Fooling with
Mother Nature
Why do the scientists of the big screen feel so compelled to mess with human DNA in such reckless ways?
In Species (1995), the big brains decide it would be a good idea to combine human DNA with alien DNA, and the result is a stunning woman (Natash Henstridge) who sometimes becomes a deadly, hideous alien monster.
By no means a masterpiece, Species is entertaining, features ample sex and violence, and boasts a fairly cool monster (designed by artist H.R. Geiger of Alien fame). It also features a great cast, including Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger, Alfred Molina and Michael Madsen.
Now You
See Him ...
When Dr. Jack Griffin, an English scientist discovers a formula to make himself invisible, he encounters two problems. First, he doesn't know how to make himself visible again and, second, a side effect of the formula is that it slowly destroys his mind.
Despite the tremendous power invisibility bestows on him, (*SPOILER ALERT*)Griffin ultimately runs afoul of the law and it turns out badly for him.
Based on he classic book by H.G. Wells, director James Whale's 1933 film "The Invisible Man" stars Claude Raines and features what, for the day, were great special effects.
Fly Guy
Given America's historic undercurrent of anti-intellectualism, it's not surprising that many monster stories revel in the boneheaded play of some overreaching scientist.
Consider the 1958 film The Fly, starring Vincent Price and David Hedison (above). Scientist Andre Delambre (Hedison) invents a device that transports matter through thin air from one chamber to another. Then comes the bonehead part: Delambre decides to just jump into a chamber and transport himself.
One would think that someone smart enough to figure out how to beam matter around by disassembling and reassembling its atoms, and reckless enough to attempt to disassemble and reassemble his own atoms, would at least get some colleagues to oversee the experiment and conduct it in a hermetically sealed, pristine lab environment.
That way, the wisenheimer would not have to worry about, oh, a housefly buzzing into the chamber with him and getting the fly's atoms mixed up with his own. Which would avoid the awkwardness of swapping body parts (notably heads) with the fly when man and the fly are reassembled.
The fly that gets Delambre's human parts buzzes off (as flies are apt to do). He and his wife attempt to hunt down the missing insect in the hopes of somehow reversing the damage but no go.
The original includes an eerie depiction of how the missing fly meets its end.
King of the
Monsters
Sometimes the monsters created by science are an unintended side effect. This is the case with one of the screen's best known creatures--Godzilla (above).
First appearing in the 1954 film Godzilla, the city-razing giant lizard was a mutant created from the fallout of the atomic tests in the ocean off the coast of Japan.
There are really two versions of the first Godzilla flick. The original, produced in Japan for the Japanese audience (which knows the beast as "Gojira") was later edited, with added scenes of Raymond Burr as American reporter, and released in the U.S. in 1956 as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
The sight of the great lizard so thrilled audiences that it resulted in dozens of sequels.
Godzilla's link to radiation is not surprising coming from a country that had two major cities incinerated by atomic bombs in World War II.
The connection between mutant monster and the bomb also rears its, yes, ugly head in assorted fright flicks set in New Mexico and Nevada, where the U.S. has conducted many nuclear experiments over the years.
Call It a
Dino-Thaw
No look at how radiation spawns monsters is complete without mentioning the 1953 release Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
In his film, atomic experiments in the Arctic Circle thaw and reanimate a frozen man-eating dinosaur (above) that heads down the coast to New York and goes on an eating spree. Oh, yeah, the beast also carries a deadly bacteria.
Another example takes place on a remote island, where a nuclear test unleashes the Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). This Roger Corman entry features giant brain-munching crabs.
There might be more justice in this scenario if the huge crabs had decided to have their human banquet at Red Lobster.
In Them! (1954), similar atomic testing results in giant ants. This flick stars James Whitmore and James Arness.
Star in Thaw
Val Kilmer will star in Anagram Pictures' upcoming horror film The Thaw.In the movie, a deadly prehistoric parasite is released when a Woolly Mammoth is discovered in a melting ice cap. Faced with a potentially global epidemic, four ecology students must destroy the parasite before it reaches the rest of civilization. One-by-one they are infected and one-by-one they turn on each other.
Soon the survivors are left with only one choice - to make the ultimate sacrifice and burn everything to the ground ... including themselves.
Get Your
Shriek On!
Check out the top horror books, CDs, DVDs, video downloads and more at The Shriek Shop. If you dare.
Mary's Monster
The daughter of an anarchist and a feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
was born in London in 1797 and ran off with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814. They married two years later and it was a tempestuous union, marked by adultery and the loss of two children.
In a writing competition with her husband, Lord Byron and Dr. John William Polidori, Shelley (right) created a story about a medical student who patches together body parts from corpses, then brings the hideously assembled creation to life. That story was later expanded into the novel-length masterpiece of horror fiction Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818).
Victor describes his creation this way:
I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.
Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.
Though intelligent, the creature's ghastly appearance causes it to be rejected by humans, including Victor Frankenstein. As a result, the creature strikes out at its creator's loved ones and at Victor himself with horrific violence.
Some would argue that Shelley's feminism shaped the novel in that Frankenstein is a man who attempts to do what is essentially a woman's task--give birth. The results of such an unnatural project seems almost certainly doomed to tragedy.
Others speculate that Victor Frankenstein committed the murders himself and the monster is just a delusion of his, though there seems to be little support for this in the text.
Mary Shelley died of brain cancer at 53.
Frankenfilms
• Film technology was in its infancy when directors began producing video versions of Frankenstein and, through the years, the viewing public has witnessed several interpretations of Mary Shelley’s classic work.
The Original Bridezilla
• The great success of director James Whale’s 1931 version of Frankenstein led to a sequel, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, which reunited Whale with original cast members Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein.
