This is a grouping that could, just as easily include the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint, From Dusk 'til Dawn. It has monsters in Mexico, Americans in trouble over their heads, and what the hell, an ancient pyramid. So do these films, except unlike From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which I now consider a modern classic, you're much less likely to have heard of either of these, and that's where I step in. I am, after all, here to help.
The Ruins - 2008
Written by Scott B Smith
Directed by Carter Smith
The Ruins is, in many ways, a fairly typical horror movie. Take a group of not-particularly-likeable college students on vacation and kill them off in an isolated location. What makes it a little scarier and a little more interesting than that formula usually is are a few little twists and variationsalong the way.
Things start out not-very-promisingly, with two college couples vacationing in a fairly secure and homogenized Mexican resort. I've never been able to figure out whether horror movies deliberately make these characters unpleasant so that we won't care when they start getting killed off, or if they're simply trying to present members of their target viewing demographic in an identifiable way, and it's merely high school and college-aged human beings that suck in a more general sense. Nevertheless, we get to meet them and learn that they're spoiled and arrogant. They meet Matthias, a German traveler who's less frivolous, but no more charismatic. He's planning to join his brother at an archaeological dig at a previously unknown pyramid in the jungle and invites them to get away from the resort and see something real. And thus our stage is set, although, frankly, not very intriguingly so far.
The next day (after some interpersonal drama), their little group has to overpay a driver to take them anywhere near the site, then hike the rest of the way in. They find a pyramid covered with vines, and no apparent sign of Matthias' brother and associates. The moment they approach the pyramid, they're surrounded by a group of natives, waving guns and arrows, and shouting at them in their tribal tongue, so their intentions are difficult to ascertain under the circumstances, but clearly all is not what it appears. Misunderstandings go from bad to worse, and someone ends up getting shot. The vacationers retreat up the pyramid, where the natives are unable, or unwilling to follow.
So, obviously there is something about the pyramid that scares the natives, and we have a group of young people who are destined to get killed off one by one. We, as film-goers, have been here before. But it's in the how that things get interesting, but that's also where the secrets are. It's ordinarily my practice to spoil movies as little as possible. Unfortunately, with The Ruins, to explain what's good about it requires me to spoil that a little bit, so this is your fair warning; skip the rest of the article if you don't want spoilers.
Atop the pyramid, our group of imperiled white kids find signs that Matthias' brother and team have been there, but disappeared, and probably in a hurry. Deep inside a shaft in the pyramid, they can hear the occasional ringing of a cell phone, despite the fact that none of the rest of them have been able to get service. What becomes evident to us long before it becomes obvious to the characters is what kind of threat the pyramid contains.
Going into the movie, I had no idea what the menace was, and I feared that it might be a giant snake. It's not a giant snake. It's not an alligator. It's not a cult or a mummy or a ghost, although up until their descent into the pyramid, it could have been almost anything. What it is, instead, is the vines themselves. They're aggressive, but most terrifyingly, they act as a contagion, getting into human bodies and growing rapidly beneath the skin. This gives The Ruins its most disturbing element, because it's not a matter of vines jumping out and simply strangling their victims, but infecting them, and leaving the humans living in terror and desperately struggling to find a way out of their grisly fate. It's far more gruesome to try to extract a vine growing under your friend's skin -- or your own -- than to merely be strangled by one. That's where The Ruins becomes something cleverer than it initially represented itself to be. If the writer had actually bothered to flesh out his plot and characters more deeply, this could have been a truly great horror movie rather than merely a surprisingly decent one.
There now, I didn't spoil as much as I thought I'd have to. So, The Ruins doesn't have good characters. That may not matter in ways, because you get to look forward to them dying. However, if they had been better characters, the horror of what they go through would be even harder hitting. The story isn't remotely original (vacationing young people get picked off), and while that might be semi-unavoidable given the conventions of the genre, a little bit of cleverness could have gone a long way here. Why did they have to be vacuous college kids (other than that also being the film's key demographic)? Why not the initial archeological team, or urban Mexicans enjoying their own country, or missionaries, or smugglers, or Hondurans emigrating to America, or, or OR...? The fact is, they could have come up with a hundred different back stories (and yes, I know the real reason they're all pretty young white people) for their leads, but instead they offered us an effortless reprise of what we've seen over and over already. Perhaps I'm being too hard on them here, given that The Ruins came out before The Cabin in the Woods, which did a pretty good job of stripping down the "5 isolated young people get killed" horror movie trope. What The Ruins did RIGHT, however, was the fear, the desperation, the skin-crawling dread and the deeply unnerving viscera, and for that, it definitely deserves a nod, because after all, it IS a horror movie.
Monsters - 2010
Written & Directed by Gareth Edwards
Monsters is a small story set against a big backdrop.
The backdrop is pure sci-fi, in which a meteor has fallen to Earth, giving rise to a plague of giant monsters (think massive glowing octopods that can walk on land) throughout northern Mexico. Due to this "infection," the United States has bombed the area heavily, and built a "border fence" that would be the stuff of conservatives' wettest dreams.
The small story is about a photojournalist in Central America trying to get some money shots of the monsters and otherwise chronicling this crazy new chapter of the human experience. His rich and powerful publisher obliges him to get the publisher's bleeding heart, do-gooder daughter home to America. We follow them through the difficulties of bureaucracy and the unregulated marketplace as they attempt to make their way home past the Infected Zone, discovering new truths about life in a war zone, the nature of monsters, themselves and each other.
Like Cloverfield, Monsters attempts to focus on the human side of a giant monster situation. However, unlike Cloverfield, it doesn't devolve into a jump-scare exercise in killing off cast members. What we get instead is the experience of two people, who initially start out with a bad impressions, getting to know each other and developing the beginnings of credible feelings for the other. In many ways, it bears a closer resemblance to old fashioned romance movies than, say, Godzilla. That shouldn't be a turn-off, however, if it's something a little bigger that you're looking for. There's still plenty of tension and high adventure at work here. They still have to survive the dangers of the Infected Zone and the American borderlands beyond The Wall.
