I could feel my heart rate going up

and my breathing was getting shallow.

I can't imagine the claustrophobic feel

that you'd be glued into this foam,

latex suit that's soaked with water

in this giant creature head that you can't see out of.

And I had... I just kind of talk myself down

an... and remember that I'm in the suit, and I...

Still, it wa... it was frantic, just a frantic few seconds.

I don't think everybody can do stuff like that.

The fact that he played the creature

and that he continued after that to continue to play monsters is,

uh, shows how... How devoted he is.

What we do,

no matter how well we make it, is...

really a piece of plastic,

you know, it could be a beautiful model

or whatever, but it's the action that brings it to life.

That's really the final thing

because, if it's just sitting there as a...

As a display, that can be great and dynamic,

but in film, you need the actor to bring it up.

Steve Wang and Matt Rose did a great job on the Gillman.

For its day, set the tone for so many things.

I will go on record

and say I think our creatures is one of the best monster costumes ever filmed.

Having been involved in other suits in the past,

and also having studied a lot

how monsters... monster suits were made back in the old days,

they usually made it in sections and parts and they just kind of like

put it... put it on, they'd do zippers and do...

And sometimes you'd just see where all the seams are.

So the way that Matt and I did it

is, you know, we still did our body cast

and we sculpted the whole suit,

but instead of making it in sections,

the main body was all molded just as one.

And... and, was it the first shot he went right into the lagoon?

- Yeah. - We're seeing you do the suit,

this perfect suit, they say, "Put it in the water." "What?"

[Steve Wang] Remember how nervously we were because it's, like,

we're... we're gluing the hands on, we were, like...

[whispering] "Okay, I think it's working."

And then we were... we're putting the feet on, you know,

"All right, that seam went away."

And following, we're gluing th... the head,

his big giant seam, I would put it on.

And we're starting to glue, and Matt was in the front and I'm in the back,

and we're, like, gluing it on, and then looked at him,

Matt looked at me, and we're just, like,

"It works." [laughs]

I mean, it fit like a tailored suit,

- it really did... - Stan got so many compliments when he walked out,

all the people are like, "I was in business 30 years,

I've never seen anything like this before," you know,

and Stan is like, "Thank you. Thank you.

I did it all, me, me! And the... these two helped."

Stan was always a jokester, you know.

The question is how do you create

a new Creature in Black Lagoon? Well,

you just have Stan Winston's guys design it

and build it, and... and sculpt it.

[crickets chirping]

[wolf howls]

[howls continue]

We wrapped the movie and you've got six,

eight months before it comes out and...

It felt...

like, all of a sudden, like,

your life was going to change...

drastically.

Fred and Shane and the guys,

they all got together in a limo on our opening night,

and we drove around Los Angeles

and went to all the theaters that it was playing it.

And we went to probably five or six theaters.

I will not forget that.

We went to one actually in the valley.

There was seven or eight people in the theater, I think.

Seven or eight people in the theater

which seats 300 people.

It was crushing.

[Joe] I walked out of that movie thinking,

"I can't wait until the newspaper

comes out on Monday morning," because that's when they would a...

They would have the top ten movies for the weekend.

I hoped it was Monster Squad and unfortunately,

it wasn't. And I was really bummed.

Well, listen, it was a huge hit.

And by it, I mean The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys came out two weeks

before The Monster Squad.

Two weeks later, we come out and we tank.

And it was incredibly disappointing.

My review of Monsters Squad appeared in the LA Times

on August 14th 1987.

"The Monster Squad is such fun.

It makes you wish you were a kid again.

Although you can never regain childhood innocence,

you can find compensation in being able to appreciate

the artistry with which director Fred Dekker

and co-writer Shane Black, have brought

to this horror comedy-adventure aimed at youngsters."

Yeah, and not all the critics were so generous.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote,

a mildly scathing review

of The Monster Squad which I think makes it plain

that this is never going to be a movie for him

because the last line of his review says,

"The Monster Squad includes vulgar language

and some sequences that could scare already emotionally troubled four-year-olds."

- Well... - As a kid, you're relegated

to whoever was in your local newspaper

or maybe Siskel and Ebert.

I would say a good majority

of the people writing the print reviews

for newspapers weren't film lovers themselves so much.

They... they were assigned that duty.

[Jen] You think about the impact

that it had at the time,

when newspaper reviews could make or break

a movie that might need critical support

to find its audience, in a time when audiences

largely depended on critics

to tell them what is worth seeing and what is not.

Let's not tiptoe around it, the movie bombed,

the movie bombed.

"Guys, uh, better luck next time.

This movie just, no one's seeing it,

no one knows about it. No one cares."

I mean, I don't even know if I remember

that I knew when the release date was.

I just remember thinking that people should've been talking about it more.

[laughs] That's all.

But I remember the profound disappointment,

because you spent two years on these things

and you know in an afternoon

whether it's gone or it's going to stay.

By Friday night, latest Saturday morning, it's like,

"Well, you're movie is a hit," or, "Yeah, next time."

I'd... I didn... I wanted it to all go away.

I said, "No more acting.

I don't want anyone t... To know that that happened."

And so, I would never talk about it.

I wouldn't let anyone know.

I wouldn't let girlfriends know.

When movies come out,

they get a... A limited time to perform.

They get all kinds of conditions and circumstances

that have nothing to do with the quality of the movie,

where it's released, the date it's released.

How many screens,

what's going on that week.

[Stephen] I saw that it was a PG-13 rating.

And I thought...

"No." At that time,

I... I said to my wife, I said,

"I don't think that mothers are going to schlep their kids

to this movie, to get them in, to watch it with them."

True is the fact it didn't last,

and I think it had to do a lot with that rating.

[Paul] When this film was released, it was rated at 15,

which means that anybody under the age of 15

wasn't able to see this film theatrically

and wasn't able to rent the VHS tape.

You had to be 15 or older to see this film.

So, when it was released, it was clearly marketed

towards that Goonies-y sort of, you know,

teen adventure film audience

whose films typically were rated PG.

No one who wanted to see it could see it, I couldn't see it.

