Monster Force (animation)



''Not to be confused with the Game Boy Advance game of the same name. For that, see Monster Force (Video Game).''

A Monster of the Week cartoon about a group of teenagers wearing Powered Armor and fighting classical Universal Monsters. Produced by Universal Studios and Lacewood Productions in The Nineties. Recently, the first seven episodes have been released on DVD, so if you haven't heard of the show at the very least you can go look for it now. The show is also noticeable for having comic book writer Marv Wolfman behind some of the stories which explains the quality behind some of the stories.

Monster Force provides examples of following tropes:

 * Badass Longcoat: Doc and Frankenstein.
 * Cut Short: Only 13 episodes, bah!
 * Dracula: The series' Big Bad.
 * Enemy Mine: In one ep, the heroes discover a ritual that Dracula wants to do to become all powerful. He gathers several powerful vampires for the attempt (with the premise that he'll share the power) and the heroes are virtually powerless to stop them. However, Shelley uses her Psychic Powers to show the vampires an image of Drac intending to use them as a sacrifice. They turn on him, distracting Drac long enough for the heroes to destroy the ritual ground and stop Drac's plan. After he flees, the vampires start to turn on the group, but withdraw as 1) the sun is coming up and 2) they presumably owe Monster Force for saving them. As one of the vampires says, "Just this one time".
 * Fish People: The original Creature From the Black Lagoon, in fact.
 * Five Man Band
 * The Hero: Doc
 * The Big Guy: Trip
 * The Smart Guy: Luke
 * The Lancer: Lance
 * The Chick: Shelley
 * The Sixth Ranger (and a bigger Big Guy): Frank
 * Frankensteins Monster: In this series, he does a Heel Face Turn and joins the good guys.
 * Remember, this is based on the Universal version of Frankenstein. He was never really evil in those films, just dangerously naive.
 * The Glasses Come Off: When Luke transforms into his Wolf Man self.
 * The Igor: Renfield. Oddly enough, this troper thought it actually was Igor till he saw the show again on DVD.
 * Monster Mash: The baddies.
 * Monster of the Week: Quite literally.
 * Mummy: Im-Ho-Tep.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Niles Lupon, alias Bela the Werewolf, seems to be a harmless old man. Also, Luke is a Wolf Man.
 * Powered Armor: The EMACS.
 * Shout Out: A surprising one in the Bride of Frankenstein episode, where the Leitmotifs for the Monster and the Bride from the original 1935 film show up in the soundtrack.
 * The Smurfette Principle: Shelley is the Monster Force's only female member.
 * The Something Force: The "Monster Force", to which the series owes its title.
 * Took a Level In Badass: The Creature From the Black Lagoon is not only more muscular here than in his original movie, but is presented as more or less a walking force of nature. He is said to have sunk an entire city and slaughtered its inhabitants single-handed, takes on four power-armored monster fighters and a Wolf Man with nothing but his bare claws -- and wins, and shrugs off energy blasts that have killed vampires in one shot as though they were fleabites.
 * Town With a Dark Secret: The aptly titled "Dark City" which is more like Dark Town but whatever.
 * X Meets Y: The series' premise: a Darker and Edgier version of the Ghostbusters fights the Universal Monsters.