Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares
Author: John Landis
Date: 2011-09-19 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Film; Horror; Direction & Production; Performing Arts; History & Criticism; Reference; General
Description: From B-movie bogeymen and outer space oddities to big-budget terrors, Monsters in the Movies by legendary filmmaker John Landis showcases the greatest monsters ever to creep, fly, slither, stalk, or rampage across the Silver Screen! Landis provides his own fascinating and entertaining insights into the world of moviemaking, while conducting in-depth "conversations" with leading monster makers, including David Cronenberg, Christopher Lee, John Carpenter, and Sam Raimi€” to discuss some of the most petrifying monsters ever seen. He also surveys the historical origins of the archetypal monsters,
Publisher: DK

Table of Contents

How to Use this eBook

Foreword

Introduction

Vampires

Vampires

In Conversation: Christopher Lee

Werewolves

Werewolves

An American Werewolf in London

In Conversation: Joe Dante

Mad Scientists

Mad Scientists

In Conversation: David Cronenberg

Zombies

Zombies

In Conversation: Sam Raimi

Ghosts

Ghosts

Mummies

Mummies

In Conversation: Guillermo Del Toro

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales

In Conversation: Ray Harryhausen

Dragons & Dinosaurs

Dragons & Dinosaurs

Monstrous Apes

Monstrous Apes

In Conversation: Rick Baker

Nature’s Revenge

Nature’s Revenge

Atomic Mutations

Atomic Mutations

The Devil’s Work

The Devil’s Work

In Conversation: John Carpenter

Space Monsters

Space Monsters

Monstrous Machines

Monstrous Machines

Human Monsters

Human Monsters

The Monster Makers

Monster Makers

Monster Directors

Make-up Artists

Monster Designers

Stop-motion Animation

Matte Painting

Miniatures

Copyright

HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK

On devices with both portrait and landscape orientation, this book is best viewed in portrait orientation and with the type size set to minimum.

On touch screen devices, you can tap on any movies mentioned in the essays and conversations to go straight to that movie’s photograph and caption. If you double tap on any photograph, it can be enlarged.

The top of each screen features links to the chapter opener and to the table of contents.

FOREWORD

I busied myself to think of a story, which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror. One to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

Ingmar Bergman, film director

Fantasy, horror, and science-fiction films are where most of the monsters in this book are to be found. These three genres have among the most ardent and faithful fans. Just Google “horror film websites” and see how many people are deeply passionate about this stuff.

There are many books about the movies, and like the movies, most of them are not that good. So I feel the need to clarify that this has been a labor of love and not a class assignment. This book is meant to be fun. It is not some heavy tome on the meaning of violence in the cinema, or a ponderous examination of film theory. This is a book with a lot of photographs of monsters in the movies. The films represented here are included not because they are necessarily good or bad films, but only because of the monsters that appear in them.

Even though this eBook is mostly photographic essays, included are some conversations with a few of my friends that will be of interest. I spoke with people who have made enormous contributions to the cinema, and in particular the cinema of monsters! Let me express my deep thanks and appreciation to Ray Harryhausen, Sir Christopher Lee, David Cronenberg, Rick Baker, Joe Dante, John Carpenter, and Sam Raimi for participating. You will be impressed by what these guys have to say.

Most of what is written here is from my memories of the films, with additional research at the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles Public Libraries, as well as the Internet for fact-checking names and dates. The Internet is an amazing source of information. It is an equally amazing source of misinformation, and often disinformation. The Internet allows literally anyone to say anything, which is a very sharp double-edged sword. Reading the Internet postings of some people, it is clear that the writers have issues far beyond whatever ignorant or hateful bile they are spewing forth. On the other hand, there are often thoughtful and fascinating insights to be found on the web (said the spider to the fly!).

I apologize for any factual errors (blame my editors for not catching them). However, I do take full responsibility for any opinions expressed. Just remember that the quality of anything is entirely subjective. Have a good time. I know I did.

Foreword [Book Contents]

Michael Jackson’s Thriller  [John Landis, 1983]

Michael as a zombie in this all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing horror film.

Foreword [Book Contents]

Triple-terror thrills

A one-sheet poster advertising a triple feature showing of Frankenstein [1931], Dracula [1931], and The Wolf Man [1941]. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, actor and cowboy Glenn Strange (who played the Frankenstein monster in both House of Frankenstein [1944] and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [1948] would put on the costume and a rubber mask and, with other performers dressed as Dracula and the Wolf Man, rampage through the theater as the kids screamed with delight.

Boris Karloff and Mae Clarke in Frankenstein [James Whale, 1931].

INTRODUCTION

This guide is not meant to be an encyclopedia of every monster that has ever appeared in a movie. Nor is it my intention to write an exhaustive history of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction cinema. It is a pictorial overview of monsters from the movies that I have chosen. Most of the images come from The Kobal Collection; others come from friends who make monster movies.

My criteria for inclusion of a particular monster is simple: the illustrations in this volume are there because I think they are cool. Some have cultural and historic importance, some are terrifying, some are beautiful, some are repulsive, and many are just silly. Please remember my ambition is that of an entertainer, not of a scholar. You may learn quite a bit of useful and fairly esoteric information, but that is entirely up to you.

What is it about the movies that holds such power over the popular imagination? Although the medium itself is a relatively new one, pictures projected from strips of film to create moving images have had a massive impact on world culture. Hollywood movies and the international cinema have become the basis of what can only be described as our global mythology.

Montage is the juxtaposition of images to create a narrative. Even children, the first time they watch a film, instantly understand the concept of montage. When one is shown the outside of a building and then the characters inside it, the viewer understands this radical shifting of time and place at once. When we are presented with a close-up of a man looking out a window and then “Cut To” a car driving down the street, we do not have to be told that the car is what the man on screen is seeing (his “point of view”), we just know it. Human beings from around the world automatically accept and comprehend this film language.

Even more magically, when two characters are on screen and one says, “You drive the car, and I will take a bus. We will go to the airport and fly to Paris. There you will rent another car and I will take a taxi and we will meet at the Eiffel Tower in two days.” Then the screen CUTS TO: EXTERIOR EIFFEL TOWER—DAY and our two characters approach one another and shake hands. All we’ve been shown is the Eiffel Tower and our two characters, and we instantly know that it is two days later, that one drove a car to the airport and the other took a bus. We know they checked in, went through airport security, boarded the plane, flew to Paris, got off the plane, went through Passport Control, and that one rented a car while the other took a taxi, both driving to the Eiffel Tower.

I believe that people instinctively understand film language because it is exactly the way we dream. I am sure you have heard someone say that the dream they had last night, “was so vivid, so real, it was like a movie.” Exactly. Our dreams are “cinematic.” And when we dream, we often have nightmares. Since the cinema is the perfect medium to depict our dreams, the movies have always been an ideal way to show our nightmares. Our nightmares are often populated with monsters. And that is the subject of this guide: monsters in the movies.

The word “monster” comes from the Latin monstrum. “Monstrous” means a perversion of the natural order, usually biological. The word monster is associated with something that is wrong or sinister. A monster is either physically or mentally detestable, often an aberration in appearance and behavior. The word monster is generally associated with the concept of evil, both in thought and action. Normal-looking people who behave in reprehensible ways are also referred to as monsters.

Monsters are found in the legends and folklore of all nations. Monsters appear in the world’s religions and philosophies, and have always been well represented in works of art. From the earliest primitive cave paintings to today’s most sophisticated digital technology, humans continue to feel the need to create images of monsters.

Monsters are not always frightening or evil. The monsters of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. [Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, David Silverman, 2001] and certainly the title character in Harry and the Hendersons [William Dear, 1987] were charming and sweet. Even the most famous monster of them all, the Frankenstein Monster, as portrayed by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein [James Whale, 1931] is vulnerable and sympathetic. The one thing that most monsters have in common is their abnormal appearance; monsters are usually not considered conventionally beautiful. Monsters are often grotesque, and sometimes downright ugly.

Monsters are the physical embodiment of our fears. Humanity’s fears can be summed up in three words: injury, pain, and death.

People need an explanation, a reason, for why things happen. Not knowing the cause of an event is unacceptable to us. So humans have invented philosophies and religions to cope with and to try to explain the unknowable. No one truly knows what there is before we are alive, and what happens to us after we’ve died. Different cultures have created different answers. Most of these answers involve monsters. From the winged angels in the clouds above to the demons down below, the religious view is chock-a-block with fantastical beings.

Are we afraid of the dark? Or are we afraid of what is out there in the dark?

In the early days of the European exploration of our planet, men went to sea in ships to discover just what was out there beyond the horizon. Their maps and charts showed where they had been and what they knew of so far. The places people had not yet been were labeled on their maps and charts “Here Be Dragons.” This phrase meant that these places were unexplored and therefore unknown. And people consider the unknown dangerous. In medieval times, the blank areas of the map were filled with illustrations of sea serpents and dragons. These monsters are meant to warn us off, to scare us. However, what really scares us are not the sea serpents or dragons, but what they represent. The Unknown.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Schlock  [John Landis, 1971]

The Author as the Schlockthropus. I was 21; the make-up artist Rick Baker was 20. The movie was shot in 12 days for $60,000.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Harry and the Hendersons  [William Dear, 1987]

Kevin Peter Hall as Harry in another Academy-Award-winning make-up by Rick Baker.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Dinosaurs

Young boys tend to love the giant beasts of prehistoric times. Almost every boy goes through his “fascination with dinosaurs stage.” Movies have exploited this fascination from the very earliest days of cinema to the present. And when we look at the stories and paintings of giant serpents and dragons throughout recorded history, it makes us wonder if there is a connection between the dragons of legend and the dinosaurs of the fossil record. No paleontologist has ever found evidence of a dinosaur that could blow flames from his mouth and nostrils, at least not yet. So where did that concept come from? Why did humans come up with these gigantic Thunder Lizards?

Countless sculptures and paintings show us Saint George slaying the dragon. In reality, very large alligators and crocodiles and Komodo dragons exist on land, and huge whales and giant squid inhabit the oceans. Could these be the animals that inspired the Hydra, the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece, or the monstrous Kraken who dragged ships down into the depths of the sea?

There is a theory that mastodon skulls, with their large holes in the center, were believed to be the skulls of giant Cyclops. If you came across the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex what conclusion would you come to?

In One Million B.C. [Hal Roach, Hal Roach Jr,. 1940], and Hammer’s One Million Years B.C. [Don Chaffey, 1966] humans are shown living during the same time as the dinosaurs. The fossil record tells us that this cannot be true. But some believe that there is a dinosaur alive now in Scotland—the Loch Ness Monster. People are convinced there are Lake Monsters living in Africa and China. We desperately want to coexist with dinosaurs—a desire exploited by Michael Crichton, who wrote the novel and then the screenplay Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993], in which scientists clone living dinosaurs from DNA samples of dinosaur blood taken from mosquitoes trapped in amber millions of years ago! In much the same way as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger made the treacherous journey to The Lost World to prove that dinosaurs still lived on a plateau in the Amazon, we all seem to be prepared to go to great lengths to be with dinosaurs.

Three ways to make dinosaurs in the movies.

Introduction [Book Contents]

One Million B.C.  [Hal Roach, Hal Roach, Jr., 1940]

Tumak (Victor Mature) protects Loana (Carole Landis) from a superimposed iguana.

Introduction [Book Contents]

One Million Years B.C.  [Don Chaffey, 1966]

In the remake, Tumak (John Richardson) protects a little cave-girl from Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion allosaurus.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Jurassic Park  [Steven Spielberg, 1993]

Effects artist Stan Winston’s full size audio-animatronic T. Rex in Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park also made extensive use of CG dinosaurs. (CGI or CG is the abbreviation used for Computer Generated Images, or computer animation.)

Introduction [Book Contents]

Man is not meant to know

The fear of science is behind many of our greatest monsters. “There are some things man is not meant to know,” is a line from many movies in which someone pays the price for tampering with “God’s work.” The classic “mad scientist” is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Her revolutionary novel is titled Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus [1818].

In Greek mythology, Prometheus the Titan stole fire from the Gods of Mount Olympus and gave it to us mortals. To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock where a giant eagle would come every day, rip out his liver, and eat it in front of him. According to Zeus’s curse, Prometheus’s liver grew back every night so that the eagle could tear it out again the next day, and the next, for all eternity. With Prometheus’s gift, the human race could now cook their food and warm their homes and fend off wild beasts of prey. But ask Prometheus; was it worth it? Ask Dr. Frankenstein, or Dr. Jekyll, or Dr. Moreau, or Dr. Morbius and all the other doctors, professors, and scientists who have dared to explore the unknown in the movies.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Vampires

Vampires have never gone out of style. Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula created one of the most popular monsters in literary and film history. There are more movies in which the character Dracula appears than any other real or fictional person. Actors diverse as Béla Lugosi, Carlos Villarías, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Louis Jourdan, Frank Langella, Leslie Nielsen, George Hamilton, Udo Kier, Jack Palance, John Forbes-Robertson, Francis Lederer, Charles Macaulay, Klaus Kinski, and Gary Oldman have all portrayed Dracula. And Dracula’s bitter foe Dr. Van Helsing has been played by actors as varied as Edward Van Sloan, Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Jackman, and Mel Brooks!

Vampires drink human blood. They sleep in their coffins during the day. Like so much of what we believe is ancient folklore, authors and screenwriters invented most of what is now accepted to be vampire behavior. The rules change from book to book, movie to movie. Stake through the heart? Check. Afraid of a crucifix? Sure. Can’t stand garlic? Okay. Cannot enter a room unless invited in? Really? Cannot be in direct sunlight? Have no reflection in a mirror? Well, the rules all depend on which movie you’re watching.

What is well known is that male vampires are often sexy. From Lugosi’s matinée-idol Dracula, to Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s bloodsucking heartthrobs in Interview With the Vampire [Neil Jordan, 1994] to Robert Pattinson’s pale teenage idol in Twilight [Catherine Hardwicke, 2008], male vampires continue to make the hearts of women beat faster.

The movies have shown us that female vampires can also be very sexy. Actress Theda Bara was one of Hollywood’s first sex symbols and the femme fatale roles she played earned her the nickname of “The Vamp.” Elsa Martinelli and Annette Vadim were the gorgeous vampires of Blood and Roses [Roger Vadim,1960], which was based on the scandalous “lesbian novel” Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla was also the inspiration for The Vampire Lovers [Roy Ward Baker, 1970] with the voluptuous Ingrid Pitt. Beautiful actresses continue to portray vampires—Sadie Frost in Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Francis Ford Coppola, 1992], Anne Parillaud in Innocent Blood [John Landis, 1992], and no doubt will continue to do so far into the future. We all know the effect beautiful women have on men that also involves blood flow.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of vampires in film is their bisexuality. When Christopher Lee bites down on the neck of his female victims, they always “swoon.” What happens when he sinks his fangs into a man? In The Fearless Vampire Killers [Roman Polanski, 1967] a very camp, blond, gay vampire has his eyes on Professor Abronsius’ assistant Alfred (Roman Polanski). Lesbian vampires are a genre unto themselves. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, when Mina says, “Come kiss me, Lucy,” she is not just being affectionate. Since the early 1980s, the AIDS crisis has helped bring about a vampire revival in the movies, there being an obvious parallel between vampirism and an illness spread by the exchange of bodily fluids.

Introduction [Book Contents]

A Fool There Was  [Frank Powell, 1915]

Theda Bara poses as a “vamp” in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Blood and Roses  [Roger Vadim, 1960]

One more movie based on Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Vadim’s film features the gorgeous Annette Vadim as Carmilla and the equally gorgeous Elsa Martinelli as her victim.

Introduction [Book Contents]

The Fearless Vampire Killers  [aka Dance of the Vampires, Roman Polanski, 1967]

Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne) abducts Sarah Shagal (Sharon Tate) from her bath in Polanski’s vampire romp.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Werewolves

The rules of werewolf movies are just as elastic as those of vampire films and often change movie to movie. In Stoker’s book, Dracula can change himself into a wolf at will, but Larry Talbot in Universal’s The Wolf Man [George Waggner, 1941] cannot control his transformation and unwillingly turns into a werewolf on the night of a full moon. Lon Chaney, Jr. played the unfortunate Mr. Talbot in five movies for Universal and always walks upright on two legs as the Wolf Man. In An American Werewolf in London [John Landis,1981] David Naughton’s werewolf rampages through Piccadilly Circus on all fours. In I Was a Teenage Werewolf [Gene Fowler Jr., 1957] troubled teen Tony Rivers (Michael Landon) is given “hypnotherapy” and “Scopolamine” injections by mad Dr. Alfred Brandon (Whit Bissell) to bring him back to a “pre-evolution state.” How this would be helpful, or why a “pre-evolution state” would be a werewolf is never explained. Anyway, Rivers becomes a werewolf at the sound of a bell! Wait a minute; Rivers turns into a werewolf when he hears a bell? Once again, how one becomes a werewolf depends on which picture you happen to be watching. A gypsy’s curse, a werewolf’s bite, being born on a certain date, or being the offspring of a rape may make you a werewolf. For all these reasons, the ancient poem rings true:

Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

This “ancient poem” was actually written in 1941 in Hollywood by Curt Siodmak for his screenplay The Wolf Man for Universal Studios. This is how ancient legends are born.

Introduction [Book Contents]

The Wolf Man  [George Waggner, 1941]

The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.) about to pounce on unsuspecting Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers).

Introduction [Book Contents]

I Was a Teenage Werewolf  [Gene Fowler, Jr., 1957]

A troubled teen is exploited by an evil scientist. As we were told in school, this is where masturbation can lead. Not to mention rock‘n’roll!

Introduction [Book Contents]

Ghosts and zombies

A ghost is the spirit or soul of someone who has died that manifests itself to the living. A zombie is one of the “living dead,” meaning that a zombie is a reanimated corpse, someone who has died but whose cadaver is still walking around. I’ve often wondered if a zombie has a soul? Or once you have killed a zombie (often by shooting him or her in the head), does the re-dead zombie beget a ghost zombie?

The entire concept of ghosts develops from our natural longing to remain in contact with a loved one once they have died. Death is the ultimate unknown, and that means man needs to create all kinds of reasons that the dead are not really dead. When a person has passed away, people want to believe they have “gone to a better place.” Or at the very least, someplace. The idea that once you die you no longer exist is just too disturbing for most of us. Hence we find tales of ghosts and zombies returning from the dead in every culture around the world.

Ghosts can be malevolent or vengeful, but sometimes they are lonely and sad. Ghosts are perhaps the most difficult of fantastic beings to show on screen and retain their reality. In two of the most frightening ghost movies ever made, The Innocents [Jack Clayton, 1961] and The Haunting [Robert Wise, 1963], no ghosts are ever seen!

The director George A. Romero is rightly crowned as the King of the Zombie Movies for his remarkable series of zombie pictures that began with the classic Night of the Living Dead [1968]. George’s “blue collar” zombies have become the standard for the living dead ever since. They stagger around in the clothing they were wearing when they died, as opposed to the funeral suits they were buried in. With glazed eyes, torn flesh, and bloody faces, Romero’s zombies are in nightgowns, dresses, jeans, T-shirts, shorts, and uniforms—the costumes of the real world. Romero has used his zombies for scathing political commentary all through his series of zombie pictures.

Voodoo used to be the main resource for zombies in movies, from White Zombie [Victor Halperin, 1932], to The Serpent and the Rainbow [Wes Craven, 1988]. In more recent films, atomic radiation or bizarre diseases create zombies. When unforeseen consequences to scientific research in radiation or germ warfare results in an outburst of the living dead, you can bet the government is doing the dastardly experimentation. The zombie has grown to be one of the most popular types of monster. All of us are going to die one day. Ghosts and zombies somehow reassure us that even death can be overcome.

Introduction [Book Contents]

White Zombie  [Victor Halperin, 1932]

Béla Lugosi as Murder Legendre, a white voodoo master on Haiti, who uses zombies as labor in his sugar cane mill. A rich plantation owner enlists Legendre’s aid to help him with a sexual conquest. This is considered to be the first feature-length zombie movie.

Introduction [Book Contents]

The Serpent and the Rainbow  [Wes Craven, 1988]

Wes went to Haiti to shoot this adaptation of the book by Wade Davis. Here, Bill Pullman suffers from chemically-induced hallucinations. The movie deals with Voodoo and zombies at their source— African and Christian rituals mixed with drugs.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Giant monsters

The word monster can also mean big. As in REALLY BIG. Monstrous apes, lizards, insects, robots, aliens, men, women, and even children have stomped their way down the streets of our cities. Creatures of every description come in Large, Extra Large, even King-Sized.

King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933] is the prototype of the big monster creating havoc in an urban setting. And even before Kong was abducted from Skull Island and brought in chains to the island of Manhattan, the silent film version of The Lost World [Harry O. Hoyt, 1925] ended with a brontosaurus causing mayhem in London before swimming away down the Thames. Thirty-six years later another great dinosaur-like beast was brought to London, Gorgo [Eugène Lourié, 1961], only to have his mother come to rescue him and show us what BIG really means. The whole movie, Gorgo is a pretty large beast, but he is dwarfed by the enormous size of his mom. She towers over him as they make their way back down the River Thames together to go back to the sea. The truly colossal monster alien that comes from outer space to trash New York in Cloverfield [Matt Reeves, 2008] is so large that it strides through the city, taller than the tallest skyscrapers.

The advertising campaign for the American remake of Godzilla [Roland Emmerich, 1998] proclaimed “SIZE MATTERS.” The iconic poster for Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman [Nathan H. Juran, 1958] is a clear demonstration of why this statement is true.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman  [Nathan H. Juran, 1958]

One of the most iconic movie posters of the 1950s—Allison Hayes on the rampage in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman.

Introduction [Book Contents]

King Kong  [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933]

The original and still the greatest giant ape movie ever made. Here is ad art from the first of its many theatrical releases.

Introduction [Book Contents]

An excellent shot of Kong carrying Fay Wray up to his mountain lair.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Also given here is a close-up of Kong.

“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast!”

Carl Denham (Jack Armstrong), King Kong [1933]

Introduction [Book Contents]

Cloverfield  [Matt Reeves, 2008]

New York City is invaded by really huge monsters and we watch the whole thing through the video camera of one of the young people we do not care about who are trying to escape. The special effects are first-rate. Here, one of the aliens looks into the camera.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Godzilla  [Roland Emmerich, 1998]

Godzilla sniffs Matthew Broderick in this misguided remake.

Introduction [Book Contents]

Human monsters

History has given us too many examples of political leaders who can easily be classed as monsters. Hitler and Stalin are two of the more obvious examples of men whose actions led directly to destruction and murder on a vast scale.

This guide deals with human monsters that operate on a more intimate scale of death: the serial killers, cannibals, and pathologically insane, whose exploits have inspired so many truly disquieting movies. We will meet and discuss Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, and many other fiends that have populated the Hollywood sound stages. Criminals have always held a fascination for the public. But these criminals’ actions are so perverse that the films about them are no longer mere crime movies—they are horror films.

A number of the cinema’s human monsters are actually physically disfigured, either maliciously or by accident of birth. Others are profoundly damaged in the way they view the world. And some may appear completely normal. As Norman Bates says in Alfred Hitchcock’s extraordinary Psycho [1960], “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Filmmakers Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter have made some of the most visceral and scariest movies in history. I asked them what monsters scared them. Both replied, “There are no such things as monsters. Monsters don’t scare me, people scare me.”

My wife, Deborah, is not bothered by most of the monsters in the following pages, but she refuses to see Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974], or The Silence of the Lambs [Jonathan Demme, 1991], because these monsters, she says, “are real.”

Vampires, werewolves, dragons, ghosts, zombies, mummies, aliens, psychopaths, and more await you inside. Have fun. And, oh yes, tonight when you’re in bed and the lights are off and you hear an odd noise just outside your window… or was it just outside your door… or even inside the room..? Please do not even think about the monsters you’ve seen in this guide. And whatever you do… DO NOT OPEN YOUR CLOSET!

Introduction [Book Contents]

Psycho  [Alfred Hitchcock, 1960]

The real Mrs. Bates, as discovered in the basement by Lila Crane (Vera Miles)—just before Norman, wearing his mother’s dress and wig, bursts in with his knife!

Introduction [Book Contents]

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  [Tobe Hooper, 1974]

A relentless and brilliant movie about some college students who encounter a family of cannibals. Here Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) is swinging his chainsaw in anger and frustration at the end of the movie. For such a brutal film, there is hardly any blood or violence onscreen. With an intricate and crazy-making soundtrack. Tobe then directed a comedy sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 [1986], starring Dennis Hopper as Lefty, a Texas Ranger.

Introduction [Book Contents]

The Silence of the Lambs  [Jonathan Demme, 1991]

Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in this multi-Oscar winning film based on the Thomas Harris novel. The only horror film to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Hopkins played Lecter twice more in uninteresting sequels.

Frances Dade as Lucy and Béla Lugosi as Count Dracula in Dracula [Tod Browning, 1931].

VAMPIRES

More films have been made featuring Dracula than almost any other fictional character. Tarzan is (forgive me) neck and neck.

Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula appeared in 1897 and was an instant success. It was influenced by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla, about a lesbian vampire who preys on young women—later the inspiration for the trilogy of Hammer films, The Vampire Lovers [Roy Ward Baker, 1970], Twins of Evil [John Hough, 1971], and Lust for a Vampire [Jimmy Sangster, 1971].

Varney the Vampire, a penny-dreadful serial by James Malcolm Rymer, preceded Le Fanu’s Carmilla. And the first notion of the vampire as an aristocrat appeared in The Vampyre [1819], written by John Polidori on a holiday with Lord Byron and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. On that same holiday, Shelley’s wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein!

The first cinematic version of Stoker’s Dracula was the German silent Nosferatu [F. W. Murnau, 1922] with the unforgettable Max Schreck as “Count Orlock.” This beautiful film was, in fact, entirely ripped off from Stoker’s book and Stoker’s widow suppressed its release in the courts.

Bram Stoker’s novel was adapted into a play by Hamilton Deane that toured England for three years before it opened in London’s West End to tremendous acclaim. The play was heavily revised by John L. Balderston in 1927 for its debut on Broadway, where it was a sensation. Hungarian matinée idol Béla Lugosi played Dracula and veteran stage actor Edward Van Sloan portrayed Van Helsing. They reprised their roles in Dracula [Tod Browning, 1931], Universal Studios’ follow-up to their smash hit Frankenstein [James Whale, 1931]. Lugosi was actually offered the role of the Monster in Frankenstein on the strength of his success in the play Dracula, but he felt the role of a non-speaking brute beneath an actor of his talent. The lead in a Hollywood adaptation of Dracula was another matter, however. The movie version followed the plot of the Balderston/Deane play rather than the novel.

Sadly, Lugosi’s distinctive performance as the elegant Count typecast him for the rest of his career. Whenever movie work was scarce, Béla would go out on another theatrical tour of the play, eventually performing the role thousands of times.

Dracula is an early “talkie.” Before sound dubbing, studios would often shoot different language versions of their movies on the same sets. Tod Browning shot during the day and a Spanish-language Dracula [George Melford, 1931], with Carlos Villarías as the vampire Count, shot on the same sound stages at night. Many believe this Spanish-language version to be superior to the English one.

Just as Universal capitalized on box-office powerhouse Frankenstein with The Bride of Frankenstein [James Whale, 1935] and Son of Frankenstein [Rowland V. Lee, 1939], so they soon followed Dracula with Dracula’s Daughter [Lambert Hillyer, 1936]. Gloria Holden starred in the title role of a movie that is much better than it sounds. Keeping it in the family, the studio continued with Son of Dracula [Robert Siodmak, 1943], featuring a debonair Lon Chaney, Jr. as Count Alucard (Dracula spelled backwards).

Lugosi played a Count Dracula lookalike named Count Mora in Mark of the Vampire [1935], Tod Browning’s remake of his own London After Midnight [1927], the lost Lon Chaney silent. There is a nice twist at the end of Mark of the Vampire, which I will not spoil here.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was Lugosi’s last hurrah as Count Dracula for Universal. He is excellent in this well-mounted comedy. The fact that Béla ended up starring in Ed Wood movies does not dull his monumental contribution to Dracula lore.

Hammer’s first Technicolor horror film introduced the world to a new, dynamic, sexy, and powerful Count Dracula: Christopher Lee. Dracula [Horror of Dracula in the US, Terence Fisher, 1958] also brought Lee’s Dracula a worthy foe in Peter Cushing’s driven Van Helsing. Both Lee and Cushing would go on to play these roles for decades although, unlike Lugosi, their wide range of character roles continued (and for Christopher Lee, continues) for the rest of their careers.

Hundreds of Dracula movies have been produced since then, including an excellent BBC adaptation starring Louis Jourdan as the Count and Frank Finlay as Van Helsing, and two big-budget feature productions: Dracula [John Badham, 1979], with Frank Langella as the Count and Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Francis Ford Coppola, 1992], starring Gary Oldman, with Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing. Universal tried to milk this bat once again with the monster rally Van Helsing [Stephen Sommers, 2004], starring Hugh Jackman as an action-man Van Helsing, in an attempt to create a new franchise.

The folkloric rules of vampirism have been reinvented in almost every vampire film. Kathryn Bigelow’s terrific Near Dark [1987] brought us a motley group of vampires trying to survive in the modern American west. Anne Rice’s bestseller Interview With the Vampire was made into a lavish film [Neil Jordan, 1994] starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, with the young Kirsten Dunst playing an older woman still in the body of the child she was when bitten. Her anger and frustration with her plight is identical to the vampire boy-child Homer in Near Dark, who is played by Joshua Miller with a raging intensity. The wonderful, Swedish, Let the Right One In [Tomas Alfredson, 2008] deals with a child vampire in a stark and poetic way.

Innocent Blood [John Landis, 1992] stars Anne Parillaud as Marie, a vampire who finds herself stranded in Pittsburgh alone and hungry. She refuses to take what she calls “innocent blood,” and so must feed on criminals. Although she is careful not to create more bloodsuckers, by mistake she creates a vampire out of Sal “The Shark” Macelli (Robert Loggia), a vicious mafioso. She joins undercover cop Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia) to try and deal with a developing plague of monster mobsters. He falls in love with her, but isn’t quite sure if he can trust a vampire, let alone make love to one.

In 30 Days of Night [David Slade, 2007], a gang of vampires led by Danny Huston besiege an Alaskan town. Daybreakers [Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009] takes place in 2019, after a plague has turned the majority of the world’s population into vampires.

Vampires continue to intrigue, scare, attract, repel, and entertain us. I’d like to end with a strange request in a guide about movies: I urge you to read Stoker’s original book. The story is told through letters and diaries and it’s not only postmodern, it’s really scary!

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Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood  [Malcolm Rymer, 1847]

An illustration from the 1847 “penny dreadful” pamphlet edition of James Malcolm Rymer’s gothic vampire story. Many persistent vampire behaviors originated here.

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Dracula Has Risen From the Grave  [Freddie Francis, 1968]

Christopher Lee as the bloodthirsty Count.

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Dracula  [George Melford, 1931]

Carlos Villarías as “Conde Dracula” and Lupita Tovar as “Eva Stewart” in the Spanish language Dracula, shot at night on the same sets as Browning’s version.

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Interview With the Vampire  [Neil Jordan, 1994]

Brad Pitt as Louis de Pointe du Lac, the vampire in Neil Jordan’s 1994 film of Anne Rice’s novel Interview With the Vampire.

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30 Days of Night  [David Slade, 2007]

Andrew Stehlin as Arvin, one of the vampires laying siege to an Alaskan town in 30 Days of Night.

