Friday, 2 January 2009
Monster, Monster!
posted @8:51 p.m. by Richard Kelly
Hello again reader(s). Wait, though, is that a monster over there? There, behind you!? Or is it a list of ten great movie monsters, recently contributed by Gabriel Featherstone? Phew. The latter. I'm doubly pleased that Gabe has written in, firstly to give the site some action, and secondly because he includes The Thing (1982), and I have been minded at times to make it a prerequisite that any submission to this site include The Thing. That, or The Long Goodbye (1973). Gabe also gets TBDwDN points for including a film with Jenny Agutter, for reasons passim.
Gabriel Featherstone's list of 10 best movie creatures.
1: The crocodile in Lake Placid
The film in total was not very good at all. It featured bad script, poor humour and hardly any scenes of the crocodile. But when the crocodile appears we get a few good scenes: for example, the scene where the group of stupid park rangers get cornered by a grizzly bear and the crocodile eats the bear, showing how dangerous it is compared to the bear.
2: The shark in Jaws 1-5
Quite possibly the best shark film ever (the only other that springs to mind is Deep Blue Sea). The best scene is in Jaws 2 when a helicopter comes in to rescue the annoying teenage castaways and gets promptly eaten by the shark.
3: The alien in Alien 1-4 and AVP 1-2
This incredible series of sci-fi films stars Sigourney Weaver as flight officer Ellen Ripley whose life is slowly destroyed by a greedy weapons company, cloning, death, rebirth, experimentation and a parasitic monster with acid for blood. The best scene is in Aliens when Ripley and Newt are trapped in a room with two face-huggers. They have no weapons and no way of reaching the marines outside.
4: The werewolf in An American Werewolf in London
Although this is supposed to be a comedy, it is in reality quite a dark film. The scene that resonates most strongly is the bit when the werewolf bites off a policeman’s head and proceeds to destroy the city.
5: The thing in The Thing
This sci-fi by John Carpenter is by far the best sci-fi science alien. Scenes such as the ribcage-jaws scene have made this film a great success but my favourite bit is when the thing breaks in to a dog pound and absorbs several dogs before taking on the pound owners.
6: The Freddy snake in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
The third addition to Wes Craven's series saw the creation of one of the most underrated movie monsters of all time. In one twisted dream Freddy Krueger turns himself in to a snake and tries to eat a teenage girl. He fails when the heroine Nancy Thompson arrives and stabs him in the eye.
7: The t-rex in Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World
This is one of Spielberg's greatest scenes. a t-rex escapes his captors after arrival in San Francisco and trashes the neighbourhood. Good old-fashioned carnage!
8. The Rancor in Star Wars Episode 6: Return of the Jedi
Aside from seeing princess Leia in a slave bikini (this is a joke) the Rancor battle was the best scene in the film. Luke Skywalker is thrown into a pit with the dreaded Rancor (which looked very similar to the big angry monster in Hellraiser). Luke does not use any Jedi tricks in this fight. He simply traps the beast under a huge door and calls it a day.
9: Kong in Peter Jackson’s King Kong
This remake of the 1933 classic was surprisingly good. The best bit in the film was the fight scene between Kong and the t-rex. Kong 1 dinosaurs 0. No contest.
10: the giant creature in Cloverfield
Cloverfield was shot from the perspective of a guy with a video camera, so it was hard to get a good look at the film's monstrosities. But they were there. And the best bit of the film is when the guy with the camera gets killed by one.
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