Bonus Monster Movie of the Week DEMONIC SUPER HERO EDITION: Hellboy (2004)

HELLBOY (2004)
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Genre: Superhero/Occult/Detective

THE MOVIE:

Guillermo Del Toro is the superb Mexican director who gave us such great genre movies as Mimic (1996),  Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Pacific Rim (2013.) He has an all encompassing interest in monsters and brings them to the screen with great love and care. Hellboy is probably one of his most personal movies, as the central story deals with a monster’s struggle with his nature and the path that he has chosen versus that for which he was created. The movie is based on characters from the comic of the same name which was created by Mike Mignola, who worked closely with Del Torro on the movie.

The main character is Hellboy, a demon summoned as an infant to earth by Rasputin and Nazi occultists at the end of World War II. After the defeat of the Nazis he was taken in and raised by a kindly occultist, Dr. Bruttenholm, who works for the Federal Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, which was founded by FDR (who apparently never passed up a chance to start a government program). The Bureau is a sort of paranormal detective service which eventually includes Abe Sapien, an intellectually-gifted psychic fishman (voiced by the wonderful David Hyde Pierce) and the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman.

It's time to call Super Nanny.

Hellboy serves as the strongarm of the group, a gruff blue collar action hero with some very adolescent vulnerabilities. The group is a family unit with Dr. Bruttenholm acting as the wise patriarch.

Hellboy centers around the newest addition to this group, the fresh faced agent Myers, at a time when Rasputin returns with a few of his preternatural Nazi cohorts, including the clockwork cyborg, Kronen. He also utilizes the Sammael, monstrous demon hounds that reproduce twice for everyone that is killed. Rasputin wishes to reopen an extra dimensional portal to unleash a giant Lovecraftian tentacle monster on earth and to reclaim Hellboy for his original purpose, to serve as the herald of the End of Days.

"...and that's for Alien vs. Predator 2!"
"That wasn't me! I swear!"

While I am a big fan of the movie, it perhaps suffers for having too many incredulous plot lines for one movie. You have a demon struggling with his nature, a Federal Bureau of Paranormal research, Rasputin, occultist Nazi remnants (one of whom is a machine the other doesn’t age), a pychic fishman, a pyrokinetic struggling with her powers, a machine that summons extra dimensional tentacle monsters. On top of all that, a love triangle and interdepartmental infighting.


THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

Never having read the comics I was immediately interested in seeing this movie upon seeing the trailer because of the very imaginative creature design. Hellboy is chock full of good creature work. There’s Hellboy himself, who is superbly played by Ron Perlman under extensive makeup. If you’ve never seen Hellboy, know that he is big, red, has sawed off horns, a tail, and a large stone hand.

Abe Sapien is an aquatic being of a very extra-terrestrial appearance, with large dark almond shaped eyes and mottled blue skin. He is performed by Doug Jones on set and voiced by David Hyde Pierce.

Kronen is perhaps the film’s most visually interesting and badass character. He is a human being from the time of the Nazis who surgically enhanced himself with mechanical parts. Interestingly, his mechanics are low-tech and consist largely of gears and clockwork. He wears a couple of different masks that resemble gas masks. He is one of the most dangerous characters in the film and wields knives and swords fatally.

Bad...ass.

The Sammael engage in some very cool hand-to-claw scenes with Hellboy. They rather look like the bastard children of Aliens and Predators, and therefore a bit like the Predalien from AVP:R. They are basically quadrupedal with skeletal faces, long weapon-like tongues and tentacle manes around their heads. They seem to have the ability to infinitely contort their bodies.

The effects are by and large very good, although there is some annoyingly bad wirework. There are far too many scenes of people being “blown back” or “thrown” into walls and other objects where they are clearly being pulled by some sort of waist harness.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

All of the above, as well as a giant tentacle monster.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

This movie really has a ton of them but I love Hellboy’s subway fight with Sammael.

SEQUELS:

I was rather meh about the sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army which was released summer of 2008. Guillermo del Toro is finally getting busy again after a detour in Middle Earth but the fate of Hellboy is uncertain.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Available in a single disc or special edition two disc set on DVD and also on BluRay.