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Dracula’s Daughter  [Lambert Hillyer, 1936]

Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter, seen here burning her father’s body in the hope that this will free her from the curse of vampirism.

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Nosferatu  [F. W. Murnau, 1922]

Max Schreck as Nosferatu in this, the first (and unauthorized) screen version of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. This German expressionistic silent was remade as Nosferatu the Vampyre by Werner Herzog in 1979.

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Max Schreck in the title role arrives in Wisborg; everyone else on board the ship is dead, apparently killed by a plague that leaves strange marks on the necks of victims.

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Nosferatu the Vampyre  [Werner Herzog, 1979]

Klaus Kinski, in make-up based on Schreck’s in Murnau’s silent original, realizes too late that the sun is coming up. The beautiful Isabelle Adjani is Lucy Harker.

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London After Midnight  [Tod Browning, 1927]

In this movie mystery, the “vampires” are a red herring used to trap the real culprits. One of the most sought-after “lost films,” mainly because of Lon Chaney’s extraordinary make-up. Remade as Mark of the Vampire [Tod Browning, 1935] with Béla Lugosi as the “vampire.”

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Dracula  [Tod Browning, 1931]

Béla Lugosi as Count Dracula about to bite Frances Dade as Lucy in the film that forever typecast the Hungarian actor as the vampire. Lugosi never wore fangs as Dracula.

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Lugosi’s entrance: “I am Dracula. I bid you welcome.”

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Some publicity person painted blood coming from the wounds on Frances Dade’s neck from Lugosi’s bite. The movie itself is entirely bloodless.

“My, what a big bat!”

John Harker (David Manners), Dracula [1931]

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Mark of the Vampire  [Tod Browning, 1935]

Carroll Borland as Luna and Béla Lugosi as Count Mora, her father, in this remake of London After Midnight [1927]. In the original, Lon Chaney played both the “vampire” and the Inspector from Scotland Yard. Lionel Atwill portrays the Inspector in this remake.

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Dracula’s Daughter  [Lambert Hillyer, 1936]

Universal Studios’ first sequel to Dracula [Tod Browning, 1931] begins with Edward Van Sloan as Professor Abraham Van Helsing being taken to Scotland Yard and accused of Count Dracula’s murder!

“You’re not in London now, Dr. Garth, with your police. You’re in Transylvania, in my castle!”

Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), Dracula’s Daughter

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Son of Dracula  [Robert Siodmak, 1943]

Lon Chaney, Jr. as Count Alucard holds Louise Allbritton as Katherine Caldwell in his power in this story, which brings the Transylvanian Count to New Orleans long before author Anne Rice had a similar idea.

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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein  [Charles Barton, 1948]

The last gasp of the classic Universal monsters: The studio threw Dracula (Béla Lugosi), the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange), and the Invisible Man (Vincent Price) into the pot. Here, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) approaches the oblivious Lou Costello. Surprisingly, this was a handsome production that treated the monsters with respect.

Vampires [Book Contents]

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave  [Freddie Francis, 1968]

The priest has lost his faith and the man his nerve when they stake Count Dracula.

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But their aim is not true and Dracula pulls out the stake (with lots of gushing red gore, unusual at the time)!

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The Vampire Lovers  [Roy Ward Baker, 1970]

Ingrid Pitt as Marcilla Karnstein, a character based on the J. Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla. One of the so-called Karnstein Trilogy of lesbian-themed vampire films from Hammer.

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General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing), having driven a stake through Marcilla’s heart, cuts off her head, just to make sure she’s really dead this time.

“You must die! Everybody must die!”

Marcilla Karnstein (Ingrid Pitt), The Vampire Lovers

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Twins of Evil  [John Hough, 1971]

Mary and Madeleine Collinson, identical-twin Playboy Playmates, are the stars of this, the third in the Karnstein trilogy from Hammer. Peter Cushing shines as a fanatical Puritan eager to burn witches and stake vampires.

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Near Dark  [Kathryn Bigelow, 1987]

A rushed happy ending is the only flaw in Bigelow’s Western vampire masterpiece. Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton (pictured) give fantastic performances as outlaw vampires trying to survive in the contemporary American West. Joshua John Miller as Homer, an aged vampire trapped forever in a child’s body, is both repulsive and heartbreaking. A very good movie.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula  [Francis Ford Coppola, 1992]

Sadie Frost as Lucy is not too pleased to see that cross, in Coppola’s imaginative retelling of Dracula.

“Lucy is not a random victim… She is the Devil’s concubine!”

Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), Bram Stoker’s Dracula

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Innocent Blood  [John Landis, 1992]

Anne Parillaud as the beautiful and lonely vampire Marie, who will only take “innocent blood” to survive. She accidentally lets violent mob boss Sal “The Shark” Macelli survive her attack, creating an even more monstrous mobster who envisions creating an army of mafia vampires. Marie joins forces with undercover cop Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia) to destroy Macelli. Robert Loggia is brilliant in a brave and very funny performance. With Don Rickles as Manny Bergman, Macelli’s lawyer. From an original screenplay by Michael Wolk.

Vampires [Book Contents]

Interview With the Vampire  [Neil Jordan, 1994]

Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Cruise are all vampires in this big-budget movie version of the Anne Rice novel.

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Van Helsing  [Stephen Sommers, 2004]

Josie Maran as the flying vampire Marishka.

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Richard Roxburgh as Count Vladislaus Dracula, holding Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious, looking into a mirror. Mel Brooks repeated this gag in Dracula: Dead and Loving It [1995].

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Roxburgh tries to remain as menacing as he can under the circumstances.

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30 Days of Night  [David Slade, 2007]

Danny Huston as Marlow, the leader of the vampires who besiege a small Alaskan town in the dead of winter. Huston is terrific as a vicious vampire out for blood.

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Let the Right One In  [Tomas Alfredson, 2008]

Lina Leandersson as Eli in this marvelous Swedish vampire film based on the novel and screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist. A young boy named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is bullied by the other boys in his small town. He slowly builds a friendship with the strange girl who moves into his apartment block with her uncle. A quietly great horror film.

“I live off blood… I’m twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long time.”

Eli (Lina Leandersson), Let the Right One In

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Daybreakers  [Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig, 2009]

A variation on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend (which has been made into three films already). A pandemic has turned most of the world’s people into vampires and they want a cure. Good actors and cool special effects.

IN CONVERSATION

Christopher Lee

“I never looked upon my films as horror films.”

Schlock reads Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine sitting next to its editor, Forrest J Ackerman. On the cover is Sir Christopher Lee as Dracula.

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JL: Chris, you were just about to say why you shy away from the term “horror film.”

CL: It’s a very simple answer. I did films with Boris Karloff who, like myself, made his name as a monster. He was a wonderful man, a superb actor, far better than the parts he was often given to play. What he had to do, and what I had to do, was to make the unbelievable believable. And that’s very difficult, especially with today’s audience. The reason I don’t like the word “horror,” is because it conjures up something really nasty, horrific, horrendous, evil, vile. The word that Boris used to use, and indeed I use, is “fantasy.” The French always refer to these films as “films of the fantastic,” which I think is a very good description. I never looked upon my films as horror films. I always tried to give the impression that the characters I played were doing things they couldn’t help doing. And Boris did the same.

JL: You’ve played some of the classic monsters. You are the definitive Dracula, and you’ve played the Mummy, as well as Frankenstein’s Monster. Your Dracula is pretty ferocious, whereas your Frankenstein’s creature is very sympathetic…

CL: This is what I’ve always tried to do. Even when playing, not necessarily a monster, but the bad guy, I’ve always tried to do something, say something, the audience doesn’t expect.

JL: Your performance in The Curse of Frankenstein [Terence Fisher, 1957] is fabulous.

CL: The Creature is a very pitiful character. He didn’t ask to be made; he’s a victim. More so than the people he kills.

JL: I think the people he kills are victims, too.

CL: Well, I didn’t kill many people, as I remember. And Boris didn’t either. In (the Karloff Frankenstein), there was that famous scene when he throws the little girl into the lake thinking that she will float like the flowers. The censors cut that out, but I believe it’s back in now. That scene is pitiful, pitiful. The audience has to see this other side to the Creature.

JL: What’s interesting about The Curse of Frankenstein, is that Peter Cushing’s role, Dr. Frankenstein, is the real monster.

CL: Oh, absolutely. As you say, I’m the victim.

JL: And in the sequels, Frankenstein’s creature becomes less and less important.

CL: I never saw them.

JL: Well, they vary greatly in quality. But Peter’s always good!

CL: He was a superb actor.

JL: Marty Scorsese said that your entrance in Horror of Dracula [aka Dracula, Terence Fisher, 1958] made a huge impression on him. You walk quietly down the stairs and say, “I am Count Dracula. And this is my house.” Something elegant and simple like that.

CL: I remember our first night in New York with Peter [Cushing]. I’d never been to America. This was about ’57, I think. There was a great big building near the theater that was covered with an enormous painting of me (as Dracula) carrying one of the girls.

JL: How many stories high was it?

CL: At least 10 stories. That made me reel! Then we had to go to the first performance. And I’m not good in public, few actors are. I said to Peter, “I don’t think this is a very good idea.” And he said, “Oh, my dear fellow, this is what we’ve come for! We’ve got to do it!” It was close to midnight, and many in the audience had had a few, to put it mildly. So I said to Peter, “I’m going to sit in the very top row, underneath the projection booth with you, near the exit, so that if anything happens I can leave.” Because I didn’t like seeing myself on screen, and I didn’t know what the audience reaction was going to be. Finally, the lights go down, the curtains part, up come the credits, and I recall there was a coffin with my name and blood splashes onto it. There was a huge roar of applause, and then the moment comes where you see me at the top of the stairs: a silhouette. The place exploded. Everyone shouting and yelling, and laughing, and I thought, “Oh God, this really is the end.” And I walk down the stairs in a perfectly normal way, and I say quite calmly, “Mr. Harker,” or “Good evening, Mr. Harker” or something, and he says, “Count Dracula,” and I say, “Yes, I am Dracula,” or something… The audience went completely quiet! Total silence for the rest of the film!

JL: The audience must have reacted to the scares?

CL: A few shudders or squeaks, but every time I appeared on screen—silence. The biggest shock in the film, was when the girl [Valerie Gaunt credited as “Vampire Woman”] tries to seduce Jonathan Harker. And there’s a shot of me in the doorway, teeth bared, wearing those contact lenses—couldn’t see a thing— and I leap up onto a table, and I leap off—that’s no stunt, no fake—shoot across the floor, fling her aside and go straight for him. There were no cuts. I don’t think anybody had ever seen an actor playing a vampire do anything like that before.

JL: Your Dracula is terribly physical, and very, very sexual.

CL: Which I did not intend.

JL: Whether you intended it or not, it made a big impression.

CL: I know it did, but I tried to play him as a man with a kind of compulsion. I obviously gave the impression that he enjoyed it.

JL: You played it very sexual, though, Chris. You’re saying it was an accident?

CL: I tried to make him attractive to women. That was in the script!

JL: Now, what about all the sequels. They got sillier and sillier.

CL: That gives rise to a true story. The first film came out, and it rocketed around the world.

JL: It was a huge hit.

CL: And it made me world famous. As Dracula, though, not necessarily as Christopher Lee.

JL: But not only was your Dracula so striking and remarkable, it was really the first color Dracula movie. And the blood was so Technicolor red.

CL: Well, that was Hammer’s idea. Eight years later, they asked me…

JL: …It was 8 years until the second one? I didn’t know that.

CL: Yes, 7 or 8. I did Rasputin [full title, Rasputin, the Mad Monk, Don Sharp, 1966] and Dracula: Prince of Darkness [Terence Fisher, 1966] back to back. Same sets. When I read the script, I said to my agent, “I’m not saying any of this dialog. It’s appalling.”

JL: You don’t say anything in the movie!

CL: Not a word.

JL: But you have a hell of a presence!

CL: When Chekhov went to see one of his plays at a local theater, they asked him at the end what he thought of it, and he came up with this wonderful expression: “Not enough gunpowder.” That’s the secret. If you have the physical presence, all right: you’re lucky. If you have power, well, you’re lucky. But, gunpowder, that’s the real secret!

JL: Well, your Dracula certainly has fire and brimstone.

CL: I refused to do the second one at first. In the end, I played Dracula five or six times…

JL: I hope they paid you well!

CL: Oh, you’re joking. I think they paid me about £750.

JL: Even for the later ones?

CL: I think they paid me a little bit more later, but not much. Certainly not five figures.

JL: But you were the selling point of the movies!

CL: I bought my first car when I was 35. It was a second-hand Merc. I could just about afford it. Anyway, the process went like this: The telephone would ring and my agent would say, “Jimmy Carreras [President of Hammer Films] has been on the phone, they’ve got another Dracula for you.” And I would say, “Forget it! I don’t want to do another one.”

JL: So how would Hammer get you to agree?

CL: I’d get a call from Jimmy Carreras, in a state of hysteria. “What’s all this about?!” “Jim, I don’t want to do it.” “You’ve got to do it!” “Jim, I don’t want to do it, and I don’t have to do it.” “No, you have to do it!” And I said, “Why?” He replied, “Because I’ve already sold it to the American distributor with you playing the part. Think of all the people you know so well, that you will put out of work!” Emotional blackmail. That’s the only reason I did them.

JL: “Emotional blackmail” is a tradition in the movie business. Tell me about The Mummy [Terence Fisher, 1959].

CL: The Mummy was a real person at one time, a high priest, and he falls in love with a princess.

JL: It’s a romantic story.

CL: Oh yes! This love is forbidden, and they find out, cut out his tongue, and ball him up.

JL: Was that terribly uncomfortable?

CL: Yes! Swathed in bandages. Boris [Karloff, star of the original The Mummy, Karl Freund, 1932] said it was absolute hell, because he was covered in make-up and wrapped so tightly in bandages. If he took a deep breath, the bandages would crack and you would see there was a real person underneath.

JL: Luckily for him, Karloff is only the bandage-wrapped Mummy in one scene…

CL: The way I played it, I tried to make people feel sorry for me. The problem with the role was a physical one. I had to move like an automaton, but the Mummy also had a mind of its own. Because of the bandages I could only act with my body movements and my eyes. In one of the most effective scenes, I come crashing through the windows and Peter Cushing thrusts a spear into me, which goes right through, and shoots me. And then Yvonne Furneaux comes in. And Peter shouts, “Let down your hair! Let down your hair!” while I’m strangling her with one hand. And she does. And it’s Ananka, the princess I fell in love with. I see her and I am riveted. And after quite a long time, I just turn around and walk away. Which I thought was very moving.

JL: And didn’t you have to go into a swamp?

CL: Ah, the business in the swamp: I had to carry about three or four girls, sometimes as much as 80 yards, and they were pretending to be unconscious, so they were dead weight. It didn’t help my shoulder muscles! In the swamp, Yvonne was saying to me under her breath, “Don’t drop me, don’t drop me,” and I was using the most appalling language, because I was crashing into these pipes which were producing the bubbles in the water and the mud.

JL: Which brings us to Mr. Hyde.

CL: I’d forgotten that one. I think that was one of the best things I’ve ever done. But it had a ridiculous title: I, Monster [Stephen Weeks, 1971]. And they changed Jekyll’s name.

JL: He’s not called Dr. Jekyll?

CL: Jekyll and Hyde became Marlowe and Blake. But all the other people in the story have the correct names.

JL: Why on earth would they do that?

CL: Don’t ask me!

JL: Fredric March played Hyde as a bestial, ape-like character.

CL: Yes, and Spencer Tracy was very frightening, too.

JL: Tracy played him more like a psychopath. It was John Barrymore who first made Hyde into a physical monster.

CL: Oh yes, that was extraordinary.

JL: And he did it live on stage on Broadway!

CL: I don’t know how he did that.

JL: George Folsey, the camera operator on the silent Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [John S. Robertson, 1920], told me that on stage Barrymore would drink from the flask, then stagger and fall down behind a desk and quickly get right up again transformed into the hideous Mr. Hyde! It happened very fast. All he did was put on a pointed, bald cap and shove crooked teeth into his mouth. He could distort his face so grotesquely.

CL: I played Hyde in stages of degeneration. I became worse and worse and worse. In the name of science. Curiosity. What would happen if I took this drug? All scientists are curious. The make-up man, Harry Frampton, did a wonderful job. There were about five or six stages of degeneration.

JL: Is there any particular monster that you were frightened of as a kid?

CL: Well, I remember after seeing Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, aged 11, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and think he was in the room. And I wasn’t the only one!

The Wolfman [Joe Johnston, 2010] An atmospheric shot from the very disappointing remake.

WEREWOLVES

The belief in shape-shifting is universal. In every culture, from the ancient Greeks to the Native Americans, men and women often become animals and vice versa. In stories like the god Zeus turning himself into a swan to seduce the mortal Leda, or the magical Puck giving Bottom the head of an ass in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theme of man-into-animal appears countless times in art and literature. In cinema, by far the most popular shape-shifter is the werewolf.

The shape-shifting “rules” change from film to film. Usually a man becomes a werewolf by being bitten by another werewolf, as in Werewolf of London [Stuart Walker, 1935], The Wolf Man [George Waggner, 1941 and Joe Johnston, 2010], and An American Werewolf in London [John Landis, 1981].

In The Curse of the Werewolf [Terence Fisher, 1961] Oliver Reed is born a werewolf because his mother was raped and he is born on Christmas Day! This movie claims that for an unwanted child to share his birthday with Jesus Christ is “an insult to heaven.” When the poor bastard baby is to be baptized, the Holy Water in the baptismal font begins to boil. Not a good sign.

In the Underworld series of films, an entire race of werewolves battles a race of vampires for supremacy, and in Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers [2002], a troop of British soldiers has the misfortune of running into a family of werewolves in the Scottish Highlands. In How to Make a Monster [Herbert L. Strock, 1958], an insane make-up artist uses Michael Landon’s actual make-up and mask from the earlier film I Was a Teenage Werewolf [Gene Fowler, Jr., 1957] to turn an innocent actor into a homicidal wolf man! Val Lewton’s production Cat People [Jacques Tourneur, 1942], centers on a beautiful woman (Simone Simon) descended from an ancient European race. When her passions (jealousy and lust) are aroused, she turns into a murderous black panther!

The full moon has long been associated with violence and madness—the word “lunatic” shows the power we give the full moon. Against his will, the body of the lycanthrope changes into that of a werewolf whenever a full moon appears in the night sky.

A common term for the natural menstruation cycle of women is “the curse.” This idea is explored in the clever Canadian picture Ginger Snaps [John Fawcett, 2000]. This film, like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and The Beast Within [Philippe Mora, 1982], uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for adolescence. In adolescence, youngsters begin to grow hair in unexpected places and parts of their anatomy swell and grow. Everyone experiences these physical transformations in their bodies and new, unfamiliar, sexual thoughts in their minds. No wonder we readily accept the concept of a literal metamorphosis.

In Curt Siodmak’s original screenplay for Universal’s seminal The Wolf Man, he emphasized the notion of the werewolf as a victim. The Wolf Man of the title, Larry Talbot, (played by Lon Chaney, Jr. in all five Universal Wolf Man movies), is horrified by his plight and spends most of his time trying to find a cure or contemplating suicide.

Every single werewolf film always has a major “transformation” sequence: Larry Talbot’s transformation was accomplished by a series of optical dissolves. Chaney sat very still (usually with his head, hands, and feet held in place) while make-up man Jack Pierce gradually applied more and more yak hair and putty to his face. This was a tedious, time-consuming process, and the use of optical dissolves resulted in a rather gentle transformation from man into wolf man.

When I wrote the script for An American Werewolf in London (written in 1969, produced in 1981), I envisioned the metamorphosis from man to beast as a violent and painful one. The character of David Kessler (David Naughton) would transform from a two-legged human into a four-legged “hound from hell.” I also specified that the sequence take place without cutaways and in bright light. The gifted make-up artist Rick Baker accomplished this with an elaborate combination of make-up, foam appliances, and what he called “change-o” body parts. These were elaborate puppet reproductions of parts of Naughton’s body (including his torso, hands, feet, head, and face) that could actually stretch and transform into the wolf monster in real time on camera. This sequence took five days to shoot. I ended up using one cutaway: of a toy Mickey Mouse silently watching. Rick won the first of his many Academy Awards for his groundbreaking work.

In Joe Dante’s terrific The Howling [1981], the character of Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo) positively relishes his lycanthropy and gleefully transforms in front of a terrified Terry Fisher (Belinda Belaski). In this movie, werewolves seem to transform either at will or from sexual arousal. TV anchorwoman Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) has a particularly disturbing encounter with Quist in a porno booth at a sex shop while a film of a rape is being projected. Karen White eventually turns into a sort of fluffy, poodle-dog-werewolf during a live television news broadcast!

As in the Underworld pictures, the popular Twilight movies also chronicle the conflict between a race of vampires and werewolves. Also like the Underworld movies, the Twilight series uses computer-generated imagery to accomplish not only the man-into-wolf transformations, but also the monsters themselves. In Eclipse [David Slade, 2010] the werewolves tend to all be very buff, shirtless young men who transform into wolves by leaping into the air.

Hogwarts’ unfortunate Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Professor Lupin (David Thewlis), introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [Alfonso Cuarón, 2004] is another werewolf who uses CGI to “morph,” while Jack Nicholson in Wolf [Mike Nichols, 1994] uses a far more subtle, traditional make-up by Rick Baker.

Since the werewolf is here to stay, I suggest taking the excellent advice given by the customers of The Slaughtered Lamb pub in An American Werewolf in London: “Stay on the road. Beware the moon.”

Werewolves [Book Contents]

An American Werewolf in London  [John Landis, 1981]

Scotland Yard’s Inspector Villiers (Don McKillop) attacked by the werewolf in Piccadilly Circus.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Michael Jackson’s Thriller  [John Landis, 1983]

Michael Jackson as a teenage werecat “strangling” me on the set of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

The Werewolf  [Lucas Cranach the Elder, -]

This woodcut by the German Renaissance painter, engraver, and printmaker shows a lycanthrope attacking a village.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Little Red Riding Hood  [Charles Perrault, 17th century]

German postcard illustration [c. 1900]. Charles Perrault wrote the first account of the French folk tale in the 17th century. In Perrault’s telling, Little Red Riding Hood ends up as a tasty meal for the devious Wolf.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

The Wolf Man  [George Waggner, 1941]

This ad for Universal Studios’ newest monster stresses the transformation “from Man to Beast” as a major marketing strategy.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Lon Chaney, Jr. as the tragic Wolf Man of the title holding the lovely Evelyn Ankers in his arms. I’ve never understood why the werewolf that bit him (the Gypsy Bela, played by Béla Lugosi) was a proper, four-footed wolf and Talbot became a two-footed wolf man.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Cat People  [Jacques Tourneur, 1942]

French actress Simone Simon stars as Irena Dubrovna in this intelligent thriller from the Val Lewton B Picture Unit at RKO Studios. The sequence where a jealous Irena follows her husband’s secretary to her apartment building’s swimming pool is still eerie after all these years.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Werewolf of London  [Stuart Walker, 1935]

Henry Hull refused to wear the make-up Jack Pierce designed for the werewolf, as he felt it hid too much of his face. Pierce and Hull settled on the face pictured here in a highly retouched publicity photo from the original release. Pierce ended up using his first Werewolf of London design on Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Wolf Man.

“The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a Satanic creature with the worst qualities of both.”

Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland), Werewolf of London

Werewolves [Book Contents]

The Curse of the Werewolf  [Terence Fisher, 1961]

Oliver Reed makes a splendid werewolf in this handsome Hammer film. Roy Ashton, Hammer’s go-to monster maker, did Reed’s werewolf make-up.

“Their dream of love a nightmare of horror!”

From the trailer for The Curse of the Werewolf

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Dog Soldiers  [Neil Marshall, 2002]

A squad of British soldiers on a training mission in the Scottish Highlands has a nasty encounter with a family of werewolves in Neil Marshall’s exciting, action-packed horror movie.

“They were always here. I just unlocked the door.”

Megan (Emma Cleasby), Dog Soldiers

Werewolves [Book Contents]

How to Make a Monster  [Herbert L. Strock, 1958]

Actor Gary Clarke in Michael Landon’s Teenage Werewolf make-up from the earlier film, poses with Gary Conway, the Teenage Monster from I Was a Teenage Frankenstein [Herbert L. Strock, 1957].

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Ginger Snaps  [John Fawcett, 2000]

A smart take on werewolf mythology and a clever examination of teenage angst and sexuality. Two “goth” sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins) meet the Beast of Bailey Woods and find out that it’s a lycanthrope.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

The Howling  [Joe Dante, 1981]

Serial murderer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo) is the epitome of the young punk our parents warned us to stay away from. He is also a werewolf. Note the poster design for The Howling is essentially the other side of the poster for I Was a Teenage Werewolf!

Werewolves [Book Contents]

The Twilight Saga: New Moon  [Chris Weitz, 2009]

The second film in the Twilight series. In this picture all of the werewolves have nice bodies and rarely wear shirts in their human form.

Werewolves [Book Contents]

Wolf  [Mike Nichols, 1994]

Jack Nicholson with Michelle Pfeiffer in a modern werewolf story. James Spader steals the picture as a rival werewolf.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

This was my attempt to make a movie dealing with the supernatural in a completely realistic way. Because there is no such thing as men who become monstrous wolves when there is a full moon, I tried to explore how one would react when confronted with this as truth. What do you do when the unreal is real? That was my premise and An American Werewolf in London is the result.

David Kessler (David Naughton) wakes up to find himself naked inside the wolf cage in The Regent’s Park Zoo.

David Kessler (David Naughton) halfway through his painful metamorphosis.

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A publicity shot of David surrounded by the victims of his “carnivorous lunar activities” at a porno theater in Piccadilly Circus. His best friend Jack (Griffin Dunne), now also one of the “Living Dead,” is on his right. Jack is not a fresh kill and by now looks a little worse for wear.

“The wolf’s bloodline must be severed. The last remaining werewolf must be destroyed. It’s you, David!”

Jack (Griffin Dunne), An American Werewolf in London

The transformation from a man into four-legged “hound from hell” is a painful one. Sinew, muscle, and bone stretch, bend, and crack. New, non-human flesh grows and limbs elongate, teeth become fangs, hair sprouts from all over the body, claws burst from fingers. The jaw unhinges from the skull and actually begins to grow into a snout. I recommend you do not try this at home.

IN CONVERSATION

Joe Dante

“It’s confronting death without having to really die.”

Director Joe Dante checks a shot on the set of Gremlins [1984].

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JL: So, Joe, here on your office wall you have a poster from Creature From the Black Lagoon [Jack Arnold, 1954]…

JD: One of the great monsters of all time.

JL: Why?

JD: It’s one of the best-designed monsters. It’s a triumph, considering what was available at the time. There has to be something recognizably human about a great monster. And the greatest thing about the Creature is, of course, that he lusts after Julie Adams!

JL: But what’s he going to do when he gets Julie Adams? Isn’t he a fish?

JD: Well, I think he’s certainly part fish.

JL: Okay, we love the Creature. And you also have a large poster of La Belle et la Bête [Jean Cocteau, 1946] on the wall.

JD: Yes. That monster is also a great design, by Jean Cocteau. It’s kind of a Wolf Man design. The great thing about wolf men characters is that they are sort of dog-like, and so we tend to feel a kinship to them. The Jack Pierce make-up for The Wolf Man [George Waggner, 1941] is great, but there is something dog-pet-like about him.

JL: What about your werewolves in The Howling [1981]?

JD: The werewolves in The Howling were an attempt to get away from that dog-like look. We thought they should be more lupine, like they are in the old woodcuts.

JL: Do you really think the most effective monsters are humanoid?

JD: Well, what is a monster? A monster is something that isn’t normal, that doesn’t look like regular people. In the Middle Ages, anybody who had any kind of a deformity was considered to be a monster. There are a lot of superstitions about deformity. There are many fantasy creatures that are half man and half something else, like the Minotaur. But the fascination for monsters for my generation was basically that we were powerless kids and monsters were misshapen individuals who didn’t fit into society, who didn’t have any power, and who had to strike back. So, as a kid, you felt a kind of power watching a monster doing his stuff.

JL: Do you have a theory on why people like monster movies?

JD: It’s a difficult question. It’s confronting death without having to really die.

JL: What was the first monster movie that genuinely frightened you?

JD: I remember finding Christopher Lee’s Frankenstein Monster very scary [The Curse of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher, 1957].

JL: How old were you? Five?

JD: I was eleven. I imagined that he was going to be coming upstairs from the cellar in our house! The whole thing about these movies is that you took them home with you. When I saw Them! [Gordon Douglas, 1954], the giant ants made a sort of cricket-like, chirping kind of noise, very much like the sounds that would come from the field behind my house. Whenever a tree branch would rap on the window pane, I would think it was a giant ant antenna!

JL: But you really enjoyed seeing these movies, even though they would haunt you when you got home.

JD: I would come home and have nightmares, and my parents would say, “If you’re going to have nightmares, then why do you go to see these pictures?”

JL: And how would you answer them?

JD: “I have to.” I had to go see them. I couldn’t not go. I loved those movies. I loved all movies when I was a kid—particularly cartoons—but there was something about those pictures. They weren’t like other movies. They took place in worlds that I couldn’t even imagine, places that I couldn’t go to.

JL: The Exorcist, for me, is still probably the most successful horror movie.

JD: Yeah, it’s a brilliantly nasty movie. It’s very cleverly put together. At the beginning of the movie there are no make-up tricks or revolving heads or green vomit. By the time you get to that stuff, the audience has been pummelled into a state of being unable to resist watching whatever they’re going to do. They’ve got a girl peeing on the floor, they’ve got her masturbating with a crucifix… The movie breaks down your defenses until you’re just numb and ready to take all of the classic horror tropes which, had they been at the beginning, would not have worked.

JL: What was the first monster movie you saw?

JD: The Mad Monster [Sam Newfield, 1942]. It’s about a mad scientist (George Zucco) who turns this dim-witted handyman (Glenn Strange) into a werewolf. The reason this picture was so fascinating to me was that there was a little girl in it, whom the monster kills off-screen. We just see her ball bouncing back into frame.

JL: Were you scared by it?

JD: Sure I was scared: He killed a little girl! But it was a contained scared, because I saw it on TV. When I saw movies in the theater, that’s when I had nightmares. When you’re in a big theater and it’s dark, it’s truly scary! I was small and I didn’t want to have any heads to see over, so I would always sit in the front row, looking upwards, which I’m sure is why I have to wear glasses. I really liked movies that were about things that didn’t happen in real life—the fantastic. And in the early ’50s, when the space movies came out—This Island Earth [Joseph M. Newman, 1955] was a revelation—I was in heaven.

JL: The visual effects and those vivid Technicolor colors still hold up.

JD: Plus it was written on the level of a ten year-old. It’s fabulous! I saw Invaders From Mars [William Cameron Menzies, 1953] and then Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956] when they came out. If you saved up enough Quaker Oats box–tops you could get into that for free…

JL: You’re only five years older than I am and it makes such a difference to the films you actually saw in a movie theater.

JD: It makes a tremendous difference, because from ’53 to ’58 were a kind of golden years for science fiction movies.

JL: I saw The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [Nathan H. Juran] at the Crest Theater on Westwood Boulevard in 1958. But those other films I saw on television in black and white.

JD: Well, that was the beginning for you, but I had already been watching sci-fi and horror films for a long time at the movies. They were marketed to kids. You’d maybe have one friend, or two, who liked monster movies, but you really didn’t know many people who liked them, so you felt a little isolated. But when you went to the supermarket and you saw Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine on the shelf next to Lady’s Home Journal, you realized: “My God, there must be other people like me out there!” I spent years writing letters to Famous Monsters, trying to get my name in it. If you could get your name in it, you were immortal! I wrote letters about everything: all the movies I’d seen, who were my favorite monsters, whatever.

