Ghoulish Guests: Bubbawheat’s Five Favorite Movie Monsters

I did one of these last year for the “Five Films That Scare” me and when I made the short list for this year, I realized that I had a lot of overlap, especially since I only had three horror films on that list. I could easily put Tomie and the Gremlins on this list as well, but they are worthy of at least honorable mentions. Tomie is a long running series over in Japan and there are some pretty bizarre and monstrous versions of Tomie in some of the later movies, and who doesn’t love the Gremlins? But anyway, this year I’ve got an all-new list and it’s all tied to horror this time, no funny business.

5.) Ju-On: The Grudge

Ok so I lied, this list isn’t 100% all new since this made my honorable mention last year, and even though the girl/young woman with long black hair over her face is a bit of a cliché, at least in Asian horror, and Sadako from The Ring is often considered scarier, I like Kayako better as the vengeful spirit inhabiting the house she was murdered in before spreading out in the later movies. There are some great scares and images in the first English Grudge movie, not only that but the sound design on her haunting throat rasp is chilling. It’s hard to hear that sound and not get shivers down your spine. And Takako Fuji has a great presence herself with the way she moves, there’s a reason that the director brought her back for every installment of the movie, of which there have been many, I think three or four in Japan, as well as three in English.

 4.) Werewolves

This is my first, but not my last broad category of movie monsters. I’ve been a fan of the concept of werewolves since I was very young, and enjoyed reading many different sorts of stories about them. I’m disappointed that the main reason that I have this as a broader category, is that I have yet to see what I feel is the definitive werewolf movie. There are just so many bad ones out there, though I’m a little abashed to admit that I’ve missed one that’s considered a classic of sorts, American Werewolf in London. If I did have to choose, I would probably go with the werewolves in the Underworld series, especially Raze who was surprisingly played by the writer of the movie. Underworld is great because is makes the Lycans sympathetic without making them overly tragic, which is often the way they are handled.

3.) Jurassic Park‘s T-Rex

It’s been too long since I’ve seen Jurassic Park, but there is no substitute for the feeling that I got when catching that first glimpse of the T-Rex on the big screen. It’s visually impressive even by today’s standards, which is pretty amazing when you consider that most other CGI from this period doesn’t hold a candle to today’s movies. But Jurassic Park not only holds up, it’s even better than a lot of poor excuses for CGI monsters that they’ve churned out in recent years. The size of it, the detail, even the subtleties of using the ripples in the water to sell the incredible size and mass of this creature. Not only that, but the fact that it’s not just CGI, a lot of the time it’s an actual giant animatronic that’s physically there with the actors. And who doesn’t love a giant dinosaur?

 2.) Vampires

This is another one where I had to make it into a broader category. There’s no way I can choose just one movie vampire as my favorite. The only downside of making this into a broad category is that there are plenty of movie vampires that I would want to exclude, including some recent angsty vampires that I refuse to even mention. Vampires have some of the best qualities to them, they can be sexy but also menacing, even downright terrifying in some cases. There’s so much you can do with the vampire mythos when you pick and choose which qualities you want to highlight. But it’s almost always about the mystery and allure of the night, the parallels of sensuality with caressing and sucking on the neck and the exchange of bodily fluids. There’s so much that can be done with it and so many great ones out there I can’t list them all but I will list a few of my favorites: The Lost Boys, Coppola’s Dracula, Rise, Vampire Hunter D, Underworld, Interview with a Vampire, and plenty more that are escaping my mind at the time.

1.) The Insane

Movie monsters like my previous four are all still really fantasy creatures, but when you come down to what’s really the most horrifying when you stop to think about it are the monsters that actually do exist in real life. The criminally insane, the monsters that are actual people driven to do horrifying things because of a mental instability or just general lack of morality. Hannibal Lector is the one that first comes to mind, but there are plenty others like John Doe from Seven, even someone like Jack Torrence from The Shining. It’s one thing to be scared of something that’s not real, it’s another to be scared of something that is.

