A monster mash

Opinion

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This article was published 29/10/2016 (3237 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are only two more sleeps until Halloween, and you parents know exactly what that means, don’t you?

It means you need to put this newspaper down RIGHT NOW, drive to the mall, and buy your kids expensive factory-made Halloween costumes representing some licensed Saturday-morning cartoon character you have never heard of before.

Failure to obtain a trendy, socially acceptable costume means your child will be ostracized on the playground and end up living in a van down by the river, whereas you will be shunned by all the other responsible parents, who spend more time and money on their children’s costumes than you spend on your annual summer vacation.

So what are the popular costumes this year? Well, according to online news reports, the Top 10 most-searched Halloween costumes on Google are: 

1) Suicide Squad character Harley Quinn; 
2) The Joker; 
3) Superhero; 
4) Pirate; 
5) Wonder Woman; 
6) Witch; 
7) Batman; 
8) Star Wars; 
9) Clown; 
10) Dinosaur.

Is that a comprehensive list, or what? No, it’s not! Did you notice what was missing? We hate to point out the obvious, but the list pretty much ignores the classic, old-school monsters that caused us innocent baby boomers to wet ourselves when we were just kids.

Clearly what is needed is a guide to educate modern youngsters about truly terrifying creatures. Which is why we are drawing on our own childhood nightmares to present today’s chilling list of the Top Five Classic Movie Monsters of all Time:

 

5) The monster: The Blob (1957)

The monster mash: Imagine how terrifying it would be to be chased by one of those gross jellied salads your great aunt always made for Thanksgiving dinner.

That’s pretty much what happens in this 1957 American sci-fi film that has become a beloved drive-in classic. In a nutshell, the movie follows teenagers Steve, as portrayed by action star Steve McQueen in his film debut, and his best girl, Jane, as they try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches. Of course, the townsfolk don’t believe them, because, well, they’re just teenagers.

In the beginning, Steve and Jane are necking on lovers’ lane when a meteor crashes nearby, which is when they get to see the jellied salad consume an old man who poked it with a stick. While the kids try in vain to warn everyone, the Blob eats a mechanic at a repair shop, growing in size with each victim. Cornered by the creature in his dad’s grocery store, Steve and Jane hide in the walk-in freezer, which is when they learn the Blob doesn’t like the cold.

The Blob goes on to gobble the projectionist at the movie theatre, then oozes into the auditorium to chase the audience. In the end, they manage to freeze the Blob and parachute it down to the ice in the Arctic. Is it dead? “Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold,” Steve says in the final line. Beware global warming!

The monster mavens: Along with McQueen’s debut, the movie is famous for its theme song written by the legendary Burt Bacharach and featuring lines like this: “Beware of the blog, it creeps/And leaps and glides and slides/Across the floor/Right through the door.” Gushes the review site Rotten Tomatoes: “In spite of its chortle-worthy premise and dated special effects, The Blob remains a prime example of how satisfying cheesy B-movie monster thrills can be.”

 

4) The monster movie: The Wolf Man (1941)

 

The monster mash: In this Universal Pictures classic, the legendary Lon Chaney Jr. portrays Larry Talbot, who returns to his ancestral home in Wales and reconciles with his estranged father after the mysterious death of his brother.

While puttering around, Larry visits an antique shop and, in a bid to impress the attractive shopkeeper, Gwen, he buys a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. That same night, Larry kills a wolf with his shiny new walking stick, but is bitten on the chest during the struggle.

Naturally, he meets a gypsy fortune teller, who tells Larry the animal he killed was her son, portrayed by Bela Lugosi, who was a werewolf, and now Larry is doomed to become a werewolf, too. The scares get ramped up as Larry transforms into a wolf-like creature and stalks the village, chowing down on the local gravedigger.

The makeup transforming Chaney from man to beast took up to six hours to apply, and an hour to remove. He later complained he was forced to sit motionless for hours as the scenes were shot, frame by frame, and sometimes wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom. To change his feet into paws, he had to don uncomfortable hard rubber boots covered in yak hair.

At the end of the movie, our wolfish hero is bludgeoned to death by his dad with his own silver walking stick, before transforming back into human form.

The monster mavens: Chaney reprised his role in four sequels, but it was the 1941 film that became a beloved classic in the monster genre. It didn’t do big box office initially, but in later years became a Halloween staple for lovers of old-school frights. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it is one of the classics of the Universal horror stable. Says one reviewer: “Horror movies today rely on gore and as many jump-out-of-your-seat moments as they can throw at you. This one relies on old-fashioned atmosphere and acting ability and that’s all it really needs.”