I realize that I'm being kind of non-specific about the things that they go through, and I'll be honest with you, the story is pretty uncomplicated. As I understand it, the story was outlined, and the scenes themselves are heavily improvised. This really puts the moments of humanity in the spotlight, with all the fear and danger feeding those moments, rather than being fed by them per our ordinary expectations for a monster movie.
Speaking of other giant monster movies, writer & director Gareth Edwards was hired off of Monsters to direct 2014's revival of Godzilla, with two-hundred times the budget. In addition to writing and directing Monsters, Edwards also served as his own Director of Photography, Production Designer and Visual Effects artist, using a store bought laptop and retail effects software. Well, the film is gorgeous, and the effects are used sparingly, in service to the narrative. Adolescent cases looking for mass destruction are going to feel betrayed by Monsters. Then they're going to get angry and better when they realize that Monsters is better than them. But that's not you, is it? You, my friend, appreciate a thoughtful tale of humanity and the beauty of well-photographed wilds and ruination with a high-concept wrinkle that both evokes and eschews obvious allegory. For all the grand scale of its premise, perhaps the biggest surprise of Monsters is what a well-made and beautifully small film that it is.
Okay, I said I wasn't going to do this, but here I am doing this. The thing of it is; monster mash-ups in comic books went some truly crazy places, and I'd just feel like I'd done an incomplete job if I didn't at least try to drive past that cemetery on our way home. I'm still going to do an incomplete job, but you'll have some kind of idea what has been going on out there.
Casper began life (so to speak) as a cartoon from Famous Studios, and he was, in fact, first introduced to comic books in 1949, but it's his association with Harvey Comics that is best known. In the 30 years that Harvey published Casper, his cast expanded to include friends like Spooky the Tough Little Ghost, the Ghostly Trio, Hot Stuff the Little Devil and Wendy the Good Little Witch. Now that I'm reminded of them, it's startling to consider that they may have been a large influence on me as a young child. And believe me, that's the only startling thing about these ghosts.
In the 60s, publisher Jim Warren took the idea employed by Mad Magazine -- publish magazine sized comics in black & white for the newsstand rather than the comics rack, thus escaping the scrutiny of the Comics Code Authority -- and applied it to horror comics. These tended to be more monster oriented than the EC comics which inspired them. With the addition of Vampirella to the line-up, the "host" character moved into the spotlight, and Vampirella had her own adventures which strayed, on occasion, into the other titles. More than a mere vampire, Vampirella came from Drakulon, a planet of vampires where the rivers flowed with blood. The character gained her own cast of characters, including ties to Dracula and Lilith, mother of demons. She has also crossed over with other comics LIKE CRAZY. There's a movie too, but you didn't hear that from me.
Amid the monster craze of the late 60s, Dell Comics tried to get in on the action with three interrelated monster-themed superheroes based on the Universal Monsters. They each lasted only 3 issues, across which the same creative team was spread.
The Frankenstein character had a sidekick named Miss Ann Thrope. That should give you some clue what we're dealing with here. Frankenstein ranked "highly" in the World's Worst Comics Awards.
You know, I'm honestly not sure that they even lasted long enough to meet each other, but it seems pretty evident that they were intended to form a team. A terrible, terrible team.
Swamp Thing
Created by Len Wein & Bernie Wrightson
DC Comics - 1971
Swamp Thing was first introduced in DC's horror anthology House of Secrets, then moved to his own title in short order. While the character (in its original incarnation) owed elements of story and tone to Gothic horror like Frankenstein, the character was an original creation. Nevertheless, he would soon encounter a Patchwork Man, werewolves and much more as he went about his life of existential torment. The character has gone through many changes over the past 40 years, but he remains the DC Universe's central figure in matters of supernatural horror. Yes, Marvel's Man-Thing (obligatory snicker) predated it by a few months, but that character was never as well developed as Swamp Thing. Then again, with Alan Moore delivering a large part of his narrative in the 80s, very little else comes close.
In the early 70s, the Comics Code Authority loosened some of its restrictions (which were arbitrary and self-imposed in the first place) on what comics could depict, and Marvel took full advantage of their new freedom by introducing a whole line of comics based on classic monsters. Not only did these monsters then cross over with each other, but they were considered part of the greater Marvel continuity, and crossed over with everyone from the X-men to Spider-man. As a matter of fact, Marvel's first significant film success came from the Blade, a character that first appeared in Tomb of Dracula #10.
I've only read a couple issues of these, but I'd really like to read more. It's my understanding that some of the comics are really pretty good. Tomb of Dracula has some pretty extraordinary art from the legendary Gene Colan, and the great Mike Ploog took turns on both the Frankenstein and Werewolf titles.
Marvel's Man-Thing (which I was shocked to learn, predated DC's Swamp Thing by months) also crossed over heavily with the rest of their supernatural horror line.
Godzilla has been licensed to a number of comics companies over the years, but naturally it was during his two-year stint with Marvel that he did most of his crossing-over. He mostly encountered super-teams like the Avengers (sadly the Hulk was not with the team at the time) and the Fantastic Four (so at least he met the Thing), but he did also clash with Marvel's own Godzilla knock-off, Devil Dinosaur. Marvel created the Ren Ronin character for the comic. Ronin was a Mazinger-like giant robot who would then filter back into the periphery of the Marvel Universe after the Toho license expired. The greatest missed opportunity was that Marvel's publication of Shogun Warriors overlapped with Godzilla, and despite planning a crossover, they didn't get it together before the license ended.
In the 90s, Dark Horse published a one-shot called Godzilla vs Barkley featuring basketball star Charles Barkley. Despite some super-growth, Barkley isn't strictly a monster. Now, if it was Shaq...
