Critter flix!
Jun 13 '01
The Bottom Line Its a nasty, critter filled world out there. But don't stay home as you don't know what is growing in your refrigerator, either!
Well if the 10 Best Aliens films category is cross-genre then so are the Monster films! You got your guys in rubber suits sort of monsters (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and GODZILLA come to mind), the undead sort (vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster), oversized critters (THEM and other movies starring close ups of crickets and such like), mechanized beasts (FORBIDDEN PLANET, the TERMINATOR films [do they show up AGAIN?]), natural critters gone really bad (JAWS), and your just plain indescribable things (THE THING, THE BLOB, etc.). Yup, critters and monsters everywhere you look!
1) GODZILLA - Starring Raymond Burr in a badly over-dubbed film that was filmed in at least three different locations, not including the sound stage with the guy in the rubber Godzilla outfit. Nasty, ancient monster changed by nuclear explosion into a monster with destructive halitosis! And Tokyo was very afraid as 'Tic Tac's hadn't been invented yet...
2) FORBIDDEN PLANET - Ahhh... the monster from the ID! A good man uses an alien machine to enhance his mind and can't figure out that an energy monster is being generated from his unconscious via the alien machinery. Why, oh why, didn't anyone take a lead-filled sock to the back of this guys noggin and zoom him and his daughter out of there? Great special effects that are impressive to this day (and those were filmed by Disney!).
3) THE THING (Directed by John Carpenter) - A scary, gross-out flick based on a John W. Campbell short story, and much, much better than its 1950's predecessor. This creepy bio-entity can take over any living being cell by cell, and then manifest itself via gory shape changing. And you thought lawyers were bad!
4) JAWS - The shark is one nasty critter! It is also a mutant as it has an unusual taste for human take out, especially from a resort town. My guess is that is was just looking to get some fisherman stew and didn't get enough fisherman in it...
5) THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS - Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen both worked on this film. Not a great story line but what a beast they invoked from below!
6) THE OMEGA MAN - Charlton Heston, Vampire Hunter. Heston is one of the last REAL humans left on Earth after the rest of the populace has been turned into strange vampiric beings. Get out your sharpened implements as these vampires can be killed with more than just wooden stakes!
7) STAR TREK IV - Big space probe comes to Earth and shuts everything down and starts to ruin the environment. The crew from the late starship Enterprise figure out that this probe is looking for Humpback Whales and is po'd at not finding any! So its a great excuse to pop back to the 20th century and become one of the greatest cross-genre SF films ever made and save a few whales, to boot!
8) METROPOLIS - The first appearance of the word 'Robot' in the movies (Rossum's Universal Robots) and the first transition of the 'Frankenstein Complex' (as the late Dr. Asimov would call it) to our metal/ceramic/plastic creations in humaniform. Of course the 'Robot' is better than the mere humans and wants to take over everything, but doesn't realize how meaningless life would be to make shoes with no one to WEAR them!
9) ALIEN - The quintessential critter flick of critter flicks. Nasty alien bio-critter gets 'accidentally' taken aboard the star freighter Nostromo. A quick chest bursting scene at breakfast and the rest of the crew is probably doomed not to see dinner.
10) JURASSIC PARK - Well, it should have been named Cretaceous Park, but one can't be too much of a stickler for accuracy when Michael Crichton is involved. Take ancient, partially digested dino DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber, cross with toads and what do you get? Huge dinosaurs looking for the slightest excuse to try the latest in higher mammalian life forms!
Honorable mentions include: THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (so tacky now it is classic!), ALIENS (yup, as you suspected they couldn't leave well enough alone), GODZILLA VS THE SEA MONSTER (lotsa critters), THE TERMINATOR films (for once not in the top 10!), NOSFERATU (the original vampire film, not to be missed), and just about any film made in the 1950's that has a one word title (IT, THEM, etc.).
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kurt_h
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Location: Sterling, VA
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A reader of SF and fantasy, and an enjoyer of liquid refreshment now and again.
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