"Best movie monsters"

[cleolinda]

Oh, whatever. I've seen a lot of lists, but this one is up there:

"Best Movie Monsters"

1: King Kong (King Kong, 1933)

2: Talos (Jason And The Argonauts, 1963)

3: The Alien (Alien, 1979)

4: The T-Rex (Jurassic Park, 1993)

5: The Thing (The Thing, 1982)

6: Shelob (Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, 2003)

7: The Metaluna Mutant (This Island Earth, 1955)

8: Tetsuo (Akira, 1988)

9: The Skinned Werewolf (The Company Of Wolves, 1984)

10: The Troll (Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, 2001)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The Harry Potter troll? Talos? The mutant from This Island Earth? Dude! What monkey crack are you people on? In fact, I don't even think they chose the best monster from Lord of the Rings (girl, please. I have two words for you: BAL and ROG). I bow to the Alien, however. I haven't seen The Company of Wolves, but anything called a "skinned werewolf" works for me, quite frankly. And, unlike the people in the article, I'm not upset that Dracula and Frankenstein's monster were left out, because Dracula has this huge sex appeal thing going and most people seem to feel sorry for Frankenstein's monster.

Clearly, there is but one thing for us to do: run our own poll. First, however, we will need a good pool to chose from, so leave me some comments, people. For our purposes, let's say that we're going to value two things in our monsters: 1) inventiveness/personality, and 2) sheer ability to induce terror. People in the actual article are already complaining about the omission of "Godzilla, the robot endoskeleton at the end of the first Terminator, the final stages of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, The Blob and the flying monkeys in The Wizard Of Oz," Jaws, Freddie Krueger, and Pinhead, among others. (I would also like to know where Sadako/Samara is.) So: this is the nomination stage. And tell other people to come over here, so we get a good pool to choose from.

Comments

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Arg. Arg. Arg. LJ just ate my comment. So I now present you concise version.

The Troll? WTF? Seriously? I'm not sure if they're rating on most popular or enduring or what but this BBC article says the skinned werewolf was voted scariest (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3596551.stm).

Hah. I know Adele (woman talking about Jaws, Freddy, Pinhead). I lived in the flat beneath for a year and a half. She could tell what horror movie we were watching by the soundtrack if we had the volume too high.

I need to sit down and think about monsters. And are we going for scary or just great? Because Shelob and the Balrog just had me grinning and whispering AWESOME! to myself.

Dracula not on the list due to watering down presumably. Some of the films are cool, some are creepy but a lot are just poo. POO!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Okay, I went and Googled "Company of Wolves" and--holy crap, I am willing to concede to the skinned (http://www.hammerposters.com/pics/us10022.jpg) werewolf (http://www.werewolfpage.com/multimedia/stills/company_of%20_wolves.htm). Particularly if it involves one of them ripping his own human face off. Holy crap.

I will admit, I couldn't watch Shelob the first time through, but that's because I hate spiders and spider "faces" freak me out. I was more impressed with the Balrog because--I mean, here's this imaginary creature, and I know it's all CGI, and it's just fire at that, but the first time I saw that scene in the theater, I nearly wet myself.

But please--the Harry Potter troll was just sort of goofy. If we're going to talk Harry Potter, I mean, bring out Aragog or something (spider faces SPIDER FACES AHHHHH). And even then, it's still just the second best spider on the list--it's a children's movie, for chrissakes! It's not supposed to be the epitome of soul-crushing terror!

And hee, Adele sounds awesome.

Talos? TALOS?!?

[(Anonymous)]

I can see King Kong as number one--not MY number one, you understand, but I can see it. Karloff's Frankenstein Monster makes the top of my list (scary and sympathetic at the same time), with the Alien, Kong, Oliver Reed's ferocious werewolf from "Curse of the Werewolf," Lon Chaney's Vampire from "London After Midnight" (okay, it's a lost film, but the pictures of that freak gave me nightmares for years), the original Nosferatu and, yes, my old friend, Godzilla.

Adoresixtyfour

[malenky-devil.livejournal.com]

Hmm, toughie. I do agree, spider faces freak my shit out. Though, I have had a continuing childhood fear of Chucky (shut up, the lot of you *shakes fist*), but I don't know if he counts. The fact that he's voiced by Brad Dourif makes me a little sad, since I recently came to find out that the voice that induced fear into wee little me is none other than Wormtongue himself. Why?! I actually *like* Brad, but Chucky continues to scare the bejeezus out of me. Oops, digression.

On another tangent, I didn't know Tetsuo counted as a monster. Huh. Well, towards the end his big blob o' disfigurement was damn freaky. Other monsters...um...I'm at a loss right now.

[bombastic.livejournal.com]

Due to the fact that I'm not even halfway through my teenage years, I'm still viewing the typical teenage slash-em-up flicks without monsters, per se, and just cold blooded human killers. I don't think this really counts. That said, there are several monsters that abso-frickin-lutely scare the crap out of me. Having Talos on there is hysterical. It's like putting Medusa from "Clash of the Titans." (Do not see that movie EVER.) I'm just gonna run down a few of my scariest:
-- The shark in "Jaws"
-- Alien from "Alien" (didn't sleep for days)
-- David/Werewolf in "An American Werewolf in London." (this one has that eye-popping transformation going for it)
-- That freaky-ass clown in "Poltergeist"
-- Or the clown in "It" for that matter. I don't like clowns much.
-- Freddy Krueger (not Jason. Jason isn't scary.)
-- The final stages of Jack Nicholson's insanity in "The Shining." AAAHH!

I would put the killer from "Scream" in here, but given that, in the end, it's Matthew Lillard (well, one of them), it sorta takes away the whole menacing angle. "Scream" is one of the scariest and funniest movies I've ever seen. Just a gem, that one. Laugh if you want, but I love it.

This comment is waaaaay to long. I'm done.