"Out-of-Space?" So, it's mad because it doesn't have enough closet space?
20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)
Director: Nathan Juran
Genre: Monster on the loose
THE MOVIE:
Back in the day, moviemakers could get away with silly science fiction premises like “In the year 1974, man has colonized the sun….” The premise of the classic 20 Million Miles to Earth is that a manned expedition to the surface of Venus crash lands in the Mediterranean and looses a Venusian monster on Rome.In reality the surface of Venus is hot enough to melt lead.Oh well, ignorance was bliss, or at least the fodder for fun movies like this one.
In the year 1957 man has secretly landed on Venus.The ship crashes to earth with only one human survivor.A canister containing a specimen of Venusian life looses itself from the ship and washes on to the Italian shore.A young boy finds it and sells it to a local zoologist. The little beast feeds off of sulfur and grows to enormous size.The zoologist attempts to take it to Rome but the beast escapes and goes on a mini rampage before it is recaptured. The creature again escapes and goes on a larger rampage in Rome, battling an elephant in the process.
This is another one of the movies worked on by the brilliant special effects master Ray Harrryhousen, the undisputed master of stop motion creature effects, having studied under the great King Kong special effects artist Willis O’Brian.His work on 20 Million Miles to Earth is among his best. It is also a great example of the monster-on-the-loose subgenre of movies which featured monsters running amok in urban settings, a favorite theme of the Harryhousen movies.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
The monster is known as the Ymir, although this term is never used in the movie.He grows to a height of about 25ft and is a bipedal reptile with a human like torso and a long tail.His face resembles that of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or, much later, the Cloverfield monster.Like the earlier Harryhousen film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, this film is shot in glorious black and white and the lighting is again used here to give the Ymir a wonderful three-dimensionality and texture.Harryhousen animates the creature with great personality and realism, such as the scene early on when the miniature version of the Ymir is first exposed to light and covers its eyes in a way that is almost cute.Ultimately, this is a sympathetic creature that has been displaced from its own home and thrown into our world by human beings.There are some other nice allusions to King Kong throughout the movie, such as the building top climax, here taking place at the ruins of the Coliseum instead of the Empire State Building.
MONSTERS FEATURED
Only the Ymir.
Grandpa?
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
The monster rampaging through Rome with the Imperial Ruins as a backdrop.
Now in groovy vision!
DVD AVAILABILITY
The original version of the movie has long been available and includes a nice Harryhousen retrospective and a few other features.
Recently a special edition came available featuring a new colorized version of the movie supervised by Harryhousen himself (apparently they wanted to shoot in color but did not have the budget) as well as the original black and white version.
Not do date myself too much but I remember a time before home video. It was a time when the idea of "owning" a copy of a movie was pretty much unheard of. It was before VCRs and even premium cable channels like HBO were a new thing. Back in those days, if you wanted to watch a movie you saw it in the cinema or caught it on TV. A network broadcast of a hit movie was a huge deal with a lot of fanfare and these broadcasts would gain enormous rating. That's how I first saw Alien. I was very young and happened to catch it on TV, perhaps on it's first broadcast in the early 1980's. I don't remember if I saw the whole thing or even if it scared me but I know that I was completely fascinated by it. I even begged my father to buy me a copy of the Giger Alien book that we saw in a used bookstore. I've been a huge fan of the Alien series since then.
Ridley Scott’s Alien is a milestone in monster and horror cinema and features what is arguably the greatest movie monster of all time: the Alien, designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger. The movie has spawned three sequels (each helmed by a different gifted director with radically different takes on the material), two cross-over prequels with the Predator franchise, a semi prequel in the form of Ridley Scott's Prometheus and too many rip-offs to list here. It also helped to launch the careers of star Sigourney Weaver and Ridley Scott. In addition to all of this, Alien and its sequels have also inspired a flood of spin-off comics, novels and videogames. It was one of the first genre movies to feature a woman as a strong protagonist and the ultimate survivor (this is heightened in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliensin which Ripley becomes a bonafide action heroine) and Alien features what Bravo TV deems the second scariest movie moment of all time: the infamous dinner scene, one of the most shocking and disturbing sequences in the history of the movies.
