Monster Squad - The Complete TV Series

If you're like me, and you like your horror monsters a little on the kooky side, like 'The Munsters'  or 'The Addams Family', then 'Monster Squad - The TV Series' could well be for you. Growing up in the halcyon age of Hammer, with a steady diet of the Universal Horrors as a kid, I was part of that generation whose anthem was 'Monster Mash' and who considered Frankenstein, Dracula, The Werewolf and The Mummy as potentially friends as opposed to fiends. 

'Monster Squad' aired at the tail end of such silliness in the mid-seventies (almost a decade before the movie spin-off) and in the US it aired on Saturday mornings on NBC from 1976-1977. Unlike many such series, it has been pretty much confined to the vaults ever since, rarely seeing the light of day (a couple of episodes made their way onto a Saturday Morning kids TV compilation VHS in the early eighties).



The series is low budget, stagey studio-bound time filling fodder with more canned laughter than it rightfully deserves, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the 'Batman' TV Series of the sixties. Actually, this is no coincidence as it was produced by pretty much the same team with many episodes being penned by Batman TV series creator Stanley Ralph Ross.

The series stars Fred Grandy (who also starred in The Love Boat) as Walt, a criminology student working as a night watchman in a wax museum. We learn in the opening credits (again and again) that, to pass the time, Walt built a prototype "Crime Computer" in a mummy case near an exhibit of legendary monsters; Dracula, Frankenstein and The Werewolf. When Walt plugged in his Crime Computer, "oscillating vibrations" brought to life the wax statues of Dracula (Henry Polic II), the Wolfman (Buck Kartalian) who here was named "Bruce W. Wolf" (with one episode revealing that the "W" stood for "Were"), and Frankenstein's monster (Michael Lane) who was referred to as "Frank N. Stein" in the credits, and called 'Frank' throughout.



The monsters, wanting to make up for the misdeeds of their pasts, become superhero crime-fighters who use their unique abilities to challenge and defeat a raft of ultra-camp super-villains, very much like those in Batman. In most episodes, Walt sends the monsters out to investigate crimes and fight the villains while monitoring the activities from the wax museum via the Crime Computer, because his job requires him to be at the museum at all times. However, Walt sometimes joins in the action  by stepping into the breach to rescue his monster crew at the eleventh hour ...just as a 'tickling machine' or some other mad device is about to put them out of action.

The Squad have their own customised Monster Van, and each monster has a "utility belt" with a communicator device used to keep in touch with Walt.



Despite having  very low-budget production values (this looks even less expensive than 'Batman') it featured some familiar faces as villains, including Alice Ghostley (Esmerelda in 'Bewitched') , Marty Allen (a popular TV stand up comedian at the time), Jonathan Harris (Dr. Zachary in 'Lost in Space') , Julie Newmar (the original Catwoman ....Miaow!),  Avery Schreiber ('Chico and the Man') and Vito Scotti ('Columbo', 'The Monkees', 'Get Smart' etc).  So a virtual 'who's who' of budget American TV at the time.

Though the series pretty much came and went, it remains a popular 'lost in time' series amongst nostalgia freaks and will, certainly in the U.S., be a welcome release, bringing back some happy TV memories. Newcomers, however, should expect a creaking, dated and singularly unfunny monument to a time in Television when you could get away with stuff like this. Hammy, almost pantomime acting, and plots so fragile as to be meaningless. But despite this (or maybe precisely because of this) it does have a strange nostalgic charm.



Though by no means a hit on release (I don't think I ever saw a 'Monster Squad' lunch-box) it did inspire the movie a few years later which changed the original premise somewhat and put a young teenager in as the star. A later, unrelated animated television series by Hanna-Barbera Productions called 'Drak Pack' had a noticeably similar premise.

The image quality on this set is pretty poor. I suspect a pretty quick transfer of an ancient NTSC video tape. But if you can overlook that, then it's likely to look as good as you remember it.



There are no extras other than text based character and episode synopsis which, in my opinion, don't really count.

On balance, though the quality isn't great, and the series is really only of historic interest, I think Fabulous Films should be applauded for this release. It will have only very limited appeal but it will certainly make some individuals extremely happy to finally get their hands on the complete series.