The
Creature Commandos were a special ops type unit during WWII. They made their debut in DC's Weird War Tales anthology title in 1980. The team
included a vampire (named -- I kid thee not -- Velcro), a Frankenstein's monster, a werewolf, a gorgon (Medusa, for our less literate friends) and a normal human leader (such bigotry!). Oh, sometimes a robot. They were originally
introduced into DC's Weird War Tales shortly before the "DC Implosion"
when the publisher scrapped a bunch of titles and fired a bunch of
talent. Despite this, and at least 2 universal reboots, DC actually
brought the concept BACK in 2000 and again within the past year in Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
Though loosely based on a twice-published 1940s Canadian comics character of the same name, Michael T Gilbert's Mr Monster is his own character. He's a superhero, albeit one strongly influenced by the pulp heroes of the 30s and 40s. He fights all manner of monsters with blazing pistols in both tribute to, and satire of superheroes and the monster movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s.
The books don't seem to have gained traction with readers, although more 10 publishers have been willing to present Mr Monster's adventure across that past 30 years. You have to admire Gilbert's tenacity and commitment to a vision.
It just seems bizarre to me that Mr Monster and Hellboy haven't had a crossover.
Once Dark Horse had acquired both the Aliens and Predator licenses for publication, it was only a matter of time before they figured out that the should meet... and kill each other. The core premise is that Predators are the ultimate hunters in the galaxy, and Aliens are the most deadly game, so there's an honor principle at stake for the Predators. The combination proved so popular that numerous miniseries have been published to date, also spawning a video game and returning the concept to movies. While the comics occupy a future continuity that makes sense in the context of the original films, the movies based on the comics based on the movies have been set in contemporary times -- one presumes to reign in costs, since a future setting would cost more to design and build, taking away from the monsters budget. Comic books cost the same to produce, no matter where and when they are set, nor how large the explosions or rampaging creature hordes.
The rivalry has spilled over into crossovers with Top Cow Comics' Witchblade & The Darkness, DC Comics' Superman & Batman, and The Terminator, also licensed to Dark Horse. Both Aliens and Predators have crossed over with Judge Dredd in comics as well.
Comics based on the Terminator films had been done before, but it was when Dark Horse started buying up licensing rights in the late 80s and experienced success with the Aliens vs Predator crossover that things really got rolling. In addition to crossovers with AvP, Terminators have had miniseries meet-ups with the RoboCop (also published by Dark Horse) franchise and DC's Superman. After all, what is RoboCop if not a Frankenstein in armor? RoboCop vs Terminator also spawned a video game.
Hellboy
Dark Horse Comics - 1993
Created by Mike Mignola
The comic upon which the movies are based. I love the movies but the comics are even better. They're such a pure expression of Mignola's creative vision, combining Lovecraftian mythos, legends and folklore from around the world, re-imagined Universal Monsters and good ol' silver age face punchin', all told in his oft-imitated yet inimitable graphic arts style.
For an hilarious variation on the whole Hellboy thing, seek out the Hellboy Junior specials which put a Mad-Magazine-but-more-gross spin on the character, thanks to Bill Wray and other extraordinary talents.
Wetworks
Image/Wildstorm - 1994
Created by Whilce Portacio & Brandon Choi
When comics readers razzed Image Comics for struggling with schedules in their early years, they were mostly talking about Wetworks. It wasn't the only one that struggled, but it was the longest delayed, and nobody really cared if Rob Liefeld wasn't taking a steaming dump on the comic racks for another week. When the comic DID finally come out, it was about a black ops team (because ALL the image books were about black ops teams) that were armored with golden symbiotes. Two members of the team were werewolves, and many of their foes were updated versions of classic monsters. I know there was a pretty cool Frankenstein's monster in there, because I have the action figure and the head broke off. Crap was always breaking off on those cheap/expensive McFarlane toys. Oh yeah, Wetworks also had a crossover with Vampirella (but then who hasn't; you know what I'm sayin'?).
A few years after the seven season run of the TV series, many of the writing talents behind the show got together to create a new "season 8" in comics. Each writer took an arc within the greater "season" telling a story that built up to a whole. There had been Buffy comics before, but excepting a few instances, they had been made by comic writers meddling within the established chronology. Season 8, however, was considered new canon. The transition to comics allowed the series to deal with all variety of monster madness on the much larger scale (think: Tokyo) that the narrative development really demanded. The Season 8 arc has concluded, and the series has continued into Season 9. With the success of the Buffy continuations, Whedon & Co have also been producing Angel and Spike comics which serve to continue from the end of the Angel series as well as bridging with Buffy.
What I read of Buffy was (mostly) good, but I must admit, I have considerable catching up to do.
There aren't too many people in comics who can get their name above the title without actually doing anything, but Frank Frazetta is one of them. Frazetta painted the image for the cover of Creepy in 1966, and then 42 years later someone else wrote and drew a comic book based on it, and he still got paid. THAT is what you call solid brass BALLS, my friend. What's more, it's not even the first time he's done it. His Death Dealer painting spawned TWO comics series, in addition to being the main reason anyone ever bought a Molly Hatchett album. You can also buy a statuette of the Wolfman wailing on Dracula for $225.
BALLS.
And with that, I can't think of a more appropriate bookend to an article that began with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Thanks for hanging in there, monsterphiles. It was a gas, gas, gas.
Okay, so the facts have made me a fibber once again. This was intended to be the final entry in the series, but new information has necessitated one more Appendix, so READ ON, dear reader for the FINAL final chapter, The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 10: El Hombre Lobo Appendix!
When I was very young, my imaginary friend was a ghost named Marvin. I don't think he was ever the kind of imaginary friend that I played with or talked to, but he was my explanation for why doors would shut suddenly and I pointed him and his father out to my parents when we saw some laundry blowing in the breeze. Sometimes I made up stories about him -- at least I think I was making it up. In time, I expanded Marvin's cast of supporting characters. He had a skeleton friend named Mr. Bones who lived in our attic, and a vampire friend named Fangs who dropped by on rare occasion. I'm pretty sure there was also a wolf man, and there might have even been a Frankenstein's Monster of some sort, but these were additions that came toward the end of my "imaginary friend" arc -- somewhere in my first couple years of school. I don't think I made up as many stories about them, but it seemed natural to me that a ghost would have a supernatural supporting cast.
