On August 15, 2013, the film was announced to be used as the seventh maze to be featured at Universal Orlando Resort's annual Halloween Horror Nights event in 2013. The Toxic Avenger is a 1984 American superhero film released by Troma Entertainment, known for producing low budget B-movies with campy concepts. In a dilapidating ice cream stand on 12 Mile, in the ’60s-style ranch homes of Ferndale or Berkley, in a game of Parcheesi played by pale teenagers with nasally, nothing accents—if you’ve never been, you’d never recognize the stale, gray nostalgia creeping into every corner of David Robert Mitchell’s terrifying film. | Votes: 39,251 | Gross: $0.08M. Olin Howland. | Gross: | Top 20 Must-See Best Monster movies from our List of 605 Monster movies, including Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, Jaws, Aliens, The Birds, Alien, Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Quiet Place, and Little Shop of Horrors ranked and rated by score… What follows is a joyously vivid, fast-paced feature, full of Lovecraftian monsters but none of the author’s pomp and circumstance. As in that film, man’s hubris is ultimately revealed as the true monster, but the popcorn munchers in the audience still get to indulge in some thrills as well. | VFX and CGI were produced by effects studios Double Negative and Tippett Studio. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) 134. In Japanese cinema, such monsters are referred to as Kaiju. | $2.20M. Widely panned by critics for its premise, bad directing, stilted acting, and laughable special effects, the film's biggest failure was considered to be the inability to make the rabbits seem scary. Aneta Corsaut, In a manner that was mimicked six years later by the remake of The Blob, Carpenter took a thinly veiled Cold War allegory and cloaked it in his taut, atmospheric style, ratcheting up both suspense and the lurid payoff delivered by groundbreaking FX work, while expanding the mythology and capabilities of the titular monster. John Hurt, Votes: And regardless of its box office success, it is the standard against which future Kaiju films will be—or in the case of its lackluster sequel, was—judged. Doug Jones, The first time that Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) sees the literal “jaws” of the beast while absentmindedly throwing chum into the water is one of the great, scream-inducing moments in cinema history, and it’s a shock that has literally never been matched in any other shark movie since. Likewise, it set the bar on its special effects at such a high level that in many instances, shots and sequences from King Kong weren’t suitably duplicated for decades to come. Stars: Shusett was executive producer. The film's tongue-in-cheek title song was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David and became a nationwide hit in the U.S. The film is set not too far in the future, out somewhere in rural America. Louis Jourdan, James Franciscus, She starts killing for him to revitalize his body so he can escape the demonic beings that are pursuing him after he escaped their sadistic underworld. Dennis Dugan, The first 20 minutes show us a young camera crew investigating some unexplained bear deaths and a suspicious man who may be poaching them. That hook is so clever that, although this is a horror movie, I sometimes laughed as much as I tensed up, just because I admired the sheer pleasure of its execution. —Jim Vorel, © 2021 Paste Media Group. PG | The first film to ever feature a giant monster directly attributed to the detonation or radiation from an atomic bomb, it set the template for dozens of creature features that would follow in the 1950s, such as Them! Director: Jonathan King | Stars: Oliver Driver, Nathan Meister, Tammy Davis, Matthew Chamberlain. Also like King Kong, you’ll find yourself rooting for the monster. Simply swap out the communist paranoia of the Steve McQueen-starring 1958 original for some light satirization of the horror genre itself, along with a healthy dose of governmental distrust, and you’re all the way there. | For those who worry that it’s “not safe to go back in the water,” then most certainly it is. Stars: J.J. Abrams' Super 8 is a monster movie I can relate to, because the core characters are a group of young kids from Ohio who are attempting to make a horror … Geena Davis, He is then captured and brought back to New York City for public exhibition. Every frame is a visual puzzle, as Carpenter’s camera drifts over empty hallways, open door frames and cloaked figures in the arctic air. Larry Talbot returns to his father's castle in Wales and meets a beautiful woman. Now evildoers will have a lot to lose. We want to see this merry band of special forces operatives conquer the faceless chameleon set against them. Del Toro cares about the well being of freaks and aberrations more than most people care about the well being of other actual people. Stuart Gordon The Host had set a new Korean box office record by reaching 10 million tickets in just 21 days. Sometimes described as being like “The Goonies with monsters,” that’s really not a bad way to sum it up. R | The film was released on a limited basis in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD formats on July 24, 2007. Park Hae-il, Peter Cushing, It now is regarded as a cult classic.The film has generated three film sequels, a stage musical production and a children's TV cartoon. Today, the same film would no doubt arrive as a streaming original feature from the likes of Netflix or Amazon, where its genre-redefining camera perspective would be less of a risk. $59.62M, Hellboy is a fictional character, a superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. | Gross: There are beasts aplenty here, and a smattering of snarling aliens, but also lovable monsters and misunderstood creatures that never wanted to do any harm. Stars: It borrows the basic structure of Night of the Living Dead to do so, having our group of protagonists holed up in a rickety farmhouse that is under