King Kong

Year:  1933

Directors:  Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Screenplay:  James Creelman and Ruth Rose, from a story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper

Starring:  Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot

Running Time:  104 minutes

Genre:  Fantasy, horror

Wildlife filmmaker Carl Denham (Armstrong) leads an expedition to a mysterious, remote island.  Among the party is Ann Darrow (Wray), a woman who Denham encountered in New York and convinced to accompany him in order to play the female lead in his film.  Shortly after they arrive on the island, Ann is captured by local villagers who sacrifice her to their god, Kong, a giant gorilla who lives in the thick jungle behind a giant wall which protects the village from the horrors in the jungle.  The rest of the expedition set out to rescue Ann only to find a nightmarish "lost world" is the jungle populated by prehistoric beasts.  Meanwhile Denham decides that instead of bringing film of Kong back to America, it would be a much bigger money-maker to bring back Kong himself.

This is one of the most influential and beloved films ever made, and still possibly the definitive monster movie.  The film has dated somewhat over the past ninety years, it's pretty suspect today in the way that the local indigenous people on the island are treated, and also the male characters are extremely sexist (the film opens with Denham, the ship's first mate (Bruce Cabot), skipper (Frank Reicher) and a theatrical agent (Sam Hardy) discussing how much they do not want a woman on their journey, like a bunch of little boys who don't want to let girls into their club, however Denham reluctantly maintains that they need a woman to make their film more commercial).  Also there are the technical limitations of early sound recording, which required the actors to stand near a microphone to record their voices.  The special effects developed by Willis O'Brien, are notable for their use of "stop motion" animation (basically with stop motion a posable model is put into the required position and a photograph is taken, the model is then moved very slightly and another picture is taken, then it is moved slightly again  and another picture is taken and the process is repeated again and again and again, and eventually when the pictures are run together it should look like the creature is moving, it's very painstaking and time-consuming but can be very effective).  When Kong moves you can see his fur moving in strange ways due to the fingerprints of the animators moving the model.  Kong is a terrifying, savage force of nature.  In his island home he really is "King" Kong, defeating several dinosaur  adversaries, including a memorable battle with a Tyrannosaurus (which took seven weeks to animate).  However, when Kong is captured and taken to New York, where he is put on display in chains, it is hard not to feel sympathy for his rage, bafflement and fear, and you can't really blame him when he breaks out and goes on a rampage.  It is his fascination with Ann, who he treats with surprising tenderness, that brings about his downfall, culminating in one of the most iconic scenes in all of cinema where Kong is at the top of the Empire State Building (the tallest building in the world at the time) being gunned down by planes which he tries to swat like flies.  The film's true villain is the reckless Carl Denham, who at the very least is criminally irresponsible, in the risks he exposes others to in order to make his film, he puts his entire crew at risk, as well as Ann, and happily sacrifices the lives of the villagers on the island, as well as bringing Kong to New York in the first place.  However he is given the film's final line, surveying Kong's body in front of the Empire State Building a character comments "Well, the airplanes got 'im".  Denham replies "No, it wasn't the airplanes.  It was beauty that killed the beast."

  

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

 Year of Release: 1953

Director:  Eugène Lourié

Screenplay:  Fred Freiberger, Eugène Lourié, Louis Morheim and Robert Smith, based on the short story "The Fog Horn" by Ray Bradbury

Starring:  Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey

Running Time:  80 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

A nuclear bomb test in the Arctic awakens a prehistoric monster called a Rhedosaur which begins making it's way down the coast of North America.  Professor Thomas Nesbitt (Christian) who witnesses the creature desperately tries to convince a sceptical world of the danger, before the creature can destroy New York City.