I suppose that's a large part of the impetus behind this article. From the very edges of memory, I was thinking about monsters who were friends with me and with each other. I don't know what planted that seed specifically, but given when I was born, there were all kinds of cheeseball possibilities from the 60s and early 70s. It's altogether likely that it was a combination of those elements that reinforced the idea for me and inspired me to add to Marvin's retinue. Looking back, it's easy to make fun of those things, but I sure wish I'd had access to some of these books back then. Adam Rex's books, in particular, would have blown my mind.
I'm not going to make any effort whatsoever to be comprehensive here. It's simply not possible, particularly given the history of monsters in comic books, and comic books' fetish for crossovers. So if I forgot your favorite, or simply something that you remember, that's okay. It's not a Master's thesis.
Neal Adams' Monsters - 1984 (collected 2003)
Written & Illustrated by Neal Adams
Comics industry superstar Neal Adams tried to break away from the Big Two in the 80s. The business of comics still wasn't quite ready, and Adams had neither the business acumen nor the writing chops to really make it work the way that it would for the Image founders a decade later. One of his projects was an anthology comic called Days of Future Past (I know, right?) and Adams' contribution to the short-lived title was a story than combined Dracula, Frankenstein and a Werewolf with his own designs, to avoid any legal toe-stepping with Universal and, one suspects, to show off a little because he was still Neal freakin' Adams after all.
The story would actually have been a better a better House of Dracula than "House of Dracula." It still works within the same themes as the Universal pictures, adds some new elements of its own, and remixes them into a much better story with more interaction between the monsters we'd like to see. It's not necessarily great, but it does pay tribute while improving upon the notion.
It turns out, the comic was expanded from a record and storybook that Adams originally made in the 70s. If Universal had taken the bait then and developed it as a movie, we could have seen much different development through the 70s and 80s.
Rampage is an arcade video game that puts players in the role of giant monsters tearing cities apart. While the characters are not licensed from existing monsters, they are clearly "inspired by" them. George is a giant ape, akin to King Kong. Lizzie is a giant dinosaur like Godzilla, but also looks a little Black Lagoon-y to me. Ralph is a giant werewolf. Okay, sure, why not? With its large character sprites, Rampage definitely looked different in the arcades, but I always felt that gameplay ran a little thin fell short of the concept's potential. Clinging to the sides of buildings and moving fairly slowly just didn't embody the sense of rampaging that I wanted from it. There would be sequels for consoles later on, but none of them were terribly well-rated. Small surprise.
King of the Monsters was a giant monster fighting/wrestling game for the SNK's Neo-Geo arcade/console system, which made it an unusual creature indeed. Players selected monsters which took their cues from Godzilla, King Kong and Ultraman characters, then fought it out in large cityscapes. The concept was great and the large figures in urban environments were impressive for their time (like Rampage), but (also like Rampage) the gameplay just really wasn't there. Being more inspired by Japanese wrestling games than martial arts styled fighting games, the controls were less intuitive and satisfying than a giant smash-fest really demanded. There was also a sequel. Due to its oddity and its SNK basis, it really didn't get much traction in the west, despite ports to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
Darkstalkers - 1994
Capcom for Arcade and various consoles
Featuring: a vampire, demons, a mummy, ghosts, a Frankenstein type monster, a werewolf, an Uzi-packin' Red Riding Hood, a cat girl and more!
Darkstalkers (known as "Vampire" in Japan) is a 2D arcade fighting game series from Capcom, similar to the Street Fighter series, but with monster characters and more fantastical fighting techniques. There have been 3 main entries in the series and a couple compilations. It's also spawned cartoons and comics. It has been suggested that there won't be a new Darkstalkers game until Capcom gets a million requests. I suck at the games about as much as I suck at most 2D Capcom fighters, but it was always my favorite of the bunch because the characters are so cool. Some of the characters turn up in other Capcom crossover projects.
Featuring: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, a giant samurai demon and a giant naked mole rat
Creature Features collects 4 monster tales illustrated by enemy of deadlines everywhere, Art Adams. The largest story is a fairly straight adaptation of Universal's Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's beautifully illustrated (let's just say they all are, because Art Adams), thanks also to the coloring by Matt Hollingsworth. The other main feature is a story from the Godzilla Color Special, and that's the real money shot, as far as I'm concerned. It's the story of an isolated Japanese island whose residents have turned their backs on the ways of the 20th century. An anti-kaiju strikeforce known as G-Force (90s continuity) is sent to evacuate the villagers due to an impending Godzilla attack. The villagers are unwilling to leave, and it soon becomes a moot point once Godzilla devastates the naval blockade. It turns out the villagers aren't quite so defenseless as they appear. Legend tells of an 800 year old demon that attacked the village long ago. The body of the demon became a huge statue which the villagers believed would come to life to protect them, which it does (although there's a story behind it). Every time Godzilla smashes the statue, it reforms itself from the dirt and stone, coming back bigger. With the help of G-Force, it's able to go toe to toe with the King of Monsters and ultimately redirect his course. Now, this giant samurai demon statue is a tribute of its own to the Daimajin trilogy from the 60s, about a guardian statue in medieval Japan. I like this story so much that I had partly convinced myself that it had been an actual movie, or that the statue had at least existed in one of the, at some point. It would indeed be a great Godzilla movie, or half a movie, at some point when Toho starts making them again. There are also a couple short stories in Creature Features. One stars Adams' own characters, Monkeyman & O'Brien against the Shrewmanoid and a giant naked mole rat, and the other is by Alan Moore. I don't know that piece, as I purchased all the original comics separately, but hey, Alan Moore, so that can't suck.
