Director: Fred Dekker
Writers: Shane Black, Fred Dekker
Stars: Andre Gower, Robby Kiger, Stephen Macht
1 Hour, 19 Minutes
Get it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2pfixyG
Synopsis
We start in Dracula’s castle a hundred years ago. A big, ugly bat changes into Dracula, who looks around the crypt menacingly. Van Helsing and the villagers storm the castle, but Dracula’s nowhere to be found. A girl is brought in to recite a spell in front of a glowing crystal, but the dead claw through the floor and attack the men. A portal opens, sucking several of the people through.
Back in the present day, Sean and EJ sit in the principal’s office. They were drawing monster pictures in science class. They’re big monster movie fans. The principal explains, “Science is real, monsters are not.”
The two boys then go outside and bully the fat kid, whose name is Horace. They walk past a house where a scary old German guy lives. Horace runs up and wants to let Gary into the Monster Squad.
A pilot hears strange noises coming from the cargo bay. He goes back in there to check it out and finds Dracula. Dracula dumps a couple of coffins out the door and jumps out of the plane.
Sean’s dad, Del, is a cop, and they get a guy at the station who insists he’s a werewolf. The moon comes up, and he freaks out and the cops shoot him. Across town, the Del responds to a call at the museum, which reports a mummy has been stolen. “2,000 year old mummies do not just get up and walk away!” Of course, we then cut to the mummy walking down the street. The werewolf wakes up and kills the guy who was driving him to the morgue.
The werewolf and the mummy meet up with Dracula in the woods. The three of them find the Gill-man and Frankenstein’s monster there as well. Dracula pulls jumper cables out of his cane and hooks them to Frankenstein’s neck-bolts. Lightning hits the cane and recharges the monster.
Sean gets a message from “Mr. Alucard from school.” It seems he wants the Van Helsing diary that Sean just found in a scary house in the neighborhood. Sean unscrambles the name and sees that it spells “Dracula.” Sean calls his friends from the monster club, and he explains everything in an annoying, childlike, panicky way that anyone over the age of twenty will find particularly grating.
Dracula orders Frankenstein to find the kids, take the diary, and if they don’t cooperate, then kill them.
Meanwhile, the kids go to see the scary German guy, and they ask him to translate the diary for them. The scary German guy gives them pie and reads about an amulet that is made of concentrated good that wards off evil. It can only be destroyed once every hundred years when it becomes vulnerable. If this happens, the balance between good and evil will shift, and evil will win. He explains how to do the ceremony that opens the portal to Hell. The hundred-year anniversary is tomorrow night.
Sean’s little sister introduces them to Frankenstein’s monster. They teach him words like “Bogus,” and he joins the club.
Meanwhile, Dracula and the Wolf Man dig up the amulet in the old house where Sean found Van Helsing’s book.
There’s a montage of the kids making silver bullets, stealing pointy stakes and bows and arrows, and other things kids their age shouldn’t be doing. The human half of the werewolf calls Sean’s dad and warns him what’s coming just before he wolfs up again.
The boys enter Dracula’s house, and Frankenstein gets buried under rubble. The Wolf Man chases the boys toward Dracula’s brides. They’re surrounded, but they find a secret trapdoor wherein they find the amulet.
Dracula attacks, but they smear garlic pizza on his face and run away. The old German guy shows up in his car and drives them to church, but then the mummy attacks. The Mummy gets unspooled.
Del the cop and his partner drive right through Dracula’s car on their way to the house. Dracula goes to Sean’s house and blows up their clubhouse with dynamite. He then kills Del’s partner with dynamite. He tells Sean’s parents that he intends to kill Sean.
The kids stand outside the church and try to read the book with the ritual while Rudy shoots vampire women with arrows. Del shows up just as Dracula does and there’s more shooting. They blow up the werewolf with more dynamite, but he starts to reassemble. Rudy shoots the werewolf with a silver bullet. The Gill-man attacks, but Fat Kid shoots him with a shotgun.
Dracula approaches and manages to kill every cop in town on the way there. The little girl, Phoebe, has the amulet, and Dracula wants it. He grabs her, but Frankenstein intervenes and stops him. The German man prompts Phoebe to say the rest of the magic words, and the portal finally opens, pulling in all the monsters. Van Helsing comes out of the portal and pulls in Dracula. Lastly, Frankenstein gets sucked in too, but it’s OK because Phoebe gives him a stuffed animal to keep him company.
The army shows up just as everything starts calming down.
Commentary
These kids are way too hyper, wise-cracking, and fast-talking, and they all talk in 80s slang. There’s inappropriate rock music, gratuitous Burger King and Pepsi product placement, naked selfie blackmail threats, and many shots of people smoking in offices. It’s the 80s; times were different. There’s a lot more dynamite easily available than I remember being the case in the 80s.
The makeup, masks, and monsters all look really good here. The child actors screaming their lines hysterically killed it for me. The acting quality is right up there with watching a Disney Channel show with the volume turned up to “excruciating.”
This is another really highly-regarded young-people’s horror movie, and it does have really good creatures and scary situations. The child actors ruin it for the adult me, but I can see where kids would love it.