I think it's also a testament

to the fact that the movie was maybe not properly

marketed or marketed enough

back then and it's crazy to think of what a year would have made,

if they just sat on it for a few more months

and then released it with, "From the writer of Lethal Weapon."

I thought we had an ability to appeal

to some people on a,

a more nostalgic emotional level

than just simply the cartoon version

that I think the ads would... Suggested the movie to be.

Because we just had these "wanted" posters

all over around billboards and it just... it was like mug shots of the monsters

with, like, a call to action, but nowhere to go.

[Andrew] It's really hard to find stuff from The Monster Squad,

but then I joined eBay in 2005 and I was like,

- "Oh, my God, look at all this great stuff." - [vocalizes fanfare]

Right? So I'll... I'll check in every couple days

- and... - Not too many people have that.

Probably a good reason for it.

You know, I... [stutters] got it and then I was like,

"Well, that's not even Duncan.

That looks like a Halloween mask costume

- in a, like, a Kmart or something. - Yeah, I don't know...

Wanted poster, like an Old West,

- but new mug shot type thing. - Right.

"For felony neck biting, unlawful blood-sucking,

and assault and bat-tery."

- Yeah. - Mummy.

"Armed bandage and statutory wrap."

Today I think if you even brought that idea

to the conference room table in an ad pitch,

you might be cleaning out your desk.

[André] Like, so... that got... that got greenlit,

that got greenlit, right? [chuckles]

That was on billboards,

like, giant billboards in LA and across the country.

- It's probably why the movie didn't do well. - Oh... [laughs]

And the next weekend,

it didn't get any better.

[Fred] I never, ever, ever got the sense

that this movie was finding a new audience

or that its original audience were enjoying it again.

None whatsoever.

I was still licking my wounds.

[interviewer] Until 2006.

Which is... So that's roughly 16 years,

before I had a clue that people liked this movie.

That's the God's truth.

[upbeat rock music]

[man shouting] The Monster Squad!

[crowd cheering]

- [Ryan] Oh, my God! Hi! - [André] How are you?

[André] How you doing?

Welcome!

We're doing 17 Alamos in 17 days.

[crowd cheers and claps]

Only because of you guys that keep filling up

- these damn theaters. - [Ashely] Yes.

Monster Squad fans are very special and th... they're a little bit

tighter connected to this movie than most genres fans.

I don't think anybody in here doesn't have

a special connection with this movie for some reason, right?

Uh, it hit and connected somewhere that stayed with you.

And after five or six years...

[chuckles] it just got to be overwhelming

how interesting this fan dynamic is with this movie.

[garage door rattles and squeaks]

Dance to this for the, uh, Horrorhound of Cincinnati.

It is probably one of my favorite pieces, uh,

if someone ends up making a t-shirt,

let me know because I'll gladly buy at least like

seven of them so I can wear them every single day of the week.

I decorated my garage in the way that I imagined.

Rudy and Sean and Patrick decorating their tree house

with all the monster stuff.

I saw that and instantly I was like,

"Man, I would want to emulate something like that."

You can step into a room in your...

You can look at someone's tattoos now

because those are collections too.

And you could understand and not have to ask, like,

"W... what movies do you like?" It's like, well,

they could possibly be tattooed on someone's arms

or, if you look around a room,

you could pick up on it pretty quick.

My first experience with The Monster Squad

was, uh, spending the night over at a buddy's house.

So we, uh, turned it on, I was probably seven or eight.

And it was on HBO or something like that.

And we sat there and, uh, wolfed down popcorn

and watched the most amazing movie of our lives.

Everything we had seen up till then, it all had been kid's stuff,

and this was the first... the first taste of something dangerous.

[light rock music fades]

[crickets chirping]

[wolf howls]

[eerie suspenseful music]

Back in the '70s, cable was what you did to get television

if you were in the mountains. By the time that had been exploited

to the point where it's economically feasible,

then they went into the cities.

The growth kept going and going and going.

I was at HBO when The Monster Squad first aired.

We knew that, by the time a film came out of the theaters

and maybe went to VHS, 95% of people had not seen it.

We put it in front of a network of 20 or 25 million households,

somebody would watch Monster Squad in HBO,

tell his next door neighbor, the word got out.

Monster Squad developed a word of mouth.

I think it was either HBO or... Or The Preview Channel,

I think that's what it was called before HBO.

Monster Squad was on a lot, um,

Beastmaster was always on, Dragonslayer.

And those were the movies that really shaped my youth.

Pretty much the early days of HBO were pretty gold in the sense that,

if you missed an '80s movie,

it would play a hundred times

in a row over and over again.

If you grew up in the 80s,

you knew, when you watched HBO

or any of those cable channels back then,

that eight o'clock was this, like,

magical time where, like, the world changed.

I think that was even before we owned a VCR.

I think we rented our first VCR.

[Rob] And then, eventually I would go

and rent it when it wasn't on cable.

[Rebekah] The first time I ever saw Monster Squad,

my mom had taken me to the video store,

and I was maybe seven or eight years old,

and I was a die-hard horror fan and my mom let me watch

pretty much whatever I wanted.

And I was having a slumber party that night,

and I wanted a horror film, but mom was scared to death

that all the other parents were going to freak out

if she brought home, like, Nightmare on Elm Street,

and I got to watch it with all the other girls.

So she was looking for something

that was a little bit more kid-friendly.

And she handed me The Monster Squad

while we were standing in the middle of the video store

and she said, "How about this?"

And I said, "Oh, this looks perfect!"

And I took it home and we watched it during the slumber party that night,

and half the girls got scared and half of them loved it,

and it became one of my favorite movies

throughout my entire adolescence.

[Mike] I couldn't tell you when I first saw it.

I can't ever remember a time

when I didn't have a reliable VHS copy.

I can't remember a time when there wasn't

a Monster Squad, kind of, in my life.

[Shawn] The sad fact at the time was, there were certain movies

that were being sold to the public and certain ones

that were just being shipped off to video stores.

And if you wanted to buy a movie, you basically had to buy it with,

uh, distribution license locked into the tape.