War of the Monsters - 2003
Incog Inc. for Playstation 2
Designers: Dylan Jobe, Kellan Hatch, Eric Simonich & Scott Campbell
This free-roaming fight game pays homage to giant everything in a 1950s drive-in movie setting. While none of the characters are licensed from existing franchises, it features a giant ape, a couple reptilians, giant robots in both American & Japanese varieties, a giant mantis and more, wreaking havoc across 10 highly destructible environments. Players can duke it out hand-to-hand or use ranged attacks, but the most fun comes from using environmental weapons. My favorite is skewering an opponent with an antenna tower and watching them flail around trying to pull it out. I love this game. I can only assume that it's been criminally slept-on, because it would have become a mega-series if it was getting the following it deserves.
Mommy? - 2006
Story by Arthur Yorinks
Illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Papercraft by Matthew Reinhart
If you haven't seen a pop-up book in a while, let me just tell you; they are doing amazing things in papercraft nowadays.
Maurice "Wild Things" Sendak pays tribute to the Universal Monster movies of his youth in this very simple tale of a little boy looking for his "Mommy" in all the wrongest places. The pop-up art does more than merely fold out of the page. It creates a deeper sense of space, and often animates as it unfolds. The scene with The Mummy is a real show-stopper. The papercraft doesn't just show off the art, it plays a role in telling the story. But oh that art! Sendak clearly had fun illustrating it, and the whole product just radiates with the love that its creators put into it.
Adam Rex started out as an illustrator. I think he painted card art for Magic: The Gathering before he moved into children's books. Then he started writing them too. Then shifted into juvenile & young adult fiction, and he does it all brilliantly. I've loved everything he's done, but this was my first real exposure to him. The whole book is filled with poems that play with classic monsters. Imagine Shel Silverstien wrote a book about Universal (and other) Monsters and had it illustrated by the Usual Gang of Idiots from Mad magazine, and you'll have kind of a sense of what to expect here.
Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich must have worked out well for Adam Rex, because 2 years later he was back with more monster madness. This time, there's a bit more of a narrative thread connecting them as Frankenstein prepares to marry his Bride.
Sometime more IS better!
Rex has gone on to write the HI-LARIOUS juvenile lit book "The True Meaning of Smekday" (soon to be a major motion picture!) and the young adult satire, "Fat Vampire." He's partnered with Neil Gaiman on Chu's Day and Chu's First Day of School, so, you know, the guy's got mad nerd cred.
While very similar on paper to Adam Rex's Frankenstein books, The Monsterologist goes a very different direction with it. Like the previous books, it's meant to be a humorous poem tome about a very similar variety of monsters, framing them as the research notes of a monsterologist. This device serves to distance the reader from the monsters and their personalities. It's hard not to compare it negatively in light of Rex's books. While it's certainly a different beast, those different choices don't seem to serve it well. I just didn't find the poems to be funny or endearing. Sadly, the art only magnifies this distancing from the material. McCauley's art isn't really fun or cuddly. It's very graphical with a more punk aesthetic better suited to something like the New Yorker than a children's book. They clearly invested in book production, employing gatefolds and die-cuts inside and a pseudo-leather embossed cover with metallic ink. It's an interesting piece of graphic design, but it disappoints in almost every category as a children's book.
King of Tokyo is a tabletop board game by superstar game designer Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering, RoboRally, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, etc). It's based on the general premise of Godzilla movies, and each player plays a monster inspired by Godzilla, King Kong, a Cthulhu-like Kraken, a giant robot bunny, etc. It's a most-ages game that uses Yahtzee-like dice mechanics to empower your monster as it fights to become the last monster standing.
It's much easier to grok than it initially seems like it will be. Strategy centers around a simple kind of resource management, balancing life, damage, victory points and power cells that allow you to buy cards to power up your creature. In our own gaming sessions, we've found that more is better -- more monsters is more fun, and setting a higher bar for victory lengthens the game, making the power-up cards more worthwhile and the strategy of dominating or yielding Tokyo more significant. My only real complaint is that it has a LOT of little pieces, which really comes into consideration if you have younger kids around. Not necessarily a complaint, but a questionable choice is that the dice are pretty big for an Ages 8 & up game. It can get kind of... dicey ... shaking 6 or more dice. You may want a cup, a la Yahtzee. That being said, it IS a lot of fun to go all rampagey and try to get the upper claw on your friends and family.
Featuring: ghosts, a vampire, a werewolf, ghouls and more
When sudden death comes to the family of a toddler, he wanders off to a nearby historical graveyard. When the cause of their deaths pursues him, the ghosts in that graveyard take it upon themselves to raise the boy and keep him safe. Renamed Nobody Owens, or "Bod," he is granted the freedom of the graveyard and raised in the ways of ghosts, with additional tutelage by Silas, a neither dead nor alive resident of the cemetery. The flow of the narrative is semi-episodic, illustrating chapters in Bod's life which offer fun little encounters and adventures in their own right which will each provide the lessons he needs to overcome the dark forces which pursue him.
Highly recommended for spooky kids.
It's also come to my attention that the novel for kids has been adapted into a graphic novel with Gaiman's frequent collaborator and American national treasure, P. Craig Russell, so that's bound to be a gorgeous and satisfying option. I fully expect this one to get turned into a movie, so wait for that if you're lazy, or get on it now if you enjoy telling people you told them so.
So... I kinda lied. I ended up deciding to include more comics after all. It's still not comprehensive, but it's representative. Continue on to the penultimate chapter of the Monster Mash-Ups IN The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 9: Comics Appendix!
Monsters and monster mash-ups really started to make a comeback in the 21st century. I believe that Buffy played a large role in this. It may not have been the most statistically successful show, but it was dramatically influential on the next generation of film & television writers, and particularly upon the geek arts fan base. Your traditionally male fantasy & sci-fi crowd dismissed it as girl stuff or wrote it off as lacking the grim-browed seriousness they demanded at the time, but in our post-broadcast digital media era where binge-viewing is becoming the norm, holders of the platinum geek card now know better than to underrate the power of the Whedonverse. I would go so far as to claim that the ever-deepening long-form narrative of Buffy and Angel made shows like Lost possible, and therefore much of what we expect from televised drama today.