Alien was produced as part of the great late 70’s sci-fi boom in the wake of Star Wars but in many ways it is the polar opposite of George Lucas’ movie. Whereas Star Wars is an optimistic piece of bubblegum space opera, Alien is a dark and cynical horror tale that is thoroughly unromantic about the exploration of space and what we may find once we get there. While Luke Skywalker desperately dreams of adventures off his humdrum planet, Ripley and her crew would have been better off staying home. Ultimately, they are only in space to work, not to save the universe.
At its core, Alien is a throwback to the Sci-Fi horror films of the 1950’s such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space, in which a spaceship is menaced by an alien that hides in the shadows picking off the crew one by one. Alien does a better job of creating suspense and exploiting social tensions between the crew members. It shares with Star Wars a certain design aesthetic of a grungy “used universe,” unlike the sleek chrome rocket ships of classic Sci-Fi movies or the clinical whiteness of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The production design of Alien attempts to create a realistic utilitarian space in which a small crew lives in for long periods of time. The phase “truck drivers in space” was thrown around a lot during preproduction.
Ridley Scott’s film begins as the crew of the enormous interstellar shipping vessel Nostromo is awakened from an induced hibernation by a mysterious distress symbol. They receive instructions from their faceless employer (referred to throughout the film simply as “The Company”) to investigate this beacon. Once on the barren planet they discover a mysterious derelict space craft complete with a fossilized alien pilot and a cache of leathery eggs. When crewmember Kane examines an egg it hatches and a strange crablike creature attaches itself to his face. Kane ultimately ends up birthing the Alien which stalks the crew one by one until only Ripley is left.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:
The real star of the movie is Giger’s Alien. Without this extraordinary and nightmarish creature the movie would not be as effective as it is. H. R. Giger designed the Alien through its various life stages as well as the derelict ship and its interior. From the moment we see weird-looking ship on a grainy video feed from one of the crewmember’s exo-suits we know that we are in for something special.
The ship itself is actually alien-looking. This is in itself remarkable because as often as you see extraterrestrials and their technology in movies the designs rarely look alien. Giger’s ship is vaguely horseshoe shaped but also asymmetrical with a strange bioorganic appearance. The crew enters through a weird sphincter-like orifice and one can see in that one shot that they simply do not belong there. One of the underlying themes of the movie is the very Lovecraft derived idea, Men Do Not Belong in the Stars. This is powerfully reinforced in Giger’s design. The derelict ship is not made for men, it is the wrong scale, it is so alien as to be beyond human comprehension, the explorers stumble around it like children (not coincidentally children were used in these scenes so the sets could be constructed at half scale.)
The brilliance of the concept and design of Giger’s Alien is how it taps into people’s psychosexual fear and discomfort. The Alien itself is conceived in an act of oral rape, in which a creature attaches itself to Kane’s head and inserts a long tube down his throat with which it plants its seed. When we later see the underside of this “facehugger” we see organs that somehow manage to look like a penis and a vagina at the same time.
The infant alien later erupts from Kane in a bloody parody of childbirth. When we next see it, The Alien is spindly and asexual with a long phallic head. Novelist Anne Rice has speculated that movies like Alien and its imitators-in which sexualized or fetus-like Body Horrors exact their revenge on society-are exhibiting a kind of collective guilt over abortion. Whatever the reason, the design in Alien is successful because it insidiously crawls into your unconscious an lurks there.
In terms of special effects, the creature is realized primarily through suitmation and clever editing that rarely lets you see the entire Alien. The impression from watching the movie is that you ever know exactly what the Alien looks like.
MONSTERS FEATURED:
1 Alien.
1 chestburster
1 facehugger
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:
I like the exploration of the derelict ship. It’s very creepy and overwhelmingly Gigeresque.
HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY:
Widely available on its own or in boxed sets. There two different DVD boxed sets the first of which features Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 or the superior Alien Quadrilogy, set which features theatrical and alternate cuts of all FOUR movies. The special features for Alien include deleted scenes as well as a documentary on the making of the film as well as the usual trailers and interviews, as well as the exhaustive special features from the old Alien laser disc.