The Acorn Falls Near the Tree
In 1939's Son of Frankenstein, Basil Rathbone (best known from his Sherlock Holmes movies) plays Victor Frankenstein's son Wolf. Wolf returns to the family homestead and is lured back into his father's nefarious footsteps by the hunchback Ygor (Bela Lugosi).
In this go-around, Ygor knows the location of the original creature (again played here by Boris Karloff), and prods Wolf into reviving it. This obviously results in no good.
Jurassic Lark
There may be some research merit to using DNA from amber-encased prehistoric mosquitoes to create the DNA of ancient dinosaurs. But when it comes to using that DNA to make actual dinosaurs with the capitalist intention of creating a theme park full of these extinct monsters, trouble seems sure to follow.
And it does, big time, in Michael Crichton's 1990 bestseller Jurassic Park. The book, under the capable direction of Steven Spielberg, became a thrilling film three years later, featuring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and many computer-created dinosaurs, notably including the deadly raptors (pictured above in the kitchen, looking for a snack).
Blast Brings Big Trouble
Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) may have survived a plutonium-bomb explosion, despite being badly burned, but the catastrophic event turned him into The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). That is, he grew some--to about 60 feet tall. The bigger he got, the crazier he got. The craziness is said to result from problems with circulation of blood to the brain brought on by the rapid growth. However, the truth is: How can you have a monster movie with a friendly giant.
A line from the film ("Why don't you ask me what it feels like to be a freak?) is sampled in the Rob Zombie song, "Demon Speeding."
Must Be Something in the Water
The halt of U.S. nuclear testing dried up one source of monsters, Lucky for us monster lovers, we live in a society so awash in dangerous chemicals that it was only a matter of time before these toxic agents took over where radiation left off.
That's what happens in Eight Legged Freaks (2002). Directed by Ellory Elkayem and starring David Arquette, the film centers on residents of a mining town battling deadly giant spiders created by a chemical spill.
Too bad for the town that the chemicals didn't affect the humans, too. Giant people could easily dispatch giant insects.
Tapping Into Our Dark Side
When Robert Louis Stevenson penned the classic tale "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," he tapped into our fear that we each possess a dark side, which, unleashed, could be our undoing.
In the tale, nice-guy Dr. Jekyll invents a potion that turns him into bad-guy Mr. Hyde. Whereas Jekyll is kind, Hyde is immoral and reckless.
Green With Anger
One popular variation on the Dr. Jekyll yarn is Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk (above). When scientist Bruce Banner is bitten by a spider explored to gamma rays, he turns into a 500-pound muscle-bound hellion who enjoys using his great strength to smash stuff. Though he returns to his normal form, Banner discovers that every time he get pissed off, the green guy takes over.
The Hulk's adventures have been chronicled in comics, the big screen and the small.
A Future Full of Fear
While no one can foresee the future, some writers have accurately predicted developments of modern life. Jules Verne prophesied submarines, and H.G. Wells predicted lasers and robotics, among other advancements.
Let's hope Wells was off base about certain aspects of the future he projected in 1905's The Time Machine. When man known only as the Time Traveler discovers a device that transports him 800,000 years ahead, he finds what appears, at first, to be Utopian society of leisure and abundance. However, he soon discovers that Utopia has a price: It relies on the labor of subterraneans known as Morlocks to survive.
These Morlocks, of course, demand their pound of flesh.
The Killer Cyborg From the Future
In The Terminator (1984), director James Cameron unleashes a killer cyborg from the future (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that comes to modern times to slay a young boy named John Connor (Edward Furlong) before he has a chance to grow up and become a rebel leader.
These traveling-to-the-past-to-change-the-future plots are usually cumbersome and intellectually tricky to pull off convincingly, but The Terminator benefits greatly from being a terrific monster flick. This cyborg is brutal, emotionless and damn near unstoppable. In sequels, the Terminator character becomes a good-guy guardian to John Connor, but in the original the cyborg is bad to its titanium-alloy bones.
Two Words: Giant Tarantula
One dumb thing scientists often do in monster movies is to create a mutant creature of some sort and forget to lock the cage. Or something along these lines.
In 1955's Tarantula, scientist Gerald Deemer, who is developing a growth serum, has the ill fortune to work with a couple of dimwits who decide to inject each other with the drug, to inject Deemer and, ultimately, a tarantula, which escapes, gets really big and starts scurrying around the landscape on its big, hairy tarantula legs, eating some people, killing others and scaring the hell out of quite a few more.
Trying To Make Men from Beasts
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by H.G. Wells tells the story of Edward Prendick, a shipwreck survivor brought to a strange island where a scientist transforms animals into human-like creatures. The hideous experiments are, of course, doomed to failure, not to mention downright cruel.
Like Frankenstein, Moreau attempts to play God. The oddly comprised beings are miserable and unable to adopt human ways, ultimately with terrible results.
While supposedly meant, in part, as a commentary on Darwinism (which Well strongly supported), this book is credited with helping to fuel the antivivisectionist movement in England. Some see parallels between Moreau's experiments and modern genetics.
What's That Buzz?
A cosmetics-company president, Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot), hopes to boost flagging sales by using wasp enzymes in her company's wares in 1960's The Wasp Woman. Supposedly, wasp enzymes turn back the hands of time. The result? Let's say she goes a bit overboard.
She injects herself full of the stuff, and transforms into the Wasp Woman.
Great line: "I'd stay away from wasps if I were you, Miss Starlin. Socially, the queen wasp is on a level with the black widow spider. They're both carnivorous. They paralyze their victims and then take their time devouring them alive. And they kill their mates in the same way, too ..."
This was a Roger Corman low-budget special that some regard as the first feminist monster movie. Buzz on, sister.
Go Team
Official NFL merchandise at prices that will have you cheering.
