Teeth? Claws?
Joe Flaherty died this week. He was one of the founders of Toronto’s Second City improv comedy troupe, and known for playing many characters on SCTV. He created Floyd Robertson, who was not only the lead news anchor for SCTV, but also had a part time job hosting Monster Chiller Horror Theater in the guise of Count Floyd.
Robertson didn’t try very hard to play a convincing vampire, since he howled like a werewolf, and tended to break character to confess that the movies he was showing were bad, dumb, and baffling. The joke was he was just there to cash in.
So in honor of Joe Flaherty and Count Floyd, let’s talk monsters.
Were You Scared?
Did you watch monster movies on TV as a kid? Did you find them scary or funny? I remember watching the original version of The Blob with Steve McQueen and thought it was pretty ridiculous, and the heightened 50s teen atmosphere didn’t help make it any scarier. I also remember how more and more commercials were packed in as the movie went on, making it almost unwatchable.
I vaguely remember other monster movies, maybe wolfman knockoffs or mummy movies, but one annoying thing was the way lots of scenes were cut to make room for more commercials, and the plots could be impossible to follow – sometimes commercials were dropped right in the middle of a scene, and the action would restart in a completely new place.
I also read Dracula as a kid, and I remember enjoying it quite a bit, although I was surprised when (SPOILER) he was killed with a knife to the heart. And for some reason my dentist’s office had monster comics in the waiting room which I read before getting my teeth cleaned.
Would You Be Scary?
Or let’s take this NOT another direction. If you could be a monster, what would you be? Would you be a vampire like Count Floyd, and accept that you couldn’t go out in the sun anymore and needed to live on an all-blood diet? Or maybe you might like to be Godzilla, with the obvious downside of not much companionship and getting tanks stuck in your toenails.
Would you be a monster from ancient mythology, like Medusa? Or maybe something out of folklore like Bigfoot, and live in a band of shaggy proto-humans in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, eating possums and roots and berries?
Stay and chat, Deadsplinterhowlers, about monsters from your childhood or monsters you might aspire to be. Or any other aspects of monsters you like.
your post popped up as i was listening to this again
wierd coinkadink
anyways…ive never found monster movies scary
i mean for one they are kinda silly…..and for 2 anything i can physically touch doesnt scare me……cept circular saws….they scare me….so i dont touch them
now..the supernatural shit…. yeah….im not very good with that one…. shit i cant touch scares me
I’ve talked about this before but I loved Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The series was brilliant, making incredibly pedestrian scenarios on a limited budget terrifying (I can still picture the mannequins attacking Kolchak, or the Rakshasa). It’s a shame there’s never been a proper reboot.
X-Files was supposed to be. I liked the show but he should have gotten a better camera considering the number of photos he took and ended up with “issues”.
Cameras were primitive back then.
X-Files: I know it was intended to mimic Kolchak. And it’s no coincidence that the very best episodes are the one-off “monster of the week” episodes. The bizarre adherence to the incoherent and contradictory “mythology” (that ultimately made NO SENSE) led to increasingly byzantine episodes that were painful to watch. I don’t think I even finished the series. I did try to watch the reboot for a bit, and I think I saw the first movie, but the fact that I can’t even remember them suggests I found them less than compelling.
The Lone Gunmen, however, was fucking brilliant and ended far too soon.
The only monsters (movie) that freaked me out was Killer Man Trout aka Humanoids from the Deep. It was a terrible awful movie but I saw it was a kid and it scarred me.
It was a Piranha knockoff but dumber.
TV stuff freaked me out more. Space 1999’s S1 episode Dragon’s Domain taught me to fear dark corridors and space squid that consume your flesh. Plenty of Dr Who monsters did.
I looked up Humanoids, and that sounds like the most Roger Corman movie ever.
As for being a monster, I would be a Greek Fury or something akin to Pale Rider or High Plains Drifter (my sisters call me jokingly the man with no name.)
A ghost that comes from nowhere to avenge itself upon those that wronged it and won’t stop till the scales are balanced.
I like to think i do that in real life but I mostly just pin prick the motherfuckers enough to lay off and find some other putz to bully.
I would either be a gorgon or a Greek sphinx. Not an Egyptian one, I want bloodshed and funsies.
Anyways, I have no Greek heritage but if I could get a reasonable copy for outdoor decor, I’d totally fucking have it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Close_up_of_Gorgon_at_the_pediment_of_Artemis_temple_in_Corfu.jpg
That’s a great expression on her face.
Right, she’s spectacular.
The Temple of Artemis at Corfu is the oldest known example of Doric architecture from the Greek Archaic period, it’s when they were still figuring out their styles etc. Gorgons are also protective elements, and hey who couldn’t benefit from that!
Kali. Goddess of time, change, creation, power, darkness, destruction and death. I figure that you can’t be a megalomaniac if you have the attributed skills for real.
Nobody messes with Kali.
far as being a monster goes….
pretty sure im taz the tasmanian devil
a chaotic whirlwind of destruction and random shit
……sounds about me
I grew up riiiiight in the middle of th.l 1980’s golden-ish age of TERRIBLE, yet *incredibly FUN* horror movies, so Night of the Creeps, Creepshow, the Hellraiser series, the Evil Dead series, etc, are *all* in my personal favorites list
The 1980’s was a GREAT time to be a kid, and into horror.
Movies had “gross” scenes, and FUNNY ones, but UNLIKE so much of the more modern horror–there *wasn’t* so much, “Gore for the sake of Gore”
YES, there was plenty of blood, guts, etc.
But there WAS stuff that was appropriate for Kids (Creepshow, Gremlins, The Evil Dead, Night of the Creeps, etc), it WASN’T the sort of thing that could actually *traumatize* most of the kids who saw it.
Althpugh i loved films like the Matrix series, I honestly noped out of modern horror, around the time Hostel and Saw came out, because with the exception of some of the Asian *original* horror-genre films (for example, Train to Busan is AWESOME), 0
Toooo many of the American “remakes” are just slasher-gorefests, with little *real* plot or story, it feels like.
They’re too focused on the “ick factor” and making folks really uncomfortable–but without the *psychological* elements that make vintage horror–and it’s 1970’s/80’s/90’s descendants *FUN* to watch–as opposed to just “gross and uncomfortable”
I don’t know if I’m so biased, because my MOM loves psychological thrillers/horror, and originally got me watching *classic* horror–like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dracula, Frankenstein, and–although later–The Elephant Man?
But *that’s* the sort of horror I adore–something with a good, FUN or compelling *plot*, which sucks you *in* to the world of the story😉