The Alien Anthology Bluray set is truly beautiful thing, with all of the above features and plenty of Bluray exclusive content, and it offers a customizable way to watch the bonus features according to what you are interested in seeing. Out of all the movies in the series, Alien,really shines in this HD format.One really begins to appreciate the abundance of detail in the sets and costumes. The Anthology set is a must for any fan of this movie.
SEQUELS:
James Cameron's Aliens (1986) is set some time after Alien and continues Ripley's story as does Alien 3(1992), which concludes it. Alien Resurrection (1997) is set hundreds of years later and features a clone of Ripley.
Alien Vs. Predator (2004) is a defacto prequel to Alien and is a contemporary tale set in the Antarctic and involves the creatures from Predator. It is particularly interesting to fans of Alien as it makes use of some ideas discarded from Alien such as the abandoned temple that was cut from the movie. Its own sequel is Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).
In 2012 Ridley Scott returned to the Alien universe with Prometheus, set several decades before Alien an which deals with an expedition to make contact with the "Space Jockey" race glimpsed in the first movie and their connection to humanity. It also has some Alien-y creatures in it.
There has been talk of a sequel to Prometheus. THE TRAILER:
SEE ALSO:
The Thing (1982), It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958), Species (1995)
Director: Bong Joon-ho Genre: A label defying mix of monster-on-the-loose, family drama and comedy.
THE MOVIE:
The Host is a South Korean film about the ne’er-do-well Park family whose youngest member is abducted by a mutant sewer monster and their struggles to get her back. Not only do they have to contend with the monster itself but with government and international interference, incompetence and misinformation. During the course of the movie the family become bio-fugitives in order to track down their missing member from whom they receive a garbled cell phone call.
Elderly Hee-bong runs a snack shop on the banks of the Han River with his son Gang-du, a thirty-something slacker doofus with dyed blonde hair. Gang-du’s brother, Nam-il, is an embittered and chronically unemployed alcoholic. Only the family’s women seem to fare a little better: There’s Gang-du’s daughter, young Hyun-seo, who seems more mature and resourceful than any of her male relatives and Nam-Joo, a skilled archer who’s hesitation causes her to come home with a bronze medal. This dysfunctional family is at the core of The Host. It is the rare monster movie that takes the time to cultivate human character and relationships and good performances from its actors, who create multidimensional characters who are endearing despite their flaws. The movie is not about the unnamed monster but about how the monster affects this family.
The movie’s opening scene has an American doctor ordering his Korean lab assistant to dump dozens of bottles of formaldehyde down the drain and into the Han River, presumably causing to the mutation that creates the creature. Throughout the film, the Americans are depicted as either sinister autocrats, foolishly heroic, or the brains behind an elaborate disinformation campaign to cover up the creature’s origins. One leaves “The Host” wondering if they even knew what they were covering up or if governments just reflexively cover up anything that might potentially look bad. The South Korean government and media are painted as ineffective U.S. lapdogs that help spread the lie about a “virus.” This is part of the movie’s libertarian charm, which ironically looks back at SARS and birdflu and the inadequate government responses to those problems through the lens of a monster movie.
The Host is an all around class act. It is well written, nicely acted, thoughtfully directed and beautifully shot. It is one of the rare monster movies that can appeal to viewers outside of the fan base.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:
The monster effects are surprisingly good for a movie that only cost the equivalent of $10 million dollars to make. The filmmakers outsourced some work out to Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital and a U.S. company and the result is Hollywood-quality special effects.
The monster vaguely recalls the Kothoga monster from The Relic (1997) in size and body shape but also resembles a giant primitive amphibian that still maintains some fish-like characteristics. The monster moves a little awkwardly on land but gracefully swings, climbs, and flips using its large forelimbs and prehensile tail (featured on the poster) under bridges and on pipes.
MONSTERS FEATURED:
Just the one.
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:
The creature’s first appearance as it rampages through the touristy riverside. Some shots recall classic Japanese kaiju movies.
