I've known JAL a long, long time. I don't know exactly when we started hanging about, but I do remember he had a lot of pictures clipped from Fangoria in his locker in middle school. I can also say our first collaboration was a 9th grade video for English class wherein we discussed different kinds of horror movie characters. I have no idea what the assignment was supposed to be about, but I do know we called it "Psychobabble".
Anyway, dude knows his scary movies. He was the first one to show me Halloween (I could not believe Jamie Lee Curtis had played a high schooler. For some reason, that was mindboggling.). In college, we saw movies together like Dead Alive and Lynch flicks. So I am, of course, thrilled that he participated. The boy knows scary flicks.
Witches - I don't think it gets any scarier. I don't like them one bit, with their incantations and eyes of newt. I think what gets me the most is that the result of their ill deeds always seems to be very much linked to the visceral. Witches seem to revel in pain, be it vomiting cherry pits or finding cameraman's teeth in a bag. No one ever when quickly under the spell of a witch and what they're doing to you is seems to come from the darker corners of imagination.
Speaking of corners, they make you to things like this, which for my buck, is one of the most unnerving images committed to film.
AmyD is new to our Signal Corps, and I am delighted she's decided to participate, and I think you'll be glad, too
Least Favorite: Chucky
Why nobody ever just drop kicked this monster, I could never understand
As a fourth-grader, I had an irrational fear of Charles Lee “Chucky” Ray of the Child’s Play movie series fame. I couldn’t look at him, think about him, see him in a commercial, or hear other people talking about him without sensing indescribable dread and crying. Since he actually frightened me (and still does a little to this day), he is my least favorite monster. I have no idea where this fear came from because I have never even seen a single “Chucky” movie, and I had nothing but positive doll experiences growing up. It made no sense to anyone at the time. I couldn’t even go to the cheesy video store in my neighborhood, “Movies Galore” (yes, that really was the name), without dramatically avoiding the “Horror” movie section. If I even caught a glimpse of the demonic red-headed doll on the movie box by accident, my heart would race and I would start sweating profusely.
Unsurprisingly, my family had no idea how to deal with my strange behavior, but that fact has never stopped them from trying before. While my sister delighted in exploiting my fear, my parents decided to employ two different approaches to try to calm me down. My psychiatrist dad decided some sort of “thought experiment”/mental exercise was in order. He instructed me to lie down, close my eyes, visualize putting Chucky in a jar, twisting the lid on tightly, and putting the jar on a shelf somewhere in the recesses of my elementary school mind. I am not making this up. So, as I stretched out on the couch trying to put Chucky in a mental memory jar, all I could think was, "what if he gets out?" Cue panic.
My mother, the more practical of the two, took it upon herself to “tease” the fear out of my body. She was convinced that I was far too old and smart to be afraid of Chucky. Clearly, she did not understand that age and a high Brain Quest score were totally irrelevant to the matter. So, (again, I am not making any of this up) she would follow me into a room at night, turn off all the lights, and then whisper "Chucky, Chucky, Chucky" to me in the dark. Immediately the tears would well up in me and the guilt would set in in her. The tagline to all of these experiences as I would run out of the room was always the same, “Amy, I don’t even know what a ‘Chucky’ is. It’s just some pretend creature!”
I think these experiences only proved that my folks were well-meaning but ill-equipped to battle a little doll in overalls. Eventually, I outgrew my fear, was able to sleep again, and could rent as many Sega videogames from “Movies Galore” without any panic attacks. However, no one in my family has seen a “Chucky” film since he was banned from our household for so long. I doubt the ban and his “least favorite monster” moniker will ever be lifted.
Favorite: Rhoda Penmark from The Bad Seed (1956)
Wow. Just.. I need to see this movie.
Rhoda Penmark is the greatest mean girl there ever was. As both a child and a monster, this makes her all the more compelling. Children naturally don’t understand complex morality, and Rhoda flaunts this in the most grotesque manner. You really can’t help but empathize with her poor mother when she discovers her little brat killed grandma. My parents were big fans of “The Bad Seed,” so anything my sister and I ever did was dwarfed by Rhoda's growing body count. In fact, her evil nature worked to reaffirm our (mine, especially) own angelic goodness.