SEE ALSO:

What else is there like Hellboy?

Try the animated follow ups:

Hellboy: Sword of Storms and Hellboy: Blood and Iron

Get a handle on some of Del Toro’s other movies:

Mimic deals with insect monsters in the New York subways.

Cronos (1993) one of Del Toro’s Spanish-language movies also features Ron Perlman and a clockwork scarab that turns people into vampires.

Pan’s Labyrinth another Spanish language movie set in Spain during the Civil War and features a young girl who follows a sprightly insect into a magical world almost as monstrous at the real one.

THE TRAILER

Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

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The Overlooked Hotel: Deadgirl (2008)

THE OVERLOOKED HOTEL

The horror movie is a tricky thing to pin down. Some movies try to scare you and make you jump. Others try to gross you out. Others try to unsettle you. Most commonly today, horror movies try to shock you with violence or gore, desperately trying to elicit a reaction in the desensitized brains of 18-25 year old men.

Deadgirl does all of the above and actually manages to genuinely horrify. The set up seems to fit nicely within this decade's "torture porn" genre of horror movies when two disassociated high school slackers cut class and go exploring an abandoned mental hospital, cigarettes and beer in hand. They make it deep within the structure when they find a secret room in which an immaculately preserved female corpse is strapped to a table. Only she is not quite dead. Nor is she alive, either. One of the two decide to put her to "use" and what follows is a disturbing take on the teenage male mind and sexuality.




Like any great work of horror, Deadgirl is a deeply offensive and troubling movie that takes us on a trip through the shadowy corridors of the mind. It is dark and unpleasant, but ultimately rewarding for the honest insights that it offers. It differs from your Saws and your Hostels in that the horror does not solely come from gore and violence but from the main characters and how the horror upon which they stumble actually affects the course of their lives and its about the choices that they make and how it reveals the horror within them. Deadgirl, despite the fact that it is basically a zombie movie, is much more reality-based than your average horror movie. It has a strong indie-movie portait-of-middle-America feel that supports the horror elements very nicely.



Deadgirl is a movie that came in way under the radar ( it just got its own Wikipedia page entry within the last week) but that should not stop you from checking it out. Deadgirl does the work of the horror film admirably: it pulls the darkest parts of human nature from our unconscious kicking, and screaming into the light where we can see them and maybe really consider them. It has recently been released on DVD and is currently streaming on Netflix for your viewing pleasure. If you can stand the dark places that this movie takes you, it be a very rewarding experience.

Monster Movie of the Week: Rodan (1956)

RODAN (1956)

Director: Ichiro Honda

Genre: Daikaiju movie

Note: This profile is based on the English dubbed version of the movie which may have been re-edited for American audiences, although not to the degree of some of Toho’s other movies.

THE MOVIE

After the disappointing Godzilla Raids Again, Toho Studios had retired the giant lizard in favor of exploring some new kaiju. The first of these moives was Rodan from 1956 which is the story of a pair of giant irradiated Pteranosaurs that attack Japan. Rodan has the distinction of being the first kaiju movie ever to be filmed in color as well as introducing us to one of the most popular monsters in Toho’s pantheon. Rodan would later be incorporated into the Godzilla series and go on to costar in numerous Godzilla movies over the years.

What? It's perfectly normal for a pterodactyl to walk upright like this.

As one of the earlier Japanese giant monster movies Rodan also has a tone that is still somewhat grim and horrific and an ending that is downbeat to say the least. It begins oddly for a movie about aerial monsters with some miners in rural Japan who discover the mutilated bodies of some of their compatriots. They soon discover that these deaths are due to the presence of some large and irradiated prehistoric insects called Meganulons. These insects are apparently the food source for a pair of Pteradactyls dubbed Rodans. The Rodans are large and powerful and capable of producing hurricane force winds by flapping their wings. In order to save Japan and the world from the pair, lest they reproduce, the scientists come up with a plan to lure them into a volcano where they perish rather gruesomely.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

I have a soft spot for flying kaiju. When they are done well it is really cool. Unfortunately it took Toho a really long time to get this effect right.