I finally got to the point where I wrote about the worst movies I’d ever seen. It was published in the magazine as an article titled “Dante’s Inferno!” And when Forrest J Ackerman sent me the magazine, annotated with “Go, Joe! Go!” it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. I was 12 or 13. Then I read the article and, of course, he’d completely re-written it. He used words like “symbiotic”—things I didn’t even understand. But nonetheless, I felt like, “Wow! I’m part of a community.” There was this feeling of solidarity with other kids like me. Now there are online fan communities, but there wasn’t anything like that then. If you wanted to find out about a movie, you had only the TV guide. If you went to the library, the movie books were very scholarly and serious and not interesting to kids. The great boon of Famous Monsters was that it got people interested in film history.

JL: Yeah, it had articles not just about actors, but on writers, directors, technicians… like Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jack Pierce, Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, Lon Chaney, Richard Matheson, James Whale, and on and on.

JD: Famous Monsters of Filmland put all those disparate strands together in a way comprehensible to kids.

JL: Most horror magazines and websites now are just about maiming and killing. People are really into gore!

JD: It’s all spectacle. It’s pure, transgressive spectacle. It involves the same kinds of emotions that the Romans experienced when the Christians were thrown to the lions. Except in movies, it’s safe, we’re not really killing anybody. Now extreme gore is an accepted part of the way films are made. If you have a gory death scene, you can build a whole film around it, like The Final Destination [David R. Ellis, 2009].

People are so jaded. They’ve seen every plot, they’ve seen every twist, they’ve seen every gore effect. They’ve seen it all! And there are many things competing for their attention now that didn’t exist when we were growing up. Plus, they know nothing about film; they know nothing about film history. They don’t know who Jimmy Stewart was! They don’t know!

JL: It kind of freaks me out.

JD: And you say, “How ignorant of them,” but the fact is, in order to know about something you have to see it! The Marx Brothers—who are they? Laurel and Hardy? Nobody programs them. People don’t want to see them.

JL: My kids grew up with all the old movies, so I was so shocked when my daughter brought a bunch of girls home for a sleepover and she wanted to put The Women [George Cukor, 1939] on for them. The girls refused to watch it because it was in black and white! It was very upsetting to me.

JD: The Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and all that kind of stuff is only going to be kept alive in universities. They are no longer part of popular culture. This stuff runs only on cable or satellite. It’s considered niche programming.

JL: Why do you think that so many vampire, werewolf, and zombie movies are now being made?

JD: It’s an astonishment to me—particularly because I was loyal to the genre when people thought it was trash, and now it has become mainstream. The fact is that the motion picture industry has become a glorified B-movie factory. Nowadays, the studios mine all the old, low-budget serials and monster titles, give them massive budgets, and cast them with big stars.

JL: Well, that’s directly because of Spielberg and Lucas!

JD: Exactly! But there was a moment during the Jaws and Star Wars period in the ’70s, when it seemed like movies were going to grow up. Look at what the studios made in those decades. But now it’s like the suits realized: “Wait a minute! We can just make fantasy films with no content and they will all show up all over the world! So now it’s all elves and Lord of the Rings, special effects in Transformers… it’s non-content film. Films that aren’t about anything.

JL: Gremlins [Joe Dante, 1984] was a case where there was a new fantasy film with a political subtext. And the wonderful malevolence of the Gremlins was so subversive! And Gremlins 2: The New Batch [Joe Dante, 1990] had some brilliant stuff in it. I saw that movie a hundred times—because my son Max adored it. But there are extraordinary moments in that. Really funny, brilliant, and dark…

Okay, enough about you. Let’s talk about some specific monsters: The Mummy.

JD: The bromide about the Mummy was that you just need to walk away, and if you walked fast, you could get away from him. But when I was a kid, even though he was slow, he always got his victims. So it seemed to me that he had this magical power.

JL: And vampires?

JD: They’re back. And now they’re sexy and young, and they’re…

JL: Mormon!

JD: Absolutely, the whole appeal of the Twilight thing is that they can’t have sex. It’s the abstinence thing—that’s why parents are saying: “You should see these Twilight movies; they’re really good!”

JL: So summing up, do you have any thoughts about why it is we like monsters?

JD: They’re sources of melodrama; they’re dangerous; they make people run in fear; they decimate; they kill; they do all the things that a bomb does. Maybe it’s an embracing of death that starts at an early age. But basically, monsters do bad things and usually cause lots of death and heartache. Monsters are metaphors. Godzilla is a perfect example. Here is atomic war come to life, to be visited upon the people of Japan. That would be a good game: Name the monster movie and then the metaphor!

Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein and Dwight Frye as his assistant Fritz in Frankenstein [James Whale, 1931].

MAD SCIENTISTS

Scientific curiosity is the bedrock of progress. Sometimes, however, scientific research can be harmful to those conducting it; Madame Curie almost certainly died from the effects of the very radioactivity she discovered.

In Die, Monster, Die! [Daniel Haller, 1965], Boris Karloff’s work with a radioactive meteor in the cellar of his house has catastrophic consequences for his entire family. In The Invisible Man [James Whale, 1933], Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) is driven mad by the injections of “Monocane,” a drug he has discovered that makes him invisible. And woe to poor Dr. Jekyll, whose research into what we now call psychopharmacology releases his inner, murderous personality, his alter ego Mr. Hyde. Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) learns too late the power of the technology of the lost race of Krell in Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956] when it unleashes his subconscious thoughts as a living creature of pure energy. The terrifying Monster from the Id is only seen in outline when it is being blasted by lasers. This memorable and fearsome monster was animated by Joshua Meador, on loan to MGM from the Walt Disney Studios.

The insane Dr. Moreau from H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau is a ruthless scientist performing radical surgeries on animals to create men. Wells’ short novel was written in 1896 as an anti-vivisectionist tract and the three feature films based on the book have all emphasized the extreme sadism of Dr. Moreau. Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) in Island of Lost Souls [Erle C. Kenton, 1932], rules the “manimals” he’s made by their fear of “The House of Pain”— the operating room where he struggles to cut out “the stubborn beast flesh.” The Beast Man Sayer of the Law (Béla Lugosi) confronts the bullwhip-wielding Dr. Moreau with his plaintive, “We are not men. We are not beasts. We are things.” The Beast Men finally revolt, turning Moreau’s gleaming scalpels on their tormentor. Laughton’s screams as he is dragged off to The House of Pain live long in the memory. This truly disturbing movie could be used as an “anti-genetic engineering” brochure in the present day!

The most famous mad scientist would have to be Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) in the classic 1931 Universal Picture, Frankenstein [James Whale]. His experiments to revive with electricity the creature he has pieced together from dead bodies created the definitive movie monster. As portrayed by Boris Karloff, in make-up by the great Jack Pierce, the Monster is both to be feared and pitied. Karloff’s brilliant performance powerfully conveys the Monster’s pain, innocence, and brutality. The tremendous popular success of Frankenstein gave James Whale the freedom to create its extraordinary sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein [1935], which gave us not only Elsa Lanchester’s unforgettable performance in the dual role of author Mary Shelley and the Bride of the Monster, but the maddest of all mad doctors, Doctor Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger).

Mad doctors tend to have bizarre obsessions; my personal favorite is the brain transplant. Dracula himself (Béla Lugosi) plans to put Lou Costello’s brain into the skull of the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange) in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [Charles Barton, 1948]. George Zucco transplants the brain of a young man into a gorilla in The Monster and the Girl [Stuart Heisler, 1941] and Dr. Sigmund Walters (John Carradine) puts the brain and glands of a young woman into the skull of an ape, creating the attractive, yet mysterious Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) in Captive Wild Woman [Edward Dmytryk, 1943].

A “matter transportation device” has tragic results when a common fly is inadvertently dematerialized along with the scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) conducting the experiment. When Andre rematerializes, he has a giant fly’s head and one large claw in The Fly [Kurt Neumann, 1958]. Meanwhile, the little fly now has one tiny arm and a tiny human head! The scene of this little fly trapped in a spider web as a huge and hideous spider bears down on him (his tiny human face squeaking “Help me!”) is one of the silliest, yet most upsetting, images in all of the horror films of the 1950s.

In David Cronenberg’s excellent remake of The Fly [1986], scientist Seth Brundle (a wonderful performance from Jeff Goldblum) is doomed to repeat the experiment, with more profound but equally shocking and tragic results.

The experiments of Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland) with X-ray vision also go badly awry. His vision grows more and more powerful until he goes mad and tears out his own eyes in X [aka The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Roger Corman, 1963].

In Altered States [Ken Russell, 1980], Dr. Edward Jessup (William Hurt) and his colleagues experiment with sensory deprivation water tanks and drugs to achieve “biological devolution.” Jessup emerges from his tank once as a primitive man and once again as “conscious primordial matter.”

In Swamp Thing [Wes Craven, 1982], Dr. Alec Holland works in the swamps with his sister doing bio-medical research. He is trying to create a plant/human hybrid that can live in extreme environments. It should come as no surprise that Dr. Holland ends up a hybrid plant person himself.

Dr. Stoner (Strother Martin) wants to turn his handsome assistant into a large snake in SSSSSSS [aka SSSSnake, Bernard L. Kowalski, 1973]. In both The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant [Anthony M. Lanza, 1971] and The Thing with Two Heads [Lee Frost, 1972], neither the recipient nor the donor of the extra head is very happy with the results! After his wife is decapitated in a car accident, Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) keeps her severed head alive in his basement lab in the country while he scouts strip joints for the right body to sew it onto! His wife (Virginia Leith), or rather her head, is now The Brain That Wouldn’t Die [Joseph Green, 1962]. She develops telepathic communication with a hideous monster locked in the basement closet—the result of her husband’s earlier failed experiments. Without giving too much away, just let me say that this film has one of the strangest endings in movie history.

The fundamentally conservative nature of the horror film tends to reinforce the reactionary idea that, “There are some things Man is not meant to know.” Intellectual curiosity is punished and those who dare question conventional wisdom suffer the consequences. I think this would be a good place to point out that Galileo was right, and the Church wrong!

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Re-Animator  [Stuart Gordon, 1985]

Poster for Re-Animator.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Frankenstein’s monster  [Mary Shelley, 1831]

Frontispiece illustration from the 1831 edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  [Rouben Mamoulian, 1931]

Fredric March’s Dr. Jekyll transforms into Mr. Hyde. March won a Best Actor Academy Award for this performance.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

The Curse of Frankenstein  [Terence Fisher, 1957]

Peter Cushing as the ruthless and cold Dr. Frankenstein with Christopher Lee as the victimized monster.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

The Bride of Frankenstein  [James Whale, 1935]

Elsa Lanchester as the mate Frankenstein has made for his monster.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Ernest Thesiger, as Dr. Pretorius, displays his own creations—homunculi he keeps in jars!

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Forbidden Planet  [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]

Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Edward Morbius, a scientist who has partially solved the remarkable secrets of the Krell, a vanished alien race.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Die, Monster, Die!  [Daniel Haller, 1965]

A stunt man doubles for Boris Karloff as the unfortunate victim of radiation from a meteorite in this movie based on H. P. Lovecraft’s story The Color Out of Space [1927].

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

The Invisible Man  [James Whale, 1933]

Claude Rains made his film debut in a role in which he was not seen but heard. Whale treated the story as a comedy, while Rains gave full throat to his character’s growing megalomania. With groundbreaking special effects by John P. Fulton.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Island of Lost Souls  [Erle C. Kenton, 1932]

A rare photograph of a test make-up. A remarkable mixture of animal parts in a terrific design not seen in the finished film.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Charles Laughton gives a fantastic performance as the sadistic Dr. Moreau. Here, he gives instructions to one of his Beast Men.

“We are not men! We are not beasts! We are things!”

The Sayer of the Law (Béla Lugosi), Island of Lost Souls

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Boris Karloff, Colin Clive  [Frankenstein, James Whale, 1931]

The monster (pictured first) and his maker (pictured second) in the first of the three films in which Karloff played the role.

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The Fly  [Kurt Neumann, 1958]

Herbert Marshall, Vincent Price, and Charles Herbert discover the terrible truth in the horrifying climax of The Fly.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

The Fly  [David Cronenberg, 1986]

Jeff Goldblum as mad scientist Seth Brundle in two stages of his metamorphosis into what he terms “Brundlefly.” Cronenberg’s movie is both gross and emotionally powerful.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Jeff Goldblum as mad scientist Seth Brundle.

“I’m an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake. ”

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), The Fly

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X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes  [Roger Corman, 1963]

Ray Milland is Dr. James Xavier, whose experimental eyedrops allow him to see more than the human eye should. Once again, the moral is that we should not tamper with the natural order of things. Xavier ends up tearing out his own eyes! One of Corman’s best films, with a terrific performance from Don Rickles as a carnival barker who sees a way to profit from Xavier’s affliction.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Swamp Thing  [Wes Craven, 1982]

Dick Durock as Swamp Thing in the first film based on the DC Comic book character. Durock wore this suit in a sequel and the subsequent television series. As H. L. Menken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the American public.”

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

Sssssss  [Bernard L. Kowalski, 1973]

Mad ophiologist Dr. Stoner (Strother Martin) injects snake venom into his daughter’s boyfriend, which transforms him into a malformed, half-man, half-snake.

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The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant  [Anthony M. Lanza, 1971]

A drive-in classic, in which mad doctor Bruce Dern transplants the head of a criminal onto the body of a big, mentally handicapped guy. Essentially remade as The Thing With Two Heads [Lee Frost, 1972], in which racist Ray Milland’s head is attached to African American Roosevelt Grier’s body, to Rosey’s head’s dismay. The Thing With Two Heads boasts an early cameo by Rick Baker in a two-headed gorilla suit.

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die  [Joseph Green, 1962]

Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) attends to the head of his fiancée (Virginia Leith). He keeps her head alive in his basement while he searches for a voluptuous body to replace the one she lost in a car accident! An outrageous movie with a deeply twisted premise.

IN CONVERSATION

David Cronenberg

“Directing a movie is similar, in some ways, to a science experiment.”

David Cronenberg on the set of A History of Violence [2005].

Mad Scientists [Book Contents]

JL: David, how would you define a monster?

DC: A monster is a distortion of something that has a normal, non-threatening form. The monstrous form is threatening and disturbing because it is beyond the pale of what we consider normality. A monster is a deformation of what we consider normal and therefore safe.

JL: Do you remember your first encounter with a monster movie?

DC: Bambi [James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, 1942] was scary, and in Bambi it’s the humans who are the monsters. As a kid I identified with Bambi. The hunters who would kill your mother are definitely monsters!

JL: What about the classic monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man?

DC: All those guys are deformations of normal humanity. Those are probably the scariest kind of monsters. But the shark in Jaws [Steven Spielberg, 1975] isn’t a monster. It’s an animal designed to kill you. It has no expression, its eyes are dead eyes. It is a killing machine. Does it qualify as a monster? Not really. Same with a T-Rex.

JL: What about Godzilla or a Cyclops or a dragon?

DC: Well, those are different because a Cyclops is a deformation of the human form. And there are some great monstrous creatures in, let’s say, some of the Harry Potter films that are based on a Tyrannosaurus rex.

JL: But those dragons are magic!

DC: I think the further away from the human form a monster becomes, the more it becomes like a natural disaster. So, if you’re eaten by a shark, it’s almost like being hit by lightning. There’s no ill will there. It’s just a machine-like animal behaving normally. A natural occurrence.

JL: In Jaws, they did give the shark a personality. They made it malevolent.

DC: That’s true… that was an attempt to mythologize the shark. To make the shark more than just a killing machine. And that’s why Jaws was more successful than the movies about hundreds of piranhas who eat you up. The fact that there was one shark was the key. That’s sort of a Moby Dick thing, to humanize and then mythologize an animal. When a monster is recognizably human, like a Cyclops, that’s when the definition of monster and monstrous and monstrosity becomes very specific and very resonant.

JL: Okay. The Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man—I always find them sympathetic because they’re victims.

DC: Yeah, there is a wonderful layering of those characters that makes them much more interesting. The same with vampires—there’s just endless vampire films happening right now! But the more vampires are humanized, and even made beautiful, like in the Twilight movies, there comes a point where you treat them like… the disabled or something. They’re humans but they have this disease problem. In other words, I guess you can go too far with the empathy. There has to be that sense of danger for a monster to really be a serious monster.

JL: What about the new craze for zombies? The flesh-eating, walking dead. What’s that about?

DC: I think that’s about video games, frankly. But once again they are deformations of normal humans and not only in the way they look, but also in their craving for human flesh.

JL: What do you mean by video games?

DC: In the early days of video games, the way that you could get around parental fear of having children enjoying killing people, was to have them not be people exactly. If they’re anonymous creatures, it’s okay to kill them. And really part of the fun of those movies and TV series is just the many different ways that you can kill a zombie. You don’t have empathy with them, they’re not sympathetic… everything shifts to sort of, like, “slaughter fun.” It’s actually quite different from the vampire thing.

JL: What are your thoughts on the Devil or demons or satanic possession?

DC: I have big problems with demons and the devil, since I don’t believe in them. So, I’ve never dealt with anything like that in any of my films.

JL: A movie is supposed to create suspension of disbelief. I am an atheist; I am a Jew; I do not believe in Christ or the devil but, when I saw The Exorcist [William Friedkin,1973] in the theater, it scared the shit out of me.

DC: The Exorcist was scary. It was very effective.

JL: Because it…

DC: Because it created a world that seemed real to you and they had a couple of priests in it who were characters you could identify with. The audience wants to be in the film, you know. If you haven’t been able to make use of that desire as a filmmaker then you’ve failed. Because audiences come to the movies wanting that and if you shut them out of your movie, well, it’s your fault. If you bring them into it, then, yes, you can absolutely create an ambience that is convincing. For the time of the movie the audience is living in that universe. And in that universe anything is possible. The Exorcist felt absolutely real and it drew you in slowly, slowly, before it started to hit you over the head. So, it was a very interesting example of suspension of disbelief.

JL: What drew you to The Fly [1986]? It’s really about a mad scientist.

DC: I studied organic chemistry at the University of Toronto and I thought that I might be able to be like Isaac Asimov, a scientist and a writer. The fact that The Fly was based on some interesting and then-current hard science was what appealed to me. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t supernatural. It was very physical. It was very body-oriented. And as an atheist, existentialist Jew myself, I really do think that the body is what we are, and that religion is a flight from that, fear of that…

JL: A lot of your movies deal with the human body…

DC: That’s right.

JL: I thought that what happens to Jeff in The Fly was like a form of cancer. In fact, in a lot of your pictures, there are projections of cancer and aging…

DC: Yes, but isn’t that intriguing? I mean, as you and I grow older, you can see what happens when someone, someone perhaps close to you, becomes monstrous. Monstrous in the sense that their body transforms as they age. And their mind, perhaps, starts to go in unpleasant ways. That’s close-to-home monstrousness. The more fantastical a movie is, and I include demons and stuff, the further away it is from your body, from human reality.

JL: I saw The Exorcist with George Folsey, Jr. and Jim O’Rourke, who had been altar boys, both lapsed Catholics. It scared me, but when it was over I went home and went to sleep. Jim and George had nightmares for weeks!

DC: So, with The Fly, although you’re not a scientist and you didn’t go through the telepod, you are human and you have seen people become diseased or heard about people aging too rapidly or dying too soon. Any human in any culture can relate to what happens to the Jeff Goldblum character Seth Brundle in The Fly…

JL: So you don’t consider him a mad scientist?

DC: No, not at all. Not at all mad. I have read fairly deeply into scientists and their life stories… They are a strange breed, but they’re very human, and they’re not mad at all. They’re risk takers. I think most filmmakers can relate to scientists because we work with technology to create things that didn’t exist before, to explore the world as we find it. Directing a movie is similar, in some ways, to a science experiment.

JL: It seems to me that all of the mad scientists and mad doctors in movies tend to illustrate the falsehood, “There are things Man is not meant to know.” And you don’t fuck with God’s work. These films tend to be very conservative and reactionary and, although I hardly think of you as conservative or reactionary, all of the scientists in your films do end badly.

DC: Well, there’s a reason for that. As George Bernard Shaw said: “Conflict is the essence of drama.” It’s dramatic compulsion that makes me do it. It wasn’t God who made me do it!

JL: But the protagonists in your films do follow in the tradition of the scientist messing with “things he should not know.”

DC: But you see it is the things that he must know. That’s quite different…

JL: But in your films the “things he must know” end in violence and death.

DC: Yeah. Because it would not be very interesting if it didn’t. That’s what I mean by dramatic compulsion. It’s to make it interesting and compelling for the audience.

JL: I don’t think…

DC: Yes, there’s a kind of an arrogance involved, but there’s also a real desire to get to grips with the essence of human existence and the physical existence of Man and how that relates to the human spirit and to the human mind. My approach is more like William Burroughs’, that is to say, “Art is dangerous.” Creation is a dangerous thing, but we must do it. We are compelled to do it. It is in the nature of Man to be creative. We transformed the planet as we evolved as human creatures. You don’t stay out in the rain, you find shelter; you don’t accept cold, you build a fire. Immediately you are not accepting the world as it is. To me that’s just basic human activity. When you put this in a dramatic, scary but interesting context, you often end up with the scientist in a bad place because, in fact, a lot of scientists do end up in a bad place. Like the astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle explosion. Scientists are aware of the potential danger of exploring the things that they explore, but they feel an incredible compulsion to do so—a creative compulsion and a desire for knowledge to understand the world. My movies often examine the price that is paid for that. But they’re not really cautionary tales.

JL: Yes they are, David! Regardless of your intent, they are cautionary tales because they always end badly.

DC: Every medical discovery in the world has killed somebody, often a researcher or scientist…

JL: What’s interesting about your version of The Fly is how attractive and funny and intelligent Goldblum’s character is.

DC: There are many scientists who have suffered some disease by making themselves their own subject. And a way of distancing yourself from this terrible affliction that’s hit you is to examine it like a scientist. To examine yourself as though you’re your own patient or your own specimen.

David Cronenberg with the star of The Fly [1986].

JL: Why do we like horror films?

DC: I think it’s a rehearsal for dealing with death…

JL: But that’s what a rollercoaster is. A rollercoaster allows you to feel…

DC: No, no, I don’t agree. You’re talking to someone who has raced cars and motorcycles. Of course there’s an element of “Oh my god I’m going to die,”—a good rollercoaster will give you that. And there’s also the incredible sensation of speed and G forces and there’s a kind of a liberating feeling in that. That’s very exhilarating. It’s not just a death-defying thing. As you know, if you go on a rollercoaster 20 times, you lose the fear.

JL: When you’re racing a Formula One car David, there’s real danger. I mean, you could flip over and die. You can really crash and burn. When you’re on a rollercoaster you have all those sensations of speed and G force and falling, but you know you’re safe. The theory is people go to horror films to experience that stuff, but be safe. But you don’t think so?

DC: I don’t think that seeing a horror film is the same as going on a rollercoaster ride. A rollercoaster ride is visceral and not meditative. A good horror film should have elements of both. A rollercoaster ride is devoid of philosophy, as far as I’m concerned.

JL: Okay, I give up. But why do people want to go see films that will terrify them?

DC: Well, they don’t all. My family dentist once said to me,“Why should I go see your horror films? I have enough horror in my own life!”

Dawn of the Dead [aka Zombi, George A. Romero, 1978] Romero’s vision of the North American consumer; a fairly typical day at the mall.

ZOMBIES

For decades, zombie movies drew on the traditional figures of Haitian Voodoo ritual. The clichéd image of a zombie was a tall, lean black man with glassy eyes. A prime example appears in I Walked With A Zombie [Jacques Tourneur, 1943], which is a much better movie than it sounds. Zombies were called the “Walking Dead” and they tended to shamble along. They may have been slow, but they just kept coming…

The mystical figure of Baron Samedi, Master of the Dead, a spirit (or Loa that can be summoned by a Voodoo priest (or houngan), is always depicted wearing a top hat. Baron Samedi has been portrayed onscreen by Geoffrey Holder in the James Bond film Live and Let Die [Guy Hamilton, 1973] and by Don Pedro Colley in the blaxploitation/horror/gangster picture Sugar Hill [Paul Maslansky, 1974]. A Voodoo priestess is called a mambo (also the name of a popular Latin American dance).

In Haitian Voodoo, a houngan uses poisons and ritual burials to convince victims that they are dead. The houngan then uses their new zombies to pick sugar cane and for other menial tasks. Many claim that this practice continues today. In Voodoo and in the movies, zombies are symbols of exploitation and social decay. Hammer Films’ The Plague of the Zombies [John Gilling, 1966] places witchcraft (Voodoo)-created zombies at the center of a story of typically English class warfare, using the zombies as a menace and as slave labor.

Zombies are basically the Walking Dead. How the dead come to be walking varies. In Stuart Gordon’s wild Re-Animator [1985], a concoction of glowing green liquid injected by syringe does the trick. In An American Werewolf In London [John Landis, 1981], the unfortunate lycanthrope David Kessler (David Naughton) is first visited by his increasingly decayed dead best friend Jack (Griffin Dunne), then surrounded by the gory victims of his “carnivorous lunar activities” who demand he kill himself.Apparently, when the “last remaining werewolf” is destroyed, his victims will cease being “undead.” So are Jack and his companions zombies?

What about those poor unfortunates in all those movies who turn into flesh-eating crazies thanks to medical experimentation, atomic radiation, pollution, or some bizarre virus?

The term zombie has become a bit like pornography—even if we are unable to make a definitive description of exactly what a zombie is, we know a zombie when we see one!

The Spanish zombies in Rec [co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007] or the British zombies in Shaun of the Dead [Edgar Wright, 2004], and 28 Days Later [Danny Boyle, 2002] or the French zombies in Paris by Night of the Living Dead [Grégory Morin, 2009] and La Horde [Yannick Dahan, Benjamin Rocher, 2009], the New Zealand zombies in Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive [aka Braindead, 1992], and all those Italian zombies from Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore [aka Cemetery Man, 1994] to Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 [1979] to the Japanese (I swear this is a real movie) Big Tits Zombie [Takao Nakano, 2010] to the all-American Zombie Strippers [Jay Lee, 2008], I think we can safely say that zombies are an international audience favorite.

My personal favorite zombie movie is King of the Zombies [Jean Yarbrough, 1941], a low-budget B movie from Monogram, in which the wonderful Mantan Moreland’s supporting character, Jefferson “Jeff” Jackson, steals the picture as the only one who actually sees the zombies. He is then hypnotized by the villain to believe that he is a zombie, too. Once he thinks he is a zombie, his fear of the authentic zombies is replaced by feelings of camaraderie and good fellowship. Of course, when he discovers that he is not a zombie, he runs in terror from his former “brothers.”

In the 1960s, movie zombies started to eat the flesh of the living, often feasting specifically on brains. In the very funny Return of the Living Dead [Dan O’Bannon, 1985] the zombies even speak! A police car is surrounded by hungry zombies who viciously attack the two cops inside and then gleefully eat their brains. The patrol car’s radio crackles and a voice asks if they need assistance. One of the zombies clumsily takes the microphone and croaks, “Send more cops.”

The Walking Dead is now no longer an all-encompassing term for zombies. In films like Return of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later [Danny Boyle, 2002], the zombies no longer shamble along, they can also run very fast. Assorted causes for their zombification have gone way beyond Voodoo to include atomic radiation, alien invasion, pollution, and weird Ebola-type viruses, sometimes natural, sometimes produced by the military. In Dead Alive, an outbreak of crazed, flesh-eating zombies in New Zealand is started by the bite of a “Sumatran Rat Monkey!”

In contemporary films, zombies are frequently agents of anarchy and represent the collapse of an orderly society. Films like 28 Days Later, Zombieland [Ruben Fleischer, 2009], and both versions of Dawn of the Dead [George A. Romero, 1978 and Zack Snyder, 2004], unleash berserk, flesh-eating zombies and suddenly, it’s every man for himself as hordes of rotting corpses roam the streets and chaos reigns.

Zombies have now evolved into modern agents of the Apocalypse. Based on a video game, the Resident Evil series of films stars Milla Jovovich as a former employee of an evil corporation who battles zombies through four movies and counting: Resident Evil [Paul W. S. Anderson, 2002], Resident Evil: Apocalypse [Alexander Witt, 2004], Resident Evil: Extinction [Russell Mulcahy, 2007], and Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D [Paul W. S. Anderson, 2010].

Maybe one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of the zombie movie is the aging population of the Western world. As the director David Cronenberg pointed out, “As we grow older, we transform into something monstrous. Our minds begin to fail us, as do our bodies themselves.” Whether or not we like to admit it, we have all felt a horror of the aged and infirm. No one escapes the indignities and terrors of old age, physical decrepitude, and death. One day, the ravages of time will reduce all of us to shambling, drooling, “walking corpses” covered in lesions and clad in loose-fitting hospital robes. As Walt Kelly’s brilliant comic-strip character Pogo discovered, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Zombies [Book Contents]

Night of the Living Dead  [George A. Romero, 1968]

Original poster for the little black and white movie from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that has had enormous impact on popular culture.

Zombies [Book Contents]

On a scene still from his film, George gives me some good advice: “John—don’t ever let the bastards in!”

Zombies [Book Contents]

Live and Let Die  [Guy Hamilton, 1973]

Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in this James Bond blaxploitation movie. The first time Roger Moore played Bond, James Bond.

Zombies [Book Contents]

The Return of the Living Dead  [Dan O’Bannon, 1985]

A very funny sequel to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead [1968] that puts the blame for a zombie outbreak directly on the military.

Zombies [Book Contents]

I Walked With a Zombie  [Jacques Tourneur, 1943]

Producer Val Lewton was given this title by RKO and told to make a movie out of it. What they got was a Voodoo version of Jane Eyre!

Zombies [Book Contents]

The Omega Man  [Boris Sagal, 1971]

The second film version of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Charlton Heston battles albino zombie vampires.

Zombies [Book Contents]

Shaun of the Dead  [Edgar Wright, 2004]

Simon Pegg shines as he and a group of friends and loved ones deal with a zombie attack in contemporary London by seeking sanctuary at his favorite pub.

Zombies [Book Contents]

I Walked With a Zombie  [Jacques Tourneur, 1943]

Nurse Frances Dee with her patient and a zombie in the sugar cane field. I really don’t want to tell you more, go see the movie!

Zombies [Book Contents]

Sugar Hill  [Paul Maslansky, 1974]

Those white gangsters should never have fooled around with a Voodoo priestess in the first place! Another AIP blaxploitation picture.

Zombies [Book Contents]

The Plague of the Zombies  [John Gilling, 1966]

Gilling’s period Hammer film, with zombie slave labor being used by the upper class, is a zombie movie, of course, but like many British horror films, it is really about class.

Zombies [Book Contents]

An American Werewolf in London  [John Landis, 1981]

Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman does not look his best, and it will get worse. Jack is not happy being one of “the undead.”

“Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring.”

Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), An American Werewolf in London

Zombies [Book Contents]

Dead Alive  [aka Braindead, Peter Jackson, 1992]

Jackson’s uproarious movie about zombies in Auckland is so gory it becomes Dada. With a cameo from Forrest J Ackerman.

“They’re not dead exactly, they’re just … sort of rotting!”

Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme), Dead Alive

Zombies [Book Contents]

Cemetery Man  [aka Dellamorte Dellamore, Michele Soavi, 1994]

Anna Falchi as Rupert Everett’s great love, only now she’s dead and returned from the grave. An interesting story about the caretaker of a small cemetery in a small Italian town and his mentally handicapped friend who try to deal with the dead who refuse to stay in the ground.

Zombies [Book Contents]

Dawn of the Dead  [Zack Snyder, 2004]

A remake of the Romero classic [1978]. The living dead overwhelms an escape vehicle.

Zombies [Book Contents]

Resident Evil: Extinction  [Russell Mulcahy, 2007]

An ugly lady zombie from the third movie in the Resident Evil franchise. Every Resident Evil movie is basically Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass. You could take random scenes from each of these films and cut them together and I don’t think anyone would notice.

IN CONVERSATION

Sam Raimi

“I made Evil Dead just to break into the business…”

Sam Raimi on the set of Drag Me to Hell [2009].

Zombies [Book Contents]

JL: Sam, how would you define a monster?

SR: Something that represents our deepest, darkest fears in a physical form—for the movies.

JL: Do you believe in ghosts or anything supernatural?

SR: No, but I believe there are many things that are even more fantastic, as proven by science, out in the cosmos with the Hubble telescope: How gravity and time works backwards and the sub-atomic worlds. There are so many fantastic things.

JL: But that’s a sense of wonder, not fear. Those aren’t physical things that can hit you on the head.

SR: No, I wish there were some good old-fashioned monsters walking around.

JL: What about human monsters, like in Psycho [Alfred Hitchcock, 1960] or The Silence of the Lambs [Jonathan Demme, 1991]?

SR: I definitely believe that they’re out there. And they make the subjects of terrifying movies. It’s too real for me to be involved in as a filmmaker. I get too freaked out. I think all horror moviemakers are cowards at heart, but that area really terrifies me and I don’t find it entertaining to work in, even though I do love Psycho.

JL: What about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974]?

SR: That’s so brilliant.

JL: That’s about crazy people.

SR: I found it very upsetting. As a filmmaker, I couldn’t get involved in a project like that—but it was masterfully directed. In many ways it was like Psycho because it dealt with the most disturbing and monstrous aspects of human behavior, yet it was handled by a superb storyteller. That’s a very unsettling combination.

JL: Deborah [my wife, Deborah Landis] can watch and enjoy your Evil Dead movies [Evil Dead, 1981, Evil Dead II, 1987, and Army of Darkness, 1992, all directed by Sam], she can see any movie with monsters. But she refuses to watch a movie like The Boston Strangler [Richard Fleischer, 1968], The Silence of the Lambs, or Psycho because those people exist.

SR: I get very disturbed watching those films. They have a very deep effect on me.

JL: What about Mike Myers in Halloween [John Carpenter, 1978], or Freddie Krueger [in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven, 1984], these unstoppable killing machines who are clearly not human?

SR: Mike Myers was sort of a combination of the two. He was a great movie monster—with the artificiality of that blank Captain Kirk mask that he had—but there was also something very real about him. He could be any one of us tipped over the edge, putting on a mask, and doing terrible things. Mike Myers was both a movie monster and real person for me.

JL: I see Mike Myers as a supernatural figure, because he’s unkillable. Even when he’s shot point-blank, he gets up and walks away.

SR: You’re right. That is how Carpenter presents him: as a ghost. In the beginning of the movie he’s just this unbalanced guy…

JL: He’s escaped from a lunatic asylum.

SR: And by the end he has supernatural powers. He’s everywhere.

JL: What are some of your favorite monster movies?

SR: I really like King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933]; I think that’s a great monster movie. I love the fact that the monster has a soul, because it really makes it rich and emotional—very deep. I’m a big fan of your movie, An American Werewolf in London [1981]. It’s funny, it’s scary, and it has a great love story. I like it when movies have a few different elements and they all work. It’s hard to orchestrate that, but I like it when movies are rich and they have a lot of dimensions to them.

JL: In King Kong and American Werewolf both the leads are victims. They’re sympathetic, even though they’re the monsters.

SR: They are, and both films have tragic endings. The monster had a soul and it dies. It scared you, but you felt for him.

JL: What about Frankenstein’s Monster?

SR: It’s the same exact thing. I love Karloff’s Frankenstein—James Whale’s Frankenstein [1931]— and I loved The Bride of Frankenstein [James Whale, 1935] even more.

JL: Yeah, Doctor Pretorius is my favorite mad scientist of all mad scientists. What about The Wolf Man [George Waggner, 1941]?

SR: I liked The Wolf Man very much, and Lon Chaney, Jr. gave a great performance.

JL: Larry Talbot was another victim. What about Ray Harryhausen’s creatures?

SR: Those are some of my favorite monsters of all time! I was very influenced by Jason and the Argonauts [Don Chaffey, 1963]. Every Harryhausen set piece in that film was absolutely brilliant. I love the skeletons that attack Jason. To this day, my mind boggles that Harryhausen could control and plot the movements of seven skeletons.

JL: And without video playback.

SR: Yes! How did he keep track, three seconds into a shot, on frame number 85, where skeleton number six was swinging his blade, and how fast he should be moving?

JL: It took him months to animate those three minutes. And you paid homage to that sequence in Army of Darkness. What’s your favorite Harryhausen monster?

SR: Wow. I think Talos, (the bronze giant in Jason and the Argonauts). He might be the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in the movies. I love (composer) Bernard Herrmann’s music and those horrible groans of metal when the monster turns his head.

JL: The sound effects are incredible.

SR: And the way that Harryhausen limited Talos’ ability to move. When he comes to life so slowly, it’s awful!

JL: It’s interesting that Talos has no expression. He’s a bronze statue. He never changes, but the emotion conveyed when Jason and his men pull that hatch out of his heel and his lifeblood pours out…

SR: Yeah, you feel almost sorry for the guy. Almost. One of my favorite monsters, in the vein of Talos, is Gort [the robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise, 1951]. Another faceless creature.

JL: Did you see that movie on television, or in the theater?

SR: I saw it at Camp Tamakwa, in Algonquin Park, Canada. They would show old 16mm prints, and they got that for a Saturday night.

JL: How old were you?

SR: I was probably 15 years old. It was great because you’d see the reel changes. The projector would run out and you’d have to wait for the second reel to be put up. It really gave you an appreciation of this being a film. I don’t mind reel breaks because they give you time to think about what you just saw. It’s like: “Oh, that was just an illusion but it was so powerful! I wonder what they’re going to do next?”

JL: In your picture Evil Dead, isn’t there a witch, possessed by demons?

SR: That’s right. Evil spirits get inside the kids and possess them.

JL: Do you believe in God or the Devil?

SR: I don’t believe in the Devil, but I do believe in a form of God.

JL: Some kind of higher intelligence?

SR: Some cosmic intelligence, yeah.

JL: You do this great thing in Evil Dead II—which is one of my favorite movies—where you make the action completely insane, just ridiculous, and it totally works! Like that sequence with Ash and his hand; it’s a cartoon! It’s totally insane, but it also makes you believe that Bruce’s hand (Bruce Campbell, who plays Ash) has a complete will of its own.

SR: Thanks!

JL: You also did something in Drag Me to Hell [2009] that made me laugh so hard because it was so damn silly and out of left field.

SR: What?

JL: The anvil gag in the garage.

SR: Oh, that Roadrunner bit, yeah.

JL: It was like, “Who keeps an anvil suspended on ropes in their garage?” I thought, “Sam knows that’s nuts. He did it deliberately.”

SR: I did it for you!

JL: That was so funny. It really made me laugh.

SR: Thanks, man. That’s very kind of you. Making you laugh is a big, big deal to me. (Laughs.)

JL: There was also one jump scare really got me in that film.

SR: When the witch (played by Lorna Raver) is in the back seat of the car?

JL: No, when the scary old lady appeared on Alison Lohman’s cell phone. That really worked! I’m a good audience because I’m a sucker, but also, that gag was so very unexpected but completely plausible.

SR: I think one of the best scares I’ve ever seen was in American Werewolf. It was the dream within a dream; it was so powerful. I just shrieked and jumped out of my seat!

JL: I was inspired by Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [1972]. That movie goes along for quite some time with this one character, and then he wakes up! So everything we just watched was a dream, but then someone else wakes up! And so on. Buñuel keeps surprising and confusing you. You think: “Wait a minute! His dream was in her dream. But who’s dream are we in now? And is this reality or still a dream?” The dream within a dream within a dream is such a great concept. I just borrowed that and created a jump scare out of it.

SR: I remember the collective shriek in the theater when I saw American Werewolf, and I remember great roars of laughter, back and forth, back and forth.

JL: Well you do exactly that, Sam. You’ve had great success with that, too! Okay, now I have another question: Why are zombies so popular right now?

SR: I love George A. Romero! Night of the Living Dead [1968] was a big influence on me. At the time, that was the scariest movie that I had ever seen and it freaked me out. Romero shows us how to take the walking dead and one little house, and make a whole movie for no money. He’s the one that gave me the formula for the Evil Dead movie.

JL: Night of the Living Dead had almost a documentary quality. Most fantasy films are set in a fantasy place. The Wolf Man was made in 1941, at the height of World War II. It takes place in England during the war and there are horses and carriages and no mention of the Nazis or German bombings! It was filmed on the back lot of Universal—it’s like, where the fuck is this place?

SR: Night of the Living Dead had a docu-horror feel. It took place in our real world.

JL: Exactly. George A. Romero’s zombies weren’t big black guys with staring white eyes. They were ordinary folks. George calls them “Blue Collar Zombies.” He had real people eating human flesh!

SR: Oh that bit is awful—the cannibalism.

JL: Politically, the movie was so smart.

SR: And the protagonist was expendable. When that first zombie attacks the girl, it was like, “No, wait! I’m following that girl! Anything can happen here! What’s with this filmmaker?” You’re in unstable hands once that’s happened.

JL: Hitchcock did exactly that in Psycho. The movie is about Marion Crane, who is played by a movie star, Janet Leigh. We’re in her story for 30 minutes and then she’s brutally murdered and suddenly it’s about Norman Bates! At the time it was very shocking for the audience.

SR: Plus in Night of the Living Dead, I had never seen a movie with a black male lead alone in a cabin with a white woman before. That probably created a bit of extra tension in the audience, whether they knew it or not. Social tension.

JL: I think the gore had a bigger impact on the audience than the subtleties of the politics. Although the irony of the ending is hard to miss. Anyway, Sam, you’re associated with monsters and fantasy, but I get the feeling you’re not that big a fan of the genre!

SR: Well, I made Evil Dead just to break into the business, not because I was a horror movie fan. I had not liked horror movies up until that point because they scared me so badly! My friend Rob Tapert [producer of Evil Dead] told me: “We can probably only raise about $100,000, and the only kind of movies that are made for that little are these cheap Italian horror movies for the drive-in. Can you make a horror movie?’

JL: We all started in exploitation—me, you, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante—there is a long list. You knew that it didn’t matter how bad the movie was, if there’s a monster in it you could get it distributed.

The Devil’s Backbone [Guillermo Del Toro, 2001] An orphanage during the time of the Spanish Civil War is haunted in Del Toro’s wonderful ghost story.

GHOSTS

The easiest Halloween costume to make is that of a ghost—all you need is a white bed sheet over your head. I suppose this comes from the custom of wrapping a corpse in a winding sheet. Certainly, pulling a sheet over a patient’s face is a clear signal that the doctors have given up!

People who have lost loved ones are easy prey for “mediums” that claim they can communicate with those who, as Hamlet said, “shuffle off this mortal coil.” The great magician Harry Houdini, devastated by the death of his mother, attended enough séances to be appalled by the blatant tricks and scams mediums used to convince people of their special skills in contacting the “dear departed.”

The outrageous medium, Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) in David Lean’s movie of Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit [1945] is not so far away from the medium depicted in Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell [2009]. Both summon up the spirits of the deceased and both are unable to control the spirits they summon.

Ghosts are literally the spirits of the dead. They can manifest themselves in many ways. And every way you can imagine a ghost to manifest itself has been exploited in the movies. The Uninvited [Lewis Allen, 1944] begins with Ray Milland’s narration, “They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.” Disregarding his own voice-over, Ray and his sister, played by Ruth Hussey, buy an empty house on a cliff overlooking the sea. While they wander around looking into the rooms, their terrier Bobby refuses to go up the stairs to the second floor. One room smells “like mimosa” and Ruth casually puts down the bunch of flowers she has just picked. Ray and Ruth do not notice, but we are shown the flowers quickly wilt and die. Suffice to say, the house is haunted. The Uninvited is romantic and frightening. It’s also one of the few pictures to clearly show the ghost that still manages to keep us in suspense. I recommend that you see it.

Poltergeists are spirits that cause a physical disturbance, either by making loud noises, tossing objects around, or actually attacking people. In Poltergeist [Tobe Hooper, 1982], the spirits of long-dead Native Americans, whose burial ground has been built over by a housing development, make it very clear that they are unhappy with the situation. In The Entity [Sidney J. Furie, 1982] Barbara Hershey is repeatedly raped by an unseen force.

In The Shining [Stanley Kubrick, 1980], an isolated hotel with a murderous past slowly drives its winter caretaker, a writer named Jack Torrance, mad. Jack Nicholson’s intense performance as Torrance is scarier than the ghosts Kubrick shows us. The most frightening moment in the film is when Jack’s wife Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, looks at the pages he has been working on in the typewriter. All she sees are the words “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” neatly typed, over and over and over again.

Many films center around a team of researchers investigating a supposed haunted house, with unpredictable, but always spooky, results. The Haunting [1963], Robert Wise’s movie version of Shirley Jackson’s classic ghost story “The Haunting of Hill House” creates unbelievable tension by showing us nothing. Jan de Bont’s terrible remake [The Haunting, 1999] does not scare us because it shows us way too much. Another team of paranormal investigators attempt to unravel The Legend of Hell House [John Hough, 1973], which Richard Matheson adapted from his own novel. Matheson and Hough craft a rip-roaring shocker with an unexpected ending.

Perhaps the best known haunted house franchise in movie history began with The Amityville Horror [Stuart Rosenberg, 1979], a supposedly true story about a house on Long Island. The poster declared, “FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET OUT!” So far the movie has spawned eight sequels and a remake, so clearly no one has taken this warning seriously.

Movie ghosts aren’t always out to terrify or destroy. Phantoms of a far gentler disposition feature in Casper [Brad Silberling, 1995], a live-action movie (albeit with computer-animated ghosts) based on the Casper the Friendly Ghost comic books and cartoons. In the comedy Topper [Norman Z. McLeod, 1937] the ghosts are not only friendly but, as played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant, handsome, glamorous, and fun.

The Innocents [1961], Jack Clayton’s elegant adaptation of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, features a very fine performance from Deborah Kerr as the governess who fears for her sanity, and superb use of deep focus in gleaming black and white CinemaScope by director of photography Freddie Francis. When Deborah Kerr is kissed on the lips by Miles (Martin Stephens), the little boy she is supposed to be looking after, I defy you not to get the creeps.

Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, The Devil’s Backbone [Guillermo Del Toro, 2001] is the tale of a haunted orphanage. This is the first in Del Toro’s trilogy of fantastic tales set during that period (the second is Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006; the third is yet to come). The Devil’s Backbone is a straightforward ghost story. The surprise discovery at the end of the film is who is telling the tale!

We have had sad ghosts, vengeful ghosts, mischievous ghosts, evil ghosts, and loving ghosts, but my favorite ghosts appear in the beautiful Japanese film Kwaidan [Masaki Kobayashi, 1964]. The title translates literally as “Ghost Story.” Based on Japanese folk tales collected by Lafcadio Hearn, the film comprises four, unrelated stories. With magnificent production and costume design, the film is a visual delight with moments of real terror. My two favorite stories are “Hoichi, the Earless” and “In a Cup of Tea.” A magnificent and (I’ve got to say it), haunting film.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

Henry Robin and a Specter  [Thiébault, 1863]

A man about to shoot himself is confronted by his own ghost in this photomontage by Thiébault.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

Macbeth  [Théodore Chassériau, -]

The Ghost of Banquo by Théodore Chassériau depicts the scene in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the banquet when only Macbeth can see the ghost of the murdered Banquo.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Shining  [Stanley Kubrick, 1980]

Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, driven insane by the ghosts of Overlook Hotel, breaks down the door in an attempt to kill his wife and child. Based on the novel by Stephen King.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Innocents  [Jack Clayton, 1961]

Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddings, the governess. Beautifully photographed by Freddie Francis, this is one of the best ghost movies ever made.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Orphanage  [Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007]

Another disturbing ghost story, set in an orphanage in Spain. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Uninvited  [Lewis Allen, 1944]

After watching this film, you will never smell mimosa again without looking anxiously over your shoulder.

Ghosts [Book Contents]

Poltergeist  [Tobe Hooper, 1982]

Steven Spielberg produced this all-American suburban ghost story. JoBeth Williams’ initial delight at invisibly moving kitchen chairs turns to terror when her daughter stares into a television showing nothing but static and announces, “They’re here.”

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Haunting  [Robert Wise, 1963]

Claire Bloom and Julie Harris react to the very loud sounds made by “something” in the hallway outside their bedroom door in this Robert Wise classic.

“It was an evil house from the beginning —a house that was born bad.”

Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), The Haunting

Ghosts [Book Contents]

The Amityville Horror  [Stuart Rosenberg, 1979]

Based on the best selling “true story” about a haunted house in Long Island, New York, The Amityville Horror was sold with the wonderful tagline, “FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET OUT!”

Ghosts [Book Contents]

Topper  [Norman Z. McLeod, 1937]

Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as the ghosts of George and Marion Kerby, killed in a car accident. This delightful comedy also stars Roland Young as Cosmo Topper, the only person who can see or hear them. Based on the novel by Thorne Smith.

“You know something George? I think we’re dead.”

Marion Kerby (Constance Bennett), Topper

Ghosts [Book Contents]

Kwaidan  [Masaki Kobayashi, 1964]

Kwaidan means “ghost story” in Japanese, and this beautiful anthology film is comprised of four Japanese folk tales compiled by Lafcadio Hearn. Pictured is “Hoichi the Earless,” a blind musician who has an intense and agonizing encounter with the ghostly subjects of his songs.

Christopher Lee as Kharis, impaled by Peter Cushing as John Banning, in The Mummy [Terence Fisher, 1959].

MUMMIES

In 1922, archeologist Howard Carter’s expedition discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt. The fabulous treasures of “King Tut’s Tomb” created a worldwide sensation and renewed the public’s fascination with ancient Egypt.

Universal Studios’s tremendous success with Frankenstein [1931] and Dracula [1931] had them looking for a third Universal Monster to exploit. They settled on The Mummy [Karl Freund, 1932], yet another story about a living corpse. Universal even used the same music for the opening credits of The Mummy as they did for Dracula, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake!

Boris Karloff again sat patiently while make-up man Jack Pierce created yet another classic monster. Using cotton, collodion, clay, and spirit gum on Karloff’s face and hands, Pierce then wrapped him in singed linen bandages and coated it all with dust. Karloff only had to go through this once (the Mummy only appears in one memorable scene in his burial dressing), but he referred to this make-up as the worst and “most trying day” he had ever endured on a movie. The film is a romance, with Karloff’s priest Imhotep being mummified and buried alive for daring to fall in love with the Princess Ankh-es-en-amon. Centuries later, his sarcophagus is discovered and opened. When one of the archeologists reads aloud from the life-giving Scroll of Thoth, the Mummy Imhotep awakens, in one of the great moments in fantasy cinema. The terrified archeologist (Bramwell Fletcher) can only scream and say, “He went for a little walk.”

The Universal Mummy sequels became increasingly silly, as the Mummy (now called Kharis) became just a shuffling automaton. And now it could be anyone under those bandages—Lon Chaney, Jr., Tom Tyler, and stunt man Eddie Parker all took turns as Kharis.

In the late 1950s, the then-booming Mexican film industry started to produce its own Mummy movies—Aztec Mummy movies. Meanwhile, the UK’s Hammer Films bought the rights to Universal’s Mummy and made their own The Mummy [Terence Fisher, 1959] with Christopher Lee in the title role.

Stephen Sommers’ big-budget remake of The Mummy [1999] was heavy on the CG and an international hit. It, too, spawned sequels, one of which, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor [Rob Cohen, 2008] was shot in China and brought us action hero Jet Li as the mummified first Emperor of China.

None of the many Mummy films produced since the Universal original have captured the sense of love and sorrow, dignity and decay of Karloff’s performance.

My vote for the best, non-Karloff Mummy movie goes to Don Coscarelli’s wonderfully insane Bubba Ho-tep [2002]. Based on the novella by Joe R. Lansdale, it tells the story of what really happened to Elvis Presley. It features an ancient Mummy that sucks the souls from his victims in a rude way, as well as fantastic performances from Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. The movie breathes fresh life into what had become a tired concept.

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy’s Tomb  [Harold Young, 1942]

Ad art for The Mummy’s Tomb; Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Kharis for the first time.

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy  [Karl Freund, 1932]

Boris Karloff as Ardath Bay, the name the Mummy Imhotep uses in modern day Cairo.

Mummies [Book Contents]

Las Luchadoras Contra La Momia  [Rafael Portillo, 1957]

Popoca the Aztec warrior mummy attacks a tomb robber in La Maldición de la Momia Azteca.

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy  [Karl Freund, 1932]

Boris Karloff as Imhotep the Mummy reaches for the sacred Scroll of Thoth; Bramwell Fletcher watches in terror.

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy  [Terence Fisher, 1959]

Christopher Lee as Kharis The Mummy, after he’s been shot, but before he’s impaled.

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy  [Karl Freund, 1932]

Boris Karloff with Zita Johann in a trance as the reincarnation of his lost love, the ancient Princess Ankh-es-en-amon.

“My love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods. No man ever suffered as I did for you!”

Imhotep (Boris Karloff), The Mummy

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy  [Stephen Sommers, 1999]

In this Universal Studios’ remake “Ardeth Bay” (Oded Fehr) is a separate character from the Mummy. The Mummy, High Priest Imhotep, was played by Arnold Vosloo and a lot of very expensive CG done by the folks at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic.

“Death is only the beginning”

Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), The Mummy

Mummies [Book Contents]

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor  [Rob Cohen, 2008]

Brendan Fraser’s character Rick O’Connell’s third Mummy adventure, this time in China. Jet Li’s eyes are staring out of the Mummy face of Chinese Emperor Han.

Mummies [Book Contents]

Bubba Ho-tep  [Don Coscarelli, 2002]

The true story of what really happened to Elvis Presley. The Mummy was played by Bob Ivy. Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as President John F. Kennedy are both outstanding.

IN CONVERSATION

Guillermo Del Toro

“Horror films are a rollercoaster of the soul.”

Guillermo Del Toro wearing the hand of Hellboy on the set of Hellboy II: The Golden Army [2008].

Mummies [Book Contents]

JL: Guillermo, how would you define a monster?

GDT: A freak of nature. Something that is unnatural. I think the difference between a monster and every other thing in horror is that the monster is a biological entity, it’s alive.

JL: What about a ghost?

GDT: A ghost is not a monster.

JL: What about a monster’s ghost? What about a ghost that kills people? You’re saying monsters have to be physical beings?

GDT: Or beings that come out of nature. They can be related to physics, like the Monster from the Id [in Forbidden Planet, Fred M. Wilcox 1956]. The Id is a monster.

JL: What about Frankenstein’s Monster?

GDT: Yes, Frankenstein created a monster.

JL: What about zombies?

GDT: Zombies would be monsters. Monsters have to be physical in some way.

JL: So, would Sissy Spacek in Carrie [Brian De Palma, 1976] be a monster?

GDT: I don’t think Carrie is a monster movie; it’s a horror movie.

JL: Aha! Are there any monsters in David Cronenberg’s movies?

GDT: The only Cronenberg monster movies are The Fly [1986] and The Brood [1979], because all the little freaks are monsters. And, to some extent, Rabid [1977], because the Marilyn Chambers character becomes a vampire monster. A monster is anything that can be deformed, that can be altered, but has some root in nature. Godzilla is a monster, the Gill-Man [from Creature From the Black Lagoon, Jack Arnold, 1954] is a monster.

JL: What about monsters from space?

GDT: They can be monsters, as long as they are physical entities.

JL: Can a robot be a monster?

GDT: I think you can have a monster robot, or a robot monster.

JL: You’re like me, Del Toro, you like monsters.

GDT: Yeah, I love them.

JL: You grew up in Guadalajara. What were your favorite monsters, as a child?

GDT: Frankenstein’s creature—the Boris Karloff version [1931]—The Gill-Man, and the monster in Alien [Ridley Scott, 1979]. In fact, these are still my favorite monsters.

JL: Why do you love the Alien monster?

GDT: Because it broke every rule about how to shoot a man in a suit. The suit was designed to break the silhouette of the man inside, and Ridley Scott had him walking on all fours, or backwards.

JL: I love that monster, but I didn’t like that metallic tongue with teeth thing that came out of its mouth. It just didn’t feel organic to me.

GDT: I loved that! Anyway, those are my first three. Then would come the werewolf in The Wolf Man [George Waggner,1941]. I used to dress up as Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Wolf Man when I was a kid. I’d go to school dressed as a wolf man! I had the Wolf Man mask, but I didn’t buy the Don Post werewolf hands. I bought the gorilla hands, because they were better-looking. So I went with the gorilla hands, gorilla feet, and the werewolf mask to my secondary school.

JL: What did your parents think of that?

GDT: They let me do it! And I bought the cheap artificial hair and would put it under my checkered shirt, and the other kids beat the crap out of me! (Laughs.)

JL: What is it that you find most intriguing about werewolves?

GDT: The blackout is the most interesting part.

JL: You mean that the werewolf has no memory of what happened the night before when he changes back to being human?

GDT: Yeah, like David waking up in the zoo pen in An American Werewolf in London [John Landis, 1981]. And how incredibly earnestly Lon Chaney, Jr. suffered in The Wolf Man.

JL: Curt Siodmak (screenwriter of The Wolf Man) was the first to push the idea of the werewolf as a victim.

GDT: And one of the great sufferers ever is Lon Chaney, Jr. You really wanted to tell him that everything was going to be all right. What attracts me most about the Wolf Man myth was the sympathetic nature of the character.

JL: When Dr. Jekyll drinks his formula, he becomes Mr. Hyde, who is a manifestation of Jekyll’s lust and bad thoughts. Whereas the werewolf is Other, it’s completely not you, it’s like you become this separate beast.

GDT: The Wolf Man becomes a werewolf in spite of himself.

JL: The werewolves in The Wolf Man and American Werewolf are victims; Frankenstein’s monster is a victim…

GDT: The Gill-Man in some ways.

JL: He’s a total victim!

GDT: Yeah. He’s like King Kong in many ways.

JL: Whereas the Alien is a predator.

GDT: Yeah, but what I love about the Alien is what I love about insects: Remote perfection.

JL: How do you feel about vampires?

GDT: My favorite vampire movie is Nosferatu.

JL: The Murnau, [1922], or the Herzog [1979]?

GDT: Both. And I also loved Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire [E. Elias Merhige, 2000] and Barlow (the vampire in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, who was made up to resemble Nosferatu, 1979). That physicality is what I like the most.

JL: Vampires live forever, as Béla Lugosi [in Dracula, Tod Browning, 1931] says, “To die, to really die, that would be glorious.” And then there’s the sexual side of vampires; there’s also this weird AIDS and blood transfusion thing. What did you think of Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark [1987]?

GDT: I loved it. For me, the vampire myth in the Carpathian Mountains with the castle and the cape was always very remote. It’s much more interesting set in an urban or suburban environment, like Salem’s Lot or I Am Legend [Francis Lawrence, 2007].

JL: What about Christopher Lee’s Dracula?

GDT: I love him! He is a righteous, arrogant figure; a guy that believes he deserves everything by lineage.

JL: Exactly. John Carpenter said that Dracula is all about the European aristocracy literally feeding off everybody.

GDT: Christopher Lee’s Dracula exudes entitlement. Everybody talks about how sexual his Dracula was, but I think it was just very forthright. He went for it straight.

JL: One of the reasons people talk about it being sexual is that it’s only relatively recently that vampires bite great chunks out of their victims. When Lugosi’s and Lee’s Dracula made those polite little punctures, their victims swooned. They became orgasmic!

GDT: Yeah. The whole sexual subtext of the vampire, I’m not denying. Also there was a lot less wardrobe for the ladies in the Hammer films; they were a lot more scantily clad!

JL: OK, so what about mad scientists, mad doctors, like Dr. Moreau? Island of Lost Souls [Erle C. Kenton, 1932]? Have you ever seen it?

GDT: I love it! I have a homage in Blade II [2002]: The “House of Pain!”

JL: Island of Lost Souls is one of my favorite horror movies. What do you think of witches and warlocks—movies like The Devil Rides Out [Terence Fisher, 1968]?

GDT: I don’t think those are monster movies; those are supernatural movies.

JL: Do you think ghosts are scary?

GDT: Well, I have two simple rules that define horror for me: The things that create fear are either things that shouldn’t be, but are, or things that should be, but are not. I’ll give you an example (of the first rule): Your father died a week ago, you walk into your house and he’s sitting at the dining table, completely still. That generates fear. An example of the second rule is: The scene in Poltergeist [Tobe Hooper, 1982], where the woman turns around, then turns back, and all the chairs are piled up in the kitchen: that shouldn’t be, but is.

JL: But you don’t consider anything supernatural to be monstrous?

GDT: Like I said, I’m willing to make an exception with vampires and werewolves because they have a physical manifestation. But in traditional tales of vampires—in many, many countries—the vampire is a spirit; it doesn’t have a physical body. A monster has to have physicality.

JL: But what about a demon that grabs you and causes you bodily harm? I can picture a scene where people are in a room: there are terrible sounds, the walls are bending inwards, it’s getting increasingly terrifying, and they’re having this same argument! (Laughs.)

GDT: Yes! I think that there are many ways a ghost can physically manifest itself, but it doesn’t have a body. We’re going to go by my rules! I’ll tell you: Most of the time a monster has a natural or physical body that has something to do with science, or biology, gone awry.

JL: What about the character of Regan in The Exorcist [William Friedkin, 1973], when she’s possessed by Satan?

GDT: She’s not a monster!

JL: Isn’t Satan a monster?

GDT: No, he’s a spirit! He’s a spiritual entity.

JL: What about gnomes, or fairies, or elves, or leprechauns?

GDT: They’re not monsters. Not for me.

JL: But they have physical bodies!

GDT: They are not monsters; they come from a completely different lore.

JL: OK, well, now that you’ve destroyed half of my guide, I’m going to go ahead and call them monsters anyway! Let’s talk about Psycho [Alfred Hitchcock, 1960] and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974], Peeping Tom [Michael Powell, 1960], movies like that.

GDT: Yeah, those are about psychopaths. Are they in your guide?

JL: Psychopaths are human monsters! They’re the only monsters that scare me. I’m not really scared by any monster in a movie, any monster as you define them, or any monster as I’m broadly defining them: Werewolves, vampires, they don’t scare me; they do not exist. But people are crazy, they do terrible things, and they scare the shit out of me!

GDT: Has there ever been a monster movie that scared you?

JL: While actually watching the movie— absolutely! I’m a great audience, a real sucker for the sudden “BOO!” I’ve always maintained that The Exorcist is the greatest horror film because, although I don’t believe in Jesus or Satan, during the course of the film I was scared.

GDT: Alien must have scared you.

JL: Actually, when I saw it the first time, I kept thinking: “This is a remake of It! The Terror From Beyond Space [Edward L. Cahn 1958]” and Planet of the Vampires [Mario Bava, 1965]! It was like a haunted house movie in space. But it’s beautifully made. I love the scene with John Hurt… you know, the chest-burster?

