‘The Monster Squad’ star André Gower is recovering after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Andrew Gower (c) Instagram
The 48-year-old actor - who played lead character Sean Crenshaw in the 1987 cult classic horror/comedy film - had a near-fatal heart attack on Sunday (04.07.21) due to his "right coronary artery being 100 per cent blocked with a giant blood clot".
Sharing the medical emergency in an Instagram video, he said: "I apparently went and had a heart attack. Apparently, according to the info, it was a pretty decent one. I was playing tennis with my good buddy Mike, I started not feeling really well, and, long story short, after a few minutes of not getting better, my buddy Mike scooped me up in his car.
“We first went to an urgent care, and they immediately saw what was happening, and threw me in an ambulance, and I jammed over to the big ER, and wasn’t there very long, went straight to the cath lab [catheterization laboratory], so from almost the door to the ambulance to the cath lab, and had two lines put in my femoral artery and vein, they went up in through the vessels into my heart.”
“My right coronary artery ended up being 100 per cent blocked with a giant blood clot. Apparently, according to the people that worked on me and the excellent cath lab team, we got here with about 10 minutes to spare.
“That’s the update there. I am still in the ICU. They’ve just removed my two main lines, which is good, which means my heart is working adequately enough to take the pacemaker out and the lines."
On Tuesday evening (06.07.21), Gower gave another update assuring his followers that he is on the mend and feeling much stronger.
In a video which featured him standing up and walking away, he said: "When I got to the ICU, I worked to improve enough that they could remove my femoral lines and pacemaker.
"I continued to hold a good rhythm, strong rate and O2 for long enough to release me back into the wild.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up by a 'Monster Squad' fan to help pay for Gower’s medical bills and has so far raised over $50,000 towards its $250,000 goal.
'Austin Powers' star Seth Green posted a link to the GoFundMe page on his Twitter account encouraging people to help his friend.
He tweeted: "My longtime pal Andre Gower had a massive heart attack and emergency surgery- currently fighting hard to live- please send him love and help if you can."
'The Monster Squad' was co-written by Shane Black and director Fred Dekker and is a teen focused horror movie which saw Count Dracula assemble a team of classic big screen monsters, including the Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster, Gill-man from 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' and a Mummy, in his bid to take control of the world by obtaining a magical amulet made from "concentrated good".
But Dracula's quest for world domination is stopped by The Monster Squad, a group of pre-teenagers obsessed with classic creature features who have their own special club, with help from their older siblings and a neighbor known as 'Scary German Guy'.
When it was originally released it was panned by critics and bombed at the box office, however, it went on to achieve cult classic status on home release and is still attracting new fans today due to its humor and jokes, numerous references to the Universal Monsters and array of big screen baddies.