So the tapes cost like 100 dollars.

So it built up an obsession

where every time we'd go to the video store,

that's what I'd rent because I couldn't own it.

And then, it disappeared for 19 years.

It wasn't on anybody's mind for a very long time.

Sure.

Right off the bat, there you go.

Right off the bat.

Oh, man, the whole squad all together.

Yeah, obviously, I love there is like a unique style on it, you know.

[Germain] My entire apartment is covered in posters, some of The Monster Squad.

And, uh, a lot of it is that now when I walk

by that Monster Squad poster, that Lost Boys poster or something,

I immediately sort of have a flash to the entire movie in my head.

Oh, my God, look at this.

- [soft laughs] - [Germain] Just so cool.

- Just so cool. - And that's the same guy that's over there.

The same guy, Geoff Trapp, yeah, this guy is

- a Monster Squad fan. - It's got a little, uh, dynamite.

[Germain] In The Monster Squad they made those business cards

and I... it inspired me to make my own business card.

"We kill monsters for pleasure. No job too weird."

Uh, and we never actually did or performed any jobs.

We just like to have the cards.

- Holy crap. - Okay. Now this...

What the hell is this? This is crazy.

It's something you love seen through the eyes of somebody else.

And you just totally, instantly connect to it.

I don't know if I'll ever stop collecting, uh,

if I ever see any cool Monster Squad stuff.

I'm always going to think about buying it

because it's just, you know, it reminds me

of the... th... Some of the best times.

[wind blowing]

[soft eerie music]

[Fred] Is Monster Squad a cult movie?

I don't know what a cult movie is.

I mean, it's either a weird movie that people like...

or...

I struggle with the word "cult"

with films sometimes because, to me,

a cult film is something like

Rocky Horror or even The Room, for better or for worse.

But they're movies that kind of just missed,

yet, for some reason, people still love them.

That's what it is. That's what a cult movie is.

It's a weird movie that people like.

I think that cult films

emerge from exploitation genres.

Cult, over time,

I don't think means the same thing that it used to.

Because cult meant something that nobody knew about

except, like, a very small cult of people.

Over time, I think it doesn't mean that same thing.

I think it now means something that was wildly popular

but not financially successful.

I don't think a movie that doesn't do well

but then finds its audience later.

Because It's a Wonderful Life did that,

The Wizard of Oz did that,

a lot of movies did that.

[Rebekah] If you ask five different people what a cult film is,

you will get five different answers.

Even if you ask five different expert film academics

what a cult film is, you will get five completely different answers.

Well, I mean, a cult film is often a film

that didn't fully find its audience when it first came out.

That people discover on their own

and feel like it's a kind of private fantasy universe

that they can feel a particular connection with.

All of a sudden, it's like you find lifelong friends

because you have this one weird thing in common

- that nobody else knows about. - [Rob] They clearly had the same thing,

where "I love this, no one else loves it."

[Adam Murray] Kind of a, uh, members-only

kind of mentality to it, like a secret club.

[Ryan] Probably not the crowd that's going to see Transformers.

But it's like what real film lovers watch.

[Zach] When you first see it, it seems very kind of,

like, uh, out of the mainstream.

And it seems often times very odd and bizarre.

And yet, at its core, the theme is something

that really resonates in kind of a universal way.

When I think of a cult film, I think of my smaller films,

uh, that have reached a certain audience

and usually at a certain time in their lives.

Usually when they're young. It's like hearing that great rock song

when you get your first kiss or something, you always are going to remember it.

[Germain] So the Monster Squad fits into that

because it was a movie that didn't do too well

at the box office, and then came out on VHS

and cable and it just sort of existed.

So people had to find it on their own.

[Adam Green] I don't think

of Monster Squad as a...

As a cult film, I just don't.

Oh, a 1000% Monster Squad is a cult film.

What makes it cult, what earns it that right,

is that it's something that wasn't financially successful,

but has fans and those fans are rabid and loyal.

It's always been huge.

And, if anything, I would call it a classic

more than a cult film.

I mean, for me, it... very definition of a cult movie,

because when I saw it as a kid,

in my mind, it was as big as all the other movies

I loved. But I noticed no one else seemed

to have either seen it or even heard of it.

So what if it wasn't, you know,

number one at the box office for a year straight

or something like that, none of that matters.

It's nothing other than time that allows a movie to resonate more,

it's like, it's like marination.

I just think it's a word though, it's like, there's a whole bunch of words

that are really helpful in... In conversations.

And I just don't know that that one is.

But ultimately movies are good or bad,

and they're accepted or they're not.

But I don't know what a cult movie is.

So I sure don't know if this is one.

[Ryan] Where's the 35mm projector? Can I see it?

Oh, yeah, that's the stuff.

This is a film. It's going through the thing.

It's, you know, then it comes out and it's... [vocalizes roll rattling]

[film roll rattles]

This is the part that people don't know

- when they're watching a movie. What's happening? - [man] We... Yeah.

Not just behind the scenes of making the film,

but actually showing the film.

My inspirational section of my life,

which was basically the '70s and '80s

of film... uh, this is what it was.

- [man] Yeah. - This is how it was shown to me.

So this is how I want to see it for the rest of my life.

You know, it's just awesome to watch it go by.

- It's definitely arou... - No, is like my heart's like fluttery.

- [laughs] - With the motor, right?

It starts... [vocalizes engine] you know, like I just felt like that, like, "Here we go!"

[inspirational music]

[low growl]

[flash clicks]

[tape whirring]

[wind softly howls]

It's now 11 years since Tim League and Eric Vespe

from Ain't It Cool News put together the first cast union screening

at the old original Alamo here in Austin in 2006.

That all started with one man, Eric Vespe.

I don't think, at that time, I'd ever seen it projected.

I was familiar with it. I'd seen it, it... honestly,

uh, didn't make that much of an impression on me, I guess,

because I think I was into different things.

I just wanted to watch the movie.

Eric's enthusiasm for the film,

it was undeniable.

And, uh, he made a really strong case.

And, you know, frankly, it doesn't really take much

for me to say yes to projects.