Of course, it sure didn't hurt that the technology capable of bringing the fantastical to life was improving at an exponential rate. In a very short amount of time, we've seen the spawning of an environment where even the slightest flaw in the illusion triggers self-righteous nerd-rage, so one has to question what we've really gained.
A DiC Entertainment animated musical about monsters that aren't scary anymore (probably because of all the terrible cartoons made about them), based on the name of that song you hate.
Do I even need to say it? 'Cause I'm certainly not going to watch it.
Featuring: Godzilla, Baragon, Mothra & King Ghidorah
I've never been a hardcore Godzilla fan in the past. I didn't often seek them out but made a point to watch them when I stumbled across one here or there. So if you, like I, have been baffled by the continuity of the overarching Godzilla saga, that's because there really isn't one. Different eras have a certain loose connectivity, but overall, it just really hasn't mattered. In Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, that point is made somewhat clearer. It overlooks everything but the original 1954 movie, so when Godzilla rises again, he hasn't been seen in almost 50 years. The other monsters, Baragon, Mothra and King Ghidorah are all new, per this continuity. They're now legendary guardians of Japan, summoned from their ten thousand year slumber beneath all-but-forgotten shrines.
The effects are certainly updated, but not as much as you might think. I don't think there's any CGI here, or if there is, it's really just to add effects (atomic breath, etc.) to a more refined version of the same kind of effects that they used for, well, almost 50 years. The monsters are still sweaty dudes in rubber suits. There's less use of miniatures except where direct interaction is required. Instead, outdoor scenes are shot on location and edited together with the hot monster on monster action. It mostly works. The increased realism just makes things like Ghidorah's heads thrashing around, Baragon crawling on his knees and Mothra's slow, rigid wings stand out all the more starkly.
Also needing some updating is the writing and acting. Cornball nostalgia is one thing. Modern cornball is just cornball. I don't mean it to sound that bad. It's still a lot of fun and it does look pretty good most of the time. The fights are kind of brutal, with monsters sinking their teeth into each other and some definitive destruction. Also, because they're not beholden to any particular continuity, they don't cheap out on the conclusion. Giant Monsters All-Out Attack mostly lives up to its name.
Underworld - 2003
Written by Danny McBride (No, sadly, not that Danny McBride)
Directed by Len Wiseman
Featuring vampires, werewolves (lycans) and a hybrid vampire/lycan
Underworld pays homage to the classic movie monsters with an updated mythology and stylish execution. Kate Beckinsale is the perpetually leather-and-latex-clad vampire, Selene. It's her job to fight the werewolves (here known as "lycans" and not beholden to full moons) in the centuries-old war between the two species of night-dwellers. She stumbles onto a Lycan plot to create a hybrid vampire/werewolf, which throws the internal politics of both clans into chaos, especially when she falls in love with the hybrid and learns that all is not as she has been told in this clan rivalry. There are some pretty clever ideas at work here and the creators build a suitably re-imagined world for these warring factions to inhabit. The lycans are well designed, as is everything, and the action is as slick as the raindrops beading off Beckinsale's shiny hiney. Bill Nighy makes full use of his fangs to really chew the scenery in a tonally appropriate way. It takes itself ridiculously seriously, but I never felt that it expected me to.
Freddy vs. Jason - 2003
Written by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift
Directed by Ronny Yu
Featuring a disfigured homicidal maniac who's already dead and a disfigured homicidal maniac who cannot die
It seems that Freddy just can't get his kill on like he used to. The teens of Elm Street have been shielded from his memory, and just don't fear him anymore. So he tricks Jason into doing a little stabbing on his behalf, just to prime the pump for a comeback, as it were. The film seems to hinge, in part, upon the idea that making kids ignorant is an effective defense against fear, which strikes me as wrong, but obviously no one is here for the subtext. Worse, however, is the misogyny, much of which falls upon Katharine Isabelle's character (she discovers the mangled body of her apparently abusive boyfriend, then gets murdered herself while she's being raped). Speaking of rape, Freddy seems much more rapey here than I recall him being in the original Nightmare films. Where once it was his backstory, it now seems to occupy more of his thoughts... and menace.
But you did come for the bloody fan service, and FvJ delivers that. Jason eventually figures out that he's been manipulated and the two master slashers turn their attention to each other. Jason takes a beating in Freddy's nightmare world, and Freddy takes a beating in Jason's physical world. The end seemingly calls back the end of King King vs Godzilla with an uncertain outcome and one figure swimming away. All in all, what can one expect from a trashy monument to trashy fun?
Van Helsing - 2004
Written and Directed by Stephen Sommers
Featuring: Dracula & his brides, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, Mr. Hyde, some creepy little troll things and vampire demon babies
I'll let you in on a little secret. A large part of the motivation behind this article was to show Van Helsing in its proper context. It is, after all, a Universal monster mash-up; a fact which has been overlooked by rage-nerds from all across the internet. Is it silly? Sure, but that's its legacy too. Have you SEEN House of Dracula? Well Ihave now. Silly can be a whole lot of FUN, and "fun" is the lightning-charged heart of Van Helsing.
Wolverine plays Van Helsing, who is to the Catholic church what James Bond is to MI-6, right down to the unlikely gadgets that prove surprisingly handy. In the opening, he pursues Mr. Hyde (as in Dr. Jekyl and...) through Paris, bound to bring him in dead or alive. His next assignment is Transylvania, where he's sent to assist a gypsy woman (Kate Beckinsale in leather pants, natch) who represents the last in a bloodline committed to ending Dracula's reign of terror. There's really quite a lot going on in this movie. Tense moments of exposition bridge action-packed set pieces. They team up with Frankenstein's monster, which is a really fantastic character/creature design.
In fact, the whole movie is packed with great designs for costumes, monsters, gadgets and places. Are some of the CGI effects imperfect? So what? They serve their purpose. Zip it, whiners. Van Helsing packs a TON of effects for a May release. It's not supposed to look like a July movie. The fact is, the effects are fine and they move the story and action along the way they need to. Van Helsing is exactly what it means to be, and that's a roller coaster tribute to Universal's monster mash-ups that actually has more story and indulgent thrills for today's less patient audiences. Perhaps its greatest fault is expecting joyless geeks to catch the wink.
