The Monster Squad: Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition

Featuring Ryan Lambert


Ryan is one of the cast members heavily featured in the featurettes and the film commentary. Now, if only we could get him to talk at length about Kids Inc…he does mention it twice, although not favorably.

Do you know they almost cast Liam Neeson as Dracula? Also, Andre Gower (Sean) actually wanted to be Rudy!

Rudy has a last name! According to the commentary, it’s “Halloran” which Ryan believes is “Scottish for ‘badass’.”

They ask Ryan what he had done prior to the movie, and he actually does say, “I was on a show called Kids Incorporated…singing and dancing.” When pressed, he continued, “It was, uh, you know…we’ll talk about that later…let’s talk about “Squad.”

Later, Ryan cracks a few jokes about Rudy’s secret life. “Maybe his name isn’t even Rudy...maybe he’s actually in a little band called Kids Incorporated…hiding from the cheesy sequined costumes…”



Disc 2 is Special Features. Ryan first pops up in the special featurette called “The Monsters and the Squad” with plenty to say.

 

“He (Tom Noonan, the Frankenstein’s monster) was Frankenstein, and that was it. There was no breaking…and there’s a scene in the clubhouse where we’re all meeting him for the first time, and I hand him the Frankenstein mask, and he looks at it and says, ‘Scary.” They needed to do a shot – over my shoulder – to him. They didn’t need the rest of the cast, they just needed me – and we’re in this cramped quarters like on a soundstage, and he’s sitting really close to me. We’re just kind of sitting there, and I looked at him, and I said, ‘Hey, Tom, how’s it going? You know, we’ve actually never met…’ and he kind of went (groaning). I was like, ‘okay…look, I get it…I’m 15, man! I know what’s going on, man! I know…makeup and all. You don’t have to play that game with me, dude!’ But he kept it, man, he kept it! Never broke… sat there for hours, and I just…kinda just hung out.”

Fred Dekker(writer/director): “Ryan Lambert was like a teen idol at that time…and he came into the studio – and he told me this story, I didn’t remember it – that he came in, and the first thing he said was–
Ryan: “You got a smoke?”

Dekker: “And Shane Black (co-writer), who smoked at the time, said, ‘Yeah, I got one’.”

Ryan: “And he gave me a cigarette, and I lit it up, we did the scene, and I left. Don’t know what happened after that, but…here I am.”

Dekker: “It was very clear that he had the attitude. But more important, it wasn’t the attitude that kind of was acting. It was an artifice. This kid was genuinely cool – and is to this day, by the way. I have to say there are actors whose names you would know, who at that time were in that rough age range and had done fairly big movies who were suggested for the role of Rudy. And I realized, you know, they’re not as cool as this guy, ‘cause this guy’s sort of effortless about it.

Ryan: “Rudy is…sort of like a mystery, I always thought. Like, you weren’t sure if he killed his dad, or if, you know, if he actually went to school, or where he came from, did he have family? Did he just wander around? But that was sort of like, the surface stuff. I really felt like…he actually did want to belong to something. It kind of seems in the film like he maybe fell into it and he just saves the fat kid…and they ask him to be in. But I always thought, like in the background, he’s going, ‘Are they gonna let me in? I know about this stuff. I can be a badass.’”

“I was actually totally enthralled with Lisa Fuller (Patrick’s sister). I mean…I could have played it cooler, as Rudy, but in real life, I was just making her mixtapes of Journey. I was – I just tried. I tried to pull it off and just…nothing. I blew it. But I actually do get her in end, in the film. I do…but they cut it out…I promise!”


Regarding Brent Chalem (Horace the Fat Kid): “He was a sweet, sweet, sweet kid. His mom was really nice.”


Ryan is also in “Lights, Camera, Monsters!”

“He (Dekker) had a big, big responsibility, and I always saw it. I always saw everybody around him wondering whether or not he was going to be able to pull this off. I mean, nobody was skeptical or anything, but it just seemed like, ‘Wow, this guy’s got a huge opportunity here’, and I never saw it in his face. I just saw, ‘I know what I’m doing.’”

Dekker: “Probably my favorite line in the movie is when Rudy realizes that he’s got a crossbow in hand and it’s up to him to take out the vampire brides that are walking towards them and he says,
“I’m in the God damned club, aren’t I?”

Ryan: “To me, it was almost like a throwaway line, because when we shot it, I just kind of like, brushed past everyone and said, ‘I’m in the God damned club, aren’t I?’ and light a smoke. It just seemed to me like that was just gonna be like this thing, and when you see the film it’s like, BUH DAH DAH, and it is definitely, definitely one of my favorite lines.”

 

“I had never shot a gun before. They sent me to a shooting range, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know how I was gonna react, what it was gonna feel like – the kick back and everything. Fred said, ‘Action’, and I’m doing the bullets, and I’m thinking in my head, like, ‘What am I doing here? I don’t know how to do this.’ And I loaded it, and I said, ‘bang’, and I shot, and they said ‘Cut’, and they said, ‘Moving on.’ And I said, ‘That’s acting? Awesome! This is great! I’m good at this!’”

(Funny note: During the commentary, they tell the story that the sound man was confused, because Ryan said “bang” before shooting. He didn’t realize that was a line in the script!)

“You know, sometimes you do a film, and it takes three weeks, and you’re like, ‘That was fun, that was good, I had a great time, the director was great, all the actors were great’, and then it comes out and it doesn’t do anything, and you’re like, ‘Eh, well, you know…it was good.’ This seemed like a lifetime, making this film. Like…there was relationships, and we met people, and we were there a lot, and all of our families were there because of their kids, and our mothers became friends, and it just seemed like it was a big family and we were all like, really excited for this to happen, and then…nothing.”


In “Monster Mania” they talk about the convention and the 20th anniversary.

“I got a call – an email, actually – from Quinn(?) at Ain’t It Cool News, and he asked me to come out for a screening – to do Q&A before two screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. And I kinda said, ‘Why? Who’s gonna go to that?’ And he goes, “No, no, you don’t understand…it is huge.’”

“I mean, it is a good movie. It is. It’s fun to watch. From beginning to end, I can still watch it and go – as an outside party – and say, ‘That was fun. That’s a fun movie to watch.’”



I have dozens of screencaps from the movie and the Special Features if anyone wants them.

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