GDT: Yeah.

JL: What made that scene work, isn’t the chest-burster itself—that’s kind of a dumb-looking puppet—but the moment when it actually bursts out of him—the horror on the actors’ faces, their reactions, are so real. But I think Aliens [James Cameron, 1986] is a better movie than Alien. It was brilliant of James Cameron to make Aliens an action movie. Forgive me. I know that’s sacrilegious.

GDT: No, no, it isn’t! I’m just trying to define what a monster movie is. Hitchcock never did a horror film except for The Birds [1963]. That truly had a supernatural agent at work; it may not be ghosts, but it was supernatural. And to my mind, Spielberg did two great horror films: one was Duel [1971], because he elevated that truck to the state of a mechanical monster; and the other one was Jaws [1975], because he gave that shark intelligence and motivation… That is a monster movie that has haunted me for my entire life. I used to love the sea before I saw Jaws—I still love it, I still scuba dive, I snorkel, but I’m always nervous!

JL: Okay, the last question—and this is the one that everyone has given me radically different answers to. It’s the one I expected the same answer to, but they’ve all been very different: Why do you think people like going to see scary movies?

GDT: I think it is part of our nature as myth-making mammals to tell stories of the dark and what lives in it. The earliest storytellers, seated around the campfire, were trying to make sense of the world. They needed to create angels and demons, and beauty and monsters. Fear can be a very powerful, spiritual experience, and we look for it. People say going to a horror movie is like a rollercoaster ride and I partially agree. But the rollercoaster analogy is limited. On a ride, you’re only scared of being physically damaged. Horror films are a rollercoaster of the soul.

JL “Horror films are a rollercoaster of the soul.” That’s wonderful!

GDT They have a sort of purging effect. For a while, they allow you to believe in the supernatural in a stupidly rational world.

JL: Why do you think the audience for these films is mostly young people?

GDT: Because I think that horror movies destroy the illusion of order and sanity in the world. Order and sanity is a very adult concern. No one knows better the fragility and vulnerability of the real world than kids. At its worst, horror is a very repressive genre. But at its best, it’s an incredibly anarchic and iconoclastic one. Kids identify with that.

JL: Muchas gracias, mi amigo!

GDT: You are more than welcome!

Belle (Josette Day) soothes the savage Beast (Jean Marais) in Jean Cocteau’s classic fairy tale adaptation La Belle et la Bête.

MYTHS, LEGENDS, & FAIRY TALES

The world’s myths, legends, and fairy tales have provided the movies with a plethora of monsters. Walt Disney introduced many of us to folk and fairy tales in his beautifully animated movies. In fact, the first ever feature-length, animated film is Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [1937].

As captivating as Snow White is, it is the jealous and wicked Queen we all remember. The elegant and sensual Queen who turns herself into an Old Crone to give Snow White the poisoned apple was unforgettably voiced by an uncredited Lucille La Verne. Disney’s films were often genuinely scary, as in Sleeping Beauty [1959], when actress Eleanor Audley gave voice to the evil fairy Maleficent’s splendid line: “Now you must deal with me and all the powers of Hell!” as she magically transforms into a gigantic fire-breathing dragon to do battle with the dashing Prince.

The delightful Disney version of Carlo Collodi’s classic book The Adventures of Pinocchio [1881], released as Pinocchio [1940], was also not without its dark side. The sequence when Pinocchio and his friend Lampwick’s bad behavior causes them to “make asses of themselves” and they turn into donkeys, is as startling and sinister as any transformation scene in a werewolf movie.

The traditional French fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” has been made into a number of movies. The best one is Jean Cocteau’s magical La Belle et la Bête [1946]. The Beast, played by Jean Marais, is so glorious, that at the “happy ending,” his metamorphosis into the handsome human prince is a bit of a let-down. The Disney Beauty and the Beast [1991] is a full-on operetta, with witty songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken and outstanding voice work by Paige O’Hara as Beauty and Robby Benson as the Beast.

The Irish fairies known as leprechauns have starring roles in movies in which they are good, like the charming Darby O’Gill and the Little People [Robert Stevenson, 1959] and movies where they are evil, like the series of films that started with Leprechaun [Mark Jones, 1993]. Warwick Davis has played the malicious little magical bastard in six Leprechaun films so far, with no end in sight! Davis has also written an entertaining autobiography called Size Matters Not [Arum Press, 2010], in which he talks about his little person roles in countless fantasy films, including Willow, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and more.

Elves and dwarfs feature in all of The Lord of the Rings trilogy of films [Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003]. Based on the books by J. R. R. Tolkien, the trilogy contains thousands of fantasy beings including giants, trolls, fairies, wizards, ambulatory talking trees, demons, goblins, and an army of Orcs. Through a powerful motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis, the emotionally tortured creature Gollum stands out from the rest of the extraordinary array of mythical characters on display.

The one-eyed giants called Cyclops show up occasionally in films based on both Greco-Roman and Arabian Nights mythology. My favorites are the incredible Cyclops that live on the Island of Colossa in Ray Harryhausen’s first feature film shot in color, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [Nathan H. Juran, 1958]. I saw this movie at the age of eight and it changed my life in the same way that the original King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933] changed Harryhausen’s (see my conversation with Ray on pages 148-9). I was enchanted, not only by the impressive Cyclops, but also by the fabulous dragon, and especially the skeleton brought to life by the wicked magician Sokurah (played in a wonderfully hammy turn by Torin Thatcher). Towards the beginning of the film, Sokurah turns the Princess’ handmaiden into a dancing Snake Woman, Ray’s favorite monster from this particular voyage of Sinbad’s.

Harryhausen took Sinbad on two more voyages, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad [Gordon Hessler, 1973] and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger [Sam Wanamaker, 1977], both movies adding even more mythological monsters to the Harryhausen menagerie, including ghouls, a one-eyed centaur, a griffin, and a multi-armed statue of Kali that comes to life to sword-fight Sinbad and his crew.

The poet Homer gave us the Cyclops in the Odyssey, and Ulysses [Mario Camerini, 1955] starring Kirk Douglas in the title role, is a good retelling of the hero’s epic voyage to his homeland of Ithaca following the fall of Troy. An Italian wrestler named Oscar Andriani plays the Cyclops, who is tricked by wily Ulysses into getting drunk so that once more we can watch a poor Cyclops have something sharp jammed into his only eye. Also based on Greek mythology is Jason and the Argonauts [Don Chaffey, 1963], which allowed Harryhausen to create more of his remarkable creatures to illustrate the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece. On Jason’s adventure, we meet the colossal bronze statue Talos, brought to life by the hubris of Hercules, the flying Harpies sent to torment the blind Phineas for misusing his gift of prophecy, the many-headed Hydra who guards the Golden Fleece, and the “Children of the Hydra’s teeth”—screaming skeleton warriors. The Gods themselves watch Jason’s adventures from Mount Olympus and occasionally intercede on his behalf (as Hera does by sending the sea god Triton to hold back the Clashing Rocks, enabling Jason’s ship Argo to pass through unharmed).

Harryhausen’s final foray into Greek myth was the story of Perseus, told in Clash of the Titans [Desmond Davis, 1981]. Here, Pegasus the flying horse, giant scorpions, the snake-haired Medusa, and the Kraken compete for our attention. The movie was remade in 2010 [Louis Leterrier] with CG effects and mediocre 3D. But at least we got to hear once more those delicious words: “Release the Kraken!”

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Jason and the Argonauts  [Don Chaffey, 1963]

Talos, the gigantic Man of Bronze that comes to life when Hercules takes a javelin-sized pin from the treasure he guards. Ray Harryhausen’s animation is extraordinary as Talos somehow moves as a Man of Bronze would move. Here, Talos, like the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, waits to grab Jason’s ship, Argo.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Jason (Todd Armstrong) fighting the Hydra, the seven-headed dragon that guards the Golden Fleece. Another scene lit up by Harryhausen’s breathtaking stop-motion animation.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Legend  [Ridley Scott, 1985]

Princess Lily (Mia Sara) reaches out to a unicorn in Scott’s beautiful-looking fairy tale.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Cinderella  [Georges Méliès, 1899]

An early Méliès “trick film.”

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

A Midsummer Night’s Dream  [Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle, 1935]

Anita Louise as Titania, Queen of the Fairies and James Cagney as Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of a jackass by Puck (Mickey Rooney), in this lavish, Warner Brothers production of the play by William Shakespeare.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Peter Pan  [Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, 1953]

The fairy Tinker Bell in the Disney version of J. M. Barrie’s play, here with Captain Hook. Hook was splendidly voiced by Hans Conried.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Hook  [Steven Spielberg, 1991]

Julia Roberts as the fairy Tinker Bell in this misguided sequel to Peter Pan. However, Dustin Hoffman made a fine Captain Hook.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Peter Pan  [P. J. Hogan, 2003]

Ludivine Sagnier as Tinker Bell (here just called Tink) in this straightforward adaptation of Barrie’s story. With Jason Isaacs as an excellent Captain Hook.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

The Thief of Bagdad  [Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940]

The magnificent Rex Ingram as the Djinn (genie), finally free of his bottle prison, grants Abu (Sabu) three wishes in Alexander Korda’s Technicolor production. With the great Conrad Veidt as Jaffar, the evil Grand Vizier.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

La Belle et la Bête  [Jean Cocteau, 1946]

Cocteau’s magical film combines Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s story with La Chatte Blanche by Catherine d’Aulnoy, published in 1697! Surreal and gorgeous, Cocteau’s movie is truly romantic in the best sense of the word. Josette Day is Belle and Jean Marais is the fabulous Beast.

“Where is Belle? Where is Belle?”

The Beast (Jean Marais), searching for Belle in his magic mirror, La Belle et la Bête

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Beauty and the Beast  [Gary Trousdale, 1991]

Disney’s delightful musical, with witty songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Robby Benson and Paige O’Hara gave the Beast and Beauty their voices. Based on Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s story, first published in 1757.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Darby O’Gill and the Little People  [Robert Stevenson, 1959]

Jimmy O’Dea as King Brian of the Leprechauns stands on a sleeping Sean Connery as Michael McBride in this delightful Disney movie based on the Darby O’Gill books by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh. The great Albert Sharpe played Darby O’Gill. Using the Schufftan Process (forced perspective creating the illusion of size differential) the movie has amazing scenes of Darby among the “little people.”

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  [Alfonso Cuaron, 2004]

Harry Potter encounters a griffin, one of the many fantastic creatures that populate the Harry Potter movies.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

The Lord of the Rings  [Peter Jackson, 2001-2003]

Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy is jam-packed with fantastic beasts of all sizes and shapes.

Gollum, a brilliant motion-capture performance from Andy Serkis as the pathetic creature consumed with desire for the Ring

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

The fearsome Cave Troll in the Mines of Moria

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

One of the Orcs, the evil soldiers of the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee)

“We wants it! We needs it! Must have the precious!”

Gollum (Andy Serkis), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad  [Nathan H. Juran, 1958]

One of the awe-inspiring Cyclops that live on the Island of Colossa in the first of Harryhausen’s Sinbad trilogy. When roasting one of Sinbad’s crew on a spit, he licks his lips in anticipation of his meal! One of the screen’s greatest fantasy creations.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad  [Gordon Hessler, 1973]

The second in Harryhausen’s Sinbad trilogy. Here, a living stone statue of Kali, the Hindu Goddess of death, sword fights Sinbad (John Phillip Law, in the white turban) and his crew.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Clash of the Titans  [Desmond Davis, 1981]

Ray Harryhausen’s Medusa, Ray Bradbury’s favorite Harryhausen creature. In a tense, torch-lit sequence, Perseus (Harry Hamlin) stalks Medusa, hoping to use her severed head to turn the Kraken to stone.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

Clash of the Titans  [Louis Leterrier, 2010]

The remake, based on Harryhausen’s design for his Medusa. This film suffered from being made 3D in an imperfect post-production process.

IN CONVERSATION

Ray Harryhausen

“The whole point of any fantasy film is to stretch the imagination.”

Ray Harryhausen, the author, and the skeleton from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [1958], used again in Jason and the Argonauts [1963]; London, 2010.

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales [Book Contents]

JL: Ray, I know you don’t like the term “monster.”

RH: I don’t like the term “monster,” because that’s not what we do. All our creatures are misunderstood creatures, because they usually come from another world.

JL: So what does the word “monster” mean to you?

RH: I associate the word “monster” with some sort of insane creature that growls and is physically distorted. I don’t like to use the word. It has to do with things like Frankenstein and Dracula and horrible people who do horrible things.

JL: Well, some of your creatures do horrible things.

RH: They don’t do horrible things. They’re just out of their element!

JL: Hmm.

RH: (Laughs.)

JL: Doesn’t Medusa do horrible things?

RH: Well, that’s her nature! She’s a snake woman! (Laughs.)

JL: All right, let me think about it…

RH: She was cursed by Hera (queen of the Greek gods).

JL: What about the Cyclops?

RH: I don’t know about the Cyclops…

JL: The Cyclops in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [Nathan H. Juran, 1958]. The Cyclops tries to eat people!

RH: (Laughs) But that’s his nature! He’s not a monster!

Ray animating the dragon from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [1958] on a miniature set.

JL: Are there creatures in other people’s movies that you are particularly fond of?

RH: Not that I’m fond of…

JL: I know what you’re fond of: King Kong!

RH: Oh yes, but he was neither man, nor beast, as they said in the script. He was a throwback of some sort. Most gorillas have straight eyebrows, so I slanted Mighty Joe Young’s eyebrows so that he would look a little different than a normal gorilla.

JL: I had a problem with Peter Jackson’s King Kong [2005]. Peter just made him a big gorilla, not at all a mythical beast, just a very big gorilla. Do you like fantasy films in general?

RH: Oh, I love them. They stretch the imagination.

JL: What are some of your favorites… that you didn’t make?

RH: (Laughs) Well I thought Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993] was fascinating.

JL: And you wouldn’t call them monsters, just dinosaurs.

RH: Dinosaurs are not monsters; they’re just a product of their time!

JL: It’s just that when they’re out of their time, they are forced to behave badly.

RH: They behave badly because they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t normally live in this world.

JL: That’s a good answer. What about something like in One Million Years B.C. [Don Chaffey, 1966], where you have dinosaurs living with humans?

RH: Well, we don’t make these pictures for paleontologists. If you just have a bunch of dinosaurs running around barking at each other, there’s no drama. You have to include humans!

JL: What about the movie Creation? The Willis O’Brien project that was never realized. Wasn’t that just dinosaurs?

RH: Well, I think they had more than dinosaurs. They had people in it, too.

JL: What was the Irwin Allen movie you worked on?

RH: That was The Animal World [1956].

JL: That had drama in it, and no people.

RH: Well, it was a brief sequence. (The BBC-TV series) Walking With Dinosaurs doesn’t have any people in it. It’s more realistic, but they tried to make dinosaurs that would be acceptable for paleontologists, and we’re making movies just to entertain! You can’t entertain with a dinosaur just chewing on another dinosaur!

JL: Do you think you’re more interested in fantastic beings, or in beings that have a basis in reality?

RH: I think the whole point of any fantasy film is to stretch the imagination, because when one lives in a dream world like me, it’s always “what if this could happen?”

JL: Do you think that creatures can be manifestations of people’s fantasies or fears?

RH: Sometimes, but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was more about the dual personalities that we all have.

JL: What about Dr. Moreau, with his genetic experiments? Would you call him a monster?

RH: Dr. Moreau was an early one in genetic experiments and now they are coming to pass. Lord knows what they will create—I don’t know!

JL: I know King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933] is the movie that inspired you.

RH: Oh it did. It was an inspiration because it was so different than any other movie.

JL: Do you remember when you saw it?

RH: I was 13. A few marbles have lost their way… maybe they rolled under the davenport...

JL: No, seriously, I know you know. Tell me when you saw it.

RH: I saw it back in 1933, when it first came out. At Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. In Los Angeles, where I grew up.

JL: Was there a live show before the movie?

RH: There was a stage show. Sid Grauman was a great showman at that time. Sid had this great prolog with live actors, and then Kong came on.

JL: Kong himself came on?!

RH: No John. The movie! Although they did have a big bust in the lobby. The prolog got you in the mood to accept the fantasy, which was, at the time, very extreme.

JL: Really? There had been The Lost World [Harry O. Hoyt, 1925], the silent picture, and that had been a tremendous hit.

RH: There was, but most people didn’t remember it. And Max Steiner’s great music made King Kong much more impressive than The Lost World, which probably had only a piano accompaniment.

JL: How important is music to movies?

RH: I think music is very important to fantasy films, particularly movies that don’t rely on very profound dialog. Our fantasies are mostly action pictures, and music enhances them. It makes everything bigger than life, which is the function of good film music.

JL: When you were planning scenes, did you think of the music? When you worked with Bernard Herrmann, did you talk about the score beforehand?

RH: No, no, no, no. You have to leave it to somebody like Bernard Herrmann. Different people write different kinds of music. Herrmann specialized in rousing action music while a composer like Miklos Rozsa wrote romantic music.

JL: You’ve done movies based on books by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Who is your favorite fantasy author?

RH: I couldn’t choose a favorite. I like Wells; he was very profound. I liked his book, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Did you ever see the picture that Charles Laughton starred in?

JL: Yes, Island of Lost Souls [Erle C. Kenton, 1932] is great. That movie had wonderful make-up.

RH: Oh, very good make-up. I don’t know who did the score, but it wasn’t a complete score.

JL: I don’t remember the music. I just remember the monsters! Béla Lugosi was one of them, “The Sayer of the Law!” Do you have a particular favorite of your creatures?

RH: I can’t have, because the others get jealous (laughs). I like the complicated ones. They’re much more interesting to animate. Like the Hydra in Jason and the Argonauts [Don Chaffey, 1963], and Medusa in Clash of the Titans [Desmond Davis, 1981]. The sword fight with the Seven Skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts as well.

JL: How long did the Seven Skeletons sword fight take you to animate?

RH: It took about four and a half months to put it together. I was the only animator on it. I had to time all the swords, so that when an actor brought his sword down and stopped, a skeleton’s blade would be there to meet it.

JL: What are some of the fantasy films, other than King Kong and Island of Lost Souls, that had a big impact on you?

RH: Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993] was very impressive. Phil Tippett and Dennis Muren did wonderful work on that. And I liked Close Encounters of the Third Kind, too [Steven Spielberg, 1977]. There’s a space monster I particularly love in Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]. A great movie!

JL: I love the creature in that: “The Monster from the Id.”

RH: Yeah. It was a fascinating concept and very well done.

JL: You’ve already said it, but I would like you to tell me again. You never call your creatures monsters because…?

RH: Well monsters, I think, in most people’s minds, are these bad men who go around scaring everybody.

JL: Doing bad things.

RH: Doing insane things! (Laughs.)

JL: Whereas, a creature…

RH: A creature, like the one in 20 Million Miles to Earth [Nathan H. Juran, 1957] comes from a different planet, and he is not aggressive until somebody is aggressive to him—the farmer jabs him with a pitchfork! That, of course, upsets his ego. (Laughs.)

JL: What do you think of actors who are famous for their fantasy roles, like Boris Karloff, or Christopher Lee?

RH: Well, Boris Karloff was perfect for Frankenstein. And he’s still the most profound Frankenstein’s Monster, I think. He wasn’t just frightening.

JL: But in your films, there are moments where you want people to be frightened.

RH: Well, yes. But that’s the way you stage a film. As a director, you have to think about how you’re going to stage it so you get the most effective appearance, visually.

JL: You know, I was thinking about it, and in your films, even more than a sense of fear, you often impart with a sense of wonder.

RH: Well, we try to do that. I hope that the strangeness of the subject matter also helps create a feeling of wonder.

One Million Years B.C. [Don Chaffey, 1966] Raquel Welch as Loana in the claws of a pterodactyl! A Hammer color remake of the black and white Hal Roach original [1940], with special effects by Ray Harryhausen.

DRAGONS & DINOSAURS

What’s the difference between a dragon and a dinosaur? “Dragons” are legendary creatures with reptilian traits. The term “Dinosaurs” refers to a diverse group of animals that were on Earth from the beginning of the Triassic period to the end of the Cretaceous. That was a long time ago. So for the purposes of this guide, which is about monsters in the movies, I think I can safely lump them together in one chapter. Especially since humans and dinosaurs did not coexist and most movies featuring dinosaurs have people running for their lives away from them.

Winsor McCay, the brilliant newspaper cartoonist (creator of the amazing comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland), wanted an animated film to use in his vaudeville act. With thousands of drawings, McCay created Gertie the Dinosaur [1914], in which the dinosaur Gertie would respond onscreen to McCay’s live commands from the stage. Gertie is probably cinema’s first dinosaur.

The first major movie to feature dinosaurs was an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World [Harry O. Hoyt, 1925]. This starred Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger and showcased the groundbreaking stop-motion animation of Willis O’Brien. The Lost World’s climatic scenes, in which a brontosaurus brought back by Challenger escapes and wreaks havoc on the streets of London, would inspire literally hundreds of movies in the future.

The rampaging dinosaur in The Lost World ends up swimming in London’s River Thames; 36 years later, Gorgo [Eugène Lourié, 1961] and son wade down the Thames, making their way back home to the sea. Gorgo is one of those movie dinosaurs that relies more on the imagination of the filmmakers than on any science or research into the fossil record.

In 1924, Fritz Lang directed Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge [also 1924]. Based on the same 12th-century epic poem, The Song of the Nibelungs, that Richard Wagner based his Ring Cycle operas on, the first film has a marvelous dragon for Siegfried to slay. As I am sure you all remember, Siegfried bathes himself in the dragon’s blood, and if you’re curious about the proper way to bathe in dragon’s blood, Lang shows us how.

The Russian film Ilya Muromets [aka The Sword and the Dragon, Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956] features a ferocious dragon created, like the one in Siegfried, as a full-size mechanical puppet for the lead actor to fight.

Since both dinosaurs and dragons are hard to come by for motion-picture work, filmmakers have used a number of methods to bring them to the screen, including full-size puppets, like those in Siegfried and Ilya Muromets and, later, sophisticated animatronics in Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993] and its sequels. Traditional, hand-painted cell animation was used in the Rite of Spring sequence in Walt Disney’s Fantasia [Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, 1940], while CG animation featured in How to Train Your Dragon [Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois, 2010]. Jurassic Park and its sequels also makes extensive use of CG.

To save money, live lizards, iguanas, and alligators with fins attached to them were shot in slow motion in an attempt to convey great size and weight in movies like One Million B.C. [Hal Roach, Hal Roach Jr., 1940], the remake of The Lost World [Irwin Allen, 1960], and Journey to the Center of the Earth [Henry Levin, 1959].

My preference in dinosaurs and dragons is for ones made with stop-motion animation, as in the silent Lost World, King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933], The Beast of Hollow Mountain [Edward Nassour, Ismael Rodríguez, 1956], The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm [Henry Lavin, George Pal, 1962], Dinosaurus! [Irvin Yeaworth, 1960], Jack The Giant Killer [Nathan H. Juran, 1962], and the wonderful Loch Ness Monster in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao [George Pal, 1964]. Another, simpler technique to bring these enormous creatures to life is just to use men in dinosaur costumes stomping around miniature sets. This was done in Gorgo [1961], and Japanese movies like the original Godzilla [Ishirô Honda, 1954] and all of its sequels and imitations.

Stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen has created some of my favorite dragons and dinosaurs. There is the majestic dragon of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [Nathan H. Juran, 1958] and the unforgettable Hydra that guards the Golden Fleece in Jason and the Argonauts. [Don Chaffey, 1963].

Ray’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms [Eugène Lourié, 1953] was the first of the many monsters unleashed by the atomic bomb. Based on a Ray Bradbury short story, “The Fog Horn,” in which a lonely, prehistoric beast rises from the sea mistaking a lighthouse foghorn for a mating call, the enormous success of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms provided the incentive for Toho Studios in Tokyo to produce their own gigantic-beast-rising-from-the-sea movie, Godzilla, in 1954. Godzilla’s sequel, Godzilla Raids Again was retitled Gigantis, the Fire Monster for its US release in 1955.

Harryhausen made more realistic dinosaurs in Hammer’s remake of One Million Years B.C. [Don Chaffey, 1966]. Ray also gave us the indelible image of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini carried off by a mama pterodactyl to feed to her hungry chicks. In Harryhausen’s The Valley of Gwangi [Jim O’Connolly, 1969], cowboys discover dinosaurs in a hidden valley and capture an allosaurus, which they put on display in a bullring. It breaks free, and dies trapped in a burning cathedral.

Ishirô Honda’s Japanese dragon (or is he a dinosaur?) Godzilla [1954] was an international sensation and has been followed by countless sequels and one ill-conceived, big-budget Hollywood remake [Roland Emmerich, 1998]. Godzilla himself has had a fascinating relationship with Japan. Originally a symbol of the destruction caused by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II, Godzilla has gone from being Japan’s ultimate villain, to the country’s friend and protector. Godzilla has been joined by Rodan! The Flying Monster! [Ishirô Honda, 1956], a sort of jumbo pterodactyl, and a golden, three-headed flying dragon from outer space named Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster [Ishirô Honda, 1964] among others. The great Eiji Tsuburaya supervised almost all of Toho Studios’ giant monster films, his special effects distinguished by his trademark miniatures: entire cities built to scale to be knocked down, stomped on, and blown up.

Paleontologists keep discovering new dinosaurs and I am sure that moviemakers will, too. And I for one, look forward to meeting them.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms  [Eugène Lourié, 1953]

Harryhausen’s influential dinosaur-on-the-loose movie. Tagline: “They couldn’t escape the terror! And neither will you!”

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Evil defeated

St. George and the Dragon, a tinsel picture from the 19th century.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Lost World  [Harry O. Hoyt, 1925]

The first film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic book. Wallace Beery played Professor Challenger in this silent movie, with stop-motion animation by the great Willis O’Brien.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Gertie  [aka Gertie the Dinosaur, Winsor McCay, 1914]

Pioneering cartoonist Winsor McCay toured in vaudeville with his hand-drawn animation, giving the onscreen dinosaur verbal commands from the stage.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Ghost of Slumber Mountain  [Willis O’Brien, 1918]

The poster for the 19-minute-long, stop-motion animation that got O’Brien the job of animating the dinosaurs for The Lost World [Harry O. Hoyt, 1925], which led to his masterpiece, King Kong [1933].

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Goliath and the Dragon  [aka La Vendetta di Ercole, Vittorio Cottafavi, 1960]

This Italian sword and sandal epic not only features a good dragon, it also has an unexpected Broderick Crawford as King Eurystheus!

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Gorgo  [Eugène Lourié, 1961]

Lourié seemed to specialize in giant dinosaur pictures, this time it’s British. Gorgo’s mom is pictured here, trashing London’s Tower Bridge.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried  [Fritz Lang, 1924]

Paul Richter as Siegfried bathes in the blood of the dragon he has just slain to make himself invincible. However, a falling leaf lands on his shoulder, leaving one vulnerable spot. The first of the two films Lang made based on the medieval epic poem The Song of the Nibelungs.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Ilya Muromets  [aka The Sword and the Dragon, The Epic Hero and the Beast, Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956]

Boris Andreyev as Ilya Muromets about to slay a dragon. Roger Corman recut and dubbed this Russian film and I saw it on television many times as a kid, not knowing exactly what to make of the words not matching the actors’ mouth movements. The first Soviet movie shot in CinemaScope.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Jurassic Park  [Steven Spielberg, 1993]

One of Stan Winston’s dinosaurs up to no good.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Also shown here is the incredible, life-size audioanimatronic Tyrannosaurus from the second of three Jurassic Park movies: The Lost World [1997]

“All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!”

“But, John. If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists!”

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum), Jurassic Park

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

One Million Years B.C.  [Don Chaffey, 1966]

A mama pterodactyl is about to feed Raquel Welch to her hungry chicks. Ray Harryhausen did the effects in an unusual “work for hire” at this stage of his career.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

King Kong  [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933]

Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), high up in the tree where Kong has put her for safety, looks on as he battles a T. Rex. Brilliantly staged, with innovative use of sound effects (by Murray Spivack). A classic sequence from Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion tour de force.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Beast of Hollow Mountain  [Edward Nassour, Ismael Rodríguez, 1956]

From a story by Willis O’Brien, who used the name “El Toro Estrella” for his writing credit! This particular shot is too close and clearly shows the cowboy is a puppet. O’Brien did not do the stop-motion animation for this film, which is very similar to his original screenplay The Valley of the Mist, later made by O’Brien’s protégé Ray Harryhausen as The Valley of Gwangi [Jim O’Connolly, 1969].

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm  [Henry Levin, George Pal, 1962]

The lovely dragon terrorizes Buddy Hackett and Terry-Thomas in the “Singing Bone” sequence of this Cinerama movie.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Dinosaurus!  [Irvin Yeaworth, 1960]

The puppet double for the little boy Julio rides the puppet apatosaurus in this dumb movie. Surprisingly, Dinosaurus! was photographed by the great Stanley Cortez. Scenes from the film show up in Schlock [me, 1973].

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Jack the Giant Killer  [Nathan H. Juran, 1962]

The Kerwin Mathews puppet astride the flying dragon animated by Jim Danforth in this The 7th Voyage of Sinbad imitation.

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

The Valley of Gwangi  [Jim O’Connolly, 1969]

Based on an original, unproduced script by Willis O’Brien, Harryhausen finally realized his mentor’s vision and put cowboys and dinosaurs together in the Old West. Here, the captive Gwangi is being transported to be put on public display.

“It’s disgraceful to think of putting this fabulous creature on display in a cheap circus.”

Professor Bromley (Laurence Naismith) in The Valley of Gwangi [1969]

Dragons & Dinosaurs [Book Contents]

Rodan! The Flying Monster!  [Ishirô Honda, 1956]

Ishirô Honda is at it again! Tagline: “The Super-Sonic Hell-Creature No Weapon Could Destroy!” Rodan looks much less like a European dragon than the poster portrays him.

King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933] King Kong crucified and on display for a Broadway theater audience. Left to right: Bruce Cabot, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!

MONSTROUS APES

In King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933], theatrical showman Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has captured the giant ape, brought him to Manhattan, and billed him as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” The opening-night audience thrills with anticipation waiting for the curtain to rise on what promises to be the Broadway sensation of the decade. Two women wonder what Mr. Denham has in store for them this time. One remarks that she heard it was “some kind of gorilla.” As two men climb over them on their way to their seats, the other woman replies, “Ain’t we got enough of them in New York already?”

King Kong is the greatest fantasy film of all time. When Ray Harryhausen saw King Kong at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, he was stunned by Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation of Kong and the prehistoric denizens of Skull Island. O’Brien became Harryhausen’s mentor and hired him to assist on the later stop-motion gorilla picture, the romantic Mighty Joe Young [Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1949].

What is it about apes and particularly gorillas that makes them the go-to monster for the movies? Even haunted-house comedies always had a guy in a gorilla suit running around.

Monkeys have obvious similarities to human beings, something that has fascinated people for centuries. But gorillas themselves are relatively new to us. When the first gorilla cadaver was stuffed and brought to Europe from Africa in the late 1840s, the ape’s massive size and obvious power shocked many people. Popular books, like Paul du Chaillu’s Stories of the Gorilla Country [1867] helped to create the myth of gorillas as ferocious raiders, carrying off women from native villages. This theme of the gorilla as rapist became a popular motif in western art: the French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet’s bronze Gorilla Carrying off a Woman won the Medal of Honor at the Paris Salon in 1887. Popular culture, including the movies, has continued to perpetuate the image of the rampaging giant ape, even though gorillas in the wild are the gentlest of herbivores.