Hellboy - 2004
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comics by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: demons, a gill man, a clockwork assassin, a reanimated corpse, a demon-infused Rasputin & the Old Ones
In the interest of full disclosure, there wasn't much chance of me disliking Hellboy, being a fan of the comic since before it came out (I saw Mignola's sketchbook at a con, so neener), but if it had betrayed the source material, I totally could have turned on it as well. With Guillermo del Toro at the helm, there was really very little cause for concern.
During WWII, Allied soldiers interrupt a bizarre team of Nazi operatives amid a strange occult ritual. When the smoke has settled, they discover that the ritual had some effect, although it's unclear whether it was the desired effect. A bright red demon child with a giant stone hand was pulled into our world, whom they dub "Hellboy." Hellboy is raised by Dr Bruttenholm ("Broom"), the paranormal scientist on the team, and as he grows, he goes to work in pretty much the only way he could; serving the Bureau for Paranormal Research & Defense as their number one monster puncher.
Decades later, the Nazi operatives are still active. Serving the Reich was really just a conduit for their true plans; bringing about the end of the world for their Lovecraftian god. It turns out that Hellboy has a role to play in their plans, but he's really not the "destiny" type.
Hellboy's world is filled with all kinds of creatures drawn from literature and legend, and he's right at home in the middle of it with his teammates; gill-man Abe Sabien, and Liz Sherman who starts more fires than the one in Hellboy's heart.
Dark Horse Comics originated the crossing-over of the Aliens and Predator franchises, which then spread back to the cinematic worlds despite some pretty major ret-conning. Predators come to modern day Earth, activating an Alien-stocked ritual hunting ground in a pyramid under the Antarctic ice. A human expedition from Weyland-Yutani Corp makes the mistake of getting in the way, so, death. It's thin and corny without a thought in its head, but it's a reasonably fan-pleasing affair from the guy behind the Resident Evil films. Hold that, back up a little. It's pleasing for the fans that just want to see Aliens and Predators unleashing violence. It offers little of the dramatic tension of the original Ridley Scott Alien, but then so little else has.
Godzilla: Final Wars - 2004
Written by Isao Kiriyama & Ryuhei Kitamura
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Featuring: ALL of the giant monsters
What a difference three years makes! Someone at Toho evidently had the same thoughts that I had about Giant Monsters All-Out Attack." Final Wars still uses location footage, but far more extensive use of miniatures to put the mass back in "mass destruction." But let me rewind a moment...
Final Wars is indeed the final Godzilla movie from Toho. They vowed not to make another for at least ten years, and they haven't. I understand they even filled in the pool they used to shoot water scenes, so if and when they come back, it seems pretty clear that they are going to have to have retooled their production line.
The film takes place in an alternate universe. I guess they'd really all have to, but at least in the past they've been presented in a real-world-dealing-with-unreal-monsters framework. Where All-Out Attack chose to ignore all but the first movie, Final Wars embraces the legacy. In the continuity here, Godzilla first appeared in 1954, then continued to return along with most of the other monsters. It's non-specific about which movies and stories are continuity, but the idea that the monsters from all previous films existed in some form or another is more the point. It's paying tribute to the totality of Toho history before it closes the book on them -- and whoa baby, close the book it does.
As a reaction to the regular appearance of kaiju, the world has united to form the Earth Defense Force, many of whom are also mutated humans with increased strength and speed. They fend off the monsters with a giant drill-tipped flying submarine and springboard-enhanced karate poses. Oh yeah, Final Wars borrows a bit from the Ultraman types of shows that Godzilla inspired. The non-monster parts are much more action-packed in their own right, with acrobatic combat, sword fights and a motorcycle chase that would make Tom Cruise jealous. Where the human drama failed to live up to the scale of the rest of the movie in All-out, Final Wars pushes it way, way over the top. It's cornier than ever, but it works, even if there's too much of it in the third act.
So here in this alternative future, aliens suddenly appear to offer their friendship in a totally-not-suspicious way. It's essentially an updating of the story from Destroy All Monsters only with humans that actually do something. I'm sure this is hardly a coincidence, since Destroy was originally intended to be a "final" Godzilla movie for director Ishiro Honda. The Xillians, as they're known (because of course their true name would be too hard for we feeble humans to speak) took away the monsters as a gesture of good will, but when their true faces are revealed (literally) they unleash them on the world with nothing powerful enough to stop them. Except Godzilla. Destroy All Monsters' big third act throw-down featured all the monsters against King Ghidorah, which seemed kind of lame because they all just gang-rushed him. It made Godzilla look not-so-impressive and resulted in an overly brief fight. Final Wars gets the sides right. Godzilla fights EVERYONE, including making fast work of the weak-sauce American Godzilla wannabe (not to mention the Sydney Opera House). And they're not kidding about "final" either. Many of the opposing monsters get impaled or decapitated, and the final final showdown between our boy G and a super-mega new Kaizer Ghidorah occurs in the ruins of a place that can't strictly be called Tokyo any longer.
I don't know how any Godzilla fan could be disappointed with Final Wars, but birds gotta fly and nerds gotta bitch. It's an insane, over-the-top, all-action, self-serious-but-totally-silly music video of leather-posing wire-fu and rubber suited monster mashing, and it delivers. This is all I could have wanted (and more) to close out 50 years with the King of Monsters.
If Freddy Kreuger and Jason Vorhees are monsters, then isn't the Joker too? I say, sure, why not?
The Batman vs Dracula is a feature length animated feature from the "The Batman" period of animated Batman adventures. Which means it's not as good as the original Batman cartoons from the 90s, but it's still pretty good for a second-string team. The premise is pretty simple. Joker and Penguin break out of Arkham and race for a treasure stash in Gotham Cemetery. Penguin breaks into the wrong tomb and inadvertently raises Dracula from dusty death, and Dracula makes it his business to turn Gotham into a city of the undead. Batman disapproves of this business plan.
