Creature Features

These Creature Features are movies that you might have seen on late night TV hosted by a man or a woman dressed like a vampire. Ooooo! Scarrrry! If I had a TV show these are just a few of the movies I’d probably show.

 


 

An American Werewolf in London

Two American students are walking in the Welsh moors when they are suddenly attacked by a wolf. One dies and haunts the survivor, who has been bitten but survives, trying to get him to kill himself before he does something that he will regret at the next full moon. Lots of atmosphere and a bucketful of black humor.

 

The Bride of Frankenstein


Dr. Frankenstein is coerced into creating a bride for his monster, because once you have created Man, you need to create Woman as well, I suppose. The Doctor learns another lesson; you can create life, but you can’t create love.

 

Creature from the Black Lagoon

A classic Universal Studios horror staple. A pre-historic Gill-Man is captured by a scientific expedition in a lagoon on the Amazon River. Soon he becomes smitten with the only female on the expedition. The lovelorn Creature escapes and kidnaps his lady-love with the scientists in hot pursuit.

 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde


The story of a chemist’s experiment trying to unleash both the good and evil sides of man’s character. Well, he got it half right. Based on the classic story by Robert Louis Stevenson, the most popular version of this much filmed story is the 1931 version starring Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins.

 

The Fly (1958) and (1986)


When a scientist has an unwanted guest - a fly - enter his teleportation device with him during an experiment, things start to go wrong for him on a molecular level. If you didn’t know how gross flies were before, these movies will educate you.

Frankenstein


The classic story by Mary Shelley about a man who wants to conquer death, but instead creates a monster who is unleashed into the countryside because of his incompetent assistant who gets a murderer’s brain for the monster and then antagonizes it with fire, driving it mad to kill. The iconic 1931 adaptation, starring Boris Karloff as the monster, is the best of the many sequels, though the 1994 version starring Robert De Niro and Kenneth Branagh is considered very good and is more faithful to Mary Shelley’s book.

 

The Host


When a horrible monster, bred in the highly polluted Han River in Seoul, kidnaps a young girl, it is up to her slacker father to find and rescue her. Is he up to the task or will he take a nap instead?

 

The Invisible Man

Would you like to be able to make yourself invisible, or be homicidally insane? If you are Claude Rains, you get to be both in this classic movie. Bonus!

 

The Island of Lost Souls

Charles Laughton, as Dr. Moreau, puts the creature in features in this classic story of genetic manipulation. Based on H.G. Wells’ story of a mad scientist creating human-animal hybrids on a remote South Pacific island. If you are a fan of the rock group Devo, you will enjoy this film immensely.

 

Jaws

A huge white shark terrorizes a beachfront community, scaring off the summertime crowds. The local Sheriff hires a marine biologist and a crusty old fisherman (whose boat turns out to be too small) to hunt it down.


King Kong (1933), (1976) and (2005)


The classic, American version of Beauty and the Beast, where the beauty is a beautiful Hollywood actress, and the beast is a gigantic ape. Though all three versions are worth seeing, the original is probably the best, overall. They are all very interesting examples of how film technology was used in the eras that they were filmed.


The Thing


This Horror/Sci-Fi hybrid has a shape-shifting killer alien assuming the appearance of its victims in a claustrophobic Antarctic outpost. As it methodically kills the men at the outpost and assumes their identities, Kurt Russell’s character devises a way to find out who is human and who is the Thing. This is a remake of the 1951 classic movie.


Tremors

A small town in the desert is terrorized by gigantic (and fast!) sand worms that are attracted to seismic activity, such as people running from them. A great low-rent monster/comedy movie with a great cast.

The Wolf Man

Claude Rains plays a very practical man who doesn’t believe in mythical folk tales, until he’s bitten by one, that is.