Nathan Witrow aka Bubbawheat

Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

by Steve Habrat

American fans of Stieg Larsson’s webbed murder mystery novels now have a reason to celebrate with the arrival of David Fincher’s fiercely loyal The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, an frigid film that proudly embraces graphic rape scenes, torture, and fits of bright red gore on white tile. Fincher promised the film would earn its hard R rating and he sure as hell made good on that promise. Being someone who read the novel and was left underwhelmed by it considering all the hype that surrounds the books, the movie clipped the drier moments and kept the pace swift and forthright, even if it did sometimes feel like the Cliff Notes version of the book. As far as this film being the follow-up to Fincher’s praised The Social Network, it is a worthy follow up, if a bit of an epic one at that. But this isn’t The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or The Social Network Fincher. Oh no, this is Fincher in the vein of Zodiac with a touch of Seven and the camera flips of Fight Club. This is down and dirty Fincher. His choice for his punk rock hacker heroine, Lisbeth Salander, who is tackled here by the immersive Rooney Mara was a wise one and she gives one of the finest performances of the year.

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Played by Daniel Craig) is hired by the retired CEO Henrik Vanger (Played by Christopher Plummer) of Vanger Industries to help him solve the mysterious disappearance of his great-niece Harriet Vanger. Henrik promises Mikael that if he discovers anything at all about Harriet, he will give him information on Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, the businessman who brought the libel charge against Mikael and ruined his career. As Mikael digs deeper and deeper into the history of the Vanger family (You practically need a family tree to keep up with who all of them are), sinister secrets start to emerge that some of them want to keep quiet. Mikael also finds himself in need of a secretary and he gets more than he bargained for when he is brought Lisbeth Salander (Played by Mara), an anti-social computer hacker and punk rocker who is a wizard at research and has been doing some digging on her own.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes with a lot of baggage. It is a psychological scorcher, equipped with a heavy plotline and more characters than you can shake a piece of IKEA furniture at. It also has some fits of black humor that will lighten the tension that is caused by not one, but two stationary rape sequences. Yet the film is fearless, tackling issues of trust, solitude, and the drive to prove oneself. Both Mikael and Lisbeth have been disgraced and they both are eager to bring honor to their name. It should be noted that they go about drastically different ways of doing it. Fincher edits the action together with quick, precise cuts that cause a few scenes at the beginning to feel a little too brief. He is very anxious to get to Hedeby Island and focused on igniting the web that is the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. At two hours and forty minutes, Fincher could have slowed it down a bit, but I also understand that he has a lot  of material to tackle to satisfy fans. I’m fairly convinced done right by them.

If the length and strong subject matter turns you off, the performances will surely wet your appetite. Rooney Mara, who had a bit part as Zuckerberg’s girlfriend in The Social Network, looses herself in the role of Salander. She apparently took up smoking for the role, got everything from her eyebrow to her nipples pierced, and bleached her eyebrows. She has a slight alien look to her but it is also beautiful in bizarre way. She can be devastating (Just watch her at the hands of guardian Nils Bjurman, who tortures her mentally as well as sexually), resilient, haunted by her past, and in the blink of an eye, stare daggers right through you. For a film this fearless, it needs a heroine just as fearless and it is without question one of the most confident starring roles I have seen all year. Craig is overshadowed by Mara but she does deserve the attention she is getting for her work. Craig’s character is altered from the book, less a womanizer and a not quiet as confident. He has a sense of humor, sometimes at himself, and it appears as if he gives himself some room to have fun with the role at times. This isn’t clean cut Craig, but a coarse “detective” roaming a snowy film noir. Fincher couldn’t resist making another one (Seven, anyone?) and he even gives us a femme fatale. Plummer is also award-worthy in his own way, a fatigued old man just looking for the truth. He has the second greatest line of the movie. Everyone else is background performance good, no one being the weak link in the chain. Stellan Skarsgard gets the chance to play a slippery part, the mysterious current CEO of Vanger Industries.

Fincher applies some chilling artistry to the film, mostly in the creepy, alien-like biblical readings from Harriet that slink in every now and then. These will make your arm hair stand on end, I promise you. Fincher goes on to paint an uninviting portrait with a craggy background and spitting snow. Everything has a slight decayed and dusty look, more in the vein of Zodiac and Seven. He trades his trademark amber glow and rich colors for cool, faded tans, whites, and shocking blues. Fincher puts the mystery right out in the open and tells us to have at it. The twinkling score from Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is sometimes dreamy and sometimes keenly aware of the pulsating evil and doom coursing through the film’s vein. Fincher must have wanted to emulate his own success, the score never being as ear grabbing as The Social Network, but it adds a foreign sound to a film that takes place in a foreign land.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of the best mainstream films to come out in 2011. A hearty crime thriller that isn’t afraid to leave the audience rubbed the wrong way and a performance that will join the ranks of great movie performances. The film was released during head-scratching time and I wonder if releasing it at Christmas was the smartest move by the studio. I know it tried to embrace and poke fun at the season it has been released in, but the studio has to understand that this isn’t everyone’s cup of Wayne’s Coffee. The film, just like the book, many demand a few views for all the action to really sink in and to give the audience the opportunity to learn who all these characters are. In a way, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is decently timed by the studio, a chilly film to compliment and enhance the chilly weather. And trust me, this one will chill you to the bone marrow.

