Gizmo is intelligent, curious, and he even sings.
Seriously, Gizmo is the cutest monster in film history and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. This Christmas, Billy’s dad brings home a new pet for his son, an adorable Mogwai (species) that Billy names Gizmo.
If you’ve somehow missed this movie, it’s about Billy Peltzer, a young aspiring artist who lives with his parents in the idyllic little town of Kingston Falls. It still holds up very well, its practical effects still impressive and the imaginative nature of the creatures still a lot of fun. I imagine many horror fans, especially those born in the 70’s and 80’s, cut their teeth on this classic monster flick. But it is eerie, shocking, and surprisingly deep, with a depth of characters and situation more similar to horror novels than most monster movies. Much has been written on the gender politics of The Brood (as with most every other Cronenberg movie), and I must admit I’ve gone back and forth over the years with how I feel about that angle.
#Creature feature movies movie#
As with most every movie before the 1980’s, the trailers for this film give too much away, so I’d advise skipping them. And the creatures carrying out these killings? Well, they are the stuff of nightmares, not only physically disturbing but also fascinating in their origin.
#Creature feature movies series#
Then, a series of murders begins, seemingly targeting people close to (or even within) the Carveth family. When Frank finds evidence that suggests Nora is abusing their child, he tries looking deeper into Raglan’s methods. Nora suffers from mental illness and has for some time been a patient at the Somafree Institute, the site of a controversial new psychotherapeutic technique invented by therapist Hal Raglan. This movie follows Nora and Frank Carveth, an acrimoniously divorced couple still fighting over the custody of their little daughter. The Brood, however, fuses body-horror, monsters, psychological suspense, and a murder mystery into an especially tasty combo. I could’ve put any number of his titles of this list, with The Fly, They Come From Within, and Naked Lunch heading that pack. I have written and will no doubt write again about these deeper meanings, but before you go doing any critical analysis (if that’s your idea of fun too), please just let these monsters be monsters and expand your notions of what might be creeping around out there in the dark.ĭavid Cronenberg is the undisputed king of body-horror movies, this despite the fact that he hasn’t made such a film in twenty years. And surely it isn’t a coincidence that half of the movies are set in small towns or nearly deserted cities. Sexual guilt, repressed rage, conformism, the effects of pollution, these all come into play here. Each of the following movies can (and often have) be strip-mined for symbolism and psychosocial interpretation. If you’re a horror fan, you’ve likely heard of or watched several of these movies, but I hope there’s at least one that slipped by you.įor my money, there’s little in the horror genre (particularly filmed horror) that matches the pleasure and even awe aroused by one’s first exposure to a good monster. But I’m here to share my more idiosyncratic favorites. It may be the greatest monster movie yet, sporting special effects that made the squeamish angrily denounce it when it was first released. If you haven’t seen that one, absolutely watch it. Aside from three of the movies on this list, the first movie monster that caught my attention was the shape-shifting and human-mimicking alien on John Carpenter’s The Thing.
This list could have been thirty movies long and I still wouldn’t have exhausted every cinematic creature that has captured my imagination and haunted my nights.
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