He said, "If, like, maybe if you can find some people,

some of the cast and if they're willing to come out,

you know, for a coach ticket, maybe we...

We'll set up one screening, you know, on one weekend."

This could either suck and there was, like, five people there,

and we'll just go to Austin and have fun.

And so I really have the easy part.

I just have to open up the doors, uh,

find a film print and, uh, and go.

Hi, I'm Matt Pennachi.

- Normally a 35mm film collector. - Adam Hulin.

[Matt Pennache] And we had many, many adventures

going to a lot of run-down, burned-out,

closed down, dangerous locations,

searching for 35mm prints over the years.

And, uh, one of the best ones we ever found

was a print of The Monster Squad.

At the time we acquired that print,

we had bought it from a collector in New Zealand.

That's one of the last places in the world that prints go to die,

- South Africa and New Zealand... - The last stops

- on the world tour. - ...because nobody wants to pay the postage

- to get them back. - Once they get that far away, they don't want them back.

[Matt] And we started getting bombarded with requests for it.

And then, it came to our attention that

there were no known prints of this film left in North America.

- Which we're not aware of that. - We weren't aware of that at all.

[Adam Hulin] Amongst the myriad of other prints we had,

a lot of them were sold to the Drafthouse.

But even at that point, we didn't realize how...

How much of a unicorn this print was.

So we picked Easter Sunday,

they put up the tickets online saying,

"Monster Squad reunion screening,"

you know, director, the cast.

And Eric Vespe and I got in touch.

My head spun for a second. I'm like,

"Wait, you know this movie?"

[André] And they ended up putting together

what became the... kind of the seminal event of Monster Squad.

Was not expecting... [laughs]

...even remotely what actually occurred.

- And it sold out. - Uh, it sold out real fast.

I... I think at the time, faster than anything I've ever sold out

at the Alamo before, and they added a second screening.

- Oh, my God, what is happening? - And e... and everybody was like, "I love this movie!"

And I was like, "You've seen this movie? Okay."

[crowd laughs]

It just... [mimics explosion]

I... I, I couldn't believe... [chuckles] the attention

that this thing was getting.

[Fred] That first screening at the Alamo,

was a real eye-opener.

And then, to show up at the Drafthouse

and see the line of people

going around the block waiting to get in

was astounding to me.

[André] And it was like this amazing,

retro, nostalgic party jam.

You know, the floodgates just opened,

that film played somewhere

every single weekend in the month of October.

Half the questions were like,

"When is this movie coming out on DVD?"

And we were all like, "Never.

I don't think, like, I don't think anyone is releasing it."

You know, the question got asked, "Where is our DVD?"

But Fred, you know, said,

"Hey, you guys are the ones that would make this happen.

Write letters, write emails, make posts."

I remember being on DVD forums

in 2005-2006, when I was seventeen, eighteen.

People being like, "Can we get Monster Squad on DVD?"

I was alone in my office at work and I was like,

"Okay, I'm going to leave the charge on this,

this is something that I feel like

needs to happen."

So one of my ideas was when...

When I heard there was a letter writing campaign again,

I wanted this to get seen, not just throw it into a pile.

So I got a bunch of index cards

and crayons and magic markers and stuff like that,

and, basically, I would either write in

some of the characters from the movie, like Eugene,

like desperately wanting this on DVD.

I think I wrote like 60 letters into the company,

just to try to get their attention because I was afraid that...

That this jam wouldn't make it to DVD.

I'd like to think that it wasn't obsessive,

but, um, I think that, all total, it was like 60 note cards

or something like that, that I sent.

So I actually had a bootleg DVD I bought off eBay.

I even had a bootleg DVD.

So I had to go onto eBay and get the, uh,

bootleg DVD that was ripped from the Japanese LaserDisc.

Nowadays, everything comes out.

Some specialty labels putting out every movie,

but there was a time, especially when DVD was a new format,

that that wasn't the case.

And, in particular, Fred Dekker's movies were the ones

that everyone talked about saying, "When is Monster Squad

and Night of the Creeps coming out on DVD?"

[Michael] The fan base was letting people know,

"Hey, we really want to re-embrace this movie. Can we own it?"

And Lionsgate, they were very smart and very, very attuned

to what was going on out there, and they threw it out there and they did it right.

I realized that Monster Squad had made a big impact

about the time it was coming out on DVD.

[Michael] No one was prepared

for how successful it would end up being.

It was their highest selling catalog title that they had that year.

And even I was kind of taken aback by that. Because I was like,

"Wow, I knew that there were a lot of fans out there,

but that can't just be

people my age buying this.

This is their kids going for this.

This is a whole other generation, you know,

picking up the cover and going. "Hey, what is this?"

Because of Monster Squad success,

it ended up winning a Saturn Award for best, uh,

special edition DVD that year.

It brought me a lot of attention.

It was a big calling card for me for a lot of years.

[sharp rattling]

[soft tense music]

[Eileen] Probably the first time I saw Brent

was in the grocery store with his mother.

I had my daughter Rachel with me.

And he kind of had a little crush on her.

So every time he saw her,

he would hide behind the produce

and then pop up and I thought it was really cute.

[gentle inspirational music]

We were out on the beach and we were on the swings

and he's like, "Hey, you want to be my girlfriend?"

And I said, "Okay, but what does that mean?"

And he said, "I think it means we walk around holding hands."

And I said, "Okay, we could try that."

[Rachael] Brent asked me to go to a wrestling match.

He's like, "Don't worry. I'm going to take you to a nice dinner before."

He wanted it to be really special.

[Rachael] One of my friends had made fun of him,

calling him fat.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our show.

Tonight's question, what makes Fat Kid fat?

- Fat Kid? - Get out of here, EJ.

And it made him so sad.

And I remember he just ran out crying.

His defining moment, when he levels up in this movie,

I mean, that's...

That's really that... The nerd justice.

"My name is Horace."

[dramatic music]

Hey, Fat Kid, good job.

My name is Horace.

[gun rattles]

Having him go through that experience in real life,

and then having to get do... to do that in the movie was pretty cool to see.

