The Monster Sqaud!!!!!
- Thread starter Kon1
- Start date
This thread got me looking for answers. There's good news yet! A 20th Anniversary Disc comming soon!!
February 20: DVD producer talks MONSTER SQUAD disc
At the just-concluded Monster-Mania convention in New Jersey, Fango sat down with DVD honcho Michael Felsher, who was there getting interviews and more with Fred Dekker and the reunited cast of the director’s 1987 cult fave THE MONSTER SQUAD. Having created special features for THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, MANIAC COP and more via his Red Shirt Pictures company, Felsher graduates to DVD producer with MONSTER SQUAD, a long-awaited home release coming from Lionsgate later this year. While an exact street date and content details have yet to be finalized, Felsher tells Fango, “The plan is to do a new transfer in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It has never been presented that way in North America; it was transferred on high-definition a couple of years ago, and that looked great, but it was in 1.78:1. So the new one will be 2.35, and Fred is very anxious to make sure it’s presented properly.
“And there will be plenty of extras; here at Monster-Mania, we just completed an audio commentary with [pictured above] Fred and three members of the Monster Squad, [left to right] Andre Gower, Ashley Bank and Ryan Lambert.” Fango was privileged to sit in on the recording, a highly entertaining trip down memory lane for the grown-up SQUAD-ers; a panel discussion with the quartet and creature actors Duncan Regehr (Dracula), Tom Noonan (Frankenstein’s monster) and Tom Woodruff Jr. (Gillman) was also taped for the disc. “I’m shooting a series of featurettes here that will be on the DVD as well,” Felsher continues. “There are plans for other stuff, but since we’re still going back and forth on what else will be on the disc, I don’t want to say anything else right now.”
The producer goes on to relate that the key reason for SQUAD’s delay hitting DVD had to do with “a long, tangled rights history with that picture over the years. It was part of a catalog that was bought up by another company that then became part of this company that became part of another company that became part of a huge conglomerate, and it got kind of buried. A lot of people think that studios don’t care about these titles, but sometimes they just don’t know, they have no idea; it’s just layer upon layer of catalogs. So I followed the catalog that MONSTER SQUAD was a part of, and it ended up at Lionsgate. I spoke to one of the marketing people there and sent them a proposal, and said, ‘Look, the 20th anniversary is coming up, there have been screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse and elsewhere around the country; there’s a great awareness of this movie right now.’ The Lionsgate people are extremely into the genre, so they were very much interested and aware of the film, and they were excited about it and said, ‘Sure, let’s see what we can do.’
“One of my favorite calls of all time,” Felsher adds, “was right after the deal was signed, calling Fred Dekker and saying, ‘Guess what, Fred?’ Because he would get calls over the years from people saying, ‘I want to bring out MONSTER SQUAD.’ ‘Well, where are the rights?’ But I was able to tell him, ‘Fred, it’s coming.’ He’s very excited about it, and has been such a great, enthusiastic supporter of this project, making sure that if you had to wait 20 years for a MONSTER SQUAD DVD, it’s gonna be worth it.” As for when fans will be able to pop it into their players, Felsher says, “I can’t speak for Lionsgate as to what their plans are. Obviously their intention is to have it out, I would think, before Halloween. But they haven’t made any official announcement, so I’m not really at liberty to say.”
One obvious question following from all this MONSTER SQUAD discussion is: What about a disc of Dekker’s equally highly regarded debut feature, 1986’s NIGHT OF THE CREEPS? “That’s owned by another studio,” Felsher explains, “and it’s one that I’ve worked with before, and I’ve been on the phone pestering them about it. It’s almost like a subliminal every time I call over there—‘Hey, how’s it going over there NIGHT OF THE CREEPS?’ ‘So how’s that project coming NIGHT OF THE CREEPS?’ [Laughs]
“So I keep mentioning it and throwing it in front of them, and I’m hoping at some point that one of two things will happen: That they’ll realize there’s a market for this film, or maybe they’ll just do it to shut me up! I believe it’s eventually going to happen; there’s a new transfer that has aired on the Monsters HD network which looks wonderful, so they’ve got a new hi-def version sitting there. And of course Fred has his preferred ending that everyone seems to know, and that’s another title where if the button was pressed, there’s a lot of stuff. So I don’t believe we’re going to have to wait another 20 years to see a decent version of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, though there are no plans at this particular moment.”