siege by a large group of werewolves. Prophecy qualifies on several odd fronts at once: It’s simultaneously a “nature attacks” rip-off in the vein of Jaws or Grizzly, and also a would-be environmental passion piece, wrapped up in the guise of an exploitation horror movie. The Spider or The Deadly Mantis, Them! | Gross: Elisa, ballsier than Strickland and basically every other man in the film, develops instant kinship with the creature. $59.74M. Animal Horror Movies: The Best Creature Feature Films Ever Made. Like all of Harryhausen’s stop-motion creations, the Rhedosaurus has great personality and an iconic look, captured in seemingly insignificant details of its full-body articulation. Even if we are scared or feel our heart beating at a speed of 160 km/hour, we cannot stop watching these monster movies on Netflix. George Waggner It premiered in Detroit on February 12 and was released on a regional basis, opening on various dates. I understand that description sounds at odds with itself—this film is often at odds with itself. Holmes Herbert. It is a live-action film but its title character, a dragon named Elliott, is animated. The make-up artist was Jack Pierce. Stars: Alien is a 1979 science-fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. John Louie, Votes: 109 min | Director: Frank Darabont 19,360 Duncan Regehr, Votes: | Horror, Sci-Fi. | One victim's loving family does what it can to rescue her from its clutches. Armed with little more than some crappy actors and a big wicker basket, Henenlotter crafted this schlocky tale of two brothers: A seemingly normal guy named Duane and his separated, deformed Siamese twin Belial, who he carries around with him at all times. R That Alien can also make Space—capital “S”—in its vastness feel as suffocating as a coffin is a testament to Scott’s control as a director (arguably absent from much of his work to follow, including his insistence on ballooning the mythos of this first near-perfect film), as well as to the purity of horror as a cinematic genre. $39.24M. | Gross: Tell us what you think about this feature. 109 min Jeffrey Combs, Gina Philips, After seeing a man-sized Brundlefly vomiting acid, it’s difficult to ever look at a common housefly in the same way again. Most important, however, were those CGI advancements. $25.59M. It was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley, and many imitative thrillers. Giger) and a fellow crew member who’s basically a walking vessel for an upsetting amount of seminal fluid. Not Rated 112,587 Robby Kiger, $13.78M. Kong, though, still stands as an unparalleled achievement for its time period—far grander and more ambitious in scope than most anything you can compare it to in the same time frame. Krasinski and his writers sidestep the problem not just by keeping A Quiet Place short but by concocting enough variations on "Seriously, don’t make a noise" that we stay sucked into the storytelling. Pierre Benedetti. Joe Dante I love the odd proportions they give the monsters—humanoid bodies with long, somewhat thin limbs which give the werewolves an imposing height, but heads that are straight-up wolves rather than a mixture of wolf and man. Fortunately, our hero has his heart in the right place, which is why he’s the only monster on this list who aids humanity instead of destroying it. Vincent Gardenia, 82 min The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. 109 min | All Russell’s The Blob has to do is get a bit closer, and the Blob itself does the rest. — The threat or focus of a monster movie has to be something inhuman. It was recorded by studio group the Five Blobs – actually singer Bernie Knee overdubbing himself. | Gross: Shots of Godzilla trudging through thick smoke, spotlights highlighting his gaping maw as the Japanese military’s weapons do nothing but shock the dark with beautiful chiaroscuro, have been rarely matched in films of its ilk (and in the director’s own legion of sequels); Honda saw gods and monsters and, with the world entering a new age of technological doom, found no difference between the two. Roy Scheider, | Critics generally gave the film favourable reviews. The key moment is the protagonist’s incredibly painful, traumatic full transformation, set to the crooning of Sam Cooke doing “Blue Moon,” which is still unsurpassed in the history of the genre. Directors: Ernest Thesiger, utterly steals the show by truly bringing the “mad” into “mad scientist.” His initial meeting and salutation to the Monster, sitting comfortably among the skulls of a mass grave without a hint of fear, may be the most iconic horror scene of the ’30s. Lorraine Gary, Votes: Industrial Light & Magic created the visual effects sequences, which led to a revolutionary breakthrough with digital morphing technology. Director: Stars: Patrick Macnee, It is the 14th-highest-grossing film worldwide, the 16th-highest-grossing film in North America (unadjusted for inflation), and the highest-grossing film released by Universal and directed by Spielberg. $2.40M. T.J. Miller, Votes: | Gross: Maribel Verdú, Votes: They look utterly alien, and it’s great. Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla movie wasn’t really one so much as it was a brand exercise, astoundingly executed, but divorced from Toho’s legendary lizard flicks. Typically, movie monsters differ from more traditional antagonists in that many exist due to circumstances beyond their control; their actions not entirely based on choice, potentially making them objects of empathy to film viewers.Biggest challenge in constructing this list was deciding exactly what constituted a ‘monster’. Monster movies originated with adaptations of horror folklore and literature. Willow was then set up at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and principal photography began in April 1987, finishing the following October.The majority of filming took place at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England, as well as Wales and New Zealand. 