Brent Chalem passed away in 1997.

It's a big hole that he can't experience it himself

and or have great crowds like Alamo crowds

show him that, like, Ashley said it the other day,

it's like he's got the best arch in the movie.

Oh. Um, can you go really quick?

I'm still, like, freaking out about...

[softly crying] about Brent...

[Shawn] When I was growing up, I was Horace.

I was a fat kid in Town & Country surf and skate shirts.

I didn't find out the Brent passed away

until the... the DVD push.

I think mainly because I felt so connected to him

that now that the DVD was coming out and people were, like,

loving this and it was on huge news sites and everything,

it's like, you know, this is where it would pay off.

And I thought, "Man, I'm never going to get to meet that guy."

And, um, you know, it's... It's really sad and upsetting

that he couldn't be here for this.

[Marsha] It was wintertime and...

we got a call.

He got pneumonia.

He went to a local hospital and after two or three days,

instead of waiting till he was completely healed,

they sent him home with oxygen in his nose,

and it became dislodged that night.

[Eileen] He couldn't breathe, so they took him back to the hospital

in the emergency room.

And, unfortunately, they did something in the emergency room

that caused his death.

They gave him the wrong... medication

for an asthmatic and he went into a coma.

We, um, packed up right away.

I didn't realize how... How serious it was.

We all sat with him. We sat with him in the intensive care.

I do remember, though, the doctors giving us a time period.

It was like, "He's got about three or four hours

and he's going to pass, so you need to go in there

and you need to say goodbye."

Then he... he passed and we were all so upset.

I kind of went into a... A crazy time after that.

I got panic attacks and just... It was not a good time

and just... That really affected me,

um, knowing that he wasn't there anymore.

- [Marsha] I look the same. This is me. - That's after hair.

- That's after the hair? Yes. Yeah? - Yes. About a year after.

[soft laughs]

And this, that's a picture of Betty Ann, his mom,

and Brent and always the dog and this... it was an article

that they posted about all his commercial time,

and the commercials that he was in.

When he went to the first interview,

it was because his parents said no.

A lot of his friends were extras in film.

He called up.

He looked up the number and called up

to get himself an interview.

And they wrote him back.

He filled out the form himself,

he was seven years old.

And when I got the call

that they were going to be doing this documentary

on Monster Squad,

I went, "Wow.

Thirty years later and then I found out

what a following it has.

And one of the biggest people that they remember

is the lines that Brent said."

I think I'm more sad now than I was then.

It was so rad for him to go on these things, you know.

I'm sad that he's missed out on all of this

because I think that he would've really enjoyed this

and it... And people would've loved him.

There's a big piece missing.

You know, one of the characters that really connected and resonates

with the majority of the fans is not around...

to experience that.

That really is the most unfortunate...

thing that we could possibly have

in this amazing resurgence of this movie.

One, they can't see him,

and two, he can't be a part of that.

[all together] "My name is Horace."

- [André] Awesome. - [crowd cheers and applauds]

And everybody that related to Horace, right?

Everybody that related to getting their ass kicked

loved the moment where he pumps the shotgun

and proves he's the only one of these kids with any fucking balls.

Like, that's incredible wish fulfillment as a kid,

it's why I wanted to be a part of that movie so hard.

That is so iconic,

seeing a kid cock a shotgun

and blow away Gillman.

It cuts from the wide shot to the close shot,

where he goes, "My name... [vocalizes shotgun] is Horace."

And the crowd went fucking apeshit.

I aspire to do something that good in a movie someday

because I just think that that's pure cinema.

You just don't get better than that.

That was one of those moments that made me think,

like, "I want to be able to do that to an audience."

People are going to be saying that

for thousands of years.

And it's such a fucking travesty

that Brent doesn't get to see that.

He definitely knows, like, he's definitely watching all this

and, um, he... he's there.

Brent is living on through this legacy.

He did it with his whole heart,

and he brought life even to a monster movie. [chuckles]

[gentle inspirational music]

[tense music]

[André] The Alamo called me and said, would I be interested in doing

a 30th anniversary tour.

We got Ryan and Ashley, and Ashley's baby.

We ended up doing 17 cities in 17 days.

And half of those had dual screenings in the same night.

[Ryan] I knew what to expect with the screenings.

We... we knew there was going to be Q&A

and questions, we're going to meet people.

The traveling part... [chuckles]

...of the tour was a whirlwind.

We know what town we're in?

- [Ashely] Where are we? [chuckles] - [André] Yeah.

Let's look at... We could look on the...

There is a flip-flop festival around here.

[André chuckles] That's a... [unintelligible].

- [Ashley] Cool! - See it?

- [Ashely] No. - [André] Hang... Okay, now look.

- Now look at the sun. - Wha...

Wait until that cloud gets back.

- I'm blind. - [chuckles]

- [hissing] - [mimicking monsters]

[soft laughs]

Coming out to test for Monster Squad,

it was probably like the third time I've been in California,

but it really cemented that idea that, if you want to act,

LA is the place to be.

You know, about a year or two after that,

he ended up moving to LA,

he's had great success

because he's an intelligent,

very talented individual.

You know, The Monster Squad, you know,

it's really come full circle for me.

You know, I get to work

with Shane Mahan and John Rosengrant

on a... on a beautiful movie, The Shape of Water.

Only seeing him now is making me realize that,

"Yeah, I know all those guys,"

and I got André Gower right here, so.

[André] He designed and fabricated

the amphibian man for The Shape of Water.

And Mike Hill to create that aesthetic

is just a fascinating story with someone who, as a kid,

saw The Monster Squad in the theaters.

This is a zine I did, it's called I heart Rudy,

it's about Rudy and also about the Squad.

You can say that

the movie Monster Squad and the horror genre in general

is a boys club and I wanted to get that girl's perspective.

And I also modeled it after the '80s teeny bopper magazines of the day,

like Bop, TeenBeat, Big Bopper.

It was almost like I had stumbled upon Monster Squad,

like I found a bag of cash in the street or something,

and no one else seemed to know about it.

That's definitely why I started Friday Night Frights.

