by: -RoG-

...CONTINUED

Back at the town police station there's a guy begging to be locked up because tonight is a full moon and he claims to be a werewolf. He grabs one of the officer's guns and screams at them once again to lock him up. Instead, they shoot him. Haha, cops do the darndest things!

Over at the local museum, they're saying a 2000-year-old mummy has just vanished from the museum and nobody saw anybody take him. That's probably because he got up and walked away on his own. Why all these monsters are located in this small town is beyond me - I guess Dracula just got lucky.

Meanwhile, a coroner is transporting the crazed werewolf guy who got shot to the hospital. As you know, it takes a silver bullet to kill a werewolf, and sure enough, he's not dead. Even worse, he's now completely morphed into a werewolf and just killed the driver. Haha, werewolves do the darndest things!

I'm sure I'm getting a bit sidetracked here, but I have to say that I always envied the hell out of Sean when I was a kid. You see, back at home, he could climb out of his window and sit on the roof and have a perfect view of the nearby drive-in movie theater with his binoculars. So he could watch any horror movie he wanted for free. What's more is that his dad not only didn't care if he watched those mega-gory movies, but he'd sometimes come up on the roof and watch them with him. So yeah, I'm sure Sean was the envy of most kids back in the '80s, not just me.

Ok, back to the story...

Dracula and the other monsters have all converged at the swamp to bring Frankenstein back to life. And look who else has joined in the fun - it's the Creature from the Black Lagoon! Ah the classics. With his fishy strength, he lifts Frankenstein crate out of the water and tosses it up on land. Yeah, yeah the crate should say "Frankenstein's Monster" instead of Frankenstein, but we'll let it slide. It's a lot easier to just say "Frankenstein" anyway.

With Frankenstein's body now ashore, Dracula busts out a cane with a snarling brass wolf for a grip. It's the kind of cane that only a pimp would carry, but it seems that the other monsters are Dracula's ho's in this movie anyway; so that works. Dracula remove the ears from the wolf and attaches them to Frankensteins head. The ears have wires attached to them. Say, that's no pimp cane... that's a lightning rod!

With a zippity-zap, the lightning shoots down into Frankie's noggin and he starts to come to life. Don't question it... it's science. The monsters are real and they're soon going to wreak havoc upon this small town. But fret not, because the Monster Squad is on the case! That's even better than having the Bloodhound Gang out to save the day!

"Whenever there's trouble, we're there on the double! We're the Bloodhound Gang Monster Squad! If you've got the crime, we've got the time! We're the Bloodhound Gang Monster Squad!"

Back at home, Sean reads a note on the wall from his mom. Apparently he missed a call from a Mr. Alucard who is interested in buying the Van Helsing Diary. Only if you look closely it's written on the board as "Van Halen Diary" instead. Helsing, Halen... what's the difference? The point is, Sean's mom gave him this old diary (written in German) that she found at a yard sale, and now some random stranger knows about it? Who could this stranger be?

Sean, the super-sleuth that he is, writes down the name "Alucard" on a piece of paper and starts rearranging the letters. Soon enough he discovers the awful truth that it's Dracula himself!

In another completely random scene that basically adds nothing to the plot of the movie, a little boy (the younger brother of one of the Monster Squad kids, who's wearing some badass Robotech pajamas I might add) walks up to his dad and explains that there are monsters in his room. Being a good father, he humors his son and goes into the room to scare away all the monsters. The boy tells him there's one more left in the closet, so the dad opens the door without looking and jokingly goes "Oooooooo!" not realizing that the Mummy monster really is standing in the closet behind him. The father then leaves the terrified boy alone and the mummy crawls out through the window.

And that's it; we never learn just what in the hell the mummy was doing inside that closet. Probably something perverted. Damned mummies...

Back at the club, Sean tells the gang all about how he thinks some very weird stuff is going on and that the monsters are for real. With that in mind, he forms the Monster Squad and they all join in... even the dog.

Back in Dracula's spooky haunted house place, Frankenstein is now been sent out on a mission to retrieve Van Helsing's diary from the Monster Squad kids. And if they don't give him the diary peacefully? Frankenstein is supposed to kill them.

A lot of people have probably never seen the original 1931 Frankenstein, but many have heard of the scene which was (for a long time) never shown to audiences in which Frankenstein throws a girl into a lake. Not because he's a mean monster; he does it because she throws a flower into the lake and he is amused by it so he throws her in the lake thinking she will float just the same. But she doesn't float... she drowns. Back in '31, this was considered too terrible to show to audiences, but by today's standards it's quite tame.

In a wonderful tribute to the original Frankenstein film, they have Phoebe sitting next to the lake as Frankenstein approaches her. And even though he doesn't pick her up and throw her into the lake, it's nice to see them give a nod to the classic Frankenstein like that.