85 min Director: Mickey Rooney, Votes: Naturally, the perpetually stubborn Hellboy has some differing opinions on the nature of free will. R This isn’t exactly a character-driven tale, a la American Werewolf in London, but instead an action-packed wolf yarn that pits a squad of soldiers against a rampaging family of lycanthropes in the Scottish Highlands. | 94 min —Stephen M. Deusner, The Mist is straightforward in its high-concept premise, putting its pieces on the table immediately and then allowing the basics of human nature to fill in the cracks. —Dom Sinacola, Before he was breaking out internationally with a tight action film like Snowpiercer, and eventually winning a handful of Oscars for Parasite, this South Korean monster movie was Bong Joon-ho’s big work and calling card. In 2004 Rialto Pictures gave the original a limited theatrical release in the United States to coincide with the original film's 50th anniversary. —Jim Vorel, Bargain bin horror really reached a new level in the 1980s as filmmaking equipment became more widely available. Fay Wray, Director: Cloverfield puts its characters into some insane situations, but never breaks the trust it establishes that this is a bystander-eye’s view. Ray Wise, $37.63M. Frank Reicher, Votes: $80.05M. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict”. Guillermo del Toro | The Day of the Triffids is a 1962 British film based on the 1951 science fiction novel of the same name by John Wyndham. Whatever you do, just don’t see the 2014 sequel in name only, Monsters: Dark Continent. Cole Hauser, 100 min Director: | 189,097 120 min Director: 31,604 Oh, and it also wants to be Alien as well. | 97 min Kent Smith, | Because the brief 1950s 3-D movie fad had peaked in mid-1953 and was fading fast in early 1954, many audiences actually saw the film "flat", in 2-D; typically, it was shown in 3-D in large downtown theaters and flat in smaller neighborhood theaters. It has been remade twice: in 1976 and in 2005. Compared with the 1960 original from Roger Corman, it’s a far more slick and humor-laden presentation of the same story. Nothing in his previous work could prepare viewers for the precision of A Quiet Place’s horror. The theories spiral endlessly into dark corners of the internet, as Carpenter’s visual clues and Bill Lancaster’s script seem to provide the audience with most—but never quite all—of the information they need to be certain. 10 Best Body Horror Movies To Squirm Your Way Through Let’s just get it out of the way now: None of the Human Centipede movies made this chronological cut of the ten best body horror movies … | 226,668 For the film’s entire duration, we see only what they see, cleverly capturing one aspect of the true horror present in disaster situations—the very likely reality that no one present will have any idea what is happening, or any idea of what to do about it. Janet Leigh, Drag Me to Hell (2009) 269. Stars: | Schwarzenegger’s impish charm contrasts beautifully with his larger-than-life, muscle-bound physique, a dynamic he’s always happy to entertain. Joanne Whalley, It’s a basic premise that was utterly run into the ground by copycat B movies in the years to follow, but none of them come close to replicating the hyper-macho camaraderie that makes Predator an enduringly entertaining relic of its time. According to the director, his inspiration came from a local article about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in Han River. 83 min Warren William, The character has been adapted into two live-action feature films in 2004 and 2008 that starred Ron Perlman in the title role, and two straight-to-DVD animated films, as well as two video games – Asylum Seeker and The Science of Evil.A well-meaning demon whose true name is Anung Un Rama ("and upon his brow is set a crown of flame"), Hellboy was summoned from Hell to Earth as an infant demon on December 23, 1944 (given as his birth date by Mike Mignola) by Nazi occultists (spawning his hatred for them). After a space merchant vessel receives an unknown transmission as a distress call, one of the crew is attacked by a mysterious life form and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff and features Dwight Frye and Edward van Sloan. | | Ultimately, The Descent is as moving a character study as it is terrifying subterranean creature feature, with one hell of an ending to boot. Available to stream on Max Go, Cinemax, and DirecTV and to … Its heart is of course the all-time great performance from Boris Karloff as “the monster,” perhaps the first time that many audiences had seen such a role swimming in obvious pathos for a creature designated in the collective imagination as the film’s “villain.” Unlike sequels Bride of Frankenstein or Son of Frankenstein, one can say that there really is no true antagonist to the first film—the monster is a pitiable figure lashing out against a world that instinctively condemns him the moment they lay eyes on him. Freddie Francis These “Grabbers,” as they’re quickly dubbed, have only one weakness: Human blood is fatal to them if it’s over a certain percentage alcohol. Billy Crystal and John Goodman make an endearing and iconic odd couple. Since its initial theatrical release, Nightbreed has achieved cult status.Barker had expressed disappointment with the final cut and longed for the recovery of the reels so it might be re-edited; a director's cut was scheduled for release in 2014. A giant, irradiated bug stomping all over a modern metropolis, perhaps, or an inhuman beast stalking a group of campers foolish enough to blunder into its territory. Elisa’s clockwork days are disrupted by the arrival of the Asset (Doug Jones, the actor behind Abe Sapiens’ prosthetics), the aforementioned fish-man, in the custody of Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon), at once the epitome of the del Toro villain and the average Shannon role: He’s abusive, violent, dictatorial to a fault, but mannered, the kind of bastard who thinks his dastardly bastard deeds are right and never thinks twice about his own morality.