To preface this list, I had a brief conversation today about the power of imagination vs. the power of technology with regards to on screen creatures. For the most part, I'm in favor of the "less is more" because computers, puppets, miniatures... all have their issues to varying degrees. I've read a lot of books in the horror genre and then seen the accompanying movie, and usually, what shows up on screen just doesn't quite match up with what I have in my head. When the images meet or surpass what I've thought, it generally makes the movie a little more special. So thus, the top 5 least disappointing movie monster list. To make this list, the movie has to be based on a pre-existing book or story and I have to have read the story before I saw the movie. So without further ado...
5. JawsFoot, Peter Benchley's Creature
This isn't a particularly well known movie, to the point where I couldn't find any good screen shots of the titular beast. Instead faithful readers, you get the maquette pictured at the right. A short backstory/explanation... Peter Benchley is the guy who wrote Jaws (as well as the Deep) and based on the Jaws money, wrote 2 other sea creature monster movies, The Beast and White Shark. Both of these were made into TV miniseries, White Shark being renamed the awesomely generic creature. The book featured a nazi genetically enginereed shark/human hybrid that would have looked something like an albino Arnold Schwarzenegger with metal teeth and claws. As a middle school aged kid, I had this awesome mental picture of Ahnold as the White Shark monster (that line of reasoning wasn't too much of a stretch... I mean, he actually made Junior around the time I read this book). Instead, the producers of the movie changed the monster to what I have since dubbed Jawsfoot. When I watched the movie, I really loved this concept... I know it's completely ridiculous, outlandish, and dumber than the book, but I was not disappointed by this monster at all. Jawsfoot gets bonus points for the cast (including pre Sex and the City Kim Catrall and the Coach himself, Craig T. Nelson!) taking the ludicrous concept fairly seriously.4. The Balrog, Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring
The fiery demon from the mines of Moria whom Gandalf would not let pass... The only Balrog I saw as a kid was this stupidity from the Ralph Bakshi 1978 Lord of the Rings... A guy rotoscoped in with butterfly wing, slippers, and a lion mask... Terrible, just terrible
After seeing the early previews for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, I was fairly excitied what
the Balrog might look like... The book says "shrouded in fire, darkness, and shadow" and mentions the many pronged whip... Trying to combine fire and shadow together would seem like a really tough character design, but as you can see, I think it came together amazingly well. The only reason why the Balrog is so low on the list is that well, he isn't in the movie very much (less than five minutes of screen time in a two and a half hour movie). Still, an amazing use of CGI and one of the most imposing fantasy monsters I've ever seen.3. Kothoga Monster, The Relic
I realize that this was a fairly unoriginal movie, but I really liked the Jurassic Park meets Alien concept from the book. The authors, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child intentionally keep the descriptions fairly vague as to the actual creature's appearance. I don't want to post a picture because I think far and away the best part of the movie is actually seeing the monster itself. My mental picture of the Relic creature from the novel was blown away by an amazing Stan Winston (he's a visual effects guy who created both the Terminator and Predator among others) made creature.
One of the things I love is that the eye color of the monster changes from the novel to the book (yes, it's a small detail) and it's a really great, subtle tweak to the design. Yes, there is some poor late 90s CGI work at hand in parts of the movie, but the practical full size creature is one of the best of it's kind (I would use the Alien or Predator on this list, but since they were created directly for a movie and I saw the movies before any of the fan fiction, they don't qualify). So for being an organic, nasty, and crazy monster which elevated a mundane movie... the Kothoga (it's called MBun I think in the book)...
2. the Medusa, Clash of the Titans (the original)
I realize that Clash of the Titans has no exact literary basis, but I read the myth of Perseus before I saw the movie, so to me it counts. Clash of the Titans is the final movie done by legendary visual effects guru Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen came to fame by creating a series of stop motion creatures in fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s. After watching CGI films for going on 20 years now, Harryhausen films seem really archaic and outdated, but as a young kid, I thought they were amazing (In my opinion, the moat monster from Willow seems inspired by those old films).
The medusa in the movie has a snake like lower body, a rattlesnake tail, and shows skill at archery (I always thought that was cool as a kid, then when writing that, I think to myself, self, "why would someone as deadly as medusa need to be an archer?" It'd be like if Magneto was also a sniper or something... just stupid... but then, she's immortal, so archery is a hobby or something... yeah, I'm a dork...)
Ahem, the point is, the movie differs from the classic interpretation, but I really love the more aggressive, hunting Medusa. I know Clash of the Titans is fairly corny and takes itself a little too seriously (especially Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith), but it's rooted in Greek Mythology, so it's a fantastical adventure and nothing more than that. I know Clash is going to remade later this year and I'd wager that the Medusa in the remake will be a CGI creation that blows the original out of the water. For me, that old Medusa was an amazing representation of a myth brought to stop motion life.
1. All the monsters (besides the tentacles), The Mist
When I came up with this list, I knew that the menagerie of the Mist would take the top spot. For the not aware, the Mist is a novella (it's a little over 150 pages) in a book (Skeleton Crew) of short stories by Stephen King. It's about as simple as a plot gets, a bunch of people get trapped in a supermarket by an eerie mist concealing a number of deadly creatures. I read this story at the age of 13 or so, and I always wanted/pictured a movie adaptation (I thought of Christian Slater as the star back then, ended us with Thomas Jane, kind of a wash)... My wait finally came to end when Frank Darabont, better known as the force behind both Shawshank Redemption and the Green Mile, released his version in 2007. I was disappointed by very little of this finished product, as Darabont treated the material very seriously, (it's a fairly ridiculous setup and I always had worries a movie would get campy or Tremorsish) even getting a Stephen King approval to alter the ending.
Given the pretty modest 18 million dollar budge, the creatures in this movie were executed to near perfection (this movie, the 19 M Pan's Labryinth, and the 30 M District 9 prove to me that the talent/will of a crew of artists and technicians can overcome budgetary constraints to create amazing visual effects). My one problem was the 'tentacles' sequence... which didn't look quite finished as far as the integration with the rest of the environment was concerned (they also reminded me a lot of the lake monster from the first Lord of the Rings as well as the monsters from the Treat Williams opus, Deep Rising). The flying creatures bit, the pharmacy, the 'Blowhole' (super obscure Tick reference there) creature towards the end all show what CGI can accomplish in this modern age of movies... for sequences or creatures where puppetry, stuntpeople in suits, and stop motion all would completely fail.
So that's this fairly odd list done... I could write a reverse (the most disappointed I've been... to figure out an early candidate... "Amy Ugly Gorilla Amy Go Away") someday, but that might be hard to cut down to just five... Next up to finish... either my top 10 underrated villains or my top 10 supporting horror characters (the second would use the same criteria as my cartoon list). Any request anyone for something different?
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