Hey, everybody! It's time for Jamie's entry! I've known about Jamie's love of this monster for many years, and I am happy she finally gets to share this with you.
I should also add: Jamie actually provided her own captions for the pictures, so kudos to her
Favorite Monster: “Nessie”, The Lochness Monster
In no way is this picture fake
Although I do not believe in any mythical creature, I wish with all my heart that somehow Nessie could be real. I love that she is this huge sea (lake?) monster that so far no one has been able to decisively capture on film. That means she is stealthy. And smart. Or maybe she has a cloaking device, which would only make her even cooler. She also seems relatively harmless and I am a fan of friendly monsters.
Terrifyingly adorable?
Least Favorite Monster: Trashsquach
When I was around 7 years old, my mother thought she would play a funny funny trick on me and had my brother hide in a trash bag to scare me. When I went to take “the trash" out like she instructed, “the trash” moved and started following me down the hall. My 7 year old brain could not process this and to this day that moment is the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. In exchange for coming up with the name for this entry, I formally and publicly forgive Doug for his hand in this incident.
Trashquach could be the next SyFy original
Jamie, I wasn't sure if the picture you provided provided the real terror of Trashquach, so I fixed the picture for you.
Our own Horus Kemwer of of Against the Modern World sends in his picks for Favorite and Least Favorite Monster! My, but these entries are diverse, and I have to give Horus extra points for style.
Tetsuo, The Iron Man, at his angriest
My Favorite Monster: Tetsuo, The Iron Man
Tetsuo is star of two classic cyberpunk movies by visionary Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetso: The Iron Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) (all screencaps from the latter).
[Note: the name is a pun in Japanese as the prefix "Tetsu-" can mean "iron" and the ending "-o" can mean man, though these are not the characters with which the common name "Tetsuo" is usually written.]
Tetsuo is a mild mannered (nay, downright wimpy!) Japanese "salaryman" who is one day mysteriously harassed by strange techno-punks. He discovers that when angered, his arm turns into a gigantic gun which he then fires at his antagonists in blind rage.
In typically perverse Japanese fashion, Tetsuo is tricked into slaughtering is loved ones by this strange ability (in the first movie, his wife, in the second his son—essentially the second film is just a larger budget retelling of the story in the first rather than a sequel proper).
As tense situations (and correspondingly, Tetsuo's degree of anger and stress) increase, he discovers that more and more of his body is able to sprout guns.
Tetsuo's chest is now a barrage of firing cannons!
Although the source of Tetsuo's strange "ability" (curse?) is eventually revealed, I'll leave the curious reader to discover it via netflix . . . (hint: it's not pleasant)
The appeal of Tetsuo is the usual man down fights back taken to extremes. First, Tetsuo the salaryman is so pathetic and beset upon that he takes the beleaguered victim syndrome to a new level. When he turns badass, though, he turns so badass he can't even control himself.
Tetsuo's become a full on mecha for his final battle
Unfortunately, none of the screencaps really do Tetsuo justice. And this is another big part of what makes him so cool: Tetsuo really only exists in the mind of the viewer. Tsukamoto "creates" Tetsuo out of a barrage of crazy imagery, fast cutting, frenetic industrial music, and bizarre atmospherics. At no point do you really get a clear view of him, but in your mind you build up a whole construct of crazy machinery. Tetsuo isn't just a costume, he's a whole music video, limited only in its cyberpunk badassery by your own imagination!
Baixo Astral talks to his TV set
My Least Favorite Monster: Baixo Astral (aka "The Down Mood")
Baixo Astral is the villain from the Brazilian children's (?) movie Super Xuxa contra Baixo Astral (1988), which I've seen most convincingly translated ("Baixo Astral" sure does not mean "Satan" in Portuguese) as "Super Xuxa vs. the Down Mood." And "Down Mood" really seems to sort of fit the character of Baixo Astral, who is dedicated to bringing war, destruction, corruption, vandalism, and anything that's downbeat into the world.
SXCBA stars Xuxa Meneghel, the single hottest children's show host ever to talk the face of the earth (oft parodied by ignorant Americans, jealous that none of the children's shows they grew up with had hosts anywhere near as hot). Nevertheless, the movie is inventive, with crazy scenes and catchy music.
