The Monster Squad answers the age old question, “What would happen if you mixed Universal Monsters with the Goonies?” I think Socrates was the first person to ask it, but I don’t remember for sure. This Friday, The Watching Hour celebrates the Monster Squad with a big ol’ monster mash… or is it a bash? The festivities start around 9pm with free pizza, beer, and lots of monster-y goodness. It’s a costume party, so dress up as your favorite monster. The cherry on top is a special guest appearance by the leader of the Monster Squad himself, Andre Gower, who played Sean. The Monster Squad on the big screen, Andre Gower in person doing a Q&A and taking some pictures, free beer and pizza, and dress up? Now that’s a party!
In anticipation of Friday’s event, Andre was kind enough to chat with me for a few minutes about the legacy of Monster Squad. We talk about his favorite monster, the convoluted path to the long-belated DVD release, the upcoming Monster Squad remake, and everything in between, including the storied history of a very special t-shirt. Thanks to Keith Garcia, Watching Hour programmer extraordinaire for helping arrange this interview. Read on, brave souls!
Ben: Before Monster Squad, were Universal Monsters or horror movies in general an interest of yours, or did that come after the movie?
Andre Gower: Well, the classic stuff you would see back in the day before cable… you would see Saturday morning matinees. You know, right after Kung Fu Fever you’d see some old monster flicks. And everybody’s kind of always aware of the iconography of Dracula and Frankenstein. The one that always stuck out with me was the original Creature from the Black Lagoon because he was just so different. There were three dozen different incantations of Dracula, Wolfman, and Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein, and things like that. Creature from the Black Lagoon was sort of this original campy fifties thing. I just liked the way he looked. He was original, so it was kind of neat to have him involved in Monster Squad with the regular suspects.
B: Yeah, they did the Creature a lot differently in Monster Squad, I would say more so than the 1930’s Universal monsters. The Stan Winston design was a lot different for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
AG: It was. Everything came down to a rights thing because Universal passed on the movie. They didn’t think that anyone would be interested in this crop of monsters. Why would anyone put them together in anything? They’re past. So Fred (Dekker, the director) and the group took the movie over to another studio. Then lo and behold Universal ended up doing it anyway with Van Helsing a few years later! It was a rights issue and you had to take steps to not step on those copyrights with the characters. Frankenstein’s a little different. Although as a character Frankenstein was public domain by that point, the movie image of him was still under Universal rights. The Gill-Man was based on the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We had to name him Gill-Man and make him different. The gills were vertical instead of horizontal. Instead of a slimeball they made him more reptilian. They had to tweak him a little bit to deal with those rights issues.
B: How did you end up landing the role of Sean?
AG: Through a regular audition process. It was all the usual suspects of the young actors of the day, which back then was a much smaller pool than it is today because there was a lot less programming, less roles, and everyone kind of knew everybody. This was just another feature film coming down the pipeline. The interesting story is that I originally read for the role of Rudy. Those were the kind of roles that I had played. The cool kid with stylish hair, etc., etc. I’d come off a couple shows playing that sort of character. I originally read for that. After I had been called back a couple times, I got the call that I was cast in the movie, but in a different role. At the beginning I was actually a little pissed off that I didn’t get the cool role. Now I was kind of this geeky leader of the pack and not the cool character. But I think things worked out pretty well. Ryan (Lambert, who played Rudy) was a fantastic move. He was perfect for it. And being Sean Crenshaw and turning into the leader of the Squad…I think things worked out.
B: Interesting that you always went for those kinds of roles, but maybe the most iconic role of your child career was not as a bad boy.
AG: Yeah, was not as the cool kid. Even after Monster Squad there were some roles where I end up kind of playing that guy. But I think there’s always been a good blend. All the roles I’ve ever played have either been kind of Sean Crenshaw-esque or Rudy-esque. So It’s kinda neat. Fred Dekkard is a good resource of info on the subject of casting. He was there for the whole thing. I was only there for my part. There were a lot of names that people would recognize even to this day that read for this film. Fred is really adamant about the fact that everyone was cast for a reason. Some were known. Myself and Ryan had some experience and had done some work up until that time and kind of had a following, an audience. Everybody else was kind of fresh and new. I think that added to some of the realism. It’s one of the things that resonates with Monster Squad fans. I think it’s one of the reasons why the film holds up 20-something years later. I always say the reason people like this film – and some people LOVE this film – is that everybody resonates or connects with one or more of the characters in some way. And sometimes on different levels…without getting too annoyingly cerebral about it. Everybody was either the smarty leader kid, or the cool outcast that didn’t fit in, or the little sister, the fat kid, the best friend that palled around, or the young kid who no one ever paid any attention to. Like Eugene, you know? Some people ask, why was Eugene even there? The inspiration for Monster Squad was something like Little Rascals. An amalgam of all those young kids. That’s why I think Little Rascals was popular in the day, and that’s why the Lil’ Rascals theme has been played over and over in different films and TV shows. Everybody can connect with somebody in there. It worked in Monster Squad for some reason.
B: I have to ask about the “Stephen King Rules” shirt from the movie. You’ve kind of embodied that. I saw you’re selling in on your website now?
AG: Yeah, I wear that homemade crappy t-shirt through the entire film, just about, and that was one of those original, individual letters, kind of uneven and everything. Who walks around with a shirt that says that? So it sort of became a kind of iconic piece. So when we did the very first cast reunion screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX in ’06 I believe, they had actually made up a box of shirts as an event specific thing, and it kind of took off from there. I actually threw one on as I walked into the theater. I didn’t know they had them, so I threw one on under my jacket and wore it around for the first screening. It was just a crazy last minute thing. After the photos came out from that event, everybody started writing me about, you know, “where can I get mine?” So we made some up so fans can get them. They can order it and I’ll sign it or not sign it (because some people like to wear it). I’ll probably bring a few to give away at the Denver screening. It’s just a cool thing. People really like to have them. Ironically, I’ve been sent a ton of pictures and emails and things, and when we’re doing appearances at screenings and conventions, fans will come up and they went out and made their own shirts back when they were kids. It’s the same shirt. It’s amazing, twenty years later, when a 30 year old guy comes up and says, “I made my own shirt like that because you wore it in the movie.” That’s kind of cool. It’s an interesting piece for the fans to enjoy.
B: Being a little younger, that cast reunion screening put on by the Alamo Drafthouse and Ain’t It Cool News was the first time I’d heard about Monster Squad. Was there a surge of attention from that, or was there already a thriving Monster Squad cult before that?
AG: Monster Squad had always kind of been around. Fans had loved that film ever since it came out. They bought their copies on VHS, or taped it off HBO, or they rented it from Blockbuster or local video store. There’s always just one copy and people either wore it out or they stole it or bought it or whatnot because they wanted it. But you couldn’t ever get it on DVD. You couldn’t even get it on VHS because they only did one run of it back 20-something years ago. The Alamo Drafthouse and Ain’t it Cool News thing came up because one of the guys at Ain’t It Cool News - Quint - actually contacted me via email. He had gotten the email on imdb.com or something and actually contacted me directly and let me know that it’s one of his all time favorite movies and that he was working with the Alamo Drafthouse to do a screening. I had never heard of the Alamo Drafthouse before this. Quint goes, “Would you be willing to get in touch with me and talk about this?” We emailed a couple times and talked on the phone. He was like, “Look, what I’d really like to do, what the Alamo does – being the famous place that it is – is to get a cast reunion going. We’ve been in touch with you. And we’d love to get in touch with Tom Woodruff, who’s the stunt guy in the Gill-Man suit. And even Leonardo Cimino, who plays Scary German Guy,” because they had known him from another event or something. And I said, “Well, look. If you’re trying to do a cast reunion screening let me make 3 phone calls and get back to you.” I had just reconnected with Ashley (Bank), who played my sister in the movie. I’d always kept in contact with Fred (Dekkard, the director), and off and on with Ryan, but had good contact with him. I got in touch with all three of those that week and asked if they’d be interested in doing it. And they all said, “Absolutely.” This was the first time any of us had been contacted like this. In my mind I was like, “This is either going to be a cheesy thing that bombs, but we’re all going to get to hang out in Austin, TX for a weekend, or else it’s gonna be a crazy event and it’s gonna be really fun.” Well, as we arrived we had no idea what it was actually going to be. The Alamo is just awesome. This is the original venue downtown. They had two sold out screenings back to back on Easter Sunday. They turned away a hundred people at each screening at the door because they just couldn’t fit them in. They had an hour and a half autograph session after each one, and a Q&A. It just went nuts in there. Ain’t It Cool News ran it’s stories. The rest of the blogosphere and the genre sites all clambered on. Of course, this is when the DVD bug started. The question that always came up was where’s the DVD? Interestingly, at that time there was never going to be a DVD because no one know who owned the rights to the movie. Fred didn’t own them, Tristar didn’t own them. There was some talk of tracking it down. Naming rights got sold over here, and video rights, distribution, they’re all over the place. It’s this wacky thing that no one knew where the one piece of