Guys, this week and me have not been very good friends, which is why I have pumping up the tunes and writing all my lovely master-opi of music reviews this week. And no, there will be more coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it other than destroy the Japanese/Korean music industries. I would like to see you try.
And much like me and this week, August and movies are not friends either so a lot of the new releases are movies the studios thought were too one thing or another to be featured during times of heavy summer traffic. The thing is, in a world we had The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises smash through the glass ceiling of what was once the pre-conceived notion about superhero movies and sleeper hits, and how much the box office could go up overnight, any movie premiering afterwards was going to have the worst time trying to make bank. Because whether its week one, or week four, most often than not people will be going to see Batman, and not Hope Springs or Sparkle. And that leads to the problem I face currently – I have nothing to review, and what there is… isn’t worth the watch. Except maybe The Campaign…maybe…
So what to do? More music reviews? No I’ll catch up with it later. My Stay Tuned? Eh, not feeling it. That means its list time. So, top best original horror monsters of all time. Let’s be clear – no humans, no mythological beasts, nothing that’s be copied from something else. LET’S DO THIS!!!
6) Tomie – Tomie franchise
5) Leatherface – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise
The scariest part about this too-tall-and-brutish giant isn’t that fact that he’s wearing a mask made of human faces. Or that he has a chainsaw. Or that he can’t really talk. It’s that he’s a hunter, and he wants to eat sweet, sweet, human flesh, and you seem to have quite a lot of it. He’s crazy, and his entire family is crazy too, which only adds to the depravity. Because even if you escape him, it’s just as easy to run into any one of his insano backwater hick relatives, whose just as likely to cut you down where you stand for supper. And everyone knows you can’t rationalize with crazy – that’s why they go to asylums and are dosed with all sorts of meds. Now, if only they had a straight jacket in his size, the world might be a less scary place.
4) Freddy Krueger – Nightmare of Elm Street franchise
Freddy has been played lot for laughs and camp recently, but his design is truly ingenious. Before Nolan made dreams so popular, no one really explored the chaos of nightmares until a little movie called Nightmare on Elm Street appeared. Freddy Krueger, a child molester and murderer, returns from Hell in order to murder the children of the people who took vengance on him. But he doesn’t go about it in the usual way, like actually rising from the dead or possessing someone, he goes in through the dream world. He is so powerful that he can fact kill you while you sleep, and your physical body in the real world is affected, even manipulated into a giant blood fountain (look it up, it’s awesome). That’s not a stupid continuity mistake, or bad writing, that’s just the power of Freddy’s pure evil that CAN get you whenever, wherever. He’s not redeemable, there’s no way to make him pass on – he loved torturing children in life and he continues to do so in death.
3) Mary Shaw – Dead Silence
Mary Shaw is the most recent of the additions to this list only because she’s a deadly combo of the creepy old lady and dolls. Dolls are evil – let it be known. But a mix of the two? Priceless. It combines the creepiest of soulless eyes and evil spirits, where the only way to survive an encounter is to suppress a scream. Do you know how hard that is when she looks like THAT? Plus she can manipulate and transport herself with her dolls, delivering herself to the main protagonist’s front door with ease. Not to mention, she’s also incredibly clever – making sure that everyone in the family who incurred her wrath suffer, even if she has to convince a vengeful pregnant woman to allow her to posses her body. She’s creepy, chilling, and cannot be reasoned with. Better to stay out of her way, rather than suffer the torture of Mary Shaw and her many dolls.
2) The Candyman – Candyman Franchise
A fake urban legend about a former slave who feel in love with, and impregnated, a white woman sounds cliche, right? He was covered in honey and stung to death by bees-lame. Now, if you say the special words five times in a mirror, you too can summon the Candyman. And if you’re laughing right now, you have obviously never seen the movie. Yes, his name is beyond stupid. No monster worth their salt has a ridiculously cheesy, unthreatening name like “candyman.” At worst, he sounds like a really creepy pimp. But don’t be fooled, there’s nothing sweet about him and he’ll claw out your face if you dare laugh. And that’s really part of the charm – after all, who expecting a hook to the face when they hear “candyman”? Yeah, that’s what I thought. And he’s one of the only really rememberable African-American monsters who stick in the social consciousness. Who can take a human body and mutilate with his bees? Make all the disbelievers fall to their knees? The Candyman can.
1) The Thing parasite – The Thing
In my opinion, the parasite from The Thing is the ultimate in amazing monster design. Why? For one, like many other monsters, you don’t know why the parasite is here, why it’s taking over bodies, and what its end game is. All it wants to do is get inside of you and then get to the general populus. It’s crafty, and a play on the fear of blood-born disease and pathogens, written right around the time of the AIDs crisis. Ergo, it plays off the fears of its audience without them understand why. But the biggest reason? It’s an invisible monster. We never really see it, only finding it with subtle physical hints and clues from its host.In general, monsters you can’t see tend to be cop out in terms of budget or effort in general, but not here. The writers were so smart to actually understand that a big scary monster reveal isn’t necassary if you can make every man, woman, and child a potential monster. Because in the end of the film, even though we don’t know if someone’s infected still or not, it doesn’t matter. There could be thousands of more of these bad boys waiting for us to climb under our skin. Because that’s really the biggest question at the end – not, does Mac survive, but are there anymore of these out there and where might they be hiding?