Chimpanzees are known for their intelligence and “human-like” behavior. However, as adorable as baby chimps are, they grow up to be very big and very aggressive animals. Nevertheless, what audiences demanded were gorillas.

Filmmakers soon realized that putting a man in a gorilla suit was far more practical than working with a real gorilla. And soon a special breed of performer (often supplying their own ape suits) began playing gorillas in thrillers, horror films, and comedies.

Names like Emil Van Horn, Charles Gemora, George Burrows, Ray “Crash” Corrigan, and Bob Burns may not be familiar names nowadays, but their gorilla suits are, for each actor had his own, instantly recognizable one.

Gorilla suits were often more valued than the performers who owned them. The B-movie producer Herman Cohen was too cheap to fly ape-performer George Burrows to London to wear his gorilla suit for Konga [John Lemont, 1961], so Burrows reluctantly agreed to rent it to the production. The suit was worn by an unknown British stunt man.

Konga is a particularly wacky movie. Botanist Michael Webber (an over-the-top Michael Gough) injects a chimpanzee (portrayed by a real chimpanzee) with a serum that somehow changes the chimp into a highly aggressive gorilla. Webber’s jealous girlfriend/assistant injects more serum into the chimp/now gorilla which causes it to grow big enough to rampage around London, destroying Tower Bridge and Big Ben in the process. George Burrows was furious when producer Cohen returned his gorilla suit heavily damaged by the miniatures and pyrotechnics used by the British crew. But perhaps Burrows’ gorilla suit’s lowest moment was when he wore it as the space monster Ro-Man in Robot Monster [Phil Tucker, 1953]. The ape body was used, but the head replaced by an extremely silly helmet, which can only be described as a goldfish bowl with an old TV antenna on top.

Crash Corrigan (and his costume) played the gorilla in The Bride and the Beast [Adrian Weiss, 1958]. The typically weird Ed Wood screenplay concerns a woman who must chose between her husband and a gorilla! The title character in The White Gorilla [Harry L. Fraser, 1945] is Crash Corrigan again, but this time his suit was dyed snow white. With his gorilla suit already dyed, Corrigan quickly appeared in the title role of White Pongo [Sam Newfield, 1945] as an albino gorilla who might just be the Missing Link. Corrigan’s gorilla also turns up in Captive Wild Woman, The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters [Edward Bernds, 1954], and one of the few films directed by screenwriter Curt Siodmak, Bride of the Gorilla [1951].

Charles Gemora worked as a special-effects man at Paramount Studios for many years, with a sideline performing in the gorilla suits he used to design and manufacture. Gemora took care to make his suits as realistic as possible. He gives one of the great gorilla performances in The Monster and the Girl [Stuart Heisler, 1941], a peculiar mixture of mad-scientist, brain-transplant, gangster, and boy-and-his-dog movie that is one of my favorites. Gemora also played the murderous gorilla in Murders in the Rue Morgue [Robert Florey, 1932] and fooled around with the Marx Brothers in At the Circus [Edward Buzzell, 1939]. One of the crazier moments in the films of Laurel and Hardy is in Swiss Miss [John G. Blystone, 1938] when Stan and Ollie are trying to carry an upright piano across a narrow wooden suspension bridge high over a canyon in the Swiss Alps, and Gemora’s gorilla tries to cross in the opposite direction! After a struggle, the gorilla falls off the bridge, only to turn up at the very end of the movie on crutches, with his head bandaged and his leg in a plaster cast, and chase our heroes off into the sunset. Most wonderful of all is when Gemora’s gorilla lumbers onto the stage in the glamorous nightclub in Blonde Venus [Josef von Sternberg, 1932] and removes his gorilla hands and then head to reveal Marlene Dietrich in a blonde Afro wig!

Emil Van Horn was another renowned gorilla impersonator. He had a less realistic costume than Gemora, but he performs energetically in The Ape Man [William Beaudine, 1943], co-starring with Béla Lugosi. He also makes a memorable appearance in W. C. Fields’ surreal Never Give a Sucker an Even Break [Edward F. Cline, 1941].

Various studio make-up and costume departments manufactured ape suits over the years. But with “special effects make-up man” Rick Baker, the gorilla suit reached new levels of sophistication. His suit for the Bigfoot named Harry in Harry and the Hendersons [William Dear, 1987] was worn by Kevin Peter Hall, the very tall actor who later portrayed the Predator in Predator [John McTiernan, 1987]. Baker used remote radio controls to work the facial features on Harry which, combined with the terrific mime of Kevin Peter Hall, created a remarkably realistic character.

Baker himself wore the ape suit in John Guillermin’s 1976 remake of King Kong and as the gorilla named Dino in The Kentucky Fried Movie [John Landis, 1977]. His apes for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes [Hugh Hudson, 1984] and Gorillas in the Mist [Michael Apted, 1988] remain unsurpassed.

Why do apes continue to intrigue, amuse, frighten, and fascinate us? Look in the mirror.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Mighty Joe Young  [Ron Underwood, 1998]

Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton with the amazing, full-size Joe Young built by Rick Baker for this remake.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Stories of the Gorilla Country  [Paul du Chaillu, 1867]

Cover of the first edition of Paul du Chaillu’s book about his adventures with the gorillas of Africa. (From the Author’s collection.)

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Gorille enlevant une Femme (Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman)  [Emmanuel Frémiet, 1887]

A bronze sculpture by Emmanuel Frémiet. (From the Author’s collection.)

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Konga  [John Lemont, 1961]

Mad scientist Michael Gough is helpless in Konga’s giant grasp in this publicity paste-up photo.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Robot Monster  [Phil Tucker, 1953]

I’m not entirely sure what George Nader is trying to do to Ro-Man in this publicity shot for one of the all-time, strangely fascinating, terrible movies. I admire the sheer balls of putting a space helmet on a gorilla suit and thinking that would be okay as an alien monster. With music by a young, “gray-listed” Elmer Bernstein!

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

The White Gorilla  [Harry L. Fraser, 1945]

Ray “Crash” Corrigan in his now white gorilla suit. Corrigan also plays Steve Collins and the Narrator. A triple threat.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Captive Wild Woman  [Edward Dmytryk, 1943]

A publicity shot of Cheela the gorilla (Ray “Crash” Corrigan) holding Paula Dupree (Acquanetta). In the film, sexy Acquanetta becomes a gorilla (also Corrigan) and then sultry but deadly Paula Dupree. It is all very impractical.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters  [Edward Bernds, 1954]

The monsters the Bowery Boys meet are a vampire, a robot, and a gorilla.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Bride of the Gorilla  [Curt Siodmak, 1951]

A steamy melodrama, in which South American plantation manager Raymond Burr murders his boss to get to his wife, Barbara Payton, and is cursed by a witch doctor to turn into a murderous gorilla at night. Directed by the screenwriter of The Wolf Man [1941]. This time, Lon Chaney, Jr. is the cop on the case.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

The Monster and the Girl  [Stuart Heisler, 1941]

His brain now inside this massive gorilla’s head, Scott Webster regards his sleeping sister, Susan (Ellen Drew). Charlie Gemora’s best gorilla-suit performance.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Murders in the Rue Morgue  [Robert Florey, 1932]

Charles Gemora as Erik, the orangutan about to kidnap another woman for his master Dr. Mirakle (Béla Lugosi). Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue [1841], which many believe to be the first true detective story.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

At the Circus  [Edward Buzzell, 1939]

Harpo, Groucho, and Chico crooning with Charlie Gemora in this publicity photo.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Blonde Venus  [Josef von Sternberg, 1932]

During the “Hot Voodoo” dance number, as the drums pound and the trumpet wails, a gorilla menacingly comes onstage. The gorilla removes its head to reveal the beautiful face of Marlene Dietrich (inset)!

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

The Ape Man  [William Beaudine, 1943]

Experiments by mad doctor James Brewster (Béla Lugosi) turn him into an ape man! He and his gorilla must obtain human spinal fluid to reverse this situation before it’s too late. A Monogram Picture, so you know it’s cheap.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break  [Edward F. Cline, 1941]

W. C. Fields, writing under the pseudonym Otis Criblecoblis, created this surrealistic and very funny film, about Fields pitching a film to producer Franklin Pangborn. Fields is pictured with a gorilla, played by Emil Van Horn.

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes  [Hugh Hudson, 1984]

The infant Tarzan, safe in the arms of apes that adopt and raise him in the jungle. The first part of the film, dealing with Tarzan in Africa, is great. Rick Baker made the magnificent apes.

IN CONVERSATION

Rick Baker

“There is something scary about 45° angles.”

Rick Baker at home (photo by the Author).

Monstrous Apes [Book Contents]

JL: Rick, what’s your definition of a monster?

RB: I think I have a different concept of a monster than most people. I’ve always been fascinated by them, but I don’t see them as bad. The kinds of monsters that I like are Frankenstein’s Monster, Quasimodo, and guys like that. The ones I like are sympathetic.

JL: OK, but what are monsters?

RB: Monsters are creatures that don’t exist in the real universe.

JL: Mythological monsters, like dragons and Cyclops…

RB: I like all those. I’ve always been attracted to things that aren’t in the real world. Fantastic things, grotesque things. I don’t like gory stuff…

JL: But you do a lot of gore effects! Didn’t you tell me that when you were a teenager, you used to do make-up wounds on yourself, just to freak people out?

RB: Yeah I did, but that was just to get a reaction, an easy reaction. That’s why I don’t have that much respect for those kinds of make-ups because I know how easy it is to fool somebody with just the sight of blood. It’s not as hard as doing a character, or to turn a young person, through make-up, into an old person.

JL: Your own interest in monsters seems to be aesthetic.

RB: It’s a visual thing. I’ve always been fascinated by the way they look and how people designed and changed a human into something else.

JL: If I said to you, “I want to be made-up to look like me, but I want it to be scary,” are there things, shortcuts, you can do...?

RB: There is kind of a formula to that.

JL: Like what?

RB: Angularity. Look at the werewolf in An American Werewolf in London [John Landis, 1981], your four-legged hound from hell. It had big scary teeth that are going to tear you up, but it’s also sculpted in a very angular way. The brows are very angular and there are 45° angles all through it. There is something scary about 45° angles.

Baker working wolf head in Piccadilly Circus for American Werewolf in London [1981].

JL: Well, Dracula has got that going on.

RB: Yeah, with the widow’s peak and the eyebrows shaved—I use 45° angles all the time.

JL: They always show the devil that way, and Mephistopheles has brows like that.

RB: Yeah, the devil’s horns go up at 45°, as well as the ears. I don’t know why 45° angles are scary, but they are! I think some of the scariest make-ups, and the guy who was the best at making scary faces, was Lon Chaney, Sr. So many designs that I’ve done, and I know other make-up artists would say the same, were influenced by Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera [Rupert Julian, 1925]. Some of the faces he makes in that are great.

JL: And Chaney was using old stage make-up, with big limitations in what he could do because of the primitive materials he had to work with.

RB: A lot of the old make-up guys didn’t have a lot of the tools that we have now, and that’s part of the reason their efforts worked so well. They worked within specific limitations. They couldn’t make 10,000 werewolves crawl on the ceiling, you know? There was a certain reality to their work. It was closer to what you could really believe.

JL: Do you have a favorite movie monster?

RB: Frankenstein is my favorite and the Boris Karloff version is by far the best. It was one of those movies where the mix of people involved—James Whale, Jack Pierce, and Boris Karloff—created magic.

JL: Karloff had an amazing face.

RB: He’s got a great face, and the make-up Pierce designed for his face never looked as good on anyone else. And I don’t think that anyone else was as good as Karloff either.

JL: OK, so you’ve done a lot of aliens.

RB: Aliens and werewolves. I did your movie [An American Werewolf in London], and I did The Wolfman [Joe Johnston, 2010], and I did Wolf [Mike Nichols, 1994]…

Baker making-up Griffin Dunne as “Dead Jack” for An American Werewolf in London [1981].

JL: Of course! What is it about werewolves that people are so interested in.

RB: Well, I think everybody seems to feel like there’s a beast inside them somewhere.

JL: Like Jekyll and Hyde?

RB: It’s that whole evil side coming out. But what I like about werewolf movies is the change in the appearance of the person. I’m interested in the transformation, more than the story itself. That animal and man combination has always fascinated me, going back to [French artist Charles] Le Brun. I always thought the combination of humans and animals was such a fun thing. That’s why I liked Island of Lost Souls [Erle C. Kenton, 1932].

JL: The first film version of (H. G. Wells’ novel) The Island of Dr. Moreau? I love that movie! The make-ups in that picture are great.

RB: Better than in any of the remakes.

JL: Why is that?

RB: Because my favorite make-ups are the ones where the guys didn’t have the tools that we have today! For Island of Lost Souls, they didn’t have foam rubber or silicone so they couldn’t make really crazy things, and I think they benefited from that. The Beast Men are these hairy, man-like creatures, but there’s a reality to it.

JL: You flew to London to join me for Ray Harryhausen’s 90th birthday event at the National Film Theater. [Steven] Spielberg, [James] Cameron, [George] Lucas, Tim Burton, Guillermo [Del Toro] all talked about how he inspired them. What is so special about Ray’s work?

RB: He really does give those metal and foam rubber puppets life! He makes them characters… but also, I think a lot of this is that we’re the generation which grew up with his films and saw them fresh and new. I would watch a Harryhausen movie and suffer through 20 minutes of bad acting just to see his effects. Since then, I’ve seen so many huge effects movies, with thousands of things doing all sorts of crazy action, to the point where it just has no impact and I don’t care. But I can watch one of Ray’s puppet animations with complete pleasure.

JL: Do you remember the big battle in the second Lord of the Rings movie [The Two Towers, Peter Jackson, 2002]? That was the first time I saw a CG movie with so much CG that wasn’t in outer space. I thought: “This is great!” It was a way of realizing these enormous monsters on a vast scale. But now I’ve become so bored with CG effects. Things have gotten so elaborate, I just don’t care.

RB: I know, just because you can have a thousand werewolves climbing upside-down on the ceiling, it doesn’t mean that you should!

JL: You know what you showed me once that totally freaked me out? You were very gleeful. You had gotten a medical encyclopedia full of horrible photographs of medical anomalies, and one of them was of teeth growing out of a guy’s leg. Do you remember that? It really freaked me out.

RB: When I first went to junior college, I found books on plastic surgery. Just talking about those kinds of things scares me. Seeing what can happen to you and that you can still be alive… There was one guy in particular that was in an airplane crash, who basically had no face, and no skin on the top of his head. They had drilled holes in his skull to let the pressure out, but the guy was alert and alive. I find that horrifying. What scares me is that it could actually happen to me. How would I deal with that when I looked in the mirror and that’s what looked back at me?

I think that’s something that always fascinated me about make-up: that I could look through my eyes, and see a completely different person looking back at me in the mirror. I was painfully shy as a kid, but in make-up you can do things you can’t do as yourself.

JL: I think that’s true of Eddie Murphy.

RB: I think it’s true of any actor. Everybody hates the process of being made-up—hours in the morning—but you’re sitting there looking at yourself, and you can see that other face, the character’s face, looking back.

JL: What clearly demonstrates that is costume. I’ve seen it millions of times. Once the actors get into their clothes, they know who the character is.

RB: Actors need that. When you walk onto a cool set and you’re in this environment, and you’re in make-up and costume, it’s got to help! With all this movement to motion-capture and blue screen, I really think it affects the performance and reality of the moment.

JL: I am always impressed by the fact that actors, especially in fantasy films, so often have to react and respond to something that is not there. Some gigantic creature or cataclysmic event that will be put in later in post production.

RB: So many people say “If we don’t do it today, it’s not going to work.” Then I’ll say, “Did you see Star Wars? You know the band that’s in the cantina was shot six months later in a whole different country, by a whole different group of people, and you would swear that they’re there in that cantina.”

JL: But that used to be standard! That’s filmmaking!

RB: Yeah, that’s what’s missing now though, isn’t it? (Laughs.)

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne [aka A Deadly Invention, Karel Zeman, 1958] Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman’s unique blend of live action, stop motion, and drawn animation reproduces the look of 19th-century etchings, which works wonderfully well in this fusion of two Jules Verne novels.

NATURE’S REVENGE

Whether it is rats, spiders, snakes, bees, sharks, or just big old mean dogs, we are all afraid of some animal out there. Movie makers, constantly searching for something to scare us with, have shamelessly taken advantage of our reasonable fears of bee stings, spider bites, and being devoured by sharks, by featuring these and other beasties in horror films.

Producers and directors can take a real creature and make it gigantic, like the crab in Mysterious Island [Cy Endfield, 1961] or the spider—“Crawling Terror, 100 Feet High”—in Tarantula! [Jack Arnold, 1955], or they can just unleash vast numbers of the critters we dread: bees in The Swarm [Irwin Allen, 1978]; or snakes in Snakes on a Plane [David R. Ellis, 2006]. If a vast, unstoppable army of ants in The Naked Jungle [Byron Haskin, 1954] isn’t enough to scare you, then how about the REALLY HUGE ants of Them! [Gordon Douglas, 1954] or Empire of the Ants [Bert I. Gordon, 1977]? If the rats made you uneasy in Willard [Daniel Mann, 1971], schlock producer’s logic says that the giant rats in The Food of the Gods [Bert I. Gordon, 1976] should really make you jump out of your seat.

I can imagine the writer’s pitch now: “The great white shark that terrorized the beaches in Jaws [Steven Spielberg, 1975] was puny! He just wasn’t really that big! How about a Mega Shark?” “Yes! Yes!” shouts the producer. “And he could battle a Giant Octopus!” And that is how Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus [Jack Perez as Ace Hannah, 2009] was born. In that film, the absurdly big Mega Shark destroys San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Bridge, which had obviously been repaired since 1955 when it was heavily damaged by the giant octopus in Ray Harryhausen’s It Came From Beneath the Sea [Robert Gordon, 1955].

If worms give you the creeps, then the millions of flesh-eating bloodworms in Squirm [Jeff Lieberman, 1976] will make you do just what the title says. In The African Queen [John Huston, 1951] the audience shared Humphrey Bogart’s character’s revulsion when he came out of the water covered in leeches. If a few normal-size leeches generated such disgust, then an Attack of the Giant Leeches [Bernard L. Kowalski, 1959] is the only way to go.

It isn’t always necessary to make something we naturally avoid, like a scorpion, into a colossal version of itself to frighten us. (The Black Scorpion [Edward Ludwig, 1957] did that with stop-motion animation by the great Willis O’Brien.) Sometimes a rabid dog [Cujo, Lewis Teague, 1983] or just an angry grizzly bear [Grizzly, William Girdler, 1976] is enough to terrify us without the use of special effects.

Usually, the giant animal monster is explained by some pseudo-scientific theory: it’s a prehistoric beast frozen in ice, or a mutant, created by atomic radiation. The monster is sometimes created by toxic waste or by some covert corporate or government experiment gone terribly wrong. The man-eating piranha in Joe Dante’s Piranha [1978] are the results of a misguided military experiment, while in the 2010 remake, Piranha 3D [Alexandre Aja], the vicious piranha are prehistoric fish freed from an underwater cavern by an earthquake. The change reflects the politics of the era in which each film was made.

Sometimes the reason for nature turning on us is unexplained. When Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds [1963] attack and kill, no reason is given for their behavior. The characters speculate on what could be making the birds turn suddenly homicidal, but the movie deliberately offers no solution to the mystery and ends on an uneasy, unresolved note.

Creature From the Black Lagoon [Jack Arnold, 1954] is a classic story of an ancient species destroyed by contact with modern civilization, essentially the plot of the first half of King Kong [1933]. The Gill-Man was designed by Millicent Patrick and is considered to be one of the greatest monsters in film history. The celebrated sequence where Julie Adams is swimming on the surface of the lagoon, unaware of the Creature as it swims beneath her, remains one of the most poetic in the genre. A B movie made almost entirely on the back lot of Universal Studios (except for the underwater sequences, shot in the crystal-clear waters of Wakulla Springs, Florida) Creature From the Black Lagoon was a great success and is still one of the best 3D movies ever made. Two sequels followed, in which the Gill-Man continued to be abused by the human leads.

Other humanoid, water-based creatures include The Monster of Piedras Blancas [Irvin Berwick, 1959], the very silly fish-men of Horror of Party Beach [Del Tenney, 1964], and the infamous Humanoids From the Deep [Barbara Peeters, 1980]. Infamous because the producer, Roger Corman, had additional scenes shot in which the monsters were shown actually raping the nubile young girls hired to be topless and scream as the slimy fish-men, created by make-up maestro Rob Bottin, had their way with them. And to increase the sleaze factor, the movie ends with one of the rape victims giving birth to a baby fish monster by having it burst through her stomach in a geyser of blood, in blatant imitation of the “chest burster” scene in Ridley Scott’s Alien [1979].

Underwater is not the only place we will find humanoid monsters—they also come from underground. The scary, carnivorous cave dwellers a group of women encounter in Neil Marshall’s The Descent [2005] are very nasty indeed. Be warned, this is definitely not a movie for the claustrophobic. Deep in the bowels of the Earth can also be found The Mole People [Virgil W. Vogel, 1956], who are used as slave labor by a race of “Sumerian Albinos!”

Another movie that features an insatiable underground threat is Ron Underwood’s Tremors [1990]. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward play two contemporary cowboys trying to deal with the huge subterranean monsters they discover in a small town in the Nevada desert. Tremors is a textbook example of a well made and entertaining monster movie.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Mysterious Island  [Cy Endfield, 1961]

The castaways fight a giant crab on Captain Nemo’s island. Ray Harryhausen animated an actual crab shell purchased at Harrods Food Hall in London.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Tarantula!  [Jack Arnold, 1955]

The tremendous tarantula in the movie never holds a woman as illustrated here in the ad art. It was not unusual for exploitation picture promotional art to exaggerate.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Swarm  [Irwin Allen, 1978]

Olivia de Havilland wonders how her career ever came to this. Henry Fonda and Michael Caine are also in this ridiculous Irwin Allen movie.

“This is more than a movie. It’s a prediction!”

Publicity tagline for The Swarm

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Snakes on a Plane  [David R. Ellis, 2006]

The passengers and crew are not happy about snakes on the plane.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Naked Jungle  [Byron Haskin, 1954]

Charlton Heston struggles to save a Peruvian cocoa plantation from the “Marabunta”—millions of voracious army ants.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Empire of the Ants  [Bert I. Gordon, 1977]

A toxic spill turns ordinary ants into intelligent, rampaging monsters, bent on conquering mankind. Another Bert I. Gordon trashing of an H. G. Wells story.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Willard  [Daniel Mann, 1971]

A lonely young man is unable to kill the rats in the basement. Soon, they do his bidding. Based on the novel The Ratman’s Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert.

“My God, look at the rats!”

Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine), Willard [1971]

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Food of the Gods  [Bert I. Gordon, 1976]

Ralph Meeker is eaten by giant rats in this low-rent and very loose adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth [1904].

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Jaws  [Steven Spielberg, 1975]

Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) in his final confrontation with the monstrous great white shark in Spielberg’s summer blockbuster.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus  [Ace Hannah, 2009]

Mega Shark attacks the Golden Gate Bridge. Followed by Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus [2010] and Sharktopus [2010]. What can I say?

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

It Came From Beneath the Sea  [Robert Gordon, 1955]

A gigantic octopus destroys the Golden Gate Bridge in this Ray Harryhausen thriller.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Squirm  [Jeff Lieberman, 1976]

A storm knocks down high power lines, sending electricity into the ground. For some reason, this causes thousands of bloodworms to attack humans. This actor is actually covered in thousands of real bloodworms, which is not dangerous, but is pretty gross.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Attack of the Giant Leeches  [Bernard L. Kowalski, 1959]

Deep in the swamps of the Florida Everglades, a giant leech attacks victims.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Cujo  [Lewis Teague, 1983]

A rabid St. Bernard is enough to generate real chills in this suspenseful adaptation of the book by the prolific Stephen King.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Grizzly  [aka Killer Grizzly, William Girdler, 1976]

Identical in plot to Jaws, but with an 18-foot-tall grizzly bear instead of a great white shark.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Piranha  [Joe Dante, 1978]

“Operation Razorteeth,” a covert Vietnam War research project, ends up creating the menace for New World Pictures’ jump onto the Jaws bandwagon.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Birds  [Alfred Hitchcock, 1963]

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) runs from another unexplained bird attack. Based on the novella by Daphne du Maurier.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Creature From the Black Lagoon  [Jack Arnold, 1954]

Julie Adams and the Gill-Man (Ben Chapman) in an unusual color publicity still (the film is black and white).

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Monster of Piedras Blancas  [Irvin Berwick, 1959]

A lighthouse keeper leaves food for a sea creature. This turns out to be a mistake.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Descent  [Neil Marshall, 2005]

Six women go spelunking and encounter terrifying, subterranean, flesh-eating humanoids in this claustrophobic, scary movie.

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

The Mole People  [Virgil W. Vogel, 1956]

Archaeologists discover a race of Sumerian albinos that live underground and use humanoid Mole Men as slaves to harvest their primary food source—mushrooms!

Nature’s Revenge [Book Contents]

Tremors  [Ron Underwood, 1990]

A very entertaining movie about two modern cowboys (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward) coping with big underground monsters in the Nevada desert.

Them! [Gordon Douglas, 1954] Giant ants, the result of atomic mutation, in the first of the 1950s Big Bug movies.

ATOMIC MUTATIONS

The threat of nuclear annihilation has been a Sword of Damocles over our planet for more than 65 years. But usually we just prefer not to think about it. The fear of destruction on an apocalyptic scale was very real in 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the USA and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict.

A movie that captures the sense of impending doom and paranoia of that time is Joe Dante’s excellent Matinee [1993]. Although ostensibly about a William Castle-like schlock Hollywood producer (John Goodman), the movie also boasts a terrific parody of the then-popular Atomic Mutation pictures, which reflected audiences’ atomic anxiety. Mant!, the film within the film, is perfectly done.

An atomic bomb test in the Arctic awakens The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms [Eugène Lourié, 1953], which swims down to New York City and, through the exquisite stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen, creates urban chaos. The giant dinosaur is finally destroyed while ravaging Coney Island.

The same studio, Warner Brothers, saw the box-office gold in radioactive monster pictures and began its next movie with a haunting sequence of two police officers discovering a little girl found wandering in the New Mexico desert. Terrified and in shock, she can only scream, “Them!” Them! [Gordon Douglas, 1954] tells the story of gigantic ants, mutated by exposure to the radiation from atomic tests. The giant ants leave havoc and death in their wake. The army finally tracks the ants and their queen to the famous concrete LA River in Los Angeles, and destroys them with machine guns and flamethrowers. The scientist in charge surveys the charred remains of the monsters and declares, “When Man entered the atomic age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”

That same year, Japan’s Toho Studios released their version of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, titled Godzilla [Ishirô Honda, 1954]. This is a dark tale of yet another huge reptilian monster rising from the sea, but this time to destroy Tokyo. Also the result of a nuclear explosion, Godzilla is truly enormous and breathes radioactive fire as he flattens cities. A heavily edited version, incorporating new footage featuring Raymond Burr as reporter “Steve Martin,” was released in the US in 1956 with the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (Note: yes, the character in Godzilla is named “Steve Martin.” But also remember that the soulless killer wearing that blank mask in Halloween is named “Michael Myers!”)

Exposure to a mysterious radioactive cloud somehow causes Grant Williams to grow smaller and smaller in The Incredible Shrinking Man [Jack Arnold, 1957]. Based on the novel and screenplay by the great Richard Matheson, The Incredible Shrinking Man is both serious and ultimately profound. Jack Arnold’s exemplary direction of the intense battle in the basement between the tiny protagonist and a normal but now giant-seeming spider, clearly inspired the battle with the huge spider Shelob in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [2003] and the encounter with the massive spider Aragog in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [Chris Columbus, 2002]. And speaking of spiders… A biologist (Leo G. Carroll) experimenting with “atomic nutrients” to further food production, first suffers disfigurement and then finds that he has unleashed upon the world a gargantuan Tarantula! [Jack Arnold, 1955]; a tarantula so large that only jets dropping napalm can eventually stop it. The jet pilot that saves the day is played by a young Clint Eastwood.

Another notable victim of the effects of radiation is poor Lt. Col. John Manning who, after being exposed to a plutonium bomb blast, grows into a 60-foot giant wearing what looks like a diaper in The Amazing Colossal Man [Bert I. Gordon, 1957]. Even though we think he is dead at the end of that movie, Lt. Col. Manning makes a spectacular comeback in War of the Colossal Beast [Bert I. Gordon, 1958], still 60-feet tall, still wearing a diaper. This time, however, his face is disfigured—which, I guess, is the reason his billing was changed from “Colossal Man” to “Colossal Beast.”

Radiation from a meteorite is the cause of a family curse in Die, Monster, Die! [Daniel Haller, 1965], a very loose adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Color Out of Space,” starring Boris Karloff and Nick Adams.

Donald Pleasence’s experiments with radiation result in The Mutations [1974], directed by Jack Cardiff, one of the cinema’s greatest directors of photography. The Mutations, however, is a sleazy piece of work with scenes reminiscent of Tod Browning’s masterwork Freaks [1932], using physically handicapped people to cruel effect.

Doomwatch [Peter Sasdy, 1972] was based on a BBC television series in which the population of a small island off the English coast becomes malformed and violent after eating fish made toxic with pollution. Pollution is also responsible for The Toxic Avenger [Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz, 1984] and the ridiculous mutant bear in Prophecy [John Frankenheimer, 1979]. However, my favorite result of exposure to toxic waste happens spectacularly to one of the bad guys in Paul Verhoeven’s breathtaking RoboCop [1987].

Hell Comes to Frogtown [Donald G. Jackson, R. J. Kizer, 1988] concerns a group of mutant amphibians in a post-apocalyptic future that capture a group of non-mutant, fertile women to use as sex slaves!

No explanation is given for the hideous monsters in The Mist [Frank Darabont, 2007]. Based on a novella by Stephen King, people find themselves trapped in a supermarket surrounded by dense mist and lots of genuinely creepy monsters. I suggest that the monsters are not aliens, or some form of biblical retribution, but the result of a military atomic weaponry program gone wrong—that way I can put a cool photo of one of the gross creepy crawlies seen through a blood spattered windshield into this section!

All this mutating should warn us about the dangers of atomic energy, atomic weapons, basically all things atomic. Of course, in the real world, events like the Chernobyl disaster, or a tsunami hitting Fukushima, rarely happen. But listing the growing number of countries with nuclear weapons is hardly reassuring: The UK, Russia, the US, China, France, probably Israel, and perhaps India and Pakistan; both Iran and North Korea are working hard and will have them soon.

In the words of Mad Magazine’s immortal Alfred E. Newman, “What, me worry?”

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Matinee  [Joe Dante, 1993]

A scene from Mant!, the movie within the movie. A pitch-perfect parody of the many Big Bug films of the 1950s.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Godzilla, King of the Monsters!  [Ishirô Honda, 1956]

The US poster for the 1956 American release of this Japanese response to being the only country so far that has been atomic-bombed. The tagline says it all: “Civilization crumbles as its death rays blast a city of 6 million from the face of the Earth!”

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

The Incredible Shrinking Man  [Jack Arnold, 1957]

The poster’s tagline is accurate: “A fascinating adventure into the unknown!”

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Tarantula!  [Jack Arnold, 1955]

Scientist Leo G. Carroll’s experiments not only cause him to be terribly deformed, but result in a colossal tarantula being unleashed upon the world. The military end up dropping napalm on the huge spider!