I’m talking 2003.

Rodan is the very first stab at making this work and the results are very crude. Usually Rodan is seen gliding through the air on visible wires. When he flaps his wings he never does it enough to believably keep himself airborne (an affliction I have dubbed Rodanitis which has stricken Mothra, King Ghidorah and the Gaos birds among others). When he stands, he does so in a very manlike way. In Rodan, you can see the limits of suitmation for realizing certain kinds of creatures.

"I will drag my wings all over this damn city if I have to!"

Rodan is one of the nobler kaiju. While not benign by any means, from his original appearance and from the later Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla II, one gets the sense that Rodan has a sense of family. Here, the two creatures die together tragically. In the later movie Rodan adopts Baby Godzilla and sacrifices his life to protect him. Perhaps this is why he has remained so popular despite not being featured in many movies in the last thirty years or so.

MONSTERS FEATURED

A pair of Rodans as well as some man-sized insects called Meganulons.

DVD AVAILABILITY

The English dubbed “Rodan” is available in a five pack with some Showa Godzilla movies. The Japanese version is available as an import.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

The ending of the movie is surprisingly tragic and effective.

SEQUELS

While this was Rodan’s only solo film he was a popular character in the Showa series and appeared in Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (1965), Invasion of the Astro Monster (1966), and Destroy All Monsters (1968.) Rodan was also featured in the 1993 movie Godzilla Vs. MechaGodzilla II as well as in 2004’s Godzilla Final Wars in which he is realized with a mix of suitmation and CGI. His attack on New York is amazingly cool and probably his shining moment to date.

Rodan has also been prominently featured in numerous Godzilla video games, most recently in the fighting game, Godzilla Unleashed for the Nintendo Wii.

THE TRAILER

SEE ALSO:

Godzilla Vs. MechaGodzilla II (1993), Godzilla Final Wars (2004)

TRIVIA:

This is the only movie to feature multiple Rodans. In all of his other movies there are only one which has become known simply as Rodan.

The Meganulons make an appearance in 2001’s Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, as the basis for the Megaguirus monster.

Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

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Cad Bane...Is That Your Boy?

He's kind of a bastard. But that's a good quality in a villain.

So the second season of the animated Star Wars series The Clone Wars began a couple of weeks ago on the Cartoon Network. The first season was kind of a mixed bag as far as quality and tone but the new season has started off on a strong note as the Jedi face a new antagonist created for the series, the bounty hunter Cad Bane, a cunning and resourceful villain who brings a genuine air of darkness and danger to the show. And he is badass.

You don't want to know what an apartment like this goes for on Coruscant.

Cad Bane was introduced in the first season finale, and promised more bounty hunter action to come. Bounty hunters have been a big part of Star Wars lore from the beginning, when Greedo attempted to apprehend Han Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina and later with the introduction of Boba Fett. There is a strong Western influence on Star Wars and Cad Bane is visually inspired by Lee Van Cleef's characters in classic spaghetti westerns like For A Few Dollars More. He is starting to take his place in the pantheon of Star Wars badassery that includes Darth Vader, the Fetts, Darth Maul and General Grevious.

...and he hangs out with French models.

Bane is voiced by veteran performer Cory Burton (who you might remember as Shockwave in the original Transformers series as well as Transformers Animated). He is an alien based on a couple of the background creatures from the famous cantina sequence in the original Star Wars movie and attentive viewers will notice that his voice processing matches the snippet of dialogue we hear from those two, which is great attention to detail. He has a trace of a foreign accent that seems at once Peter Lorre with a tinge of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The animation in the second season has already surpassed anything from season 1, and Bane is brought to life with a great deal of subtlety and nuance which combines with the terrific vocal work from Burton to create a truly memorable character.

And that was probably the nicest thing he did that day.