Except when Baixo Astral and his dopey sidekicks are on screen.
The lamest sidekicks in any children's movie ever
Frankly, Baixo Astral himself wouldn't be that bad if his supposed evil hadn't been set up as being so intense. Frankly, he just can't live up to it. Add to that the fact that he has the lamest sidekicks in the entire universe and every moment with him just sucks.
Even the climax sucks. Baixo Astral tries to keep Xuxa's mood down by "shooting" her with his TV gun which shows sucky downbeat things like violence. The gun itself has actually a kinda cool cyberpunk design, but somehow, wielded by Baixo Astral, it just turns to suck.
TV guns could be cool, but not this one
But really, the worst thing about Baixo Astral is that whenever he's around, fun things like this aren't happening:
Final note: if you bear in mind that Brazil is a country that dealt with its homeless street urchin problem by simply shooting them, then the appeal of someone like Super Xuxa coming along and painting everything like a rainbow so everyone can just live happily together seems a lot more understandable . . .
If you haven't ever Googled 90's-era Latin-American children's TV host, Xuxa, I highly suggest you do so. I still remember stumbling across her while in college, and remember wishing I knew more Spanish.
This I find fascinating. I've never seen this movie, but people who have seen it love this thing. I honestly expected JimD to send in lots of stuff about Zombies, so this was a bit of a surprise!
Without further ado, here's JimD's entry:
I remember seeing this movie as a young child and being scared of the Bansee, the ominous figure in the film who arrives to creep out everyone. Much ado is made of the arrival of the Banshee, and I've never forgotten it. Decades passed, and when I learned the film had arrived on DVD, I had to rent it, and of course, it's all spectacularly silly to watch now. But back in the very early 1980s, not so much.
Shelley's Frankenstein hit me over the head like a ton of bricks when I read it as assigned reading in high school, and the character of Victor Frankenstein and his unbridled ambition, followed by his inability to take responsibility for what he'd created... pretty good stuff.
While there's no question the Monster is murderous, Shelley also infuses him with a craving for understanding and a humanity that Frankenstein himself may have set aside.
The movies, of course, turn the monster into an invulnerable, inarticulate beast, but the first three in particular explore much of the same themes, and are a lot of fun in their own right.
Is The Monster actually scary? Well... yeah. I mean, he's a hodgepodge of parts of various people sewn together and brought to life through artificial means. He also kills folks both accidentally and intentionally (and just to make a point - that's gangster). In the movies the Monster is more or less a superhuman, immortal walking weapon with quite a different personality. However, I think we can look at Victor/ Henry* Frankenstein as us, and he, of course, is far scarier than the Monster. After all, he dreamed the creature into being, and he failed to contain what he'd made.
but for my dollar, I'll take The Bride...
Baby, you can re-animate for me anytime
Of course, the portion of the novel featuring The Bride and the movie follow two entirely different trajectories. I think the pursuit of The Bride (or a mate or whatever) for The Monster is so terribly tragic and part of what makes the story so haunting, that longing for contact and love that humans can grasp, and the lengths the Monster will go to for fulfillment of that need can read as the horrible act of a murderer, but that's a pretty dim reading of the characters.
Of all the monsters, its the understanding forged between The Monster and his creator that's the most fascinating aspect to me (more so in the novel than in the movie, but the movie doesn't shy away from this, either). Having to face down the monster you've created and abandoned, who you've rejected and whose one dream you've torn apart? Well, that's a pretty tough conversation to have. In the sequel, Dr. Pretorious certainly adds a whole new aspect to the proceedings as Whale was making a movie completely separate from the novel.
Curiously, its Young Frankenstein that seems to be the one version of the story we can see that bridges the gap between the monster and its creator.
The original novel is the template for a thousand more stories, movies, comics, whatever... but in my book, the original is still the best in both novel and the first two movies, and its a template for a reason. The story says something very interesting about us as a creative species, and its a lesson you hear reflected and rebounded throughout science-fiction.
As per The Monster, he's the avatar of that creation, and one that is entwined hopelessly with its creator.