Meanwhile, since none of them can read German, the Monster Squad guys decide to risk everything and pay a visit to Scary German Guy's house in hopes that he'll translate it! They stand outside of it for a while, still debating about whether they should go knock on his door or not, when he appears behind them. He takes them inside and helps translate the book, telling them about how the amulet from the beginning of the movie is a talisman that wards off evil. If a virgin recites a certain passage from the book at the stroke of midnight, a giant vortex will swallow the forces of evil forever. As Patrick put it, Scary German Guy is bitchin!

Sean meets up with Rudy at the local diner and asks him if he knows any virgins, thus causing him to spit his soda out all over the place. I've never reacted to something mildly surprising by spitting soda out of my mouth. Nope, not even once in my life. But Rudy? He does. In fact, he does it twice in the movie. I told you he was a badass.

Back at the clubhouse, Phoebe introduces her newfound friend, Frankenstein, to the rest of the guys. They immediately bolt and little Phoebe shouts out, "Come on, don't be chicken shits!" When the most innocent and youthful characters in a movie get lines like that, you know you've found yourself one hell of a flick. After some hesitation, Sean approaches Frankenstein and realizes he's not going to harm them. And with that, Phoebe is now allowed into the Monster Squad club. I mean really, if you're able to produce a bona fide monster, you should be able to get into any club you damn well please.

Frank comes up into their clubhouse and Phoebe is proud of him as he practices some of the words he taught her. Out of all the things he's learned to say, there's one word that anybody who's seen this movie before remembers: BOGUS! Frankenstein looks out the window and sees the same girl from earlier in the movie (who is actually Patrick's sister) and she's disrobing.

Frankenstein, in a moment of absolute brilliance, takes a snapshot of her and shouts out "Bogus!" not once, but twice. He can take photos of naked women and say the word "bogus" - not bad for a guy who's been dead for ages, eh?

To further push the idea that this Frankenstein is absolutely harmless, the creators have him look at a Halloween mask of his face and he gets all upset and ask the kids if he's scary. We then cut to the whole Monster Squad walking down the road at sunset with Phoebe holding Frankenstein's hand. Awww...

Over at Dracula's pad where the monsters aren't so sappy, Dracula hammers his way through an old wall to find the amulet still safe 'n sound after all these years. His plan is to destroy it come midnight tomorrow night, and while I'm sure Drac is excited, it just doesn't compare to the twitchy head-bobbing glee of the Wolfman. Somebody please give that guy a sedative.

And so begins the big training / "let's get ready to fight the monsters!" montage. While Michael "Maniac" Sembello's montage music doesn't quite pack the same punch of Robert Tepper's, "No Easy Way Out," it still gets the job done for a bunch of kids who are about to face off against some classic monsters. You can't lose with lyrics like this: "Rock until you drop! Dance until your heart stops! Rock until you drop! Dance until your feet fall off!"

So each of the Monster Squad members set out to do their own little tasks to help defeat the monsters. Sean maps out things and makes all the big plans... Rudy makes some wooden stakes and silver bullets in shop class (he must've had a completely oblivious teacher)... Eugene writes a letter to the Army in crayon asking for assistance with battling the monsters... and Phoebe 'n Frankenstein do their part by playing dress up with a feather boa, flowers and a bridal veil.

Hey, I thought it was the Mummy who was in the closet, not Frankenstein!

Patrick is doing his part by printing out official Monster Squad business cards. They don't appear to have any contact information on them as they only read "The Monster Squad", but then again, Superman's phone number isn't in the Yellow Pages either now is it? You just gotta keep some shit secret. Rudy has now moved onward to the local archery field to steal himself a bow and arrow set. So Rudy is fully capable of making wooden stakes and silver bullets from scratch, but he can't make a bow and arrow? Makes sense to me.

I'm not sure what Horace has been up to during this Montage since he's absent from almost the entire thing. But whatever he's been doing, you can rest assured that it's vital to the success of their mission. Even if he's just taking a nap. It's a vital nap. VITAL.

Next, we see Rudy leaving the Fox Photo lab with the pictures from the Monster Squad's camera. And it's at this point that we witness his second soda-spitting extravaganza because he's just discovered the nude photo of Patrick's sister that Frankenstein took.

Ok, I guess Frankenstein isn't in the closet after all because he sure is enjoying the hell outta that nude photo of Patrick's older sister. Then again, maybe he's bi? The world may never know. What I do know is that it's a bit weird seeing Phoebe, who's only 5-years-old in this movie, jumping up towards Frankenstein with the rest of the guys in hopes of catching a glimpse of the nudie photo.

Oh but there's more!
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OF THE MONSTER SQUAD TRIBUTE!