Twenty Years Later, Wolfman Still Has Nards

Like some sort of conscientious, self-loathing werewolf who chains himself up as the full moon approaches, I try to keep my most fearsomely geeky urges and tastes in check. But sometimes the full moon sneaks up on you, as in this case:

The 1987 adolescents-battling-monsters classic The Monster Squad has just been released on a special 20th Anniversary DVD.

The film mostly lives on in memory for a scene where one of the monster-hunting kids kicks the Wolfman in a most sensitive region; the Wolfman doubles over in pain, and the kid, who’s shocked to see a supernatural being hurt by such a juvenile tactic, says, “Wolfman’s got nards!” My brother and I would use the phrase pretty much all the time; I don’t really think “nards” had any meaning before The Monster Squad, but it sure did afterwards.

Two Pittsburgh tie-ins to the movie and that magical phrase:

One, Pittsburgh’s Unicorn Mountain, a collective of artists, earlier this year published Wolfman’s Got Nards: A Compendium of New American Monsters in collaboration with another Pittsburgh entity, Encyclopedia Destructica.

Two, the writer of the Monster Squad screenplay, Shane Black, is a Pittsburgh native. He’s got quite the resume: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight are all Shane Black scripts. However, film historians will no doubt remember Black largely on the strength of The Monster Squad.

Okay, perhaps not. But apparently the making-of feature on the anniversary DVD is longer than the film itself, so someone is taking The Monster Squad pretty seriously. (Either that or, as the AV Club review suggests, DVD extras are getting out of control.)

-Adam