Monster movies!

baxtrom

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Nothing beats an old low-budget monster movie. Carpenter's The Thing is a great example: take a bunch of guys, isolate them on a research station in the arctics and add vicious monster! :devil: Obviously, the research station is equipped with flamethrowers so there is an even fight! (There are flashlights in the movie too, looks like mag-style torches)

Also The Thing is an example of great puppetering long before the days of computer aided monsters. Watched the documentary too, fun to listen to stories from the shooting. Apparantly, when making intestines and goo, they used thinners and stuff which caused a minor explosion on the set! Must have been fun to make an old school horror movie! :naughty:

And the soundtrack.. simplistic but great.

I grew up with Alien, The Thing, Predator and Terminator (perhaps not a monster movie but included for reference). Which are your favourite monster movies? And which are the biggest turkeys? Share your thoughts!
 

jwyj

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I love the Fly. Is that consider a monster? Got the blu-ray disk a while ago and watch it again.
 

baxtrom

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I love the Fly. Is that consider a monster? Got the blu-ray disk a while ago and watch it again.

You mean the 1950's version? That movie scared the hell out of dad when he was a kid :sweat:
 

Nyctophiliac

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Aside from 'ALIEN', which I love beyond reasonable interest, I must recommend 'An American Werewolf in London' as my second favourite Monster Movie.

I was sixteen and just getting into watching horror in cinemas from a formative teenage schooling of Hammer and Amicus films on telly for years and years. This film was a very popular one among my friends and we queued up for late night showings in Leicester square several times. There had never been such horror in settings so banal and mundane. The dream sequences were fast and frenetic and exciting before being plunged into a London of cocktail parties, tube trains and porn cinemas.

I think it helped that the locations were known to me, Hampstead Heath, London Zoo, The West End etcetera. But placing our American hero so firmly in the everyday was a masterstroke for me. I don't doubt that the film lives much more for those Londoners familiar with the city in that period. And so perfect, where else could you find a population less interested in the desperate plights of others, or less likely to believe in outlandish tales of monsters and supernatural danger. Right up until that monster bites them on their ignorant behinds!

Where once was horror, now is only familiarity and warmth. A much revisited film. Every time, I hope for a happy ending. Every time. Thank you, Mr.Landis, for defining my late teenage years. Ah, and as always, thank you Jenny Agutter too!

As to turkeys, there's a lot to choose, sadly. But have you seen 'Bloody New Year'???

Rarely has a film (RAOTFL) made me want to procure an embolism with all due speed! It's a munter and no mistake.
 

baxtrom

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I must recommend 'An American Werewolf in London' as my second favourite Monster Movie.

As to turkeys, there's a lot to choose, sadly. But have you seen 'Bloody New Year'???

Didn't see either of them! However, as I have a small fascination with werewolves, I have seen The Howling :devil:. Also, I believe I saw parts of Howling IV :green:.

"Bloody New Year" got 4.3 on IMDB. That's almost a record low! :grin2:
 

Eric242

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[...] Carpenter's The Thing [...] Also The Thing is an example of great puppetering long before the days of computer aided monsters. [...]
That´s very true. One of my favourite scenes is when the severed head grows legs and starts walking away. Entirely done without CGI and still really cool, even today.

Other great 80ies Monster Movies - I count Zombies as Monsters - with pretty cool effects especially for their low budgets are Return of the living Dead and ReAnimator.

Good Monster Movies from the last view years are Dog Soldiers, a pretty cool Werewolf film from Director Neil Marshal, Steven Kings The Mist (especially the b/w Version) from Director Frank Darabond, Unearthed, The Deaths of Ian Ston and Cloverfield.

Eric
 

baxtrom

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That´s very true. One of my favourite scenes is when the severed head grows legs and starts walking away. Entirely done without CGI and still really cool, even today.

Another example of great pre-CGI is Cameron's Aliens from 1986. Such movies are no longer made.. If I'd have to pick one, it would probably be that one. Ridley Scott's original Alien is a total masterpiece of the psychology of terror - "Hitch" would have been proud - but the sequel probably has the best non-CGI monster ever sliming its way over the screen, at least to my knowledge. Watch the trailer and shiver!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSQmYUaIyE
 

Bigpal

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I always thought if I was stuck in the zombie apocalypse, I hope they aren't like the ones in I Am Legend. Those things were wicked. Fast and strong, not the normal slow brain-eaters.

And for some reason unknown, I find it hard to not watch Tremors when I see it on. I know it's pretty cheesy, but there's something about that movie. Gremlins is a definite film I remember as a kid too.

Turkeys? I always found the Anaconda films ridiculous.
 

baxtrom

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And for some reason unknown, I find it hard to not watch Tremors when I see it on. I know it's pretty cheesy, but there's something about that movie.