These first few episodes of second season of The Clone Wars signify that the show is moving into a darker and more adult direction. In the first trilogy of episodes alone, we have a Jedi tortured to death (mostly on camera), prisoner abuse, Ahsoka captured and beat up and babies kidnapped for some sort of Sith experimentation. I feel like the show is starting to channel Battlestar Galactica, which is not a bad thing.

But seriously, what is with those cheek-hoses?

He is based off of Cliff and Norm here, as seen in Star Wars..

CAD BANE IN ACTION:

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: The Howling (1981)

THE HOWLING (1981)
Director: Joe Dante
Genre: Werewolf movie

THE MOVIE

Werewolf movies came of age with Joe Dante’s The Howling. Gone were the days when you could glue some hair onto someone’s face and slap some fangs on them and call them a werewolf. This movie along with An American Werewolf In London, (released a few months later) moved werewolves away from the traditional “wolf man” characters and towards a more monstrous and lupine design. Both movies feature elaborate transformation scenes that pushed the limits of pre-CGI special effects and make-up technology. Both movies featured work by legendary special effects artists: The Howling features effects by Rob Bottin who also worked on John Carpenter’s The Thing, and American Werewolf features effects by Rick Baker, who has worked on everything to the first King Kong remake and Star Wars to The Nutty Professor and Tropic Thunder. The Howling, however, opened first and spawned six sequels (most direct to home video).

The Howling is the story of TV anchor Karen White (not to be confused with 70’s horror actress Karen Black) played by Dee Wallace Stone who is being stalked by what she thinks is a run-in-the-mill serial killer (Joe Dante regular, Robert Picardo). With the cooperation of the police, she attempts to set him up by agreeing to meet him in an adult bookstore. The cops arrive just as he is about to show her something horrible. He is shot dead in front of her and she sees something she cannot shake but cannot exactly remember either. After having a breakdown on live TV, Karen and her husband are advised by a friend to visit The Colony, an isolated commune. This commune at first glance appears to be a vaguely Wiccan, Northern California post ‘60’s nature retreat.


Karen White becomes increasingly disturbed by little things around her in The Colony that somehow remind her of her attacker, such as the eerie howling that fills the night and the unexplained animal carcasses that she stumbles across. She begins to suspect that her husband is having an affair with a local nymphomaniac/proto-Angelina Jolie. Meanwhile Karen’s co-worker is researching the mysterious stalker and discovers connections to The Colony, which turns out to be a werewolf community. Curiously, the movie hints at internal political rifts between different factions of the werewolves but this is not explored in much depth. Having escaped the werewolves but having been bitten by one, Karen makes an emergency news broadcast in which she warns the world of the werewolf menace before turning into one on camera.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

The real centerpiece of The Howling is the make up and special effects work of Rob Bottin who attempts to get as close as possible to that ultimate holy grail of pre ‘90’s werewolf movies: the cut-away free transformation sequence. We take it for granted now from everything to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the craptacular Underworld movies. But back in the day, you could not do a transformation like this without cutting away several times. Bottin’s puppets/dummies/make-up manage to do so much in single shots that cutaways are limited. Of course the result is transformation sequences that are amazing and intricate but also long, ostentatious, and painful. I mean, seriously, bring a book. This woman sits there for like ten minutes while Robert Picardo transforms, and it's like, "What the hell are you watching this for? Run!"

The resulting werewolves are actually pretty cool and scary (although vaguely bunny-like). They actually look like a cross between a man and a wolf, which is a novel departure from werewolves that either looked exactly like wolves or, more often, Kenny Rogers.



MOSTERS FEATURED

A whole pack of werewolves.

DVD AVAILABILITY

Widely available.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

I like Dee Wallace Stone’s dramatic on-camera transformation at the end of the movie. Although it is contrived, illogical, and the rest of the movie doesn’t support the tragic tone with which it is presented, it is a very memorable moment in the history of horror movies. Although, I think she transforms into some kind of Terrier.

SEQUELS

There were six sequels to this movie; apparently each one is exponentially worse than the one before it.