*that's what he's called in the movies
2) American Remake Godzilla - Least Favorite
I like a good Godzilla movie from Toho studios. Man in Suit is where its at, if you ask me. And I love how Toho always makes sure there's some reason Godzilla is rampaging across Japan, be it an anti-nukes warning, people not loving one another enough, or as a reminder to recycle. Whatever. Godzilla is sort of a nation's conscience and psychic backlash stemming from guilt writ large and with atomic breath.
With total sincerity, I contend that this is a metaphor. Also, its @#$%ing awesome.
In the summer of 1998, Roland Emmerich (I assume, I can't remember) got his hands on a high-grade CGI crew (well, 1998 good) and went about making an American version of Godzilla. I went opening day, popcorn and Diet Coke in hand, and was naively quite excited to see what a couple hundred million thrown at a Godzilla movie would get me. The answer: an absolutely horrendous movie featuring a CGI Godzilla that made me long for the days of Man in Suit. And it featured a complete waste of Vicki Lewis.
This version of Godzilla is so reviled by true-blue Godzilla fans that the creature and the movie is referred to online as "GINO" or "Godzilla in Name Only", which I fully support.
While Godzilla in this movie was also created by nuclear tests, Americans get off guilt free as the tests were French atom bomb tests. And, of course, we were just hapless victims in our version of the story, which...
Anyway, there's my social commentary quota for the month.
Yes, the monster looks a little like a squatting mime playing dinosaur
The monster-as-emblem-of-psychic-punishment-for-national-shame angle is completely missing from this Godzilla, but... that's of course not quite enough.
The creature just looks stupid and does stupid things. Its a 30-story monster that sneaks around between sky scrapers, runs so quickly in the middle of Manhattan that it ditches military helicopters, and slithers through the New York subway line. It has a bizarre and almost lithe body for something of its scale, including oddly human limbs. Its just really perplexing to see on something of that scale that's just so off that your brain knows it and sort of sends you signals about how this just doesn't look right at all.
Godzilla has really been hitting the gym
American Godzilla is supposed to be a mutant iguana, I think, so the filmmakers decided that while a 30 story iguana with shoulders* isn't a stretch, apparently giving us some nuclear-fueled fire breath is just getting silly (although they do give it a sort of "air blast" thing, which... @#$% you, American Godzilla. Your dumb fake fire breath via exploding gas line isn't going to cut it here!).
I recently watched this movie in its entirety, by the way, convinced it couldn't be as awful as I'd remembered (I took Jason to see the movie because he wouldn't believe it was as bad as I'd said). It may have been worse. Just.... truly... an horrendous movie in so many ways, from scripting to acting to derivative creatures and scenarios to the worst love interest in a movie I can remember... and it will make you very glad we escaped 90's big-budget movie-making alive and intact.
What's stunning is that so many people had to have worked on that GD iguana, and apparently nobody pointed out that this thing just made no sense, and wouldn't it just be better to redesign based upon the Japanese version rather than start from scratch? And didn't anybody talk to a biologist or even a high school anatomy student while figuring out what a 30-story animal would look like if they were going to walk away from Gozilla classic?
Anyhow, this movie has largely been forgotten, and gladly so. I wouldn't mind another American remake or Japanese/ American remake where it seemed like everyone wasn't so busy patting themselves on the back and second guessing 50 years of awesome movies that they wound up with a boorish movie with a crummy looking monster. Sure, go CGI and do some mild redesign, just so long as Man in Suit never goes away...
*btw: an anatomical difference between lizards and dinosaurs? Lizards have splayed legs vs. how dinosaurs have hips that place the legs under them. Think how monitor lizards get around versus how triceratops stands. See, you learn important stuff here all the time.
Tomorrow sees the release of Superman: Earth One from DC Comics.
The book reimagines Superman as if he is starting his career in 2010/2011 as a 20-something (and without any of the baggage of 10 years of Smallville). The book is written by J. Michael Staczynski and drawn by Shane Davis. As an attempt to reach the library, bookstore, Amazon and general audience that isn't too keen on dropping $4 for a floppy comic (or finding a comic shop), DC is launching the Earth One line as a series of original graphic novels.
