Attack the Block (2011)

Attack the Block was another one of those destined-for-cult-status movies that was championed by the genre-focused movie websites I read back in the late aughts and early 2010s, and it’s not difficult to understand why. At its heart, this is a throwback movie to older creature features and to the youth-centric films of the 1980s, with a fannish tint to its writing that is reflected in the references in the dialogue and the love of Big, Cool Moments. Writer-director Joe Cornish already had a following from his radio and television comedy work, and was able to parlay his association with Edgar Wright’s comedy-pastiche crew (Wright is an Executive Producer on this with his frequent collaborators Nira Park as Producer and Nick Frost in the cast) to get his film off the ground, and to some extent the exuberant aficionado tone of Wright’s work is evident here even if it’s not as much of a direct homage as his films often are. While this movie didn’t necessarily make a huge splash back in 2011, its favour among an influential crowd almost certainly led its two leads, John Boyega and Jodie Whitaker, to be cast as the new faces of two different long-running franchises, something that both might feel a tinge of regret about.

So, yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that Sci-Fi and horror nerds flock toward, an attempt to capture a bit of nostalgic spirit in its kids-vs-monsters set-up, but it’s also an intelligent and novel twist on that idea that goes places those older movies did not. The straightforward kind of monster action utilized by Cornish becomes a frame in which to place a cast of well-defined, lower class youths, the kind whose lives are not simply left out of fantasy films, but are regularly dehumanized into faceless, hoodie-wearing creatures themselves by people far removed from their poverty-stricken living conditions. Like many of the best monster movies, this is one about taking something very specific and very real and letting the fictional aberrations draw out the reality of it.

The Man and the Monster (1958)

We return to the Golden Age of Mexican horror cinema in the 1950s and 60s, and to the work of producer-actor Abel Salazar, who we last saw in the bizarre brain-sucking Dracula-alike The Brainiac. As I said in that write-up, the defining features of this era of Mexican horror film is the influence the movies take specifically from the classic Universal horror cycle of the thirties and forties (and their imitators), with classically supernatural stories and moody black-and-white Gothic visuals. This is very evident in The Man and the Monster (El hombre y el monstruo), a film produced and starring Salazar and directed by the prolific director-actor Rafael Baledón—in particular, this takes cues from The Wolf Man, as well as the various film adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (of which Universal produced exactly zero), with a little bit of Faust for good measure. But this movie is more than the sum of its influences—and is a relatively more subdued affair than the off-the-wall Brainiac—learning all the right lessons to give this seemingly familiar story a unique sense of pathos and well-honed filmcraft that transcends any budgetary limitations it might have.

Monster From the Ocean Floor (1954)

Two movie posts in one week? Yes, I had so many things I wanted to write about that I’m starting my double features a bit early this summer. In June, you’ll be getting a new millennium subject early in the week, and something more vintage on Thursdays.

I was already planning on writing about this movie at some point, but the passing of Roger Corman (a few weeks ago as of this posting) made it a top priority, and I’m hoping to cover more of his movies in the near future. Of course, Corman had a big impact on the entirety of Hollywood film with his prolific filmography, general eye for talent, and, let’s say, economical methods, but the many monster movies he either directed (I’ve written about a few of them) or produced do have a special place in that vast filmography—with all their B-movie qualities, there were a few that offered genuine innovation in the category, or at the very least were uniquely bizarre and entertaining. There are also the times where he provided a starting point for filmmakers who would go on to become some of the biggest creative forces in monster movie history, including Joe Dante’s big break with Piranha. In a career that spanned everything from Edgar Allan Poe adaptations to women in prison movies and eccentric comedies, the monster movies are a crucial part of his legacy—beginning with Corman’s first-ever film as a producer.

As the story goes, Corman was irritated after seeing a script he wrote altered by the studio, so he decided to start his own production company to have complete control of the movies he worked on. Monster From the Ocean Floor was the first film he produced, and its six-day, cost-saving-whenever-possible production (the budget is somewhere between $12,000 and $35,000 depending on who you ask) was the beginning of the patented Corman method that would serve him for the rest of his career. The money he received up front from Lippert Pictures for Monster was used to fund his next movie, something called The Fast and the Furious(!), which was the first movie he worked on with distributors Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, the founders of his longtime distributor American International Pictures.