I kind of just wanted to be like a Johnny Appleseed of horror movies.

In some ways, it was fun to come full circle

and show Monster Squad to a sold-out crowd

here at Friday Night Frights with Fred Dekker there

to be able to appreciate the fact that all these years later,

people still love his movie.

- [Wolfman growls loudly] - [boy yells]

[Horace shouts] Run!

- Kick him in the nards! - Run!

- Kick him in the nards! - He doesn't have nards!

You know, The Goldbergs is a comedy,

essentially, the way I pitched it was

a movie geek growing up in the '80s.

When I saw Monster Squad, I think...

Outside of some Mel Brooks jokes,

the idea that Wolfman has nards

was so crazy-funny to me.

And it's just one of those jokes that kind of defined my sense of humor.

Do it, do it!

[Horace grunts]

Wolfman's got nards!

Come on! Come on!

- [Wolfman growls] - [Horace whimpers]

Every character on my show

is constantly going nards in some sort

because I taught it to everyone through The Monster Squad.

What was that? Punch your brother in the nards?

Good luck and cover your nards.

Nards, definitely the nards.

Oh, nards.

All you did was keep us in line

and let us get hit in the nose,

head, face and nards.

In the nards!

Everybody's just standing around

scratching their nards.

How many words for nards do you people know?

And people recognize, "Oh, that's The Monster Squad."

So this show was about giving a shout out to the movies that... that shaped us.

Right now, every day I wake up

and I go and make a show

called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And for me, the biggest thing it does is

it allows me to have...

kind of a squad of four heroes

just beat up and kill monsters every week.

[chuckles] It's pretty simple.

Oh, that love of genre and movies

led me to work at a video store.

And then, working at the video store,

it was cool because I got to talk about movies.

And then, one day, you're in high school

and they say, "What do you want to do with your life?"

And you've been watching The Monster Squad and these movies,

you know, "I want to get paid to watch movies."

"How do you get paid to watch movies?"

"Uh, well, you become a film critic."

Certainly Monster Squad wa...

Was a pretty big influence on Beyond The Gates,

like, kind of the three touchstones for it to pour.

Phantasm, The Gate and Monster Squad.

Knights of Badassdom is definitely

one of the influences that was derived from Monster Squad

for better for worse, depending on if you've seen the movie.

I wanted to make the sequel

to The Monster Squad or the sequel to The Goonies

where we've all seen them now grown up 20, 30 years later.

I wanted to see what... What all these kids did.

I had a movie night with my cast

and we watched An American Werewolf in London,

Goonies, Monster Squad.

Sitting down with Steve Zahn and Peter Dinklage

watching The Monster Squad... Yeah, picture that one.

I had a VHS recording of Monster Squad from HBO growing up

and I used to watch it every day.

And, um, that sparked my interest

in the classic monsters,

and introduced me to practical effects

and creature effects and... And Stan Winston.

And I started professionally sculpting toys,

the Creature From The Black Lagoon specifically,

um, when I was 15.

And from that, it just led me to a career

of creating monsters for movies for 15 years now.

When I think about the just...

Just how important the Gillman was to me,

my career was always about the monster,

and I didn't know that this would be such a...

A formative beginning because, uh,

it showed a... It showed that I could do it.

It showed tha... that I was respected for what I did

which meant I could continue to do more of it and be in other suits.

I wonder, had I not done that, had I not gotten over that,

that, that feeling of, "Am I good enough to do this?"

Had I not done it early enough, I would still be making monsters,

bu... but it wouldn't feel as complete to me as it is,

being able to... to be the monster at the other end of the schedule.

[Adam Green] I think I try to put as much of myself

into the characters that I write.

And it all goes back to the movies I saw

when I was eight, nine, ten, 11, 12,

uh, an... and thinking, "I know these kids, I'm one of these kids."

And, uh, that's... that's how those movies spoke to me.

I mean, I... I think I... I probably did try to start

my own Monster Squad at one point.

What I do now is, every Wednesday night, no matter what,

we come here into this, you know, sanctuary.

And, you know, we are surrounded by monsters and some robots.

We'll build model kits, we'll draw.

And I think it's important because it's...

It's a chance for us to kind of creatively take a breath

away from the things

that we do on a daily basis.

And for me, it's tricky because I have a creative job,

but I... I have to understand not to take that for granted,

and I think this is kind of a nice counterbalance.

- Like, in 1990, it was the first time I saw... - [man] Yeah.

...Monster Squad, I'd just drawn an invite, you go,

- "What is this? What am I even watching?" It was so good. - Yeah.

[Ciro] Like, me coming here and doing something that's almost,

in a way, creatively selfish,

allows me to go back to work, and it fuels that work.

[inspirational music]

An... and I'm with a bunch of goofy guys in here, and we... and, you know,

we're laughing and stuff like that about off things here and there,

but, at the same time, it's like we are very fueled visually

as... as artists. This place almost is purposefully saturating me

with that stuff and reminding me visually.

I think the dream was always to, you know,

"Hey, let's have a... Let's have a monster club.

Like, no one else can come to this."

But that's what you do when you're in your 40's.

You can't do that in your 30's.

- [interviewer] No? - [Ciro] Not really.

[calm music]

[André] All right. So we're waiting for the administrator

who we just spoke to to see if, um,

we can get permission to take the crew in

and bring us in there to go surprise Douglas and say hi.

That's the kid for the... That didn't come

yesterday to the screening.

Hopefully we can get in there and give him

- a little... - [Ashley] Surprise!

...A little surprise.

[knocks on the door]

[people laughing]

You mind if we come in and hang out for a little bit?

You sure? We got a crew with us, you're fine with that?

How you doing? I'm going to give you that.

- How you feeling? So, this is Douglas. - Hey, buddy.

- Nice to see, I'm Ryan. Here. - [woman] Douglas.

Oh, we taught you could make it last night, man.

Oh, I'm... I'm sorry too, I wanted to, but...

I'd rather you be with us than... I'd rather you be with us than in here, yeah.

You feeling better, though, a little bit or...

- Uh, getting there. - Okay, good.

