Monster movies are the backbone of horror and science fiction. Both genres gave way to vertebrates standing upright, crawling and stalking towards their unwitting prey. Lumbering masses had victims cowering in fear, desperate for the end of their misery. Viewers watched on in terror, witnessing the unthinkable and impossible tragedies unfold.
From the classic Universal Monsters to the underappreciated B-movies, there was no shortage of schlock and shock to match our craving for Creature Features. Maddening screams, sinister mayhem, and silly yet serious scandals all amount to awestruck, fearful fun. While almost everyone runs like chickens with their heads cut off (before the creature has a chance to do so itself), there still remain a few with a good head on their shoulders.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
8 Matango (1963) - Kenji Murai
Toho
Also known as Attack of the Mushroom People to American television audiences, this adaptation of seafaring author William Hope Hodgson’s short story “The Voice in the Night” is about a group of young castaways who wind up on an island of mutant mushrooms. Toho produced the nontraditional Japanese film which faced threats of being banned. Some characters’ makeup resembled the facial disfigurement of those affected by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the island, the mushrooms take on colorful shapes and sizes, to the dismay of professor Kenji Murai. He survives the experience comparing mushrooms to humans. Medicinal or psychedelic, this man-versus-nature moral comes off as highfalutin, albeit from a fun guy.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) - Jeff Trent
Valiant Pictures
Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) is a pilot in this so-bad-it’s-good cult classic. He witnesses a loud and bright flying saucer during one of his flights. Later, the occupants of the saucer are heard near a cemetery where Trent lives. Aliens are initiating Plan 9, the resurrection of the dead! In a bid to control and destroy humanity, Trent braves boarding the spaceship after a reanimated old man attacks his wife. His close encounter leaves the space invaders as they came: in a great ball of fire. After the military swore him to secrecy, there was no holding your tongue with Trent.
6 Forbidden Planet (1956) - John J. Adams
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space changed the way B-movies were treated and breathed new life into the science fiction genre. Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) is the original Captain Kirk, taking charge of an intergalactic mission in this groundbreaking techno-horror. He and his crew discover a planet, Altair IV, the last known whereabouts of a missing expedition. The planet is deserted except for the survivors of the expedition: Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis), and their mechanical assistant, Robby the Robot (Frankie Darro and Marvin Miller). As Adams presses the scientist about the group’s disappearance, he finds the personified ego of Morbius materializing as invisible beasts. Good on Adams for displaying high levels of critical thinking in a desperate and desolate place of psychosis.
5 The Thing from Another World (1951) - Ned Scott
RKO Radio Pictures
The journalist becomes a Gonzo journalist on the Alaskan frontier where he discovers the story of a lifetime. He is joined by an armed forces’ gentleman’s club who find a flying saucer embedded under the ice. With it, they excavate a carnivorous plant humanoid that awakes and attacks them at the remote outpost. After baiting the blood-hungry alien into an electric trap, they throw the kill switch and burn the monster to ashes. Scott gets the green light to tell the world about the existence of aliens, and his resounding words echo off goosebumps everywhere: “Keep watching the skies.”
4 The War of the Worlds (1953) - Clayton Forrester
Paramount Pictures
Alien invasions would never be the same after H.G. Wells’ Martians brought fire and brimstone to Dr. Clayton Forrester. Without cause, foreign canisters have landed across Earth. Inside lies deadly alien war machines with advanced death rays. As they spread their space plague onto mankind, Forrester must find a weakness to stop the otherworldly threat. Forrester and others survive long enough to deduce that the Martians could withstand military weaponry, but not the bacteria humans have adapted to. Common cold: one, aliens: zero.
3 Godzilla (1954) - Daisuke Serizawa
Scientists and world-destroying experiments go hand-in-hand when faced with a warring monster. Japan faces a nuclear threat in the form of a gigantic mutant reptile dinosaur that survived underwater Hydrogen bomb testing. Dr. Daisuke Serizawa builds a device that in the wrong hands could be used as a weapon of mass destruction, killing thousands, if not millions of people, let alone a kaiju, the Oxygen Destroyer. Serizawa shares his last breath with Godzilla, taking the beast and the weapon to his grave.
2 Night of the Living Dead (1968) - Ben
Continental Distributing
By far the most levelheaded character during an apocalypse, Ben (Duane Jones) is the poster boy for sanity in an insane world. He makes a sanctuary out of a farmhouse, housing strangers and defending against the outbreak of ghouls or zombies. He deals with a catatonic woman, a bullish man, and what thanks did he get? A gun loaded with racial and social commentary.
1 Jaws (1975) - Martin Brody
Universal Pictures
Martin Brody began as an understated police chief, wanting to protect innocent beach goers from shark attacks. When no human remains are found, victim after victim, and his oldest son is traumatized by the death of a boater, Brody decides to join shark fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) and oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) out on the open waters. Quint’s trophy-killing hysteria gets the best of him while Hooper’s tranquilizing attempt goes south, leaving Brody alone on the sinking ship. Using Quint’s rifle and one of Hooper’s oxygen tanks, Brody faces and feeds the belly of the beast a shot of the hero’s journey.
