It’s amazing that a lot of people that grew up in the 80’s don’t remember the movie The Monster Squad. This means that they certainly don’t recall Brent Chalem, who played Horace. If you want to be perfectly honest Horace probably had one of the best lines in the whole movie since it seemed to come out of nowhere and tended to be what people would remember. For the most part he was a popular child actor back in the 80’s but he usually had small roles that didn’t afford him a lot of screen time. He appeared in shows such as Quantum Leap and Dance Til Dawn in the late 80’s, but that was about as far as he went. After that short period in his career he bowed out of show business and went on to study law for a legal firm in the US. Unfortunately Brent didn’t get too far in his career as in 1997 he passed away from pneumonia at the age of 22. In all honesty it’s kind of a sad story since it seemed as though he might have finally found something he was going to be successful at and could have made a solid career with. Life is a funny thing sometimes, it grants you a peek at success and then yanks it away right when you think you’ve got it.
But to be honest, this line is still hilarious since it was something that we didn’t expect.
Why would anyone think that a wolfman wouldn’t have nards?
The answer to this one is pretty simple really, kids are entertained by the silliest things and one of the silliest possible things in a movie like this is how the monsters are dealt with. Admit it, in this day and age one of those kids, if not both, would be dead in a real horror movie since as we’ve learned monsters don’t tend to discriminate between old and young when it comes to killing. But in a kid’s movie like this the monsters tend to hop about and scare people rather than slaughter them where they stand. That’s beneficial obviously for these two but it’s also a perfect setup for what came next. Girls and women might never know the true depth of why is makes boys and men cringe but they at least get the idea. Kicking a guy in that region is about as bad as setting off a bomb in his stomach, as some guys would easily agree that this is a close approximation of what it feels like. Plus, for all kids know, monsters don’t have the same parts or aren’t equipped to feel things in the same way. So really when you think about it Horace was kicking out of sheer desperation and aiming for the one spot that any MAN would feel. Thankfully that instinct paid off right? But again, in a real horror movie this might have just made the wolfman even angrier.
If we really want to be honest, Brent was often labeled the “fat kid”.
Yes, he did have a bit of a weight issue, but so do a good percentage of other actors in the industry. A lot of times such individuals tend to get typecast and as a result can’t seem to grow as people when it comes to their characters. Brent might have been one of those folks unfortunately and it could have been a part of why he wasn’t able to keep a career in the film or TV industries. One would rather believe that he simply didn’t have the passion for it and wanted to pursue something else. But the truth is that even in The Monster Squad he was considered the fat kid. He was heavy, yes, and he was slower than the others, but that didn’t stop him from running as fast and as far as he could whenever he needed to. Being the fat kid in the movie didn’t detract from what he contributed to the group, since let’s be honest, he did manage to incapacitate the wolfman and he was instrumental in getting away from Dracula at one point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InyNfYDybD0
Honestly, once again, in a real horror movie Dracula likely would have taken the item he needed and killed the kids or used them for some nefarious purpose. But this being a kids’ show he had to be menacing without being deadly. And hey, Horace stepped up to the plate when he pressed the slice of garlic pizza to old Drac’s face, right? So despite being the fat kid and not being entirely bright sometimes Horace was still a great asset to the Monster Squad and proved his worth more than once.
It’s not likely that we’ll see another Monster Squad anytime soon, but if it does happen one can only hope that a dedication will be made to Brent.
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