When the film was in pre-production, special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen brought the producer's attention to Ray Bradbury's short story "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (now more commonly published as "The Fog Horn") in an issue of The Saturday Evening Post, particularly an illustration of the creature attacking a lighthouse.  The finished film bears very little resemblance to Bradbury's story though.  The film has aged badly, filled with hoary old cliches, flat direction and some questionable performances, but it has a lot of retro charm, and was a smash hit in it's day.  The movie was the first of the "Giant Monster Created by Radiation" movies that were churned out in the fifties, most notably Godzilla (1954) which was strongly influenced by this film, and most of the cliches really started with this one.  The Beast of the title is a fictional dinosaur called a Rhedosaur and is brought to stop-motion life by Ray Harryhausen. While the special effects may not have aged well, but they have a strange life to them, and the film has some impressive images and scenes, such as the creature attacking the lighthouse silhouetted against the evening sky, the creatures rampage through New York (during which it gobbles up a cop), and the climax at the roller coaster is exciting.  The first hour or so of the film, which basically has the scientist trying to convince everyone that the monster is real is quite sedate, and then the pace picks up in the last twenty minutes, building to a very abrupt conclusion.  It's certainly worth watching, even if it's not a great film, it is a good one, and it does have a lot of innocent charm.

The Rhedosaur in New York, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

  

The Host

Year of Release:  2006
Director:  Bong Joon-ho
Screenplay:  Baek Chul-hyun, Bong Joon-ho
Starring:  Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Go Ah-sung
Running Time:  124 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, horror, drama

 In Seoul, clumsy, lazy and slightly dense Park Gag-du (Song Kang-ho) lives and works at a small snack bar owned by his hard-working father Park Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong), and is a single father to his young daughter Park Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung).  One day, a giant water monster rises from the Han River near the snack bar and causes havoc.  Despite Park Gag-du's best efforts to save her, the creature snatches Park Hyun-seo and escapes.  The South Korean government and American military force the survivors of the attack into quarantine, on the grounds that the creature spreads a deadly virus.  Gag-du receives a call from Hyun-seo.  Realizing that she is still alive, he escapes with Hee-bong, and his sister, champion archer Nam-joo (Bae Doona), and his brother, alcoholic unemployed college graduate Nam-il (Park Hae-il).  The four embark on a desperate rescue mission , while being hunted by the police and military.

Monster movies tend to run  on very familiar lines, and this sticks to the basics, while giving a refreshingly quirky twist on the cliches.  Most monster movies have the creature being revealed gradually, hinted at and glimpsed before finally being revealed in all it's glory.  Here the creature appears in broad daylight, attacking a crowd early in the film.  Also it is not particularly big, as giant monsters go, about the size of a large truck.  The authorities in the film, both Korean and American, are portrayed as inept, callous, deceitful, and negligent, and are as much adversaries for the family as the monster is.  The relationships between the family members are well-drawn, they bicker and fight almost constantly, but there is a very strong bond between them all.  We also spend time with Hyun-seo, trapped in the monster's lair, and trying to escape without being discovered.  Co-written and directed by future Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho, this is one of the best monster movies of recent years.  Full of claustrophobic suspense, it's exciting, scary and often funny, and surprisingly satirical.  It makes some pretty scathing attacks on the American military, stationed in South Korea, who are portrayed as not knowing, or caring, how they impact the lives of the local people, and the South Korean government which is portrayed as equally callous and ineffectual.  It also has an environmental message, with the monster apparently being a product of pollution.

        Bae Doona searches for The Host

Colossal

Year of Release: 2016
Director:  Nacho Vigalondo
Screenplay:  Nacho Vigalondo
Starring:  Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudekis, Dan Stevens, Austin Stowell, Tim Blake Nelson
Running Time:  110 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, dark comedy

New York City.  Gloria (Hathaway) is an unemployed writer with a serious drink problem.  After being kicked out by her boyfriend (Stevens), Gloria returns to her small hometown to sort herself out.  Shortly after arriving she reconnects with a childhood friend, Oscar (Sudekis), who now owns the local bar.  Accepting his offer of a part time job, Gloria's alcoholism gets worse, as Oscar gradually reveals that he has a a very dark side.
Meanwhile, in Seoul, a giant monster is periodically showing up and rampaging through the city.  A monster which has a bizarre connection with Gloria.