THE TRAILER



SEE ALSO

An American Werewolf in London 1981 Silver Bullet 1985

Does anyone remember Fox's 1980's TV show Werewolf? It was literally one of the first FOX shows. Back when people used to make jokes about the Fox "network."

Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

🌳 Visit My Linktree

Monster Movie of the Week: CLOVERFIELD (2008)

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Cloverfield (2008)

Director: Matt Reeves

Genre: Monster on the Loose, Ameri-kaiju

THE MOVIE

Cloverfield might have been the victim of its own wildly successful marketing campaign. The trailer for Cloverfield came out of nowhere, attached to 2007’s megahit Transformers and it gave almost no information about the movie whatsoever. Not even the title.

And people went nuts. Speculation on the internet raged. People analyzed every little bit of information parsed out in the various viral websites and games associated with the movie. Was it a new Godzilla movie? Was it a Voltron movie? (“It’s a lion! It's huge!”) Was it an American Gamera movie? A Lost movie? What it actually was, was an attempt to create an iconic American movie monster that could stand with Godzilla.

While it remains to be seen if Cloverfield will have any kind of staying power in the American popular consciousness (anyone watch The Blair Witch Project recently? Didn’t think so.), it is an undeniably compelling experience and a unique take on the giant monster genre. While Cloverfield has its roots in Japanese kaiju movies, it avoids the mistakes usually made by American attempts to adapt the genre (see 1998’s Godzilla). The monster is kept largely mysterious; there are no long-winded attempts to explain anything. There are no talking-head scientists or feisty girl reporters to provide the characteristic loopy exposition that manages to be endearing the Japanese kaiju movies and grating in American ones.

"I said no cameras!"

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The movie effectively asks and answers the question “What would a giant monster attack really be like?” Because of the first-person point-of-view, we are literally with the human characters the whole time. More often than not, in kaiju movies, we are “with” the monster for much of the movie. If not in his point of view, we are at treating him as a character and seeing things more or less from his perspective. Here, we never are seeing things from his perspective, and he is only a force of destruction, which we are unfortunate enough to witness on several occasions.

The monster’s attack on Manhattan is presented as a terrible and shocking event that can’t help but recall the 911 attacks. This is really the first post-911 giant monster movie and the filmmakers exploit these new phobic pressure points to good effect. Despite it’s first-person conceit, this movie has quite a bit in common with the original Japanese Godzilla movie. Both movies were produced in the aftermath of some horrible traumatic national event, in Japan, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both are presented in a serious, realistic fashion. Both cinematic events are confused with the above events.

Yes, this thing is the Cloverfield monster. Well, Hasbro's interpretation.

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THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

The monster in Cloverfield is for me a bit of a let down. He’s not really a cohesive creature but a collection of disparate animal parts that don’t go well together. With his fragile-looking forelimbs and weird bat-like head (which recalls the Ray Harryhousen’s Ymir creature), he’s not particularly tough-looking by monster standards and he looks like he would lose in a fight against Godzilla, Gamera or even the American Zilla. Most importantly, the Cloverfield monster lacks personality in his brief screen time.

MONSTERS PRESENT

The monster, “Clover”

Numerous dog-sized parasites.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

Actually, featured in the trailer, the initial moments of the monsters attack on the city culminating in the rolling head of the Statue of Liberty.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Blu-Ray, although really what is the point of having this movie on Blu-Ray since it was filmed with consumer video?

God sends his vengeance against yuppie hipsters.

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THE TRAILER

SEE ALSO

Gojira 1954, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 1953, Godzilla 1998

TRIVIA

Technically, this is not the first kaiju story to be told in first person. That honor belongs to an episode of Godzilla: The Series, the animated series that serves as the sequel the American Godzilla movie. The show somehow manages to be a lot better than the movie and far more true to the Japanese series of Godzilla movies.

Michael Bay to Direct Transformers 3! Yay?

So it was just announced this week. Michael Bay will be fucking up-I mean directing another Transformers movie. Here are some free ideas that I'm sure would be perfect for the next movie:

Optimus Prime + Truck Nuts = hilarious and awesome.