 

3) The monster movie: The Mummy (1932)

 

The monster mash: How can anyone be scared of a shuffling, gauze-wrapped creature that moves at the speed of airport luggage?

Well, shut up, because we boomers were so scared we had to watch this one while peeking through our fingers.

The story begins in 1921 when a team of British archeologists discover the mummified remains of the ancient Egyptian prince Imhotep, portrayed by monster-movie legend Boris Karloff, along with the legendary Scroll of Thoth, which can bring the dead back to life.

One night, a young member of the expedition reads the scroll out loud, then goes insane because (yikes!) he has brought Imhotep back to life.

Ten years later, disguised as a wealthy Egyptologist, the Mummy searches Egypt for his lost love, an ancient princess, Ankh-es-en-amon, who has been reincarnated into a beautiful young woman named Helen.

Naturally, when he finds the modern version of the princess, the Mummy tries to kill her as part of a plan to (why not?) turn her into a mummy and make her his bride.

Fortunately, Helen recalls her past life, prays to the goddess Isis to save her, thereby causing a statue of Isis to emit a beam of light, setting the scroll on fire and breaking the spell that gave Imhotep immortality.

The monster mavens: This one didn’t have any official sequels, but spawned tons of unofficial remakes, including our favourite, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). You will be thrilled to hear Tom Cruise has signed on for a remake that will debut on June 9, 2017. Like The Wolf Man, The Mummy did not have a direct literary source. And unlike some scary flicks, it was an instant hit, forming a template for the mummy movies that followed. 

 

2) The monster movie: Dracula (1931)

The monster mash: Finally, here’s a monster capable of moving faster than a small animal passing through the digestive system of a python.

If you watch TV, go to movies, or read novels, it’s impossible to escape the clutches — or fangs — of modern vampires. The Twilightnovels of Stephenie Meyer — whose vampires sparkle revealingly in sunlight — and the TV series True Blood have transformed these terrifying bloodsuckers from beyond the grave into pop-culture sex objects.

It’s impossible to know when the myth first arose, but modern horror fans would not be thirsting for vampires if it weren’t for Irish author Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel, Dracula, the quintessential tale of a vampire seeking to move from Transylvania to England to find new blood and spread the curse of the undead. The success of Stoker’s novel has spawned legions of books and movies in which these creatures reign supreme.

For some, the greatest film spinoff was the 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu, which set the template for modern horror. (Fun fact: The head of F. W. Murnau, the famed German director of Nosferatu, was stolen from the family crypt in Germany in July 2015.) For most modern horror fans, the greatest film adaptation is 1931’s Dracula, wherein Bela Lugosi plays the dashing count who travels to London and wreaks havoc, sucking the blood of young women and turning them into vampires. Spoiler Alert: In the end of this one, Prof. Van Helsing, armed with a wooden stake, impales Dracula. Surprisingly, the vampire returns in far too many sequels to count. 

The monster mavens: In the lingo of the times, Dracula did boffo box office. Despite initial fears the public was not ready for a serious full-length supernatural thriller with no comic relief, horror fans happily sank their teeth into this one, so to speak. Newspapers hyped the film by reporting that audience members fainted in shock at the horror on the screen. The best moment? It’s when Lugosi croaks: “I never drink… wine!” States Rotten Tomatoes: “Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula in this creepy and atmospheric 1931 film has set the standard for major vampiric roles since.”

 

1) The monster movie: Frankenstein (1931)

The monster mash: While most of the monsters on today’s list moseyed along at a top speed that was slower than a modern golf cart, they still sent a chill down our collective spine.

This was especially true of big-booted Frankenstein, who was given life in the 1818 novel English author Mary Shelley wrote as part of a contest with her future husband and friends to see who could pen the best horror story. In the book, considered a modern masterpiece of the macabre, the monster is not as monstrous as you might expect.

In fact, the creature is intelligent and articulate, sickened by the fact that people are afraid of him and hate him for his appearance. The 1931 movie spawned by the book features Boris Karloff in his most famous role as the iconic monster, which everyone calls Frankenstein, although that is actually the name of the scientist who pieced the creature together from spare body parts, then reanimated it with electricity.

Unfortunately, Dr. Frankenstein’s hunchback assistant, Fritz (no, not Igor), obtains a criminal brain for the creature, as opposed to a normal one. Which is when things really go downhill. The murderous monster escapes, throws a little girl named Maria into a lake and accidentally drowns her, which results in the local villagers taking up torches and pitchforks and burning down a windmill with the monster trapped inside.

Look, we realize many of you would have put Dracula in the top spot. We love the count, because he was a role model for kids who dreamed of staying up all night and turning into bats. On the other hand, Frankenstein symbolized how we felt after eating all our Halloween candy — decidedly green. 

 

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca