Directed by Andre Gower
Featuring Adam F. Goldberg, Seth Green, Shane Black, Heather Langenkamp and Zach Galligan
Running time: 1 hour and 31 minutes

by Nikk Nelson

I’ve never known life without The Monster Squad (1987). You wouldn’t think the small-town Anthony, Kansas videostore, Videomax would carry something like it. But they did, because it was run by an older, super-foxy hippie that I had a huge crush on growing up. For a solid four years, I bet, anytime I rented a movie, it was Monster Squad and whatever else. It was one of a handful of movies that I knew by heart and could more or less perform on the spot. So, I was fairly surprised, when I started school that no one had really heard of it. I was used to the other kids not seeing horror movies, but this wasn’t really a horror movie. It was a kid’s movie. Little did I know, that was exactly why no one had ever seen it. One of the many revelations in Andre Gower’s retrospective documentary, Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018), to anyone new to this universe, is that The Monster Squad wasn’t a hit. It was a resounding flop. Too scary for little kids and too ‘marketed to little kids’ for teenagers. So, when the film opens with Andre interviewing its co-writer/director Fred Dekker, we find an indifferent and subtly bitter person who is only now seeing the film become a success: “It’s like shooting a basket in 1987 and it not going in until twenty years later.”

You can immediately relate to his frustration. John Carpenter said the same thing about The Thing (1982). It’s really great that now, these films have found an audience and built some critical acclaim. But, back when they were actually released, their performance and the response nearly ended their careers. This is probably doubly felt by Dekker who, a year prior to the release of Monster Squad, released Night of the Creeps (1986), yet another flop in its day that has gone on to achieve the same cult status. Robocop 3 (1993) was the true nail in the coffin for Dekker’s career that has only begun to revive as recently as 2018 with The Predator—thanks in no small part I’m sure to writing partner, friend, and talking head in this documentary, Shane Black. I also have to believe that this Monster Squad reappreciation that Gower set out to document has something to do with it. Fred Dekker is always someone I’ve rooted for and I sincerely hope he gets to finally start enjoying some success in real time. 

I remember the DVD boom of the late nineties to mid aughts. I was in college. I was at Best Buy probably every weekend like a kid in a candy store. So many studios were releasing their catalogues to DVD and, for ten bucks a pop, I could buy movies that I hadn’t been able to rent since my childhood. Remember, this is the era of early internet, no streaming and peak Blockbuster Video where most of their stock was two-hundred copies of the same three new releases. If it was a movie older than fifteen years and wasn’t a “classic”, good luck finding it. I remember one particularly fruitful night where I walked out of Best Buy with Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Critters (1986), The Goonies (1985), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Fright Night (1985), Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and The Lost Boys (1987). I used scholarship money and had to eat nothing but ramen for three weeks to stay in budget but you didn’t hear me complain. Noodles and movies is a happy Double K.

Anywho, the movie I could never find was Monster Squad. And it drove me nuts. How was I finding every other piece of my childhood and not this one? Internet was emerging from infancy and it was something I googled constantly. Where is our goddamn Monster Squad DVD? What the documentary reveals is that this fan demand was solely responsible for one, getting a 2-Disc special edition DVD release of the film in 2007, and two, revealing to the actors and other filmmakers that this film is incredibly loved and has been ever since it was released. 

Gower documents countless meetings with fans, Alamo Drafthouse screening and there’s even a few celebrity talking heads gushing about their love for the movie, including Seth Green. The documentary has an overall format similar to Best Worst Movie (2009), another documentary where the lead actor, twenty years later, revisits the cast and time of a cult classic, Troll 2 (1990) but unlike Best Worst Movie which I found to, at times, be horribly awkward and sad, Wolfman’s Got Nards is an uplifting and sweet thank you letter to fans like me, who loudly demanded the internet gods do our bidding and put this piece of happiness back in the world.

Find Wolfman’s Got Nards today on BluRay and on demand.