Find new things for Megan Fox to mount or lean skankily over.

Make a comic relief Autobot named Low Ride, and give him a hilarious Mexican accent. See if Carlos Mencia is available to voice him. Orale!

Ravage was awesome in TF2, so bring him back. He was clearly killed in the last movie? Who cares! Bring him back anyway. No one will notice.

Need to bring in the Dinobots on this one. Instead of making them talk like cavemen, have them act retarded. People love that shit! And have Grimlock poop on something.

And use more of those classic names that people like. Only don't make them look or act anything like the old characters, just use the names.

We need to get the Combaticons in this one. But make sure when they are combined in Bruticus, you can clearly see their individual vehicle and robot modes in the background. No one will notice! Trust me!

Oh! And don't forget to have characters move randomly though space when it is convenient. No one notices shit like that. Like the giant aircraft graveyard that is outside of the Smithsonian.

Monster Movie of the Week: Species (1995)

SPECIES (1996)

Director: Roger Donaldson

Genre: Alien-on-the-loose/Body Horror/Sci-Fi/Exploitation

THE MOVIE:

Ah, Species. You should have been made in the ‘70’s. Can you imagine the trailer? I can.

CUE GRINDHOUSE MUSIC over SEXY STRIPPERS.

RASPY-VOICED ANNOUNCER

Meet SIL. She’s HOT. She’s FUNKY. She’s READY TO GET IT ON. She’s an extra-terrestrial vixen who’s on Earth for ONLY ONE REASON: to propagate her SPECIES.

Or something like that. Species tries really hard not to be the shlocky, gynophobic exploitation movie that it is at its core. It wants to be a smart and classy sci-fi thriller that makes some ironic commentary about singles life in the 1990’s. It even has a monster designed by H. R. Giger who designed Ridley Scott’s Alien. It has a cast of fine and distinguished actors like Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Forrest Whittaker and Michael Madsen. But, sadly, a bad script and poor direction doom it to mediocrity. It’s not a terrible movie (that would be Species 2, which is deliciously, mind-bogglingly bad) but not exactly a good movie either.

Ah, the proud MGM logo. And some space titties.

The idea behind Species is that an extra-terrestrial entity sends us instructions via SETI on how to make an alien/human hybrid (For Some Reason), apparently they were too busy to invade in person and want us to do all the shlep work. Okay. So we create this creature but then change our mind and decide to gas this little alien/girl (a young Michelle Williams) to death because she has some “rapid eye movement.” Only she escapes and grows up quickly and decides she wants to mate with various douchebags that she meets in LA.

So the government puts together a crack team to track her down and destroy her. There’s Fitch, the scientist who helped create her. Okay, he should go but he has a lot of explaining to do. There’s Press Lennox (on loan from the Institute of Fake Names,) an assassin for various shady government agencies. Good. He’ll come in handy. There’s Laura, a molecular biologist. She’ll be good because she can do all the CSI-type stuff. There’s Arden, a Cross Cultural Anthropologist. Um, I guess he can come. He can help with the driving. And then there’s Dan, an empath. Dan “feels things.” Dan walks into a murder scene where Sil has killed someone and says stuff like “She wasn’t happy.” Dan makes Diana Troi seem useful. Poor Forrest Whittaker. A note to all screenwriters: if you get to the point in your script where you need to include an empath just stop right there.

The cast of Species, watching Species 2.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

In her alien form, Sil looks like a perfect cross between Giger’s Alien and a tranny prostitute.

"Heeeaaayyy! You in the space shuttle! You wanna have some fun?"

In fact, Sil looks so much like an Alien that one could say that Species is a de facto Alien prequel. She’s certainly a better Alien/human hybrid than that silly looking monster at the end of Alien Resurrection.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

Sil and her baby. As well as an alien tentacle blob.

DVD AVAILABILITY:

Widely available either individually or in a three pack with its sequels.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

There are some nicely shot dream sequences in which Sil mates with another of her species. These scenes are weird and erotic but strange because the actual mechanics are not clear.

