Weekly Theme

Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

This one's pretty self-explainitory. What is some of your favorite movie monsters and what are some of your favorite monster moments.

Are you all about the old-school Godzilla style. I have a copy of The Giant Gila Monster that I found at the 99 cents only store and I watch it with my kids all the time. It's hilarious.

How about the newer stuff? The Host is a newer movie from South Korea with a pretty good monster. Cloverfield sucked but the monster looked pretty cool.

And what about art-house monsters. The French made an "Avant-Garde" zombie movie called They Came Back.(bunch of pretentious, stuck up, walking dead.) And Hal Hartley directed No Such Thing, about an depressed Icelandic monster.

I'd really like to hear about your favorite monsters. Who scarred you? Who sucked? Dr. Gor........... I'm talking to you.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

Yeah, you already mentioned the movie, but Robert John Burke in No Such Thing takes the cake for me.

I first watched this movie at SkyPilot's house with another guy when he wasn't even though.  To my knowledge he has never even heard of the movie or knew that we watched it there.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

Risselada:

Yeah, you already mentioned the movie, but Robert John Burke in No Such Thing takes the cake for me.

I first watched this movie at SkyPilot's house with another guy when he wasn't even though.  To my knowledge he has never even heard of the movie or knew that we watched it there.

I was really surprised at how much I got into that movie. It's been a long time since I've seen it so I'm gonna have to check it out again. In contrast, They Came Back really wasn't worth watching though.

BTW while you were at SkyPilot's house watching it, I was at your house, watching The Atomic Submarine........................ with my pet giraffe. It was good.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

Well, before I go into my long list of monsters, I'm going to go ahead and say that I loved Cloverfield. I saw it in the theater the weekend it came out, I followed the viral marketing campaigns, and am slowly becoming a J.J. Abrams fan (despite never seeing a single episode of Lost). I must also say that I am one of the freaks that loved The Blair Witch Project. The Blair WItch being one of my favorite unseen movie monsters.

To the point, Cloverfield was just one of those adrenaline rush movies for me. Where you never get a sense of the monster that's lurking around every corner. You really get a sense of the characters and root for them to survive the whole ordeal. Granted the guy holding the camera was rather annoying and certain scenes (the climbing from one demolished building to another, I mean, really!?) were implausible, but yet, I was completely absorbed into the whole film.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

leeroy711:

I'd really like to hear about your favorite monsters. Who scarred you? Who sucked? Dr. Gor........... I'm talking to you.

   While all of the giant monsters such as Godzilla and King Kong et al are pretty cool and certainly 'spotlight-grabbers', there have been many, many movie monsters that are not as tall but even more terrifying.   Dracula ,  Frankenstein ,  The Mummy  and  The Wolf Man  were among the first of these and remain some of my favorites.   Here are some of my other favorite 'monster movies' ...

   Hell Night ...   Anything with Linda Blair ranks at the top of any list of mine.

   The Funhouse ...   Monster on the midway stalking sexy teenage girls... oh what fun!

  Tower of Evil  (aka The Horror on Snape Island) ...   Deranged, deformed killing machine in an isolated light-house.

   Anthropaphagus  (aka  The Grim Reaper  aka  Savage Island) ...   Deranged, deformed killing machine on an isolated Greek island.

   Rawhead Rex ...   Ancient and pissed off pagan demon runs rampant in Ireland.

   House By The Cemetary  (?) ...   The Fulci classic in which a family really DOES have a monster living in their basement.

   Well, those are some of my favorites but there are MANY more!   Way too many to list them all here.  

   Monsters Rule!

                                                                    < GOR >

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

mercurial:

Well, before I go into my long list of monsters, I'm going to go ahead and say that I loved Cloverfield. I saw it in the theater the weekend it came out, I followed the viral marketing campaigns, and am slowly becoming a J.J. Abrams fan (despite never seeing a single episode of Lost). I must also say that I am one of the freaks that loved The Blair Witch Project. The Blair WItch being one of my favorite unseen movie monsters.

To the point, Cloverfield was just one of those adrenaline rush movies for me. Where you never get a sense of the monster that's lurking around every corner. You really get a sense of the characters and root for them to survive the whole ordeal. Granted the guy holding the camera was rather annoying and certain scenes (the climbing from one demolished building to another, I mean, really!?) were implausible, but yet, I was completely absorbed into the whole film.

 

I think I really have a problem with the whole cinema-veritas style in general. I guess the idea is: Make what you are watching seem more real by making it more obvious that what you are watching is through the eyes of a camera. I also have a problem (for somewhat of the same reason) with movies shot entirely in digital like Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead.

I can't say that I loved Blair Witch, but as a whole, I thought it was extremely clever, especially the marketing. If you recall, the trailers were extremely short and they didn't show anthing. And the actors hid away for the first few months of the release.

There was a similar film that came out a few years before Blair Witch called The Last Broadcast in which these guys go into the woods to find the Jersey Devil. I think the set-up was a little bit better than Blair Witch but the acting wasn't very good.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

I've just moved Equinox to the top of my netflix queue. As a self-imposed homework assignment for this week. I've wanted to see this for a while almost completely because of the cover art so I figured this would be the week to do it.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

Dr_Gor:

   Anthropaphagus  (aka  The Grim Reaper  aka  Savage Island) ...   Deranged, deformed killing machine on an isolated Greek island.

   OOPS!   I linked the wrong movie for  Anthropophagus  and I couldn't find the correct one listed on SPOUT.   The movie I DID link looks pretty darn interesting and I can't believe I missed that one!   I have added it to my list!   The one I was refering is the 1980 Joe D'Amato classic starring George Eastman and Tisa Farrow...

                                                          < GOR >

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

Without straying too far from the topic (my idea of a monster is fairly broad), here we go:

From my childhood I was always equally scared shitless and mesmerized by the monsters in Legend (mainly Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness and that creepy green Swamp Witch) as well as those in Clash of the Titans (Medusa gave me nightmares for years). Gremlins was a great monster movie as well as Little Shop of Horrors when I was growing up. And I'm gonna go ahead and include Jaws cause that son of a bitch was a monster if I'd every seen one.

I loved how Matinee made fun of and embraced the cheesy monster movies of the 1950's and 1960's with MANT!

On the comedic side, Tremors was always good for a laugh. Ghostbusters and Freaked are probably on the top of the list of hilarious monster movies. Monsters, Inc should also get an honorable mention.

And the really hardcore monsters in my book are Jeff Goldblum in The Fly (especially when he gets his prickly fly penis and wants to mate), the monster in Jeepers Creepers (that opening scene with the monsters truck steadily approaching the brother and sister is intense), and King Kong (the 1933 original) is great aside from the racist subtext.

Re:Weekly Theme for August 25: Monster Madness

leeroy711:

I've just moved Equinox to the top of my netflix queue. As a self-imposed homework assignment for this week. I've wanted to see this for a while almost completely because of the cover art so I figured this would be the week to do it.

 

   Equinox  is a pretty darn good movie for the old fashioned stop-motion monsters and a somewhat interesting story but be prepared for some of the worst acting and dialogue you have ever seen...   A lot of fun just the same...