On a pure film history level, Monster From the Ocean Floor is actually significant, even if it is rather unassuming as a low budget fifties monster movie that could be best described as “quaint.” I would also argue that it, in its unassuming way, it’s also a fairly forward-looking piece of fifties creature feature history—released between more famous big studio fare, specifically Creature From the Black Lagoon and Them!, it gets into some of the major themes of the era early, signalling the specific form of nuclear paranoia that haunts a large number of these movies. Corman and his crew were not establishing their own distinct brand of monster movie, but developing the entire genre as a whole without really trying—and that’s a very Corman thing to do.

Quatermass II

Finally, we are rounding out Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy, three alien-heavy Sci-Fi films whose impact on the genre in the UK and beyond cannot be understated (maybe don’t expect to see coverage of the much-belated Quatermass/Quatermass Conclusion, which was made when Kneale was in full “Old Man Yells At Cloud” phase.) As with The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II was originally written by Kneale as a six-part BBC television serial, which aired 1955 (commissioned partly to give the BBC a high profile answer to their first privately-owned competitor, ITV), and then adapted into film form by Hammer in 1957 under the slightly altered title Quatermass 2 (or Enemy From Space in other countries.) With Kneale demanding new terms following his displeasure with Hammer’s adaptation of the first Quatermass serial (that argument led to the creation of X the Unknown as a substitute for a second Quatermass in film in 1956), he was given a chance to write the first draft of Quatermass 2 himself, which was then revised by director Val Guest, who had directed both Xperiment and the other 1957 Nigel Kneale adaptation, The Abominable Snowman. Kneale was so pleased with the resulting movie that, when he gained controlling rights to it, he proceeded to remove it from circulation.

Watching both versions of this, it’s difficult to really agree with Kneale’s position—Hammer’s version of Quatermass II is a thoughtfully condensed version of the serial, and even Brian Donlevy returning to play Quatermass (which one of the things that Kneale disagreed with most vociferously) fits better here than he did in The Quatermass Xperiment. While the movie version of Quatermass and the Pit made over a decade later is a generally good adaptation where you can still feel the missing depth and detail of the extended TV serial, the Quatermass II film captures all the atmosphere and deliberate storytelling without much compromise, and in some ways the story is even enhanced thanks to the upped budget. Importantly, the themes that Kneale imbued in that story are fully maintained, and with Guest’s direction, often intensified.

All of the Quatermass stories deal with a loss of human agency due to the machinations of cosmic horrors—the first one featured a near-mindless extraterrestrial organism that altered a man inside and out, and Quatermass and the Pit showed human evolution manipulated by a self-destructive alien civilization in the distant past. By comparison, Quatermass II feels almost normal, as a variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers paranoia; the TV serial came after Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers but preceded the film version, a case of parallel thought reflecting the fears in the air in the mid-1950s of secret subversive plots and the battle between free will and conformity. What this version of that story emphasizes is the terrifying speed in which the outside influence seeds itself into positions of power, and how the machinations of our higher offices seem almost tailor-made to shield this invasion from the public eye. There is a specific set of very British observations and ironies animating Kneale’s writing, leading to something that is relatively more grounded than the other two Quatermass stories and their broader existential anxieties, while still suggesting that a malignant, inhuman universe can suddenly assert control over us.

It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)

Some nine years after It Lives Again, Larry Cohen returned to his monster movie debut for one final bow—but this was Cohen returning after expanding his repertoire and innovating in the genre in the eighties, first with Q – The Winged Serpent and then The Stuff, both classics in their own right. The increasingly over-the-top and comedy-infused styles of those movie do in fact continue in It’s Alive III—sometimes in very direct ways, considering the actors involved—keeping it in line with Cohen’s eighties filmography; at the same time, it develops many of the themes and emotional beats that made the original It’s Alive and its supplementary first sequel into something genuinely special. Yes, these movies about murderous mutant babies carry all the marks of schlock genius, but as weird as it sounds, they also have a heart, and that makes something like Island of the Alive stand out just as much as…well, everything else in it.

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Get ready for this—it’s Sequel Month: The Sequel!

Tasked with putting out a follow-up to Creature From the Black Lagoon just over a year later, producer William Alland, director Jack Arnold, and screenwriter Martin Berkeley (who also co-wrote the Arnold-directed Tarantula) took what was probably the most logical path: if the the first Creature film seemed directly inspired by the voyage to a prehistoric world as seen in King Kong, then a second one should take cues from the New York climax. In Revenge of the Creature, the once dominant life form in a secluded natural habitat is forcibly transplanted to our modern world—rather than a film about entering an unreal world of evolutionary alternatives, it’s about the unreal entrapped by more recognizable surroundings. By itself, this storytelling decision de-mystifies the monster by taking him out of his element and making it a lone aberration interrupting normalcy—but, intentionally or not, the rest of the movie degrades and diminishes it to such a degree that it may be an even more pitiable figure than in the first movie.