SEQUELS:

Species 2 Species 3 Species Quattro

SEE ALSO:

Alien 1979, Alien Resurrection 1997

THE TRAILER

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: The Fly (1986)

THE FLY (1986)
Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Body horror/love story

Two things have always bothered me about the “Beauty and the Beast” story:

1) Usually the Beast is redeemed at the end and turns into some sort of handsome prince as though to reward Beauty for being able to love a monster. You can almost imagine Beauty wiping her brow at the end and thinking to herself “Whew! That was close!”

I always thought that the Beast should remain a beast otherwise the whole theme of the story is compromised.

2) As monsters go, the Beast is not usually that terrible to look at. Usually, he is depicted as some sort of leonine or ursine creature. He a beast, yes, but at least he’s a mammal, right? I think most people could fall in love with a sentient mammalian creature under the right circumstances. I always wanted to see a “Beauty and the Beast” story in which the Beast was some sort of horrible disgusting creature. Then Beauty’s love for the beast would mean something.

THE MOVIE:

This brings me to David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, which is not only the ultimate work in the Body Horror subgenre but the most fully realized version of the “Beauty and the Beast” story ever put to film. The movie is famous for its extensive and Oscar-winning make-up, its gore, its good performances, and its overall quality given the subject matter. The Fly is one of the rare genre movies that is so good that it would win a flood of awards if not for the fact that it was a genre movie. If Jeff Goldblum hadn’t been covered in rubber and slime throughout most of the movie, he probably would have won an Academy Award for Best Actor.

This is gross and disturbing and he hasn't even gone through yet.

The Fly is the story of Seth Brundle, a scientist who has invented a set of pods that disintegrate matter, send it through space and restore it to its original form. He meets and falls in love with a journalist named Veronica (Geena Davis) and offers her the opportunity to cover the development of his teleportation pods. While the pods are able to send inanimate objects through space with no problem any living material sent through is horribly scrambled, as in the case of a baboon that is sent through with horrific results. Brundle makes a breakthrough and decides to try the pods out on himself, but unknown to him a fly enters the pod with him and his teleportation device becomes a gene splicer combining his DNA with that of a housefly and for the remainder of the film Brundle goes through a painful and disgusting transformation with his humanity literally sloughing off.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

Brundle goes through about four or five different stages in this movie, all but the last two are accomplished through prosthetic make-up. His transformation is slow and painful and many have speculated that this movie is a metaphor for the effects of AIDS and other degenerative diseases on the human body. Cronenberg has denied this and has stated that the film is a metaphor for the degeneration of aging, which I find hard to believe. The movie is clearly about disease and if you think about when the movie was made, how can it not be a metaphor for AIDS?

Brundle’s ultimate forms are realized through animatronics and are true fly/human hybrids. Having seen some of the concept art on the DVD I actually wish they had gone with some of the more fantastic designs they had available, but part of the movie’s impact is from its adherence to emotional and visual realism.

This scene put me off donuts for a while.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

The Fly features Brundlefly, a pissed off inside-out baboon and Monkey-Cat in the deleted scenes on the anniversary DVD.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

The heartbreaking end of the movie...and Brundlefly demonstrating how a fly eats donuts. I'm not going to forget that any time soon.

DVD AVAILABILITY:

An anniversary edition of this movie was released on DVD in 2006 which features extensive extras including a full-length documentary and deleted scenes, such as the infamous Monkey-Cat scene, which is disturbing in theory but kind of silly to watch. But in any case, it is a very good DVD set.

The movie has also been made available on Blu-Ray, but I don't know exactly what's on it and somehow, I don't know if I really want that extra layer of picture quality in this particular case. The movie is hard enough to watch as it is.

"Excuse me, can you tell me where the District 9 auditions are?"

SEQUELS:

The Fly II (1989)

So there was one sequel and now there is talk of a remake. But here is the twist: rumor has it that the remake will be directed by...David Cronenberg. Can we all have a collective "Whaaaaaaa?"

TRAILER:


SEE ALSO:

The Fly II, Alien 3 (1992), The Host (2006)