Grade: A-

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

by Steve Habrat

No film has scared me like Dawn of the Dead did when I first laid my unsuspecting eyes on it. I had seen some brutal films before, but I had never experienced the onslaught of carnage that tore at me with unstoppable force. I was electrified by the film, vaguely aware that there was much more going on behind the stationary scenes of gut munching. The film is, yes, a full-fledged assault on the view. This is why it scares us. Director George Romero just does not let up, backing us against the wall and indirectly beating us into submission. I believe that Dawn of the Dead and I were bound to be together. The strange ways I kept stumbling upon the film in my youth and the ways in which I would end up seeing it. Sometimes it seemed to defy coincidence. I first heard about Dawn of the Dead when I was around eleven years old. My dad purchased me a horror magazine that contained a list of the 50 Scariest Movies Ever Made. I had to have it. I was drawn to monsters and horror films after having seen Dracula, Frankenstein, and Night of the Living Dead at the tender age of about five years old. One evening, my brother-in-law at the time was flipping through the horror magazine and everyone seated at the dinner table was yakking about horror films. As he flipped through the pages and the debate about what was the scariest film of all time raged on—everyone had their own opinion, my sister and mother both argued it was The Exorcist, as my mother said she would leave the room when the TV spot would play on the tube—he suddenly halted on Dawn of the Dead. He turned the magazine around to face the dinner table and asked if anyone there had seen it. Everyone shook their heads and said no. He then began to describe the film to everyone, saying the film actually showed its characters having their stomachs ripped open and the innards devoured. I was mesmerized.

A few weeks later, on Halloween night, I spent the night at my sister’s apartment. My brother-in-law suggested that we order pizza, grab some caffeine heavy soda, hit the video store, and rent some classic horror movies. A triple feature (now you have a clue where my undying love for double and triple features of gritty, scratchy classic horror films on Halloween comes from)! He told me to pick one out and I ended up with Salem’s Lot in my hot little hands. I had seen a picture of the main vampire in the film and was cast under the spell of his glowing yellow eyes. I thought he was really spooky. My sister grabbed Se7en, another movie I had never seen and was mostly unfamiliar with. My brother-in-law suddenly exclaimed, “OH AWESOME! Dawn of the Dead! This is the movie I told you about!” I was apprehensive. I didn’t know if I was ready to see people getting ripped limb from limb. All while eating pizza, might I add. He insisted that I had to see it, as it was the sequel to Night of the Living Dead and it was a must-see.

We saved Dawn of the Dead for the last movie we watched that night. It began with Se7en, bridged with Salem’s Lot, and ended with me pinned to the big comfy chair that I sat in while I watched a man’s head explode, bikers have their stomachs torn open as easily as someone rips a piece of paper in two, a zombie get the top of his head chopped of by helicopter blades, and multiple gunshots to ghouls heads that leaked rotting brains. All in shocking color. I liked Se7en and Salem’s Lot, but Dawn of the Dead made it hard for me to sleep that night. Only two other films have affected me the way that film did and I have made it my quest to seek out other gore heavy horror films in a personal quest to see if I still hold on to some sort of sensitivity to extreme gore within a film. To this day, the closest I have come to being repulsed is while watching Cannibal Holocaust, a film that upon it’s purchase, the cashier asked me if I was sure I wanted to purchase it. I replied yes, that I collect gore heavy exploitation films and I make it a point to see as many in my lifetime as possible. She said okay and bagged the purchase. It didn’t compare to seeing Romero’s masterpiece the first time. I am beginning to think that nothing ever will compare to the life altering moment. Seeing Dawn of the Dead also made me realize that I truly loved movies and I never wanted to be without them.