The Descent (2005)

If there is any consistent thread you can find throughout the most well-regarded monster movies that premiered after the new millennium, it’s an attempt to bring a classical sense of economy and imagination to a subgenre that had been overtaken by bloat and complacency. While the possibilities of digital filmmaking are utilized, special effects are kept practical, both in the sense of being generally handmade and in that they are cost-efficient and serve a purpose other than showcasing soon-to-be-outdated CGI rigs—that also means budgets are low enough that actual risks can be taken in the subject matter and tone. Neil Marshall’s The Descent is generally held up as one of the best examples of that: here is a horror film based not on impossible effects or haunted house thrills, but a general ratcheting of dread to the point of physical discomfort, one that builds from a grounded place and then introduces its monsters as a form of escalation. This is a return to some of the most unsparing horror of the seventies and eighties, while adding some of its own stylistic touches that mark it as part of a growing movement of bold experiments from genre experts.

Splice (2009)

The movies that get the tag “Science Gone Wrong” on here are part of one of the longest lineages in the history of creature features—and probably one of that history’s most reactionary undercurrents, demonstrating a ceaseless anxiety about scientific discovery and experimentation. The deeper we dive into the mechanics of nature, the closer we get to inevitably crossing lines we were never meant to cross, with terrible consequences the equally inevitable result—or, that’s the way they see it, and it’s a structure and theme that has never really gone away, and manages to adapt itself to whatever the latest technological and scientific advances (although by “adapt to”, I don’t necessarily mean “understand.”) Splice is a film that very intentionally hearkens back to some of the more hysteria-prone versions of that Sci-Fi narrative, and even places it in the consistently hackle-raising field of genetic engineering, which has been the topic of more than a few monster movies over the decades. The innovation here is that the lines being crossed in this story are not necessarily being done in the name of science, but something far more personal—and so the ensuing terrible consequences have some different and sometimes more disturbing dimensions.

“The Curse of Fenric” (S26E8-11)

It is 1989, and Doctor Who is on its last legs. You may have noticed that I skipped over all of the serials featuring Colin Baker in the lead role—this is not simply because of the poor reputation most of the stories have even among fans of the series, but because none of them offer a particularly compelling monster-centric story to write about. Things started looking up at least a little bit in 1987, when the show went through a small-scale creative overhaul, with a new batch of writers behind the scenes and a new lead in Sylvester McCoy, but none of the active attempts to make the series more ambitious and relevant saved it from going on an indefinite hiatus just as the eighties ended, leaving it at a still-impressive twenty-six consecutive years on television.

The three years with McCoy and lead writer Andrew Cartmel carry a very distinctive atmosphere, one that attempts to mine the best parts of the series’ past, especially its sense of imagination and its capacity for moments of child-friendly horror, and infuse a puckish kind of whimsy and more focus on the characterization of the Doctor and his companion. “The Curse of Fenric”, the classic series’ penultimate story, carries with it the DNA of previous serials we’ve talked about: there’s a the moody atmosphere and marching army of monsters of “The Web of Fear”, a somewhat Quatermass-esque combination of mythology and Sci-Fi similar to “The Awakening”, and even the winking social commentary of “Carnival of Monsters.” Another similarity to “Web of Fear” is its attempt to provide a new interpretation of a well-established monster—but this goes much further in taking its inspirations and playing around with the iconography.

BTTM FDRS

The 2019 graphic novel BTTM FDRS finds its monster in the legacy of gentrification and exploitation, with beautiful ideas twisted and then abandoned, and the people on the lower rungs of society left to deal with the resulting mess. Writer Ezra Claytan Daniels (author of 2018’s Upgrade Soul) and artist Ben Passmore (creator of numerous comics across mediums including the completely unsparing Sports Is Hell) make no bones about the racial make-up of both sides of that equation, showing its black protagonists putting up with the indifference and hostility of white people in positions of relative power, something used as both a source of horror and of comedy. This is a story that reflects a wider recognition of social stratification, a heady mix of self-consciousness, guilt and anger, and that complexity puts it well beyond just a simple vehicle for social critique and a side of the grotesque—although it is also both of those things, rather pointedly.