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

The Amazing Colossal Man  [Bert I. Gordon, 1957]

Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is exposed to plutonium radiation after a bomb test and grows 60-feet tall. And worse, he goes crazy.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

War of the Colossal Beast  [Bert I. Gordon, 1958]

The sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man, although the character of Lt. Col. Glenn Manning is played by Dean Parkin. Luckily, Lt. Col. Manning’s face is now horribly disfigured, so nobody notices he’s a different actor.

“A colossal freak, Major, and he’s my brother!”

Joyce Manning (Sally Fraser), War of the Colossal Beast

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Die, Monster, Die!  [aka Monster of Terror, Daniel Haller, 1965]

Loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Color Out of Space,” a radioactive meteorite causes trouble.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

The Mutations  [aka The Freakmaker, Jack Cardiff, 1974]

A trashy effort from the celebrated cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Donald Pleasence is a mad scientist, whose experiments create mutant monsters. Julie Ege (on the operating table) supplies the glamor.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Doomwatch  [Peter Sasdy, 1972]

An island’s population become deformed and violent from eating fish made toxic through chemical dumping. Based on the BBC-TV series.

“An ecological nightmare gone berserk!”

Doomwatch publicity tagline

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

The Toxic Avenger  [Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz, 1984]

A nerd falls into a drum of toxic waste and is transformed into the hideous hero of the title. A comedy tribute to bad taste, there have been sequels, a cartoon series, and an off-Broadway musical based on Toxie.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

RoboCop  [Paul Verhoeven, 1987]

This is what happens to a bad guy when a big vat of liquid clearly labeled TOXIC WASTE is dumped onto him.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

Hell Comes to Frogtown  [Donald G. Jackson, 1988]

Pictured is one of the mutant amphibians in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Atomic Mutations [Book Contents]

The Mist  [Frank Darabont, 2007]

From a novella by Stephen King, Darabont’s movie is filled with monsters like creepy big spider-like thing. Not something you want to see through the windshield of your car.

The Exorcist [William Friedkin, 1973] Regan (Linda Blair), a young girl possessed by Satan, has the upper hand during her exorcism by Father Merrin (Max von Sydow).

THE DEVIL’S WORK

“The Devil made me do it” is a marvelous excuse for all kinds of illicit behavior. This must be one of the reasons Satan remains such a popular subject in the cinema. Witches, warlocks, demons, and worse not only wage a constant battle with the forces of good, they also make very entertaining movies.

Actors love to play the Devil. Robert De Niro intriguingly underplays the role as the mysterious “Louis Cyphre” in Angel Heart [Alan Parker, 1987]. Cyphre hires seedy private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) for an investigation that involves Voodoo and ultimately, his soul.

Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick [George Miller, 1987] and Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate [Taylor Hackford, 1997] both clearly enjoy themselves as Lucifer, giving grandstanding performances. Nicholson’s devil has his hands full with three bored, beautiful women who dabble in a bit of black magic themselves.

In The Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves plays young, whiz-kid attorney Kevin Lomax, whose new job at a top law firm brings him under the spell of Al Pacino as Senior Partner “John Milton.” The Devil’s Advocate proves to both Kevin and to us that everything evil we ever thought about lawyers is true.

Ray Walston makes a weasly but potent Satan (although he calls himself “Applegate”), in an enjoyable musical comedy version of Faust entitled Damn Yankees [George Abbott, Stanley Donen, 1958]. Applegate calls forth from Hell the witch Lola (Gwen Verdon) to assist him in his quest for the soul of baseball player Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter).

The great Walter Huston makes a canny Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy [William Dieterle, 1941], the film version of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Sexy Simone Simon as Belle helps Mr. Scratch get the soul of simple farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) who enlists the great Daniel Webster (a terrific performance by Edward Arnold) to argue his case in front of a “jury of the damned.” A wonderful morality story, told as a very thick slice of Americana. The film is also notable for Bernard Herrmann’s lively score.

Christopher Lee plays a rare good-guy role in Hammer Films’ The Devil Rides Out [aka The Devil’s Bride, Terence Fisher, 1968], based on the occult thriller by Dennis Wheatley. A tale of devil worship in which Lee’s Duc de Richleau uses his knowledge of the dark arts to protect his friends from suave, satanic cult leader Mocata (played by the urbane Charles Gray) and his plans to sacrifice them on the altar of Satan. At a devil-worshipper’s orgy, we even get to see The Goat of Mendes himself!

Horror films based on bestselling books acquire a literary patina of respectability. And three bestsellers featuring Satan have given us three of the best devil movies. Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby was brilliantly adapted for the screen by Roman Polanski in 1968. A weird story of devil-worshippers in modern Manhattan conspiring to help Satan rape a young woman in their apartment building (the elegantly creepy Dakota on Central Park West in New York) and give him a son. The movie is full of wonderful performances from a great cast—Mia Farrow (as Rosemary Woodhouse), John Cassavetes (as her scheming actor husband), Ralph Bellamy, and Ruth Gordon all succeed in being funny and frightening in turns.

William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist was a publishing sensation. When the film, directed by William Friedken, was released on December 26, 1973, widespread reports of audiences fainting and screaming generated huge lines at the box office. I’ve always felt that the Vatican should make William Friedkin at least a saint, because no film has done so much for the Roman Catholic Church as The Exorcist. The concept of “suspension of disbelief” is essential to the enjoyment of a movie; as we watch, we have to be able to accept what transpires (no matter how outrageous or impossible) as reality. The Exorcist is a textbook example of a movie creating suspension of disbelief. I am an atheist but, for the running time of The Exorcist, I bought into all of it! “The power of Christ compels you!”—Max von Sydow’s soulful Father Merrin and Jason Miller’s troubled Father Karras are brought in to perform an exorcism in Georgetown, a wealthy neighborhood of Washington, D.C. A 12-year-old girl named Regan (Linda Blair) is possessed by a demon, maybe even the Devil himself. With superb make-up by Dick Smith (assisted by a young Rick Baker), the exorcism itself is as harrowing as any scene in movies and still has power to shock. The Exorcist is meant to be seen with a large audience and on a big screen.

David Seltzer wrote both the book and the screenplay for The Omen [Richard Donner, 1976], a film about the son of Satan. Gregory Peck brought gravitas to the project as the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Peck discovers that Damien, the little boy he and wife Lee Remick have taken in to raise is, in fact, the Antichrist! The Omen is a solid and well-made thriller that makes the supernatural seem real and present in our everyday world. The movie became another big hit at the box office for Satan.

A very funny retelling of Faust, Bedazzled [Stanley Donen, 1967] starred Dudley Moore as the hapless Stanley Moon, Peter Cook as George Spiggott, aka Lucifer, Lord of Darkness and, as two of the Seven Deadly Sins, Barry Humphries as Envy, and Raquel Welch as Lillian Lust— the Girl with the Bust!

Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell [2009] is essentially a fun house variation on Night of the Demon [Jacques Tourneur, 1957], which was based on a story by M. R. James called “Casting the Runes.” In Raimi’s movie, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is cursed by witch Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) for not approving a bank loan. The object that brings forth the demon is a coat button. In Night of the Demon, the fantastic Niall MacGinnis plays the leader of a satanic cult (and children’s party entertainer) who places the object, in this case a parchment with runic inscriptions, on the skeptical Dana Andrews. MacGinnis plays a character of equal parts charm and menace who asks Andrews’ professor: “How can we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of the mind?” Exactly.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

Angel Heart  [Alan Parker, 1987]

Robert De Niro’s character is called Louis Cyphre, but his claw-like fingernails and understated menace should have been a dead giveaway to private detective Mickey Rourke. Based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

The Witches of Eastwick  [George Miller, 1987]

Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher in the title roles. From John Updike’s best-selling novel.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

The Devil’s Advocate  [Taylor Hackford, 1997]

Al Pacino plays lawyer John Milton in a none-too-subtle reference to Paradise Lost. As the Devil, Pacino is given free rein in a ferocious, enjoyably mad performance. Poor Keanu Reeves is blown off the screen whenever Al is present.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

Damn Yankees  [George Abbott, Stanley Donen, 1958]

Ray Walston as Applegate and the fabulous Gwen Verdon as Lola in the film of the hit Broadway musical, a Faust story set in the world of baseball. Ray Walston’s Devil sings “Those Were The Good Old Days,” recalling with relish various wars and disasters. Gwen Verdon performs her show-stopper “Whatever Lola Wants” to seduce Tab Hunter. A lovely movie.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

The Devil Rides Out  [aka The Devil’s Bride, Terence Fisher, 1968]

Christopher Lee as the Duc de Richleau in the pentacle he has drawn to protect his friends from demons summoned by Mocata (Charles Gray), the leader of a cult of devil-worshippers in the English countryside. Based on Dennis Wheatley’s novel, with a screenplay by Richard Matheson. This movie would have benefited from a bigger special-FX budget.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

The Exorcist  [William Friedkin, 1973]

Linda Blair as Regan in a make-up by Dick Smith. Friedkin’s film is considered one of the scariest movies of all time.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

The Omen  [Richard Donner, 1976]

Harvey Stephens is truly creepy as Damien, the Antichrist in Richard Donner’s beautifully crafted film of David Seltzer’s screenplay (from his own novel). Composer Jerry Goldsmith contributes a brilliant and often-imitated score.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

Bedazzled  [Stanley Donen, 1967]

Raquel Welch as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, “Lillian Lust—the girl with the bust,” in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s comic retelling of Faust. Barry Humphries makes a very funny appearance as Envy.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

Drag Me to Hell  [Sam Raimi, 2009]

Lorna Raver as the gypsy witch Mrs. Ganush with the button, instrumental in the curse she puts on a young bank officer (Alison Lohman) who turns down her loan application.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

Night of the Demon  [Jacques Tourneur, 1957]

Dana Andrews investigates a Satanic cult led by Dr. Julian Karswell (a terrific Niall MacGinnis). This demon was supposedly put into the film by the studio over the director’s objections, but I have to say that I agree with the studio!

“It’s in the trees! It’s coming!”

Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham), Night of the Demon

IN CONVERSATION

John Carpenter

“Monsters don’t scare me—people scare me!”

John Carpenter with The Fog [1980] cast members Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Janet Leigh.

The Devil’s Work [Book Contents]

JL: You’ve created yourself as a brand, as a master of horror. How would you define a monster? What do you think a monster is?

JC: Primarily, it’s us. It’s parts of us, parts of the dark heart of humanity. But it’s also the other: the other tribe, the other people, the people that look different, the ferocious demons out there.

JL: By the other, do you mean the Unknown?

JC: Well, there are two basic horror stories. Where does the evil come from? It comes from out there, or it comes from in here. That’s it, there’s nothing else. So if you have an Outer Space invasion, the evil is out there and they’re coming to get us. That’s the evil outside of us. The harder story to tell is the evil in here, in our own hearts. Each of us is capable of evil, under certain circumstances.

JL: The John Carpenter quote that I quote all the time, is: “Monsters don’t scare me—people scare me.”

JC: A fear of monsters is part of the basic nature of humanity. When we came out of the trees and started walking upright, we still had these fears of predators. We see something coming at us and we respond to it. It’s self-preservation. All this stuff gets jumbled up in our myths, in our stories. And here it is: Here are monster movies.

JL: OK, so let’s talk about Vampires—Dracula. There are more movies with Dracula in them than any other kind of monster.

JC: Vampires are all-purpose monsters for each new generation.

JL: The new abstinence vampire is now. The Mormon vampire!

JC: You had the Rudolph Valentino vampire originally, with Béla Lugosi and his slicked-back hair and this kind of come-hither look but, throughout the years, look at Christopher Lee and his Dracula—it’s entirely different.

JL: About vampires: Is there anything you particularly like or dislike, or think is cool?

JC: Well the original myth works. It’s a myth of decay. The European aristocracy is falling to ruin in Gothic castles, and who do the aristocrats live on? They live on the peasants. They suck their blood. Think about that. Where does that come from? It comes from European attitudes way back when. European attitudes about how things work. But then they slowly corrupt…

JL: Now, what about the Wolf Man?

JC: The Wolf Man is a take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This innocent man is bitten by something, and he can do nothing about it. He’s good and evil, both.

JL: I think that the Jekyll and Hyde thing is not entirely right, because in Jekyll and Hyde, it is basically two sides of himself, whereas with the Wolf Man, it’s more of a disease. He’s a victim.

JC: He is a victim, yes. The Wolf Man is a victim of life’s circumstance, of something that has just happened to him.

JL: OK, so what about the Mummy?

JC: The original [Karl Freund,1932] Mummy movie with Boris Karloff is just Dracula. It’s literally a remake.

JL: Yeah.

JC: He comes back, he’s after the girl… but it’s still a great movie.

JL: It’s slow, but I love the opening when the Mummy walks out.

JC: Fabulous. But that’s Dracula, and the legend is that he’s a sort of fallen character. In the Christopher Lee version [The Mummy, Terence Fisher, 1959], he wanted to live with his love forever…

JL: In the first Mummy, Karloff’s Mummy is the bad guy, but in other Mummy movies it’s the priest, and the Mummy is just a kind of killing machine.

JC: That’s why I like the Christopher Lee version.

JL: He’s fabulous in both The Curse of Frankenstein [Terence Fisher, 1957] and The Mummy, and totally different.

JC: His eyes in The Mummy! He can be so sad and haunted by this ancient love for this girl, and yet he can become so cold. I mean, he’s fabulous! The Curse of Frankenstein just transformed me when I was a little kid.

JL: What I love in that is, when they shoot him, Chris has clearly got blood in his hand and he goes (slaps face)…

JC Of course.

JL: It works totally.

JC: But it was like “Ooh!”

JL: The gore was amazing.

JC: I was eight years old when I saw that.

JL: Frankenstein’s monster, the Creature. He’s always very sympathetic to me.

JC: Yeah, it’s sad because he had no choice in his existence.

JL: Doctor Frankenstein in the Hammer films—Peter Cushing—becomes the monster.

JC: That’s what’s so fabulous. He’s great, and evil. But poor Christopher Lee in that movie is kind of just walking flesh.

JL: OK, so what about zombies? Zombies were Voodoo zombies; then, starting with George [George A. Romero] really, they were vampire zombies. George copied his zombies from an Italian movie, The Last Man on Earth [Ubaldo Ragona, 1964] with Vincent Price, based on the Richard Matheson novel. Did you ever see that?

JC: Yes, I did.

JL: Because I said to George: “You got your zombies from that,” and he said, “Absolutely!” But you know, the idea of zombies, they were Voodoo, and then they became caused by disease, accidents, radiation spills…

JC: There was a film in 1959 that no one mentions, a movie called Invisible Invaders. Invisible moon people come down here and take over dead bodies, and the dead bodies rise up. Edward L. Cahn, who also did It! The Terror From Beyond Space [1958], directed it. Invisible Invaders was the first rising dead movie that I can remember.

JL: So, do you know what a ghoul is?

JC: Tell me.

JL: Well, a ghoul is basically a re-animated corpse.

JC: That’s a zombie.

JL: A zombie is also a re-animated corpse. See, I never understood it.

JC: It’s the Walking Dead.

JL: The Walking Dead, exactly. But a ghoul knows what he’s doing and has a purpose. Zombies are either eating or killing machines, and they just shamble around. Why do you think zombies are so popular now?

JC: Everybody’s been re-making Night of the Living Dead since 1968. Over and over. I’ve never seen anything like it. Specifically the rules of Night of the Living Dead.

JL: Like shooting zombies in the head to kill them?

JC: Everything about it! George A. Romero transformed horror movies. He really did.

JL: Well, Halloween [John Carpenter, 1978] inspired many other films. Here’s a question: In the first Halloween, Mike Myers (the killer) is clearly human.

JC: Sort of.

JL: No, he’s human. The only thing that’s supernatural about him is that he gets up and walks away after he’s been shot.

JC: But he’s everywhere. His behavior is of the other world. He’s partially supernatural, but nothing is explained. It’s an intentional overlay on this kind of banal story of a guy running around killing people.

JL: Now, what about giant monsters, like Godzilla?

JC: I love Godzilla. He’s everything to every generation. He was friendly, he was evil, he works for Japan, he works against Japan, he fights other monsters…

JL: Now what is this big thing about dinosaurs? In movies, we always have people coexisting with dinosaurs. You know One Million Years B.C. [Don Chaffey, 1966] and all that kind of stuff… I asked Ray Harryhausen why he thinks that is, and he said, “Because without people, it’s boring!”

JC: Well, I think that’s true. I’ve got a question for you, pal! What is the Golem?

JL: The Golem? It’s made of clay, very much like Frankenstein. They say it’s a legend, but it’s not. I can’t remember the name of the guy who wrote it (Berthold Auerbach for his 1837 novel Spinoza), but it’s set in Prague and it’s a story about the rabbi of a ghetto where the Jews are being killed, who makes this clay model, and he comes alive through Kaballah and prayer. The Golem is basically a monster, an avenger for the Jews. But then he falls in love with a Gentile. There are three movies where Paul Wegener wrote, directed, and starred as the Golem. But they’re kind of anti-Semitic movies; they’re weird!

But let’s get back to zombies. Why are zombies so popular now?

JC: I don’t know. They started as something actually frightening; when you saw Night of the Living Dead in 1968, it was actually scary. You started worrying what you were going to see. Are the filmmakers going to go too far here and show me something I don’t want to see? When the girl goes after her mother…

JL: No, her father. You saw the zombies eat her mother, and then she goes after her father.

JC: Yeah, her father. And she chomps up the bones! But one of the things George [A. Romero, the director] said was, every time he did one of those zombie movies, critics would come and visit the set, and all they’d want is to be a zombie… that’s all they’d want!

JL: Do you think the appeal of zombies has something to do with death? Or is it not even about that any more?

JC: No. It’s us. As George says: “They’re us.”

JL: That’s a good title: “Zombies Are Us.”

JC: What do you think, John? Are you going to make it? You could do it as a comedy!

JL: Everyone’s making them. Now, I have another one for you—monsters in the ocean. Jaws is a monster movie.

JC: But it’s not based in any kind of fantasy world. It’s not a monster created by science.

JL: Except Jaws, much like Moby Dick, really is out to get the hunters. The first half of that movie is a classic, by-the-numbers monster movie, and the second half becomes an adventure on the high seas! Even the music changes. It’s two different movies!

JC: Jaws, I think, is probably a monster movie. The monster in it isn’t like the Mummy or Dracula. It’s more like Moby Dick, and Moby Dick is not a monster: he’s somebody’s obsession.

JL: Ahab is the monster.

JC: Jaws is a “Force of Nature” story.

JL: What about religious angles? What about The Exorcist, the Devil?

JC: What do you think?

JL: I think The Exorcist [William Friedkin, 1973] is the best horror film ever made.

JC: It’s pretty good.

JL: The original version, not the remake. And the reason I say that is that I’m an atheist, and a Jew on top of that: I don’t believe in Jesus, and I don’t believe in the Devil. The reason I credit The Exorcist so much, is that I bought it. I bought into the church, I bought into the power of Christ, and I bought into the possession. I was so pleased when Father Karras showed up. Thank God, you know?!

JC: You see, I didn’t buy into it at the time. Later I came to appreciate what he (director William Friedkin) did there. I remember I thought at the time that this movie requires a belief in the Devil to be believable.

JL: Now, what about ghosts? There are ghosts in your movies who kill people, who are out for revenge.

JC: That’s true.

JL: And the two scariest ghost movies are…

JC: I bet you’re going to say The Haunting [Robert Wise, 1963], aren’t you?

JL: The Haunting and The Innocents [Jack Clayton, 1961].

JC: The Haunting is bullshit! It is so awful.

JL: I love it! What about The Innocents? They’re both creepy and scary, and you never see anything.

JC: That’s the bad and beautiful way of making horror movies.

JL: You think you have to see something?

JC: No, not at all. But I get pissed off when you don’t. I pays my money, I want to see what the fuck it is!

This Island Earth [Joseph M. Newman, 1955] A Metaluna Mutant checks out his looks on a sound stage mirror before being filmed. Based on the novel by Raymond F. Jones, this is an exciting science-fiction film in glorious Technicolor.

SPACE MONSTERS

There are monsters from outer space who come to the planet Earth to be in our movies [Invaders From Mars, William Cameron Menzies, 1953] and then there are monsters in outer space whom we send rocket ships to encounter [The Green Slime, Kinji Fukasaku, 1968]. There are aliens who come to Earth to befriend us [Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg, 1977], there are aliens who come to Earth to warn us [The Day the Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise, 1951—I refuse to mention the remake!], and there are aliens who come to Earth to destroy us [Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton, 1996].

Most movie aliens want to destroy us. Howard Hawks produced one of the best scary alien-who-wants-us-dead movies, The Thing from Another World [Christian Nyby, 1951], a taut thriller based on the disturbing short story by John W. Campbell, Jr. Who Goes There?. When remade in 1982 as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Bill Lancaster’s screenplay stayed much closer to the Campbell story and Carpenter, with the aid of the extraordinary make-up effects of Rob Bottin, created a truly horrific and suspenseful classic. The Thing has one of my favorite lines in a monster movie: When one of the characters sees another character’s decapitated head grow crab-like legs and skitter across the floor, he says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Which, in context, is an extremely realistic reaction. Two years later John Carpenter’s Starman [1984] landed on our planet with a sensitive performance by Jeff Bridges in the title role. Almost as if to make up for the ferocity of The Thing, Starman’s alien is so handsome, sweet, and charming, lovely Karen Allen falls in love with him.

Pioneering French special-effects filmmaker Georges Méliès probably made the first outer space movie with his silent version of Jules Verne’s A Trip to the Moon in 1902. Méliès combined Verne’s novel with H. G. Wells’ novel The First Men in the Moon and brought us cinema’s first aliens—the insectoid Selenites. This film is most famous for its iconic image of the Man in the Moon with a rocket ship stuck in his eye! Sixty-two years later, Ray Harryhausen gave us another version of H. G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon [Nathan H. Juran, 1964] with remarkably similar-looking Selenites. The charming screenplay by Nigel Kneale adds an opening sequence in which modern-day astronauts discover a tattered Union Jack, left behind by the intrepid explorers who had set foot on the moon when Queen Victoria was still on the throne!

For every benign alien visitor, there are 50 hostile ones. And we Earthlings almost always greet our guests from space with suspicion and gunfire—like the Ymir in Ray Harryhausen’s 20 Million Miles to Earth [Nathan H. Juran, 1957], which is brought back from Venus as an egg. The rocket ship splashes down off the coast of Sicily, the egg hatches, and the alien creature is eventually gunned down atop Rome’s Coliseum.

One of the greatest of all space monsters appears in Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]. A lavish MGM production, with glorious Technicolor cinematography by George Folsey, and the first all-electronic score by avant-garde musicians Louis and Bebe Barron, this is one of the most influential science-fiction films ever made. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest inspired the screenplay by Cyril Hume and, although some of the costumes and dialog are dated, the ideas expressed are startlingly modern. Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) with his beautiful daughter Alta (Anne Francis) are the only survivors of a colony of settlers on the planet Altair. A rescue mission led by Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) discovers that the two survivors are doing well, Dr. Morbius having learned much about the planet’s former inhabitants the Krell and their amazing technology. But Alta’s innocent sexual curiosity about the handsome men who have come to rescue them disturbs her father. A terrible, invisible monster kills several of the crew. It is an awesome sight, revealed only in outline by the crew’s neutron-beam weaponry. Eventually, Dr. Morbius reveals the terrible secret of the Krell’s disappearance… This splendid movie is clearly the template for the television series Star Trek and all of its sequels and prequels.

Two years after the release of Forbidden Planet, a meteor crashes down near the small town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. A red substance attacks an old man named Doc. Steve McQueen, in his first starring role, tries to convince the police of what he witnessed: “Something” was killing the Doc! The “something” turns out to be The Blob [Irvin Yeaworth, 1958], a gelatinous goo that grows larger as it consumes more and more victims. This quintessential 1950s sci-fi movie features a wonderfully loony cha-cha-cha title song by Burt Bacharach and Mack David.

Ridley Scott’s seminal Alien [1979] revitalized the genre by placing a monster in an Old Dark House in outer space. Swiss artist H. R. Giger designed the creature, combining organic and mechanical elements in a truly original way. Dan O’Bannon’s screenplay is rife with cliché, but Scott’s stylish direction and a fine cast overcome the silliness and create a handsome, truly scary film. The wreckage of an alien spacecraft they find on another planet comes directly from Mario Bava’s excellent Planet of the Vampires [1965], and once the alien is loose aboard the space ship Nostromo, Alien basically follows the storyline of It! The Terror From Beyond Space [Edward L. Cahn, 1958] a low-budget picture featuring Ray “Crash” Corrigan in a rubber monster suit.

Alien was a worldwide sensation and it was followed by James Cameron’s Aliens in 1986, which brilliantly swapped horror for full-on action and made Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley into a feminist icon.

John McTiernan’s Predator [1987] was a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger, then at the height of his stardom. But the wonderfully designed Predator, an alien big-game hunter on Earth for sport, was far too interesting to disappear after just one movie. Sequels followed until, in 2004, Alien vs. Predator [Paul W. S. Anderson] attempted to become a contemporary Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man [Roy William Neill, 1943]. I’m sure that if Abbott and Costello were still alive, they too would have eventually met the Predator and the Alien!

Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day [1996] and 2011’s Battle: Los Angeles [Jonathan Liebesman] clearly demonstrate that our planet is still not safe from alien invasion; however 2011 also brought us another gentle (if foulmouthed) alien in Paul [Greg Mottola]. So I think it’s wise to remember the last words broadcast from that Arctic station at the end of The Thing From Another World [1951]: “Watch the Skies!”

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Invaders From Mars  [William Cameron Menzies, 1953]

A tightly constructed, nightmarish scenario, in which all the authority figures—teachers, policemen, even your parents—are working for the Martians! The ending completely freaked me out when I was a child.

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The Green Slime  [aka Gamma 3: Operation Outer Space, Kinji Fukasaku, 1968]

Shot at Tokyo’s Toei Studios with an entirely Caucasian cast. Luciana Paluzzi is pictured here being harassed by one of the Green Slime. With a great title song!

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Mars Attacks!  [Tim Burton, 1996]

Based on the infamous and gruesome Topps bubblegum trading cards by Mad Magazine artist Wallace Wood. The Martians kill indiscriminately and speak in a language that consists entirely of the word “Ack.” Burton fills the film with homages to 50s and 60s sci-fi movies, specifically Ray Harryhausen’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers [Fred F. Sears, 1956].

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

The Thing From Another World  [Christian Nyby, 1951]

The indelible ad art for The Thing. George A. Romero once described this film as “a movie about doors,” because you are never sure what is lurking behind each one.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

The Thing  [aka John Carpenter’s The Thing, 1982]

Bill Lancaster’s screenplay and Rob Bottin’s astonishing make-up effects, coupled with Carpenter’s dynamite direction, make this picture a modern classic.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!”

Palmer (David Clennon), The Thing [1982]

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Starman  [John Carpenter, 1984]

Carpenter’s nice alien movie (almost like an apology for his malevolent The Thing). This baby is Jeff Bridges’ Starman! Karen Allen falls in love with him when he gets a little more mature.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Le Voyage dans la lune  [aka A Trip to the Moon, Georges Méliès, 1902]

One of the first, if not the first, sci-fi movies, this image of the rocket ship stuck in the Moon’s eye is unforgettable.

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20 Million Miles to Earth  [Nathan H. Juran, 1957]

A spaceship returning from Venus crashes into the sea off the coast of Sicily bringing with it the Ymir, one of Ray Harryhausen’s most unique creations.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Forbidden Planet  [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]

Ad art showing Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Edward Morbius, Leslie Nielsen as Commander John J. Adams, Robby the Robot, and Anne Francis as Altaira, Morbius’ beautiful daughter.

“My evil self is outside that door, and I have no power to stop it!”

Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), Forbidden Planet

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

The Blob  [Chuck Russell, 1988]

A remake of the 1958 classic, with the addition of villainous government operatives and better special effects.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Alien  [Ridley Scott, 1979]

The Alien about to be blown out of the open hatch of the escape pod by the intrepid Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Poster for Alien with the fantastic tagline, “In space no one can hear you scream.”

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

The Alien as it bursts from the chest of Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), in a truly shocking sequence.

“This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), before putting herself and the cat into a hibernation pod, Alien

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Planet of the Vampires  [Mario Bava, 1965]

Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and director Scott say they have never seen it, but it is hard to avoid this film’s influence on Alien. With little budget and, literally, smoke and mirrors, Bava created a marvelous, other-worldly quality to the planet’s exteriors. When the astronauts explore the ruins of another ship containing the skeletal remains of its giant alien pilot, it’s hard to accept Dan and Ridley’s denials. Regardless, Alien and Planet of the Vampires are seminal sci-fi films.

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It! The Terror From Beyond Space  [Edward L. Cahn, 1958]

Ray “Crash” Corrigan as It, a stowaway on the first spaceship to land on Mars. An obvious influence on Alien, down to the opening of a hatch to blow It from the ship.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Predator  [John McTiernan, 1987]

Another variation of The Most Dangerous Game [aka The Hounds of Zaroff, 1924] a short story by Richard Connell in which a big-game hunter hunts human prey. This time, it’s an alien who travels the universe hunting the local species for sport. An elite unit of soldiers finds itself being hunted by the Predator in the jungles of Central America. Kevin Peter Hall plays the Predator in a creature suit by Stan Winston. An entertaining action picture that ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger surviving an atomic blast! Eventually, the Predator ended up fighting the Alien [Alien vs. Predator, Paul W. S. Anderson, 2004] just like King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Predators [Nimrod Antal, 2010] is the latest sequel.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Independence Day  [Roland Emmerich, 1996]

One of Emmerich’s movies of mass destruction, this time an all-out alien attack on Earth that is eventually thwarted by Will Smith’s heroic jet pilot and Jeff Goldblum, using a laptop computer (in one of the all-time inane plot devices). A ridiculous, but very entertaining film. Emmerich destroyed the White House again in his 2012 [2009], this time with a tidal wave tossing an aircraft carrier onto it!

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

Paul  [Greg Mottola, 2011]

Two English sci-fi geeks (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) embark on a road trip across the US and have a close encounter of the third kind with an alien slacker (voiced by Seth Rogan) who is being pursued by mysterious government agents.

Space Monsters [Book Contents]

The Thing From Another World  [aka The Thing, Christian Nyby, 1951]

Generally assumed to have been directed by producer Howard Hawks, this taut suspense thriller about a group of soldiers and scientists in the Arctic who find something in the ice is a bona fide classic.

Target Earth [Sherman A. Rose, 1954] Richard Denning and Kathleen Crowley are threatened by an invasion of alien robots from Venus!

MONSTROUS MACHINES

Apart from the obvious advantages in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and communication it has given us, the Industrial Revolution has a lot to answer for: The clear and increasing damage that man-made pollution is doing to our planet, and all of the robots, automobiles, and computers that run amuck in the cinema! In the movies, machines turn on us with remarkable regularity. From malicious cars [Christine, John Carpenter, 1983] to malicious television sets [The Twonky, Arch Oboler, 1953], the movies have no doubts that our machines are untrustworthy.

Silent film’s most famous robot would have to be the Machine Man disguised as the character Maria in Fritz Lang’s iconic Metropolis [1927]. Another fabulous mechanical man, Robby the Robot, was introduced to us in Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]. Robby was the first movie robot to speak with the robotic voice we now associate with all computers. His 1950s “space-age” design, with its revolving antennae, plastic dome, and many moving parts was such a hit that MGM immediately starred Robby in his own feature, The Invisible Boy [Herman Hoffman, 1957].