Have you ever stumbled home drunk from a night out?  Then you know how bad it feels.  However for Gloria the drunken walk home is even worse, because every time she crosses a particular playground at a particular time, she inadvertently causes a giant monster to smash up a city on the other side of the world.  The film plays like a dark, gritty comedy-drama about alcoholism and emotional abuse which has had a Godzilla-style giant monster movie edited into it.  The mix of tones doesn't always work because the darker dramatic elements sit awkwardly with broader comic moments, and the monster movie elements are something else entirely.  The performances are great, particularly from Anne Hathaway, who is superb in the lead.  Jason Sudekis is also impressive as an all too human monster.  The special effects are impressive.  There are some odd continuity issues (for example a character runs around a corner and it's night, and into the street in broad daylight).  It's a film that is disorientating for it's first half with it's odd switching of tones, but once you get used to the film and realise what it is doing, than it becomes a lot more entertaining.  The main problem with the film is that it would have been better with more focus on the plight of the people of Seoul.  The events are entirely seen from Gloria's point of view, with the monsters rampage appearing on TV and internet news bulletins, and there are no prominent Korean characters in the film.  However, I would recommend this film, because it is inventive and features some great performances.

Creature feature:  Colossal
        

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Year: 1954
Director: Jack Arnold
Screenplay: Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross, from a story by Maurice Zimm
Starring: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno
Running Time: 79 minutes
Genre: Horror, science-fiction, monster movie

Summary: A geology expedition in the Amazon rainforest discover a fossilized humanoid hand with webbed fingers. The expedition leader, Doctor Carl Maia (Moreno), believes that hand represents a hitherto undiscovered link in the development of sea animals to land animals and contacts his friend, Doctor David Reed (Carlson), an icthyologist working for a marine biology institute, to join him on an expedition into the Amazon to find the remainder of the skeleton.
Reed persuades the institute's publicity hungry financial backer, Doctor Mark Williams (Denning), to fund the expedition. Travelling on a ramshackle tramp steamer called the Rita, captained by the crusty Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the expedition heads down the Amazon. In addition to Maia, Reed and Williams, the expedition consists of Reed's girlfriend Kay Lawrence (Adams) and another scientist, Doctor Thompson (Whit Bissell).
Arriving at Maia's expedition's camp, they find that the members of his team have been savagely killed. Lucas suggests that a jaguar was responsible, however the others are unsure. After an unsuccessful excavation of the site where the fossilised hand was discovered, Maia suggests that the skeleton may have been washed downriver. Lucas tells them about a secluded lagoon, known as the "Black Lagoon", which is described as a paradise on Earth, although no-one has ever returned from it.
They travel to the lagoon, where they soon discover that one of the species that the fossilised hand came from is still very much alive, an amphibious humanoid "Gill-man", which has no intention of allowing the expedition to return alive.

Opinions: This was one of the last of the classic "Universal Monsters" movies, and one of the few which was not based on a classic novel or story. In fact the origin of the film is reputed to go back to when producer and actor William Alland attended a dinner party at Orson Welles' house in 1941 while he was shooting Citizen Kane, in which Alland had an acting role, and a fellow guest told him about a legendary race of half-fish, half-human creatures dwelling in the Amazon.
The creature of the title, the "Gill-man" (who was played by Ben Chapman on land, and by Ricou Browning in the underwater scenes), has become a horror movie icon and despite being very obviously a man in a suit, the design is still striking. Unusually, the creature is largely sympathetic. It rarely attacks unless provoked and of course the humans are invading it's territory, not the other way around.
The film's production design is impressive, and the action moves at a brisk pace. The film features a sequence which has become iconic, where Julia Adams is swimming in the lagoon and below her, the Gill-man swims, mirroring her movements, in a sequence which is almost like a seduction, and is really about as suggestive as movies got in 1954. Even today, the scene has a kind of eerie sexyness.
The acting is kind of bland and the characters tend to be stock figures, also the story-line is a fairly conventional monster movie, however the pluses far outweigh the minuses and this is a classic of it's genre.
The film was originally released in 3D and was followed by two sequels: Revenge of the Creature (1955), which is only notable for featuring Clint Eastwood in his first screen role, and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
The inevitable remake has been planned and rumoured since the early 1980s and is currently planned to swim onto our screens in 2013.