As a teenager, I was ready to get back into video games after having been a big Nintendo fan as a kid.I had the choice between getting a Super Nintendo or a Sega Genesis.My friend Ian had convinced me that the Sega Genesis was cooler, better.Sonic the Hedgehog had some levels that were in 3D.Three D!!And then there were all these intriguing add-ons like the 32X and Sega CD drive.It could play actual CDs!I had never even used a CD before.But the clincher for me was Alien 3.
Alien 3 was a game that was very loosely adapted from the movie of the same name.It was more like the video game version of Aliens that we never got on the home consoles with lots of guns and violence and little of the existentialism of the David Fincher movie.According to my video game magazines at the time, it was going to be bad ass.And it was coming out for both systems.But it was coming out on the Genesis first.Sold!
So, I got my Genesis, I got my copy of Alien 3 and it was…okay.It was a little repetitive but the worst part was that there was no Queen at the end.Surely this had to have been some mistake.There was even a reference to the queen in the instruction manual.What the hell!
Later, I rented a Super Nintendo and a copy of Alien 3 for that system and I realized the great cost of my impatience.While the game play is very similar, comparing the two games, it is almost hard to believe that they are in the same software generation.The SNES version has vivid, eye-popping graphics and gorgeous stereo sound.How could I have been so stupid?
Years later, I bought a copy of some SNES games on eBay to use with my roommate’s old Super Nintendo.I bought Alien 3 and, surprisingly, it had not aged badly at all.I had some fun with it for a few hours, but not long enough to forget my ill-advised fling with the Sega Genesis.My copy of Alien 3 for the Super Nintendo is sitting in a drawer right now with a copy of Super Mario All Stars and an old Xbox controller.
The mid to late '90’s saw a CGI-aided renaissance in monster B-movies. Luis Llosa’s Anaconda was a part of that wave and is somewhat of a minor classic creature feature. It features a well known cast including a pre diva Jennifer Lopez, Eric Stoltz, Ice Cube (with his trademark gangsta staccato delivery) and Owen Wilson and, at the time, the movie showcased what one could do with CGI effects in a fairly low budget monster movie. Refreshingly, among the survivors at the end of the movie are a Latina and a black man, which is a bit of a rarity in this genre.
But of course the real reason to watch Anaconda is Jon Voight’s insanely over-the-top performance as Paul Sarone, a creepy Paraguayan snake hunter who slowly takes over a National Geographic documentary expedition. Not since Al Pacino in Scarface, has a non-Hispanic actor so operatically overplayed a Latino character in a major movie. Sarone speaks with a heavy (and inexplicable) Caribbean-Spanish accent, he leers, he grimaces, he constantly reminds the other characters of his jungle prowess because he “hun’s e’snakes for a leeevin’” I suppose the producers choose Paraguay as Sarone’s country of origin because there was less of a chance of someone saying “Hey! He doesn’t look or sound Paraguayan!” I mean, how often do you run into someone from Paraguay?
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
Then there are the snakes, which have not aged well in the twelve years since this movie was released. They look fake and plastic and very mid 1990’s CGI. The compositing of shots in which the snake interacts with the actors is pretty bad.
Oh, well. It’s a fun movie with a fantastic set piece at the end set in a very cool abandoned jungle outpost (so what if it looks like it is from a Universal Studios stunt show?)
MONSTERS FEATURED
A couple of giant anacondas and their babies.
DVD AVAILABILITY
Widely available on DVD and also available on Blu-Ray.
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
It is established early in the movie that anacondas swallow and regurgitate their prey. So after Jon Voight meets his ironic fate he makes a very special cameo appearance and proves that just because your character is dead doesn’t mean you have to stop overacting.
SEQUELS
Anacondas: The Search for the Blood Orchid 2004
TRIVIA
The movie would lead you to believe that anacondas regurgitate their prey often and apparently for the hell of it. In actuality they only do it when startled or in states of high anxiety. So they don’t like to puke any more than you or I.
Director: Eugene Lourie Genre: Monster on the loose, proto-daikaiju movie.
THE MOVIE:
You may not have seen The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms but it is without a doubt one of the most influential genre movies of the 1950’s and beyond. If it seems like a fairly typical 1950’s monster movie (A giant prehistoric creature is awakened by atomic testing at a remote location while bland characters try to find a way to stop it as it wreaks havoc on the nearest big city) that is because it was copied over and over again. It also has an interesting but under-developed subplot about the dinosaur carrying a virulent disease.
