Schoell - Creature features: nature turned nasty in the movies

Also by William Schoell
and from McFarland

Al Pacino: In Films and on Stage, 2d ed. (2016)

The Horror Comics: Fiends, Freaks and Fantastic Creatures, 1940s1980s (2014)

The Opera of the Twentieth Century: A Passionate Art in Transition (2006)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1072-6

2008 William Schoell. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Poster art for the 1977 film Empire of the Ants (American International Pictures/Photofest).

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

When I was a boy, my father, William T. Schoell, took me to a twin-bill of Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster and Elvis Presleys Double Trouble. I couldnt have cared less about the Presley pic but we had to sit through it to get to the monster movie. It is hard to remember which of the two movies was more awful. I think Dad took me to the double-feature because he felt guilty that he would usually only drop me off at the movie theater and pick me up two or three hours later, so I either saw King Kong vs. Godzilla with friends or by myself. Dad wouldnt even sit through The Birds, which is too bad. We did see Jason and the Argonauts together and I think Dad enjoyed that wonderful picture as much as I didhow could he help it? After a double helping of Ghidrah and Elvis, however, Pop was back to dropping me off and picking me up later, and I couldnt blame him. For sitting through that atrocious double-bill with me, my late father deserves the dedication of this book.

Thanks to 20th CenturyFox, Allied Artists, Warner Brothers, Republic Pictures, Universal, Taft, Sunn Classic, Stan Winston Studios, American International, Toho, Embassy, MGM, Eugene Lourie, Ray Harryhausen, United Artists, RKO, Dino De Laurentiis Productions, Hal Roach Productions, Hammer Films, 7 Arts, Bing Crosby Productions, and Orion.

All of the photographs in this book are from private collections.

While it may not be true that everyone loves a good monster movieor creature featurethese films are among the most popular ever made. Some monster movies, such as Jaws and Alien (Jaws is definitely a monster movie), even attract people who normally wouldnt go to a monster movie. In general, critics have never been too fond of monster movies, unless they are parodies or have a strong sense of humor or have something else to offer besides a bad-tempered creature. Science fiction fans usually excoriate monster movies, because they dont understand that movies about resuscitated dinosaurs and gigantic, impossible insects are not science fiction, but horror (or dark fantasy if you want to get technical). Most monster movie fans couldnt care less if the science doesnt add up, although even we have to pause and scratch our heads from time to time at the sheer illogic of a certain movie.

This book concentrates on creatures, but in general you wont find the likes of Creature from the Black Lagoon or Frankenstein or other monstrosities in its pages. The monsters in this book are either behemoths (discovered in time-lost worlds or ancient societies and somehow unleashed upon modern civilization) or normal-sized animals such as birds and bears that behave in strange ways. The chapter on dragons also covers other mythological creatures, as well as dinosaurs. The chapter on big bugs is self-explanatory. The chapter on humongous creatures looks at ordinary animals that grow to giant-size, while the three chapters on nature turned nasty movies look at creatures that crawl or fly (birds, bugs, and bats); creatures at home in the water (fish, alligators); and all other animals (wolves, dogs and so on). The final chapter examines movies about creatures that arent as easy to classify: blobs and demons and other weird things that go thump in the night. In general, I discuss the films in each chapter in chronological order, although I sometimes lump related films or sequels together with the original film.

I have generally eliminated discussion of films that were made for TV or for cable or as direct-to-video releases, not only because theres no room for them but because most are pretty bad. The Sci Fi Channel shows dozens and dozens of original and direct-to-video monster movies, but while the creature feature may be alive on Sci Fi its rarely well; occasionally a decent or even better-than-decent creature movie may be shown on the cable network but most of its offerings are dismal. The low budgets only allow very crude FX work and the movies are padded with boring subplots that often have little to do with the monster in question.

There have been a lot of changes to the creature feature over the years. Although many other methods were employed, stop-motion was the FX technique of choice in bringing dinosaurs and other monsters to life until the advent of computer technology, which relies on the work of stop-motion artists to make the computer-generated beasties look and move with that certain veracity. But not all computer imagery is created equal, and cheap movies often offer monsters that are far below the level of Jurassic Park (whose effects seems less impressive today than when it was first released). In most Sci Fi Channel movies the monsters seem not so much to move in a realistic way but to stretch unnaturally, their size changing from shot to shot, looking in some ways more like cartoon figures (or video game animation) than stop-motion or anything approximating reality. Whatever you call it, the monsters just dont look good. Indeed the great stop-motion FX in older movies can still hold their own with the effects that many monster movies offer today.

Another change has to do with the amount of ugliness on screen. In the fifties nobody had to see chewed-up bodies or body parts left behind by big bugs, hydras and the like because everyone could more or less imagine what happens when man meets monster and the man loses. Who wanted or needed to see severed limbs strewn about (which was senseless in the first place since a large predator would either carry off the body or devour everything, including the bones). Modern monster movies often cater to a disaffected gorehound sensibility; as long as the limbs keep flying, who cares if the monster resembles Silly Putty? There was a time when special effects technicians couldnt outdo the audiences imagination, but those days seem to be long gone, with sometimes clever, sometimes idiotic gross-outs occurring on a regular basis. This has led to some happily ingenious moments of gruesomenessthe chest-bursting scene in Alien, for instancebut also to scenes that leave you wondering if somebody oughta check with his or her psychiatrist. Sometimes the grisly slaughter and upchuck sequences work against what should be the sheer fun of the creature feature. And if a monster movie isnt fun, whats the point of it?

In a 2007 Sci Fi Channel offering entitled