"I can tell you something about this place. The boys around here call it "The Black Lagoon"; a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it."
- Lucas (Nestor Paiva) in Creature from the Black Lagoon



The Gill-man surfaces in Creature from the Black Lagoon

Fiend Without a Face

Year: 1958
Director: Arthur Crabtree
Screenplay: Herbert J. Leder, based on the short story "The Thought Monster" by Amelia Reynold Long
Starring: Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Michael Balfour, Kim Parker
Running Time: 73 minutes
Genre: Horror, science-fiction, monsters

Summary: A US Air Force base near a remote Canadian town is conducting secret experiments in using atomic power to boost radar signals. However, a number of local people have been mysteriously killed by some unseen force which removes their brains and spinal columns. The locals, who are already suspicious of the Air Force base, believe that the newcomers are ssomehow responsible for the killings.
Major Jeff Cummings (Thompson) tries to investigate the killings, with the help of Barbara Griselle (Parker), the sister of one of the murdered locals, and who also happens to work as the secretary for reclusive scientist Professor Walgate (Reeves), who has been working on the idea of telekinesis.

Opinions: On the surface this is a fairly average "B" grade horror/science-fiction film. Despite being set in Canada, this is a British production and was filmed entirely in England (the setting chosen because it was thought that a Canadian setting would appeal both to American audiences and British Commonwealth audiences and the producers thought that a Canadian landscape would be easy to replicate in the UK). The film moves at a fairly sedate pad, with the already brief running time padded out by long exposition scenes in offices, hospitals and living rooms, and also endless stock footage of jet planes and radar equipment.
However, the film comes into it's own in the final act when the previously invisible monsters are finally revealed as squishy disembodied brains, with spinal cord tails, tentacle-like nerves and protruding eyes on stalks. Filmed in jerky, stop-motion animation the creatures are genuinely bizarre and unsettling. The set-piece siege on the country house is a genuinely tense and memorable sequence, with an influence that can be felt in later films such as George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). The monsters themselves can be seen as a forerunner of the infamous "facehuggers" in the Alien series.
The acting is mostly pretty strong from the leads although there are a few weak notes among the supporting cast.
This little-seen curio is well worth checking out if you get the chance. With the climax in particular sticking in the mind long after the film is over.



Launce Maraschal encounters a Fiend Without a Face

Slither

Year:  2006
Director:  James Gunn
Screenplay:  James Gunn
Starring:  Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier and Jenna Fischer
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, comedy, science-fiction




Summary:  A meteorite crashes near the quiet, small town of Wheelsy, South Carolina, and splits open to reveal a small, pale alien creature.  The creature is discovered by local bigwig Grant Grant (Rooker), and it shoots a small dart from it's back which burrows into Grant''s chest.  Grant develops an insatiable hunger for meat, and his young wife, Starla (Banks), begins to notice bizarre physical changes.  The town's sheriff, Bill Pardy (Fillion), investigates as pets, livestock and eventually people start to go missing.  Pardy discovers that Grant has transformed into a grotesque, multi-limbed monster and has been breeding countless slug-like aline parasites, which break out and start to infect the town's population. 

Opinions:  This movie is a blend of comedy and horror and mostly it works very well.  It looks back to earlier horror films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night of the Living Dead (1968) and in particular the early David Cronenberg films such as Shivers (1975) which has it's notorious parasite in the bathtub scene referenced here, and Rabid (1977).  The plentiful gruesome special-effects range from being pretty impressive to fairly average CGI monsters.  The film benefits enormously from having genuinely likeable and engaging characters.  The cast are all good, with Nathan Fillion (who is probably best known for starring in the TV series Firefly (2002) and it's spin-off film Serenity (2005)) being a particular standout, showing himself as a talented comic actor as well as making a convincing action hero.  Of course, it's in the mix of genres where so many horror-comedy films fall down but this one successfully sidesteps the trap, managing to be genuinely funny as well as generating real tension and shocks.  The movie is well written and writer-director James Gunn keeps everything moving fast.  Surprisingly, the film was a box-office flop when it was released, which is a real shame because it is a lot of fun.  I can imagine it might be because the film was too gruesome for a lot of comedy fans and too light-hearted for some of the hard-core horror fans.  However I can imagine it becoming a something of a cult hit on DVD, which would be only right for a movie such as this which wears it's "B" movie credentials proudly.