Typical alarmist Liberal Media.
Lourie’s was later followed by such movies as Them! (1954) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955.) The Beast actually resembles another seminal monster movie: Gojira, or Godzilla: King of the Monsters, (1954) as the Americanized version of the original film was known. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is actually the midpoint between King Kong and the original Godzilla series. Like King Kong it uses stop-motion technology to bring the story of a monster terrorizing New York to life. Like Gojira the monster is saurian and is the result of atomic testing.
One could actually make the case that the American Godzilla (1998) was in fact more of a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms than Gojira. Its creature is far more like the Rhedosaur in nature than Toho’s Godzilla. And the American Godzilla’s landing in New York is almost identical the Rhedosaur’s arrival in The Beast. There are several other shots in the Godzilla remake that seem to intentionally pay homage to The Beast from 20000 Fathoms. Maybe they should have just remade that movie instead.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:
The Rhedosaurus effects are accomplished though some very nice stop motion courtesy of the great Ray Harryhousen and some truly crappy hand puppet work for close ups. I was really surprised by how good the creature looked in most of his shots. Its nice to see that in the twenty years since the original King Kong the stop motion techniques were refined to a kind of high art form. The Rhedosaur has a wonderful three dimensionality and texture under the lights and is well integrated into the backgrounds.
New York is a great city...for me to poop on!!
This particular dinosaur is not your usual T-Rex or Allosaurus clone but an invented quadrupedal carnivorous creature. It resembles the animals that Naomi Watts stumbles upon in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) which later chase her into a rotting log before getting munched on by a bigger dino. The Rhedosaur is ike that, but much bigger.
MONSTERS FEATURED:
The Rhedosaurus and some stock footage ocean life.
The Rhedosaur, terrorizing Ralph Kramden's apartment building.
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:
There are actually quite a few, from the famous attack on the lighthouse to the creature’s entrapment in a Coney Island roller coaster.
DVD AVAILABILITY:
It is available on it’s own with a nice little documentary featuring an interview with Harryhousen and some trailers or in a two-pack with Them!
When a man meets that special video game, there is a certain magical spark that occurs. There has to be a special kind of chemistry that will let him know, This is the right game for me. After all, how often have you been recommended a video game, read a glowing review in a magazine only to find when you have taken it home-gotten it out of its packaging, fooled around with its tutorial level-this is not a game with which you can spend hours and hours. This is awkward and uncomfortable for all involved.
However, with certain games you know you can commit right away. It's cool. You know this is a game that you will play often and worthy of your collection. But, sadly, nothing lasts forever and there is no real monogamy in video games.
These are my ex games.
In 1996 I bought a Nintendo 64, upon learning about the upcoming Star Wars game, Shadows of the Empire (a long and sad story for another time involving the quest for the perfect Star Wars game). After some nauseating hours playing Super Mario 64, I finally got used to the idea of 3D gaming and soon discovered the joy ofthe classic first-person shooter Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (in my mind it will always be Turok, The Dinosaur Hunter). I spent hours and hours in my little studio apartment in Rogers Park completely immersed in this (at the time) amazing world of killer dinosaurs, attempting to locate all of the pieces of the Chronoscepter. Turok was loaded with some absolutely insane weapons and featured a uniquely open and expansive world for its time when corridor shooters like Doom were the norm.
Personally, I was knocked out by the design aspects of the game, particularly its locations which had a real world, Pre-Colombian historical aesthetic. Many of the building were based on Mayan or Incan structures which really captured my imagination at the time. In some strange way, this game was a stepping stone towards some of the things in which I would be interested later in life and some of the traveling that I would do. When I finally made it to my first Inca ruin, high in the Andes of Peru, I couldn't help thinking of Turok.
I will always regret that I never finished this game. I'm not sure how it all ended. Shame. Boredom. Negligence. A furtive transaction at Funcoland. You spend weeks and weeks together and this is what happens. It makes it hard to keep playing video games. Maybe one day I will see Turok on the Wii Virtual Console and I will take it out for a spin. Or maybe it will never be the same.
