Текст книги "Monsters in the Movies "

Автор книги: Джон Лэндис

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

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 Notebooksby 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 Jawsbandwagon.

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 Halloweenis 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 Manis 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!”

Doomwatchpublicity 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 Advocateproves 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 Babywas 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 Exorcistwas 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 Exorcistis 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 Exorcistis 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 Omenis 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 Angelby 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.