Reviewed by Duncan Bain
Stars Henry Polic II, Buck Kartalian, Mike Lane, Fred Grandey, Vito Scotti,
Barry Dennen, Al Mancini, Alice Ghostley, Ty Randolph | Written by Charles Isaacs
UK certification U | UK RRP £24.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 312 minutes | Directed by James Sheldon
I suspect I may not be the last individual to mistake this for the synonymous kids’ 80 action movie. The Monster Squad presented here is a sophomore effort from the creators of celebrated Adam West Batman TV series.
Catering for a similarly fizzy-pop fuelled sort of consumption, this DVD set brings us the complete (and only) first season of the mid-70s Saturday morning TV distraction. Human hero Walt is a night watchman at a Wax Museum who happens to have a Crime Computer that accidentally awakens the wax monsters of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman. Remorseful for their misdeeds, the three beasts decide to form a crime fighting team headed by the human that appears to specialise in neon-coloured high camp villains.
The Monster Squad will presumably find an audience with nostalgic men in their late 30s and early 40s. There appears to be little scope for any other market interest – while Batman has come (in many ways) to define the bubblegum pop and psychedelia of the Sixties with a charming naivety, Monster Squad hasn’t fared so well in the collective consciousness, and with more than 30 years’ hindsight, the waxworks would have been better off left in storage. High camp antics; groan-inducing punnery; and Not So Clever post-modernism feature heavily throughout the series that looks and feels cheap, even in comparison to its creators' earlier work.
The DVD transfer is not remastered at all; looks grainier than most mobile phone YouTube clips, and the audio is hissier than a pit of snakes. The Monster Squad never claimed to be high art when it aired on TV, and there is no doubt that people will fondly return to their memories of this silliness, but younger generations can easily find better remnants of their own wasted youth to reminisce with.
EXTRAS Episode and series synopses.