Two years went by between my viewings of Dawn of the Dead. I never forgot the movie and I always thought back to it. The horror of being surrounded by an endless sea of zombies desperately wanting to eat your brains was horrifying to me. Even the tagline “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth” frightened the bejesus out of me. Then, by chance, after one of my friends loaned me a recorded version of Romeo & Juliet on VHS, I noticed that the label on the side stated that there was another film on that tape. Dawn of the Dead ’78. I made it another double feature the night I received that tape. I had originally wanted to see the contemporary update of the Bard’s tragedy, but I ended up wanting the film to hurry up and end so I could scare myself again with the blue tinted zombies desperately trying to find a way in to the Monroeville Mall. Dawn of the Dead and I had found each other yet again. It was a match made in horror movie heaven.

I watched Dawn of the Dead several times while I had that tape. I lost count at how many times I studied it, marveled at it, and pulled the covers a little higher over my head the night after watching it. The next time I found myself blessed with a copy of the film was when it was getting the special edition treatment on DVD. A four-disc set that contained the original cut, the director’s cut, and the European version, which was slimmed down to focus more on the action and gore than character development, was finally bestowing itself upon fans. I still to this day don’t care much for the European version of the film. I like the characters, Roger, Fran, Stephen, and Peter. Peter, next to Batman, is the ultimate bad ass in my eyes. Thank you, Ken Foree, you are a living God. One Saturday, my friends and I took a trip to the mall and we began exploring the FYE that was still thriving at that particular time. I always moseyed over to the horror section to make a mental note of which horror movies to see or which ones I had to add to my rapidly growing collection of fright flicks. On that day, I found the four-disc collectors edition of Dawn of the Dead. The set wasn’t supposed to be released until that coming Tuesday. I could barely control my excitement. I immediately snatched it up and dashed to the register. I emerged from the mall that day as one of the happiest human beings on the planet. I finally had my own, glorious copy of my favorite film. I probably resembled one of the consumer-obsessed zombies of the film that wonderful Saturday, but I didn’t care. I spent that night watching the documentaries, watching Romero lovingly recall making the film, and flipping through the comic book that came with the elaborate set. I still to this day will not lend the set out to anyone for fear it will get broken, stolen, or dinged up. My version is still as perfect as it was the day I brought it home before anyone else had it in his or her careless possession. We were together forever. And Dawn of the Dead could scare me all it wanted to.

I’ve chosen to avoid breaking apart the actual film for this review simply because, like Night of the Living Dead, it has been analyzed over by countless other film historians and critics. Heck, if anyone was to doubt that I don’t fully understand this film inside and out, just contact my old roommate who watched the film with me one evening over a couple of beers. He experienced as I enlightened to the tiny details one may not pick up on while seeing it for the first time. The film is sensory overload. There are still moments that creep me out big time while I watch in a daze. Stephen aka Flyboy (Played by David Emge) being stalked by a zombie through the boiler room of the mall ranks as one of the most traumatic. Or how about Frannie’s (Played by Gaylen Ross) encounter with a Hare Krishna zombie hell-bent on sucking the meat from her bones? She doesn’t even have a gun to blow the ghoul to smithereens. Or how about the blacked out final siege, which finds countless characters getting chewed to bits. It’s tense, peculiarly claustrophobic, and inexorably unpredictable. Romero only lightens up once through the whole thing, when he literally hits his zombies in the face with pies. Don’t get too chummy, his brief sense of humor quickly turns back into a stone-faced glare and the horror explodes at the viewer.

The film is multi-layered and extremely influential. It seemed appropriate to me that it would be remade in 2004, as we are now, more than ever, obsessed with consumerism. Romero was ahead of the curve and it seems like many don’t want to give him the credit he deserves. The master has also described this film’s approach as more of a comic book than it’s predecessor. While it is heavier on the action, it still manages to scare the shit out of you once or twice. I understand that today it is unintentionally funny, as many will get a few belly laughs over the blue zombies and obvious make-up lines. But if we take the film on it’s own terms, as a serious, pensive, and pulverizing, we can find much to shake our very core. Entertainment Weekly called this film “Devastating”, and I have to agree. With it’s bleak ending (not as bleak as Night) and carnage it leaves the viewer steeped in, you will walk away from this in pieces. Romero chews you up, spits you out, and puts you through the wringer. Just like one of his zombies would do to you if they had their way. It’s also what any good horror film should do to its viewer. Dawn of the Dead is an undisputable masterpiece that is a must-see for anyone who loves zombie films, and more importantly, worships at the altar of horror. Grade: A+