paper that said “we own this film” was. I thought we could probably get a grassroots effort online and have everybody send in a dollar to see if we could buy these rights and make our own DVD, just get it out there. You know, make some cheap version. And all of a sudden there’s a fan fervor. We did more conventions, more screenings, there was more and more demand. Lionsgate ended up figuring out that they owned the rights to it, or actually that they owned the video rights to it. Viacom, I think, still owns the naming rights, so they had to work out a deal with them. All of a sudden we’re at this convention in New Jersey sometime the next year and a DVD producer was there and says, “We’re doing the DVD and Lionsgate is putting it out. It’s finally happening.” They got together with Fred about finding deleted scenes and extra footage. It was incredible. 20 years of no one ever wanting anything to do with it and then after 3 or 4 months of fan fervor it just came out of the woodwork. They created a special edition DVD almost overnight. The timing worked out great. A couple months later we launched it at Comic Con and had a screening there and it was crazy. I think Lionsgate underestimated Monster Squad fans. It sold out of its first pressing after 3 days. They made another one. That sold out by the end of the week. Then they had to go to a third run and sold a couple hundred thousand DVD copies in a couple weeks. Literally it was one of the top selling DVDs in the month of August. With no marketing and advertising or anything. Just word of mouth between Monster Squad fans and us at appearances that, “Hey, the DVD’s coming out.” We had this huge launch at Comic Con. It was the same weekend the 300 DVD came out, and other films were launching. I mean, we were at Comic Con. That’s the pinnacle of that world. It was crazy. It was great. We had a 3 hour autograph line. Fans were wrapped around, winding through the convention hall to get their DVD signed the day it released. It was just awesome. And it went from there. Now, ironically, we always joke about it. It took twenty years for people to get a DVD, and now they still can’t get it because it’s sold out! And who would have thought a year later they would have come out with a BluRay of the Monster Squad? So now we have a special edition DVD and a BluRay, which means good things because that turned around and created a fan fervor of Fred Deckard fans and his first film Night of the Creeps got put on DVD.
B: They’re both beautiful releases. I assume all that had something to do with how Platinum Dunes is now planning on making a Monster Squad remake, right?
AG: Yeah, that is the word on the street, as they say. Actually, probably like two years or so ago there was talk that…actually I know for a fact, because two different sets of people contacted me asking for the rights because they wanted to remake it. And I said that’s kind of playing with fire, there. Monster Squad fans are going to hate that. So they were looking for the rights. After the DVD came out officially, Rob Cohen, who was ironically a producer on the original, announced that they were putting together a remake. Now in the last months they’ve attached some writers. So it looks like the latest news is that Michael Bay is producing it! This little decent rated film that made a little money at the box office and has a whole bunch of fans is now getting made by Rob Cohen and Michael Bay. So it’s gonna get remade, much to the chagrin of a lot of Monster Squad fans. If it happens, I hope they do it right and honor the original a little bit, just for the sake of keeping something sacred. Hopefully they do well on it and it turns out pretty good.
B: Has anybody asked for your involvement? Is it too early for that?
AG: I think it’s still too early. I think they’re still getting a script together. That’s a bridge to cross when you come to it. To this date, nobody’s made any official inquiries towards me or anyone else that I know of. So we’d have to see what the content was, and what they’re trying to do with it, maybe run it by some Monster Squad fans and get some feedback on it.
B: Do you know that the Monster Squad screening on Friday is a “Dress up as your favorite monster” party?
AG: Yeah I saw that. That’s what makes these things kind of neat. When fans do that kind of stuff it shows that they’re really getting in the spirit.
B: Any chance you’ll be dressing up?
AG: I might come as myself, just older.
-Ben
The Watching Hour is a weekly film series at the Starz Film Center, highlighting new and old cult, genre, or otherwise bizarro movies. Quite simply, The Watching Hour is usually the best thing to do in Denver on a Friday or Saturday night. From Giallo to schlock, Blaxploitation to Aussiesploitation, zombies to martial arts to who-knows-what, and everywhere in between. This is good ol’ rock and roll cinema spectacle. Not to be missed. (See the schedule, buy tickets, get directions, etc. here.)