Another particularly memorable movie robot is Gort, which accompanies the alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) on his mission to Earth in The Day the Earth Stood Still [Robert Wise, 1951]. In this elegant Cold War film, the populations of other worlds, concerned about the brutality of mankind, send Klaatu to warn Earthlings of the dangers of atomic power. If Earthlings attempt to expand their propensity for violence into outer space, Gort and his fellow robot enforcers will destroy us. So never forget the words, “Klaatu barada nikto.” A good reason to see The Day the Earth Stood Still is to learn just what those words mean, so you will be prepared the next time a flying saucer from another world lands on the Mall in Washingon, D.C.

Cold War paranoia also fuels Gog [Herbert L. Strock, 1954], where two robots, Gog and Magog, are being controlled by secret radio signals to sabotage an American space station. In The Colossus of New York [Eugène Lourié, 1958], a brilliant young scientist is killed in a car crash on the eve of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. His brain-surgeon father transplants the young scientist’s brain into the skull of a large robot—a bad idea for all concerned.

Far eclipsing the brain power of a human mind, computers’ processing capabilities have always made us nervous. This concern is reflected in a whole series of movies where computers attempt to take over the world. In Joseph Sargent’s suspenseful Colossus: The Forbin Project [1970] and in Stanley Kubrick’s seminal science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], computers come to the logical conclusion that humans are incapable of making correct decisions and take steps to relieve them of that responsibility. In The Forbin Project, the supercomputers respectively placed in control of the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals join forces “for the betterment of mankind” with terrifying results. In 2001, HAL, the onboard computer of the spacecraft Discovery One (given a calm but creepy monotone voice by actor Douglas Rain), comes to believe that the human crew will jeopardize the Jupiter Mission (to find the source of a mysterious black monolith discovered on the Moon), and begins to murder them one by one. In a chilling sequence, HAL kills the astronauts who are in suspended animation, their deaths displayed in the flatlining of their life-support systems. HAL then tricks the two remaining astronauts (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood in brilliant, underrated performances) into going outside into space. HAL murders one of them and refuses entry to the other. The astronaut repeatedly orders: “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” HAL finally responds, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.” The astronaut literally blows his way back into the ship and gives HAL a lobotomy in an unsettling, starkly beautiful scene.

Another movie featuring machines running out of control is Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton [1973]. Westworld was inspired when Crichton took his kids to Disneyland. He wondered what would happen if the audio-animatronic pirates on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride began to kill the passengers. Notable for the perfect casting of Yul Brynner as a Western gun-slinging robot relentlessly pursuing hapless tourist Richard Benjamin, Westworld is the obvious model for James Cameron’s low-budget classic The Terminator [1984], in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a relentless robot from the future. A smart and well-made action sci-fi movie, Cameron topped it with the dazzling Terminator 2: Judgment Day [aka T2, 1991]. With a bigger budget, terrific stunt work, revolutionary computer generated images, and Stan Winston’s superb make-ups and puppetry, Cameron delivered a truly spectacular movie. This film not only made the bad guy Terminator from the first film into a good guy, it also introduced the awesome T-1000 robot, played by Robert Patrick with the help of some extraordinary special effects.

Isaac Asimov’s classic and influential collection of short stories I, Robot was published in 1950. Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” (1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey any orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law) set the standards for practical artificial intelligence. I, Robot was made into an underwhelming, CG-laden, Will Smith vehicle in 2004 by Alex Proyas.

One robot that disregarded all of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics was the Proteus IV in Demon Seed [Donald Cammell, 1977], in which an “artificially intelligent computer” ends up impregnating Julie Christie by force when it fails to charm her.

In The Matrix [Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999], it is revealed that what most people experience is actually a simulation of reality created by intelligent machines to pacify the humans, whose bodies supply heat and energy to The Matrix. Neo (Keanu Reeves) becomes involved in a rebellion against the machines in a wonderful movie. I won’t talk about the increasingly stupid sequels as I enjoyed the first one so much.

Be they robots, clones, androids, cyborgs, or replicants: when does enough artificial intelligence make a non-human human? This question is addressed in movies like A.I. Artificial Intelligence [Steven Spielberg, 2001] and Ridley Scott’s visionary Blade Runner [1982]. The brilliantly realized and prophetic future of Blade Runner was done with traditional miniatures and an optical printer, before the existence of digital effects.

So what exactly does make us human? In the MGM classic, The Wizard of Oz [Victor Fleming, 1939], our four heroes are on a quest. The Cowardly Lion wants some courage. The Scarecrow wants something organic in his head, something other than straw; he (like many others in this guide) wants brains. And Dorothy just wants to go home. But it is the Tin Man who understands exactly what he needs to be a human. The Tin Man wants a heart.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Christine  [John Carpenter, 1983]

Another evil car movie, this one based on a Stephen King book. A witty opening sequence follows the manufacturing of the shiny red 1958 Plymouth Fury on its Detroit assembly line, as the song “Bad To The Bone” by George Thorogood & The Destroyers blares on the soundtrack.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Metropolis  [Fritz Lang, 1927]

Brigitte Helm as the “Maschinenmensch,” the robotic version of her character Maria.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Forbidden Planet  [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]

A crew member of United Planets’ Cruiser C-57D keeps his ray gun trained on Robby the Robot. Robby’s vehicle is behind him, on the right.

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The Invisible Boy  [Herman Hoffman, 1957]

MGM recycled the Robby the Robot suit from the previous year’s Forbidden Planet in this “boy and his robot” movie.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Also given here is the very eye-catching Theatrical Poster to The Invisible Boy [1958]

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

The Day the Earth Stood Still  [Robert Wise, 1951]

Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and robot Gort (Lock Martin) emerge from their ship. A rare color still from this black and white classic.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Gog  [Herbert L. Strock, 1954]

“…and then, without warning, the machine became a Frankenstein of steel!!” So ran the tagline on the poster of this neat, low-budget sci-fi thriller.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

The Colossus of New York  [Eugène Lourié, 1958]

Another brain transplant movie! A Nobel Prize-winning young scientist is killed in a car accident and his surgeon father puts his brain into a giant robot, with predictably dire results. Here he is carrying off his widow, Marla Powers.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

2001: A Space Odyssey  [Stanley Kubrick, 1968]

Astronauts Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood suspect HAL, the spaceship’s onboard computer, and lock themselves into a pod where HAL is unable to hear them. They are in for an unpleasant surprise. HAL, the red spot outside the window, can read lips!

“I can’t put my finger on it, but I sense something strange about him.”

Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), about the onboard computer HAL, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Westworld  [Michael Crichton, 1973]

Yul Brynner’s robot gunslinger having a check-up.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Terminator 2: Judgment Day  [aka T2, James Cameron, 1991]

Robert Patrick’s incredible T-1000 model Terminator in mid-morph. Cameron raised the bar on special effects with this exciting movie.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines  [aka T3, Jonathan Mostow, 2003]

Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a little worse for wear.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Demon Seed  [Donald Cammell, 1977]

Based on a novel by Dean Koontz, a computer with artificial intelligence named Proteus asks its inventor: “When will you let me out of this box?”. Proteus eventually rapes Julie Christie who gives birth to the silliest-looking human/machine hybrid in the movies.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

A.I. Artificial Intelligence  [Steven Spielberg, 2001]

Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law star as androids in a film developed by Stanley Kubrick and with a screenplay credited to Steven Spielberg.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

Blade Runner  [Ridley Scott, 1982]

Rutger Hauer as a Replicant in the film based on the science-fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Monstrous Machines [Book Contents]

The Wizard of Oz  [Victor Fleming, 1939]

The Tin Man (Jack Haley) with Dorothy (Judy Garland) and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger).

Peter Lorre as the child murderer in M [Fritz Lang, 1931].

HUMAN MONSTERS

The movies are populated with serial killers, psychopaths, sadists, perverts, men, women, and children who are a long way from what anyone could call “normal.”

The most obvious human monsters are characters that are physically malformed, either by birth or accident. After the huge box office numbers of Universal’s Frankenstein and Dracula [both 1931], MGM wanted a horror film of their own. But when they released Tod Browning’s Freaks in 1932, critics and the public were MONMOV279HUMMON_020so repulsed that the studio quickly withdrew it from theaters and sold it off to a grindhouse distributor. Freaks is a powerful, disturbing film, in which real sideshow freaks play themselves in a tragic love story. Although mostly presented in a sympathetic light, Browning betrays his sideshow stars by exploiting their handicaps in the grisly revenge sequence in the final reel. A more uplifting story is The Elephant Man[David Lynch, 1980], the true story of Joseph Merrick, a cruelly deformed man in 19th-century London and the kindly surgeon who befriends and protects him.

Lon Chaney, Sr. “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” often portrayed physically grotesque characters in still-unmatched make-ups of his own design and execution. Chaney’s touching portrayal of Quasimodo, the tragic Hunchback of Notre Dame [Wallace Worsley, 1923] clearly conveys the passion and sensitivity hidden inside of Quasimodo’s ugly and misshapen exterior. Charles Laughton also gives an extraordinary performance as the Hunchback in William Dieterle’s excellent 1939 remake.

Lon Chaney’s most celebrated role is that of Erik, The Phantom of the Opera [Rupert Julian, 1925]. The Phantom, who wears a mask to cover his gruesome face, terrorizes the Paris Opera House from his hideout in the sewers. Chaney’s unmasking by Mary Philbin remains one of the great moments of the horror film. Universal remade The Phantom of the Opera in 1943 [Arthur Lubin] with Claude Rains as the disfigured composer; and Hammer Films produced their own version [Terence Fisher, 1962] in which Herbert Lom was the Phantom. The lavish film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera [Joel Schumacher, 2004] is best avoided, but Brian De Palma’s rock’n’roll parody The Phantom of the Paradise [1974] is a lot of fun.

The Mystery of the Wax Museum [Michael Curtiz, 1933] shot in early two-color Technicolor, is the story of Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) a sculptor who makes life-like figures for a wax museum in London. When the museum’s profits diminish, his partner burns it down for the insurance money. Trying to save his beloved wax figures from the flames, Ivan Igor is knocked out and left to die in the inferno. A dozen years later, Igor, now in a wheelchair, opens a new Wax Museum in New York. The beautiful wax exhibits are actually real people that the now-insane sculptor has murdered and dipped in wax! Half wisecracking newspaper story and half horror film, Mystery of the Wax Museum has another ghastly unmasking scene when Fay Wray hits Atwill’s face and his wax mask cracks and breaks, revealing his hideously scarred countenance.

The movie was remade by André de Toth in 1953 as House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, in full Technicolor, and in 3D. Disfigured characters seeking revenge is a plot used over and over again in movies, from the silent version of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs [Paul Leni, 1928], to Sam Raimi’s delirious Darkman [1990].

Cannibalism is frowned upon in polite society, but it is the focal point of a lot of movies. The fictional, penny-dreadful character of the murderous barber Sweeney Todd, whose victims became ingredients in Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies, was portrayed by the marvelous Tod Slaughter in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [George King, 1936], and again by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd [2007]. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974], the story of a group of friends who stumble across a deranged family of cannibals in the Texas badlands, is a truly nightmarish movie. It introduced us to one of modern cinema’s most iconic human monsters in Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), who wears a crude mask of somebody else’s skin, a bloodstained leather butcher’s apron, and carries a very loud chainsaw.

The graphic and gory Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust [Ruggero Deodato, 1980] is a faux documentary about a lost American expedition to the Amazon. The movie then shows us the “found footage” left by the missing film crew. This extremely unpleasant picture is one of the first “first-person camera” narrative movies. The movies’ most popular cannibal is brilliant serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, from the crime novels of Thomas Harris. The first film to feature this repellent but fascinating character was Michael Mann’s Manhunter [1986], where he was played by Brian Cox. Lecter next appeared in The Silence of the Lambs [Jonathan Demme, 1991], the only horror movie to win five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins’ performance as Hannibal.

A person’s lack of sanity is not necessarily obvious at first meeting. The Old Dark House [James Whale, 1932] opens on a dark and stormy night, in which stranded travelers take shelter in the old dark house of the title. This is the home of the eccentric Femm family and their brutish, alcoholic butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff). Rather than tell you the plot, I strongly suggest you watch this deliciously camp black comedy from James Whale. But be careful of Saul, and do not let Morgan anywhere near liquor!

James Cagney plays a gangster who not only has mother issues, but was genuinely psychotic in White Heat [Raoul Walsh, 1949], and Richard Widmark is unforgettable as Tommy Udo, the giggling killer who pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs in Kiss of Death [Henry Hathaway, 1947]. But nothing prepared the public for two films from 1960 that brought a new level of terror to the movies. Psycho [Alfred Hitchcock, 1960] and Peeping Tom [Michael Powell, 1960] are two films from master filmmakers; the first, an international sensation, the other ended the director’s career. Peeping Tom is about a killer who murders women with a camera tripod that has a knife mounted on the end so that he can film his victims’ last moments of fear and death. Psycho begins as the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and an illicit love affair, but becomes the story of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) an insane, murdering transvestite who, at the end of the film, has literally become his own mother! One shot in lurid color, the other in black and white, both movies are unsettling classics.

From Jack the Ripper to Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh to that suspicious-looking guy sitting next to you, there are more than enough human monsters around to inspire filmmakers for generations to come.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Freaks  [Tod Browning, 1932]

Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), the beautiful trapeze artist, flirts with Hercules the strongman (Henry Victor), humiliating her husband Hans, a midget (Harry Earles). Freaks remains a powerful, and heartbreaking film.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The performers in the circus sideshow gather round to see the Bearded Woman’s (Olga Roderick) new baby.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Elephant Man  [David Lynch, 1980]

John Hurt as John Merrick (whose real name was actually Joseph Merrick), in a lovely film that plays fast and loose with the true story. With Anthony Hopkins as the doctor who becomes Merrick’s friend. Make-up artist Chris Tucker created Hurt’s effective make-up from casts of Merrick’s body, still held by the Royal London Hospital.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame  [Wallace Worsley, 1923]

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo in an amazing make-up of his own design and execution. One of the few films that Irving Thalberg ever put his name on as a Producer (shared with boss Carl Laemmle). Patsy Ruth Miller is Esmeralda. From the novel [1831] by Victor Hugo.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame  [William Dieterle, 1939]

Charles Laughton gives a magnificent performance as the hunchbacked bell ringer, conveying Quasimodo’s humanity through the grotesque (and uncomfortable) make-up by Perc Westmore and George Bau. Maureen O’Hara is Esmeralda.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Phantom of the Opera  [Rupert Julian, 1925]

In this hand-tinted sequence, Lon Chaney as Erik the Phantom attends the Paris Opera’s Gala Costume Ball dressed as Death.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Phantom of the Opera  [Arthur Lubin, 1943]

Claude Rains as “Erique” instead of Erik (why character names are so often changed I do not know) and this time he is a violinist, not a composer. Universal’s Technicolor remake of their own picture has more of Nelson Eddy singing than any real horror. But this film has the most spectacular falling chandelier sequence of all the Phantom of the Opera pictures. Susanna Foster is Christine.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Phantom of the Opera  [Terence Fisher, 1962]

Hammer had produced their own Dracula and Frankenstein and Mummy movies; some more rifling through Universal’s vaults brought them to Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. Their version starred Herbert Lom as the Phantom and Heather Sears as Christine.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Phantom of the Opera  [Joel Schumacher, 2004]

The film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical. Gerard Butler is the Phantom and Emmy Rossum is Christine.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Phantom of the Paradise  [Brian De Palma, 1974]

De Palma’s satirical, rock‘n’roll Phantom starred Paul Williams as Swan, a Mephistophelian figure to William Finley’s Phantom.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Mystery of the Wax Museum  [Michael Curtiz, 1933]

Crazed sculptor Lionel Atwill has Fay Wray in his clutches. In a desperate attempt to escape, she beats on his face which cracks and breaks! His wax mask falls to reveal his disfigured face.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

House of Wax  [André De Toth, 1953]

Warner Brothers’ 3D Technicolor remake of their own Mystery of the Wax Museum [1933].

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod, watches in terror as his wax figures burn.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Also given here is a close up of Jarrod’s burned face revealed after Phyllis Kirk (whom he intended to dip into bubbling, molten wax) has broken his wax mask.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Man Who Laughs  [Paul Leni, 1928]

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, who King James II has had put in an iron maiden and permanently disfigured so that his face is always a hideous grin. An adaptation of the novel [1869] by Victor Hugo.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Darkman  [Sam Raimi, 1990]

From an original story by Sam, this is his own twisted version of a comic book superhero movie. Liam Neeson plays Peyton Westlake, disfigured by the bad guys when they blow up his lab. Darkman is shown here with Frances McDormand as Julie Hastings.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street  [Tim Burton, 2007]

Burton’s film of Stephen Sondheim’s musical telling of the tale. With Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Cannibal Holocaust  [Ruggero Deodato, 1980]

Shot in the rainforests of the Amazon using indigenous people as the cannibals, this is about a documentary crew who are captured and eaten. Using “found footage” that shows us what happened in explicit detail, this is a pretty disgusting film. Over 30 years later it remains controversial.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Manhunter  [Michael Mann, 1986]

Brian Cox as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Mann’s adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon [1981]. The screen debut of “Hannibal the Cannibal.”

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

The Old Dark House  [James Whale, 1932]

Morgan (Boris Karloff) has evil thoughts concerning Margaret Waverton (Gloria Stuart).

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

White Heat  [Raoul Walsh, 1949]

James Cagney as psychopathic, mother-fixated gangster Cody Jarrett. Edmond O’Brien’s undercover cop corners Cody atop a gas storage tank; Cody shouts, “Made it Ma, top of the world!” and fires his gun into the tank, which explodes in a gigantic fireball.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Kiss of Death  [Henry Hathaway, 1947]

A film noir that introduced Richard Widmark as psychotic killer Tommy Udo. Widmark plays Udo full tilt, complete with insane giggle as he ties an old lady to her wheelchair and then pushes her down the stairs.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Peeping Tom  [Michael Powell, 1960]

Carl Boehm and Anna Massey in this study of a psychotic voyeur. A movie so disturbing it basically ended Powell’s career.

Human Monsters [Book Contents]

Jack the Ripper  [Robert S. Baker, Monty Berman, 1959]

A straightforward account of Britain’s most infamous serial killer. Considered very brutal when it was released, its violence is rather tame for today’s jaded audience.

Putting finishing touches on Boris Karloff’s costume and make-up for The Mummy [Karl Freund, 1932].

MONSTER MAKERS

From the earliest days of the Nickelodeons, filmmakers have consistently invented new techniques to help us “suspend our disbelief.”

The French filmmaking pioneer Georges Méliès was one of the first to use the camera to create visual effects. By pausing in turning the hand crank on his camera for a moment, Méliès was able to make people and objects appear and disappear as if by magic.

Linwood G. Dunn’s work in the 1920s perfected the optical printer, revolutionizing optical effects. Literally a camera set up to re-photograph already exposed film, creating multiple layers of images onto a negative, the optical printer enabled the movies to present astonishing compositions on screen. One of the greatest creators of “optical effects” was John P. Fulton, whose innovative and stunning work on The Invisible Man [James Whale, 1933] still dazzles the eye. My favorite of Fulton’s effects are the homunculi Dr. Pretorius so proudly displays in The Bride of Frankenstein [James Whale, 1935].

Building sets and vehicles to a much smaller scale allowed scenes of breathtaking destruction to be shot with minimal cost and danger. “Miniature” car crashes, airplanes, explosions, volcanoes, rocket ships, and more, have all been constructed on a stage or back lot to help visualize story elements that would have been impractical to recreate full size. Master miniature makers include the legendary Lydecker Brothers, Howard and Theodore. The Lydecker Brothers were on staff at Republic Pictures and worked on such classic serials as Adventures of Captain Marvel [1941], and Commander Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe [aka Radar Men From The Moon, 1952-3]. Japanese master Eiji Tsuburaya was the resident special FX go-to guy for Toho Studios. Tsuburaya’s work is seen in almost every Godzilla film. Derek Meddings started work on the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet TV shows like Fireball XL5 [1962] and Thunderbirds [1965-66]. Derek went on to do the miniatures on Superman [Richard Donner, 1978] and for the James Bond pictures The Man with the Golden Gun [Guy Hamilton, 1974] and The Spy Who Loved Me [Lewis Gilbert, 1977].

Greg Jein built the iconic miniature of the Death Star for Star Wars [George Lucas, 1977], and the aliens’ mother ship for Close Encounters of the Third Kind [Steven Spielberg, 1977].

Matte painters like Albert Whitlock, Harrison Ellenshaw, Peter Ellenshaw, Norman Dawn, and Matthew Yuricich created remarkable illusions for movies with a paint brush and a pane of glass (see the illustrations given in the section Matte Painting).

The producer and director George Lucas and his crew at Industrial Light & Magic have brought movies into the digital age. Special effects in the movies will continue to evolve, but never forget that every movie you see, has been literally handmade.

Two giants of the fantasy film: Georges Méliès and Carl Laemmle meet in Paris. Méliès is the father of special effects; Laemmle was one of the founders of Universal Pictures, the studio that produced most of the classic monster movies.

Shooting a close-up of Boris Karloff as the Monster in Frankenstein [James Whale, 1931].

The Monster Makers [Book Contents]

Creature From the Black Lagoon  [Jack Arnold, 1954]

Bob Dawn (white shirt), Robert Hickman (kneeling), and Jack Kevan (black suit) adjust the Gill-Man costume on Ben Chapman (Ricou Browning did the underwater swimming in Florida). Universal’s head of make-up Bud Westmore got sole screen credit, but Jack Kevan did most of the work.

Willis O’Brien poses with the full-size head used for close-ups in King Kong [Cooper, Schoedsack, 1933].

MONSTER DIRECTORS

James Whale, Tod Browning, George A. Romero, William Castle, and Jack Arnold are five directors whose monster movies have had lasting impact and influence. Between them, they have brought us Dracula, Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead, The Tingler, Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and many more classic movie monsters!

Boris Karloff as the Monster is scrutinized by well-dressed director James Whale and cameraman John J. Mescall on the set of The Bride of Frankenstein [1935]. The elegant Whale never failed to inject an element of camp into all of his horror films.

George A. Romero points to where some new zombie atrocity will take place on the set of Land of the Dead [2005]. Romero has single-handedly made the zombie the monster of the 21st Century.

William Castle in a gag photo at the sound stage door of one of his many thrillers. Castle often used carny-style gimmicks to sell his movies to the public.

Tod Browning on set with Olga Baclanova, who played the beautiful, cruel trapeze artist in Freaks [1932]. Baclanova is in costume and make-up as the pathetic sideshow freak her character becomes in the film’s gruesome climax.

Jack Arnold (white jacket) with actor Grant Williams on the set of The Incredible Shrinking Man [1957]. Both director and star are dwarfed by the giant set and props used to create the illusion of the lead character’s tiny size.

MAKE-UP ARTISTS

On the set of Metropolis, [Fritz Lang, 1927], make-up and costume personnel attend to Brigitte Helm in most of her costume as the robot Maria.

William Tuttle supervised the make-up on The Wizard of Oz [1939] eventually replacing Jack Dawn as Head of Make-up at MGM. In this photo can be seen a Morlock mask from The Time Machine [1960] and a head used in The Picture of Dorian Gray [1945], as well as life masks of MGM stars. Tuttle received an honorary Academy Award for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao [1964].

Bud Westmore, of the Westmore dynasty of Hollywood make-up artists, was Head of Make-up at Universal and is credited on more than 450 movies and TV shows. His credits include the Lon Chaney biopic starring James Cagney, Man of a Thousand Faces [1957] and The Andromeda Strain [1971].

Jack Pierce (on left), assisted by Otto Lederer, applies make-up to Boris Karloff at Universal Studios in 1931. Pierce’s brilliant design for the Monster (in collaboration with director James Whale) was a perfect match with Karloff’s gaunt features, making his Frankenstein Monster an international icon. Pierce also created the make-ups for other classic Universal Monsters including The Mummy [1932], Werewolf of London [1935], and The Wolf Man [1941].

Lon Chaney, pictured with his make-up kit, checks out a set of false teeth in his mirror on the set of A Blind Bargain [Wallace Worsley, 1922]. Chaney was known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” for his remarkable ability to turn himself into dozens of grotesque characters. Erik, The Phantom of the Opera [Rupert Julian, 1925] and Quasimodo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Wallace Worsley, 1923] are his two most famous roles.

Rob Bottin (wearing scary contact lenses) poses with one of his creations for John Carpenter’s The Thing [1982], a movie that really showcases his amazing work. Rob made the grotesque murder victim tableaus in David Fincher’s Seven [1995], the werewolves in Joe Dante’s The Howling [1981], and the mythical creatures in Ridley Scott’s Legend [1985] including Tim Curry’s remarkable Lord of Darkness.

Dick Smith, pictured turning David Bowie into an ancient vampire in Tony Scott’s The Hunger [1983], is called the godfather of special effects make-up. Dick’s legendary make-ups include: The Exorcist [William Friedkin, 1973], The Godfather [Francis Ford Coppola, 1972], Taxi Driver [Martin Scorsese, 1976]; he received an Academy Award for Amadeus [Milos Forman, 1984].

Tom Savini is noted for his gory make-ups in Maniac [William Lustig, 1980] and Friday the 13th [Sean S. Cunningham, 1980], and his many collaborations with George A. Romero. Now active as an actor, he played Sex Machine in From Dusk Till Dawn [Robert Rodriguez, 1996]. Tom also runs a successful make-up academy.

Roy Ashton was Hammer Studios’ main make-up artist, shown here making-up Peter Cushing as the living dead Arthur Grimsdyke for Tales from the Crypt [Freddie Francis, 1972].

Stan Winston, pictured with Michael Jackson in make-up for the short film Ghosts [Stan Winston, 1997]. Stan won three Academy Awards; one for Make-up and one for Special Effects for Terminator 2: Judgment Day [James Cameron, 1991], and one for Special Effects for his lifelike, full-size animatronic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993].

John Chambers won an honorary Academy Award for his groundbreaking work on Planet of the Apes [Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968]. John’s foam-rubber, prosthetic appliances allowed facial mobility and could be mass-produced to equip large numbers of actors. Chambers also did clandestine disguise work for the FBI and CIA and played the National Guard Captain in Schlock [1971].

Stuart Freeborn made the apes for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]. He is shown here working on Chewbacca’s head for George Lucas’ Star Wars [1977].

Gregory Nicotero is the N in famed special effects make-up company KNB. Greg often collaborates with Quentin Tarentino, Robert Rodriguez, Frank Darabont, and George A. Romero. Here’s Greg working on the hit TV zombie series The Walking Dead [2010-].

Howard Berger is the B in KNB. Howard won an Academy Award for his work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [Andrew Adamson, 2005].

Rick Baker working on an appliance for Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes [2001]. Rick and I first met on my first feature film Schlock [1971]. He was 20, I was 21. Since then, Rick has gone on to win seven Academy Awards, his first for An American Werewolf in London [1981], when the Academy established the category.

MONSTER DESIGNERS

Millicent Patrick designing the Gill-Man for Creature From the Black Lagoon [Jack Arnold,1954]. Ms. Patrick was not given a screen credit for what many consider one of the greatest monster designs.

Chris Mueller in the Universal Make-up lab, sculpting the original mask for Creature From the Black Lagoon.

H. R. Giger is a Swiss artist known for his surreal and bizarre paintings. Ridley Scott hired him to design the title creature in Alien [1979]. Giger is pictured here with one of his friends.

STOP-MOTION ANIMATION

Stop-motion animation is an art that is still practiced by filmmakers like Henry Selick in The Nightmare Before Christmas [1993], James and the Giant Peach [1996], and Coraline [2009] and Nick Park. Park is the creator of Wallace and Gromit and has won four Academy Awards, for Creature Comforts [1989], The Wrong Trousers [1993], A Close Shave [1995], and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit [2005]. Pictured are three of the greatest stop-motion animators in movie history.

Randall Cook is shown animating a demon from Ghostbusters [Ivan Reitman, 1984].

Ray Harryhausen animating Mighty Joe Young [Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1949]. Ray’s big break came when Willis O’Brien hired him as an assistant on this movie. Ray Harryhausen’s tremendous body of work has had enormous influence on generations of filmmakers.

Willis O’Brien, the pioneering stop-motion animator and innovator, whose crowning achievement is King Kong [Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933]. O’Brien is pictured here with the triceratops the ship’s crew discover on Skull Island. In his hand he holds a crew member puppet. O’Brien’s film work goes back to 1915 with The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy for the Edison Co. His last film was Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [1963].

MATTE PAINTING

Matte painting is now done digitally on computer, but it used to be done by hand-painting on glass. An example of traditional matte painting is shown, in a scene from The Age of Innocence [Martin Scorsese, 1993].

Albert Whitlock won Academy Awards for his work on Earthquake [Mark Robson, 1974] and The Hindenburg [1975]. In The Hindenburg, his painting on glass of the huge zeppelin was so detailed that the illusion of flight was done by merely moving his glass painting past the camera! Albert’s work can be seen in films as varied as The Andromeda Strain [Robert Wise, 1971], Slaughterhouse Five [George Roy Hill, 1972], The Man Who Would Be King [John Huston, 1975], and The Blues Brothers [John Landis, 1980].

An exceptional special-effects cameraman and a superb matte artist respectively, Bill Taylor (on left) and Syd Dutton worked with Albert Whitlock for many years. They formed Illusion Arts when Whitlock retired. They are pictured with in-house producer Catherine Sudolcan.

A painting on glass by Syd Dutton and Robert Stromberg, showing the interior of a grand train station.

A live-action scene shot on a set with actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

The finished shot with the live-action seamlessly inserted into the painting on an optical printer.

MINIATURES

The War of the Worlds  [Byron Haskin, 1953]

Special-effects technicians on the miniature set on stage at Paramount Studios prepare the Martian war machines for another attack.

The Monster Makers [Book Contents]

The Land Unknown  [Virgil W. Vogel, 1957]

Technicians prepare a shot of a dinosaur in the water tank on stage. Notice the painted backdrop and prop trees made to scale to give the illusion of depth. In the finished film, this dinosaur is gigantic and dwarfs the superimposed actors.

LONDON, NEW YORK, MUNICH,
MELBOURNE, DELHI

This book contains material previously published in print edition in October 2011
by Dorling Kindersley Limited,
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL.
A Penguin company.

ISBN: 9781405366977

Copyright © 2011 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London

This digital edition published in 2011 by
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Table of Contents

How to Use this eBook

Foreword

Introduction

Vampires

Vampires

In Conversation: Christopher Lee

Werewolves

Werewolves

An American Werewolf in London

In Conversation: Joe Dante

Mad Scientists

Mad Scientists

In Conversation: David Cronenberg

Zombies

Zombies

In Conversation: Sam Raimi

Ghosts

Ghosts

Mummies

Mummies

In Conversation: Guillermo Del Toro

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales

Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales

In Conversation: Ray Harryhausen

Dragons & Dinosaurs

Dragons & Dinosaurs

Monstrous Apes

Monstrous Apes

In Conversation: Rick Baker

Nature’s Revenge

Nature’s Revenge

Atomic Mutations

Atomic Mutations

The Devil’s Work

The Devil’s Work

In Conversation: John Carpenter

Space Monsters

Space Monsters

Monstrous Machines

Monstrous Machines

Human Monsters

Human Monsters

The Monster Makers

Monster Makers

Monster Directors

Make-up Artists

Monster Designers

Stop-motion Animation

Matte Painting

Miniatures

Copyright