You can see Felsher at this weekend’s Chicago Fango con for more exclusives and details! —Michael Gingold
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=3742
February 20: DVD producer talks MONSTER SQUAD disc
At the just-concluded Monster-Mania convention in New Jersey, Fango sat down with DVD honcho Michael Felsher, who was there getting interviews and more with Fred Dekker and the reunited cast of the director’s 1987 cult fave THE MONSTER SQUAD. Having created special features for THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, MANIAC COP and more via his Red Shirt Pictures company, Felsher graduates to DVD producer with MONSTER SQUAD, a long-awaited home release coming from Lionsgate later this year. While an exact street date and content details have yet to be finalized, Felsher tells Fango, “The plan is to do a new transfer in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It has never been presented that way in North America; it was transferred on high-definition a couple of years ago, and that looked great, but it was in 1.78:1. So the new one will be 2.35, and Fred is very anxious to make sure it’s presented properly.
“And there will be plenty of extras; here at Monster-Mania, we just completed an audio commentary with [pictured above] Fred and three members of the Monster Squad, [left to right] Andre Gower, Ashley Bank and Ryan Lambert.” Fango was privileged to sit in on the recording, a highly entertaining trip down memory lane for the grown-up SQUAD-ers; a panel discussion with the quartet and creature actors Duncan Regehr (Dracula), Tom Noonan (Frankenstein’s monster) and Tom Woodruff Jr. (Gillman) was also taped for the disc. “I’m shooting a series of featurettes here that will be on the DVD as well,” Felsher continues. “There are plans for other stuff, but since we’re still going back and forth on what else will be on the disc, I don’t want to say anything else right now.”
The producer goes on to relate that the key reason for SQUAD’s delay hitting DVD had to do with “a long, tangled rights history with that picture over the years. It was part of a catalog that was bought up by another company that then became part of this company that became part of another company that became part of a huge conglomerate, and it got kind of buried. A lot of people think that studios don’t care about these titles, but sometimes they just don’t know, they have no idea; it’s just layer upon layer of catalogs. So I followed the catalog that MONSTER SQUAD was a part of, and it ended up at Lionsgate. I spoke to one of the marketing people there and sent them a proposal, and said, ‘Look, the 20th anniversary is coming up, there have been screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse and elsewhere around the country; there’s a great awareness of this movie right now.’ The Lionsgate people are extremely into the genre, so they were very much interested and aware of the film, and they were excited about it and said, ‘Sure, let’s see what we can do.’
“One of my favorite calls of all time,” Felsher adds, “was right after the deal was signed, calling Fred Dekker and saying, ‘Guess what, Fred?’ Because he would get calls over the years from people saying, ‘I want to bring out MONSTER SQUAD.’ ‘Well, where are the rights?’ But I was able to tell him, ‘Fred, it’s coming.’ He’s very excited about it, and has been such a great, enthusiastic supporter of this project, making sure that if you had to wait 20 years for a MONSTER SQUAD DVD, it’s gonna be worth it.” As for when fans will be able to pop it into their players, Felsher says, “I can’t speak for Lionsgate as to what their plans are. Obviously their intention is to have it out, I would think, before Halloween. But they haven’t made any official announcement, so I’m not really at liberty to say.”
One obvious question following from all this MONSTER SQUAD discussion is: What about a disc of Dekker’s equally highly regarded debut feature, 1986’s NIGHT OF THE CREEPS? “That’s owned by another studio,” Felsher explains, “and it’s one that I’ve worked with before, and I’ve been on the phone pestering them about it. It’s almost like a subliminal every time I call over there—‘Hey, how’s it going over there NIGHT OF THE CREEPS?’ ‘So how’s that project coming NIGHT OF THE CREEPS?’ [Laughs]
“So I keep mentioning it and throwing it in front of them, and I’m hoping at some point that one of two things will happen: That they’ll realize there’s a market for this film, or maybe they’ll just do it to shut me up! I believe it’s eventually going to happen; there’s a new transfer that has aired on the Monsters HD network which looks wonderful, so they’ve got a new hi-def version sitting there. And of course Fred has his preferred ending that everyone seems to know, and that’s another title where if the button was pressed, there’s a lot of stuff. So I don’t believe we’re going to have to wait another 20 years to see a decent version of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, though there are no plans at this particular moment.”
You can see Felsher at this weekend’s Chicago Fango con for more exclusives and details! —Michael Gingold
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=3742