[woman] He was so upset when he heard he wouldn't get...

I know, that's why we had to come say hi.

Yeah, we came to, uh, represent a little bit.

For me, it's beyond words. I mean, it's...

The movie's been a part... A huge part of my life. Uh...

And you all are standing right in front of me. I don't know.

I don't really know what to say about that. Yeah.

How old were you when you first saw it, you remember?

Oh, man, probably, probably five,

- maybe. - Wow, you started early.

- Yeah, very early. - All right, I like that.

Yeah, me and Louise sat in boxes

and watch it in front of the TV.

- [chuckles] - You used to sit up late and watch it,

- together, you used to watch it together. - [Louise] Oh, yeah.

I think Monster Squad is a movie about outcasts

and y... if you identified with that movie,

you're an outcast.

It's so sweet. It's just so sweet.

Phoebe really wanting Frankenstein's monster to stay,

and like, "Don't go!" And she gives him her, like,

stuffed animal, her little dog, that, like,

she has with her the entire time.

It's on her belt, it's always with her, keeping her safe.

And so, she throws out to him so he's safe and limbo like...

Oh, I'm going to cry, I am crying. It's... it's the best.

I want to call it, you know, th... the...

I don't even know, I don't have a word to describe

what it means to our family.

How the movie plays into my life?

I was 12. My name is Shawn.

I got in trouble for drawing in class, but also,

five months before the movie opens,

um, I'd been diagnosed with HIV.

And it was devastating for me and my family.

I was kicked out of school.

[sighs] You know.

Leaving Ecuador at 13 years old was really tough

because it was like going from one planet to another.

I know for me, personally, having a physical disability,

childhood wasn't always the easiest.

I never really felt like I fit in anywhere.

For my situation as an only child and being more of an introvert,

I would usually latch on to one or two people,

and so I'd have one or two close friends.

I remember that night, hearing about this monster movie,

small town in Waynesboro, Virginia.

And me being able to go with my friends and sit there,

and get lost in the movie,

and forget about some of the things that, you know, where happening.

Monster Squad,for me, was just kind of sort of, like,

it was that group of friends that I needed

when I kind of sort of didn't have friends at the time.

There's a comfort to it. And so, that emotional comfort of coming home.

It just sort of gives you a refresher.

Monster Squad definitely helped me at a time when I needed it.

I blocked out a lot of that time period, but I remember,

I remember going to that movie and sitting there.

I felt normal again, you know, I didn't feel like a monster.

And I like that I have that memory.

Movies like Monster Squad, um,

in a... in a weird way kind of gave me that,

um, safe net when I didn't feel safe.

It's just so emotional, like,

this movie has been with me forever.

So, it's just something that I've always known,

I could always go back to it.

It's helped me through some really hard times,

just being able to, like,

take a break and just smile and, like,

feel accepted.

So...

[soft inspirational music]

[softly grunts]

How did Monster Squad affect my life personally?

Um, I think it's my best movie.

I think it's reached the widest audience of anything, uh,

that I've done as a director.

And it's sort of killed my career for a period of time.

I think it's probably my epithet...

It's probably going to be on my...

gravestone, and I'm...

ambivalent about that.

The analogy I make is, you do a piano concerto

in front of an audience,

and a couple people applaud and then they leave.

And then, 20 years later,

somebody comes up to you in the street and goes,

"I saw that piano concerto you did. That was incredible."

There's such a disconnect

from what you did to the response

that it's really hard to codify emotionally.

It's like shooting a basket in 1987

and then it doesn't go in until 2006.

That's... that's weird.

That's really hard for me to kind of make sense of.

It's not... It's not the sexy answer.

It's not the answer you want and it doesn't,

you know, sort of wrap things up with a bow.

I mean, I... I don't... I don't mean to downplay it.

I just have a very personal relationship with it

because I put my heart and soul int... into it

and nobody noticed for 20 years.

[inspirational music]

[Ryan] London was a total dream.

I was like that's definitely not happening.

It's just something that, when you try to explain it to people,

there's a... th... they just... it... they can't get a grasp on it.

They're like, "What did you do in 2017?" [softly laughs]

You're like,

"I went out and met a bunch of people

that feel very strongly about something that I did when I was 15."

And, uh, you got to love them.

[man] I got a dog called Rudy as well.

You have a dog... Your dog's name is Rudy?

- I gave it when I was five years old. Thank you, sir. - That's awesome.

[André] So we set up a screening

in London, at the Prince Charles Cinema,

which is something I've always wanted to attend.

We get there and we have a mom and her daughter,

and we learned that even 30 years later,

the 15 rating still holds effect in the UK.

And she's not allowed to come into the theater.

They bought their tickets, they waited in line,

and they can't come in.

"You're going to meet Sean and Rudy."

And I'm like, "Wow!"

And I just started jumping around and, you know, saying,

"What am I going to wear? What am I going to do?" And, you know...

We made sure that she was allowed to at least come in

- for the Q&A. - Allegra is in here. Yes?

- [man] Allegra? Hi. - She in the back? Where's she at? There she is.

She was a trooper. She understood, she knows the thing.

Her mom was great, and we got to hang out afterwards.

I'm more of an '80s girl than more of, like, a now modern one. [chuckles]

Because my mom always says,

"Be a modern girl!" And I'm like,

"No, I want to be an '80s star, you know."

Just like it.

[inspirational music]

[Shane] Here we are, 30 years later.

And, in the last ten years, what we've seen is this movie

attain this almost unprecedented cult popularity.

I think it's the love of kids and monsters

and just the tone of the movie

that sustained it.

[André] This growth in the love

and the attachment to The Monster Squad

has not died down.

There's more fans today than there were in 2006.

And there's new fans today.

We have a whole second generation

of Monster Squad fans.

[Matthew] It is fantastic

to be here in the Warner Brothers lot

where Monster Squad was originally filmed.

We got all these amazing sights right here.

[André] And you've got your family here with you today.

So what's it like sharing something like Monster Squad,

that meant so much to you with your own kids?

As... as it being one of my favorite movies,

it just... they were... They grew up with it,

and they loved it from... From the beginning.