Turkeys? I always found the Anaconda films ridiculous.

True, there's something special with Tremors! And, Anaconda was also on my mind for the turkey department, together with that lizard movie, "Komodo" (3.9 on IMDB! Amazing!).

I just remember watching a really, really crappy monster movie when working out on my crosstrainer some time ago - Creature! :fail:
Somehow it managed 4.5 in IMDB, but that's a mystery since it should be given a negative rating. I bet the actors wanted to disappear during the premiere. I know I would have called in sick :p
 

Launch Mini

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King Kong ( old & new) are good ones.

Stinker
Food of the Gods. This was filmed on an island about 500 metres from our house, so I watched it. Giant bugs. rats, etc, most memorable was the giant Chicken after it ate "the food"
Other stinkers, any Godzilla B&W movie
 

chmsam

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Them! is a favorite classic of mine. The little girls reactions are terrific.

I liked the original The Thing From Another Planet better than the re-make(s) but I am an old fart.

As for Godzilla in B&W, as Blue Oyster Cult said "This song is about our favorite movie star... It's NOT Raymond Burr!" They were so bad they were fun.

An American Werewolf in London was great because of the really dark humor but also the music.


So how come I'm the first one to mention Shaun of the Dead!?!
 

makapuu

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A lot of the stuff I was going to mention has already been said above.
So I'm going to list some obscure B stuff that I found enjoyable to watch.

Basket Case
Xtro
Eight Legged Freaks
Nightbreed
Puppetmaster
Warlock
Night Of The Demons 1987
Jeepers Creepers 1 & 2
Pitch Black
Pumpkinhead
Darkness Falls
The Evil Dead 1 & 2
Species
Hellboy
Childs Play
 
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Bigpal

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One of my buddies loves Evil Dead and Army of Darkness cheese. I think Bruce Campbell is his hero.

 

baxtrom

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I would like to take a moment and cite Frank Zappa:

I'll tell you, a good one that I saw one time, I think the name of the film was "IT CONQUERED THE WORLD," and the . . . Did you ever see that one? The monster looks sort of like an inverted ice-cream cone with teeth around the bottom. It looks like a (phew!), like a teepee or . . . sort of a rounded off pup-tent affair, and, uh, it's got fangs on the base of it, I don't know why but it's a very threatening sight, and then he's got a frown and, you know, ugly mouth and everything, and there's this one scene where the, uh, monster is coming out of a cave, see? There's always a scene where they come out of a cave, at least once, and the rest of the cast . . . it musta been made around the 1950's, the lapels are about like that wide, the ties are about that wide and about this short, and they always have a little revolver that they're gonna shoot the monster with, and there is always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle . . . heh-hey! Of course there is! You know how they are, the weaker sex and everything, twisting their ankle on behalf of the little ice-cream cone. Well in this particular scene, in this scene, folks, they, uh, they didn't wanna re-take it 'cause it musta been so good they wanted to keep it, but they . . . when the monster came out of the cave, just over on the left hand side of the screen you can see about this much two-by-four attached to the bottom of the Thing as the guy is pushing it out, and then obviously off-camera somebody's goin': "NO! GET IT BACK!" And they drag it back just a little bit as the guy is goin': "KCH! KCH!" Now that's cheepnis. Awright. And this is "Cheepnis" here.

:grin2:
 

blasterman

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My parents snuck me into 'Alien' back when it was near the end of it's theatrical run in the summer of 79'. Because you didn't have the social media you do now everything was word of mouth. It looked like a cool sci-flick movie even though the rated 'R' was taken more seriously then than it is now.

I can't stress enough how unpleasant that movie was to watch, and how the audience was emotionally exhausted when they left the theater. 'Alien' was not only scary, it was emotionally draining to watch. There were plenty of creepy flicks before then which were well crafted to scare the audience, mainly Jaws and the Exorcist come to mind, but Ridley Scott brought things to a WHOLE new level with 'Alien'. Prometheus on the other hand wasn't worth the ticket.

Glad somebody mentioned Jeepers Creepers. With all the junk out there over the years these are some of the few newer movies that I think really did the genre' some good. Never got why people were so afraid of Freddy Kreuger, but the 'Creeper' makes me shudder.

John Carpenters's 'The Thing' - best of the series, IMHO.

'The Crazies' is by far my favorite of the zombie films. Does a great job at being original and being tense when zombie films are otherwise a dime a dozen.

Soft spot for Roger Corman's 'Galaxy of Terror'. Even though it was filmed on a budget of about $39.95 it was conceptually pretty freaky and had an original premise. Surprised this film hasn't been remade.
 

biglights

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I really like "The Blob" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (more sci-fi) My vote for low budget is "C.H.U.D."

I loved The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a kid. Classic...
 
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