This comic arrives in hardcover (which I think is an iffy call) and is priced at about $20 USD.
Apparently there's been some confusion and some odd press from major/ non-comics-related press being written that suggests that Superman is not wearing a cape and tights, but a hoodie or something. Apparently, these writers literally never opened the book or looked beyond the cover.
This is not the costume
This is 20+ Clark Kent becoming Superman in America. I know its very confusing that he's not a middle-aged guy in a suit (which, really, who wears suits anymore? Let alone 24 year olds.), but that's his street clothes, not his Superman costume.
And, press: all kinds of people wear hoodies. Who does not? Twilight vampires. I don't even know where that's coming from. Having seen those movies, nobody wears a hoodie despite the fact they live in a rainforest in Washington and probably should if they want to keep their hair nicely gelled. But... is everything featuring a 20-something with a sci-fi or fantasy bent to it going to have to be compared (unfavorably) to the Twilight franchise?
This, by the way, is the Supersuit:
You do not @#$% with the Super
So, there's your wild reimagining of the costume.
DC isn't stupid. Nobody likes it when you mess with the costume and basic look of Superman. Oh, sure, everyone will say they want to update it, but at this point the costume is an icon. Anything you do to "fix" it will be a modernization that reflects current fashion or design, and that's not really what makes the Supersuit.
I'm picking up my copy of the comic tomorrow at Austin Books. Hopefully a review is forthcoming.
Fantomenos writes in about his favorite, The King of the Monsters
My favorite monster? Easy. Godzilla. No hesitation. I remember watching him electrocute the smog-monsters babies on our tiny B&W TV. I remember the cartoon (with Godzuki...), and I remember the Marvel comic. Godzilla has been a constant in my life.
oh, jeez. The Champions. Well, Godzilla doesn't need my good luck wishes.
But, my clearest Godzilla memory is from the Christmas of 1979, at age 5. We lived in Sitka Alaska, which means that our X-mas wish lists were made with catalogs, well in advance. This year, the Sears catalog featured a line of plastic Shogun Warriors, maybe 2 feet tall with missiles and shooting hands etc. For some reason, Godzilla was one of the members of the line. Wheels on his feet, a lever in the back that would extend a small flame-painted tongue, and his right fist shot when you pressed the button in the crook of his elbow. Remember, safety regs weren't what they are now, so this was a hard piece of plastic that shot out pretty fast.
If only King Ghidorah would reach out the same way...
This item immediately shot to the top of my X-mas list, in the "get me this and I won't ask for anything else" slot. But, $5.00 was way to much for my parents to spend on a "hunk of plastic". My B-day follows X-mas by about a month, and again no Godzilla. But, I had received enough money (Grandparents and such) to send away for it myself. So I did.
Oh, Hanna Barbera. The theme song to this show was awesome.
And it was magnificent. Pride of place in the toy chest. Totemic. I had also received this book:
kids, this was what passed for blogging in the 1970's
very '70's. Write your own book about yourself. Here's where the compulsive geekiness first rears it head. I put it together that if I can write a book about me, and Godzilla is the most important thing about me, it stands to reason that I should write "My Book About Godzilla". Which I immediately set about doing. Measuring his height, the length of the flame tongue, and most crucially, how far his fist could shoot, checking the distance of shot after shot. I remember it being around 5 feet, but that could be Proustian reverie.
So there it is, my first attempt at creative writing, being a completely uncreative compendium of facts about my favorite toy. Where'd Godzilla and his hagiography end up? No idea, we were a military family, and my parents were ruthlessly unsentimental about things. The late 70s were a weird time.
A League afterword: I had this same Godzilla toy, and it was exactly as awesome as Fantomenos describes. I once convinced this little German kid who moved in down the street that the thing was alive and would attack him because that little German kid was annoying. Anyway, his mom came down and yelled at me in German. It was traumatic, but certainly not the last time I would be yelled at by someone in a language other than English.
Godzilla is currently in the attic of my folks' garage, and I have plans to retrieve it over the holidays. However, Jason and I both believe that the missile fist may be missing. I will send photos when Godzilla resurfaces.
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