It has so many aspects to it that attracted me

and... and them that it's just part of us.

But what a surprise, what a... what a really odd but pleasant surprise

that this thing that we planted

then it grew into something

and we come around 20 years later

and there's a freaking tree there where there was a seed before.

- You got to have the dead media. [chuckles] - Have all the media, right?

Okay. So let's go through the countries.

So, Mexico, Poland, France.

At one point, someone asked me, "I need to meet you in real life at some point

because I can't wait to look at your Monster Squad collection."

And all the sudden it dawned on me that I didn't really have

a lot of Monster Squad stuff.

I remember, like, uh, going on eBay and looking

and seeing that there were some, like, copies from the UK

kind of circling around and I thought, "You know what would be really cool?

It's buying some of those, something that I could display,

but also knowing that each tape has a heritage

of being an ex-rental that... That there's a... there's a life

in each one of these tapes, even if I don't watch them."

I would just love the idea of having a bit of Monster Squad

that touched every continent on the planet.

And I'm pretty close.

[Shane] Wasn't it interesting...

that a movie that is...

basically a pastiche about nostalgia for childhood

now lets you, the actor in the movie,

relive the nostalgia for your childhood?

You know, in essence you were a monster fighter when you were a kid

and now you get to go back and relive that.

[Fred] As an adult, you develop this kind of distance.

It becomes about ideas and aesthetics and you lose the kid.

[Shane] Kids who have this peculiar belief in imagination

that's died within the cynical adults,

and they say, "We believe that this is the key to life,

not growing up."

[André] I always have to see through the eyes of the kid.

That's what people are responding to in Monster Squad.

Monster Squad was something that I, whenever I saw it,

I related to it, but I didn't know why I related to it.

We know these characters,

we went to school with them and we are them.

[Jem] I wish I had that experience.

[Shane] And I think the idea of kids preserving that is important.

And I think that's what The Monster Squad appeals to as well.

[Ryan]I mean, we are a family, that's how, you know, that... that's how it is.

We were a part of the squad. Someone in school was just like Sean.

Who isn't that young kid?

Whether it's fighting the Wolfman

or just having to get through really sucky sixth grade.

[Germain] Every time I watch The Monster Squad,

it takes me back to my childhood,

every single time.

[Fred] Whether they're 40 or... or 12,

they're seeing it through the eyes of a kid because it was told through the eyes of a kid.

[Shane] In essence, we made the movie for you,

and you just had to grow up in time to really appreciate it,

you know. [chuckles]

[inspirational music]

I have memories of driving my parents crazy

with repeat viewings and repeating certain phrases

that... that just caught on with me.

I'd just always get chills every time

Rudy says, "I'm in a goddamn club, aren't I?"

"Give me the amulet, you bitch."

[laughs]

"Kick him in the nards," right? It's the most, uh, iconic scene from the movie.

- Or your dad's fighting off Wolfman. - Yeah.

"Stick it down right in his pants."

[all laugh]

She was Phoebe.

I had a deal with an older sis...

Two older sisters that would bully me and everything.

- Oh, my God! - They were...

- We beat people's asses for you... - [loud laughs]

...in Staten Island. Holy shit!

- You did! - I did!

Dracula was always really sexy to me.

- I'm like, "Restrain yourself, girl." - I forgot,

- I just forgot. - Right?

Showed it to friends in Saudi Arabia,

and then kind of formed a little Monster Squad Saudi Arabia.

Never found any monsters.

We've raided our mom's pantries

to get garlic salt and garlic powder.

I used to imagine, before going to bed at night,

that Dracula would visit me and turn me into his apprentice.

I could, um, I could bring up The Goonies

- first... - Cut. Cut, no. Yeah, no. We're out.

We're done, we're done. Let's...

[heavily sighs]

"Wolfman's got nards!"

"Wolfman's got nards!"

"Wolfman's got nards!"

"Wolfman's got nards!"

"Wolfman's got nards!"

"Wolfman's got nards!"

[crowd shouting together]

[crowd cheers and applauds]

[upbeat music]

♪ So let's keep it underground ♪

♪ Conversation down ♪

♪ Yeah, so love it till it drowns ♪

♪ So let's keep dry ♪

♪ Keep me under ♪

[André] Since you're a fan, I was going to share,

you're one of the first people that has been out of the box,

- but... - Is that a...

[André] This is the original

hero wardrobe Stephen King Rules shirt.

Holy shit!

It's the actual Stephen King Rules shirt.

- Oh! Oh, my God! - The actual Stephen King Rules shirt.

But I have the original...

- Oh! - This has become a thing.

- Wow. - That's amazing.

Wow!

Oh, nice!

Are you kidding me?

- ...the original. - Oh, my goodness.

- This is it. - Oh!

- [water splatters] - It's, uh...

That's incredible.

You were so tiny.

Oh, so tiny. So tiny.

- You were so tiny! - I will let you... we'll let you...

- You were such a little guy. - I know, right?

- [André] It's what everybody says. - [laughs]

- It does look tiny. - [chuckles]

- You wore this? - That was it.

Did you wash it?

Smells like movie magic.

[Joe Magna] When I designed this clubhouse,

I just thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be cool

to try to make the Monster Squad clubhouse?"

And just make it as screen accurate as I possibly could.

My friends that are Monster Squad fans always see it and go,

"Oh, man, this is incredible."

We are on people's bodies.

We were at Spooky Empire and a gal came up

who is a big Monster Squad fan, and she said,

"I figured out what I want for my birthday.

I'm going to come back tomorrow and you and Ryan are going to sign my leg

and I'm going to go next door to the hall

at the convention room where all the tattoo artists work."

[upbeat rock music]

[needles buzzing]

But tell them about Danny.

[Ryan] He'd had... he already had all the monsters,

except Gillman.

[Danny] Putting Gillman on my arm today,

especially with you guys around, is a no-brainer.

[needles buzzing]

[music continues]

Turns out that André and I got to actually grab the gun and ink him.

[needles buzzing]

So, forever, uh, his Gillman will be totally fucked up.