This guide is not meant to be an encyclopedia of every monster that has ever appeared in a movie. Nor is it my intention to write an exhaustive history of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction cinema. It is a pictorial overview of monsters from the movies that I have chosen. Most of the images come from The Kobal Collection; others come from friends who make monster movies.
My criteria for inclusion of a particular monster is simple: the illustrations in this volume are there because I think they are cool. Some have cultural and historic importance, some are terrifying, some are beautiful, some are repulsive, and many are just silly. Please remember my ambition is that of an entertainer, not of a scholar. You may learn quite a bit of useful and fairly esoteric information, but that is entirely up to you.
What is it about the movies that holds such power over the popular imagination? Although the medium itself is a relatively new one, pictures projected from strips of film to create moving images have had a massive impact on world culture. Hollywood movies and the international cinema have become the basis of what can only be described as our global mythology.
Montageis the juxtaposition of images to create a narrative. Even children, the first time they watch a film, instantly understand the concept of montage. When one is shown the outside of a building and then the characters inside it, the viewer understands this radical shifting of time and place at once. When we are presented with a close-up of a man looking out a window and then “Cut To” a car driving down the street, we do not have to be told that the car is what the man on screen is seeing (his “point of view”), we just know it. Human beings from around the world automatically accept and comprehend this film language.
Even more magically, when two characters are on screen and one says, “You drive the car, and I will take a bus. We will go to the airport and fly to Paris. There you will rent another car and I will take a taxi and we will meet at the Eiffel Tower in two days.” Then the screen CUTS TO: EXTERIOR EIFFEL TOWER—DAY and our two characters approach one another and shake hands. All we’ve been shown is the Eiffel Tower and our two characters, and we instantly know that it is two days later, that one drove a car to the airport and the other took a bus. We know they checked in, went through airport security, boarded the plane, flew to Paris, got off the plane, went through Passport Control, and that one rented a car while the other took a taxi, both driving to the Eiffel Tower.
I believe that people instinctively understand film language because it is exactly the way we dream. I am sure you have heard someone say that the dream they had last night, “was so vivid, so real, it was like a movie.” Exactly. Our dreams are “cinematic.” And when we dream, we often have nightmares. Since the cinema is the perfect medium to depict our dreams, the movies have always been an ideal way to show our nightmares. Our nightmares are often populated with monsters. And that is the subject of this guide: monsters in the movies.
The word “monster” comes from the Latin monstrum. “Monstrous” means a perversion of the natural order, usually biological. The word monster is associated with something that is wrong or sinister. A monster is either physically or mentally detestable, often an aberration in appearance and behavior. The word monster is generally associated with the concept of evil, both in thought and action. Normal-looking people who behave in reprehensible ways are also referred to as monsters.
Monsters are found in the legends and folklore of all nations. Monsters appear in the world’s religions and philosophies, and have always been well represented in works of art. From the earliest primitive cave paintings to today’s most sophisticated digital technology, humans continue to feel the need to create images of monsters.
Monsters are not always frightening or evil. The monsters of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.[Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, David Silverman, 2001] and certainly the title character in Harry and the Hendersons[William Dear, 1987] were charming and sweet. Even the most famous monster of them all, the Frankenstein Monster, as portrayed by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein[James Whale, 1931] is vulnerable and sympathetic. The one thing that most monsters have in common is their abnormal appearance; monsters are usually not considered conventionally beautiful. Monsters are often grotesque, and sometimes downright ugly.
Monsters are the physical embodiment of our fears. Humanity’s fears can be summed up in three words: injury, pain, and death.
People need an explanation, a reason, for why things happen. Not knowing the cause of an event is unacceptable to us. So humans have invented philosophies and religions to cope with and to try to explain the unknowable. No one truly knows what there is before we are alive, and what happens to us after we’ve died. Different cultures have created different answers. Most of these answers involve monsters. From the winged angels in the clouds above to the demons down below, the religious view is chock-a-block with fantastical beings.
Are we afraid of the dark? Or are we afraid of what is out there in the dark?
In the early days of the European exploration of our planet, men went to sea in ships to discover just what was out there beyond the horizon. Their maps and charts showed where they had been and what they knew of so far. The places people had not yet been were labeled on their maps and charts “Here Be Dragons.” This phrase meant that these places were unexplored and therefore unknown. And people consider the unknown dangerous. In medieval times, the blank areas of the map were filled with illustrations of sea serpents and dragons. These monsters are meant to warn us off, to scare us. However, what really scares us are not the sea serpents or dragons, but what they represent. The Unknown.
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Schlock [John Landis, 1971]
The Author as the Schlockthropus. I was 21; the make-up artist Rick Baker was 20. The movie was shot in 12 days for $60,000.
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Harry and the Hendersons [William Dear, 1987]
Kevin Peter Hall as Harry in another Academy-Award-winning make-up by Rick Baker.
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Dinosaurs
Young boys tend to love the giant beasts of prehistoric times. Almost every boy goes through his “fascination with dinosaurs stage.” Movies have exploited this fascination from the very earliest days of cinema to the present. And when we look at the stories and paintings of giant serpents and dragons throughout recorded history, it makes us wonder if there is a connection between the dragons of legend and the dinosaurs of the fossil record. No paleontologist has ever found evidence of a dinosaur that could blow flames from his mouth and nostrils, at least not yet. So where did that concept come from? Why did humans come up with these gigantic Thunder Lizards?
Countless sculptures and paintings show us Saint George slaying the dragon. In reality, very large alligators and crocodiles and Komodo dragons exist on land, and huge whales and giant squid inhabit the oceans. Could these be the animals that inspired the Hydra, the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece, or the monstrous Kraken who dragged ships down into the depths of the sea?
There is a theory that mastodon skulls, with their large holes in the center, were believed to be the skulls of giant Cyclops. If you came across the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex what conclusion would youcome to?