In Dracula, he has met a fellow bat man who is more than his match as a combatant -- 'scuse me, comBATant -- but then Batman is more than just a fighter, isn't he? Joker finally turns up at the tomb and gets himself vamped, which gives him some good scenes, but it's really not his film. Penguin serves in the Renfield role and Vicki Vale gets stuck with Mina Harker duty. The vampires are brutal and creepy, with a strong Nosferatu influence. They present a viable threat on a mass scale. That's what really sells the movie and makes it work as both a vampire tale and a Batman story worthy of the longer form treatment.
Evolution picks up immediately after the original Underworld, following up on its semi-cliffhanger conclusion. The last surviving vampire elder is back, and more powerful than expected. More of the history behind the "immortal" species of vampires and werewolves is revealed in what essentially amounts to a chase movie. Selene & Michael flee the powerful Marcus, expanding our view of their world and encountering new characters from whom it is made, including the immortal father of both clans. Totally satisfying follow-up to the first with more monochromatically stylish violence.
Requiem rides the coattails of the first AvP's "BOO!" ending without really continuing the story. An alien-infected Predator crashes into a remote American mountain town, and then there's death.
At least I assume those noises were death, because almost the entirety of Requiem takes place in the dark. The woods at night. The sewer at night. Powerless buildings at night. It's not scary, it's just hard to see. It really undermines the fan service, and without the fan service, there's nothing left. See that picture? That's what happens when an Alien gestates in a Predator. That's the best part of the whole movie, and now you know.
Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man look back on their lives and relationship.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - 2008
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comic by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: a demon, a gill-man, tooth fairies, an elemental, faeries, trolls, magical robots, an angel of death and plenty of god-knows-what
Hellboy and friends are back for more, and more is what they get. This sequel is overflowing with all manner of weirdness, and a surprising amount of beauty. As much as I liked the first, I really prefer The Golden Army.
After centuries inhabiting the hidden places in the world, the embittered prince of Faerie has treacherously laid claim to the throne, and the pieces of the crown that will empower him to control the Golden Army; a force of magical mechanical soldiers capable of destroying the world as we know it. His quest to gather the missing piece of the crown brings him to the attention of the BPRD and Hellboy. The search to understand his attack sends Hellboy into back-to-back outstanding set pieces; first delving into the Troll Market, where the creatures of myth do business under the noses of mankind, followed immediately by open combat with a giant elemental plant god, which is one of the most poignant battles you can imagine in such an wild and fantastical film. It's both thrilling and heartbreaking. And that's what makes me really love this movie. For all its high concepts and cartoonish violence, it has a tremendous amount of heart -- particularly in the nihilistic context of so many of our other big action films these days. Hellboy and Abe grapple with the concept of love like the outsiders they represent. Characters do bad things, but often for good reasons. This is not the mustache-twilring E-vil of the first movie's Nazi death-worshipers, and its willingness to love makes it lovable.
From the seedier side of the Victorian age comes this horror/comedy about the misadventures of two grave robbers. Professional ghoul Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) offers his confession about his career stealing and selling corpses. His sentence is death, one way or the other, but he steadfastly denies having ever committed murder; of which the priest hearing his tale (Ron Perlman) is skeptical. The story is delivered in vignettes, which apparently confuses some viewers, but you are not them, my friend, and you do not need your hand held. Arthur explains how he got pulled into the business, and how an unscrupulous doctor (with more societal respect) was able to blackmail him and his partner into taking more dangerous jobs for even less money than usual. That sends them to a crossroads where they unearth a woman's corpse wreathed in garlic, with a stake through her heart. Another high-risk job leads them into conflict with a rival -- and much more ruthless -- gang of ghouls; the House Murphy. That conflict comes to a peak when both Arthur & Willie and House Murphy compete to retrieve two crates of unusual corpses lost at sea.
I Sell the Dead is a wholly unique story, presented with a consistent flow of good humor. Arthur and Willie don't question much and they haven't seen the movies we've see, which just makes it funnier when we're in on the jokes that elude (and chase) them.
Twilight - 2008
Written by Who Freaking Cares
Directed by It Couldn't Possibly Matter
Featuring: Sort-of Werewolves and Not-really Vampires
"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." --Stephen King
They made four of these freakin' things but I'm only mentioning it once and that's simply to satisfy my own self-imposed sense of obligation. I'll watch Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong, but I won't watch these. I'm sorry and you're welcome.
The completely unnecessary prequel that no one asked for. I can only assume that it was an excuse to bring the dead characters played by Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen back and remind us of things that we already knew about them. Due to its setting prior to Selene becoming a vampire, the similarly sassy English lassie Rhona Mitra fills the leather and latex cat suit. I suppose it might be satisfying for the fans who are all-in on the series mythology, but there's very little dramatic tension since we know how things are going to turn out 600 years later. While I never felt that the previous cared if I didn't take them seriously, Rise seemed to expect it. Looking back, I can only recall one stand-out action set piece, and it doesn't measure up to those than came before it.
Monsters vs Aliens - 2009
see link for writing team
Directed by Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon
Featuring: a gill-man, a blob, a 50 foot woman, an insectoid mad scientist and a kind of squirrel/caterpillar giant monster thing... versus aliens
It's Susan Murphy's big day. She's primped, prepped and pumped to marry her beau, Derek, and so what if he told her that the honeymoon in Paris is cancelled so he can audition for a news anchor job in Fresno? They're a team, aren't they?
And that's when a meteorite lands on her.
Moments later, scuffed by unscratched, she returns to the church to get on with the first day of the rest of her life. She has that glow about her -- wait, not that glow, the other glow. The hit-by-a-meteor-and-absorbed-cosmic-power-and-don't-they-grow-up-so-fast-no-I-mean-REALLY-fast kind of glow. In a matter of seconds, she's a 50 foot woman, and not much longer after that, she's in the custody of the US government. Fade to black.
Susan wakes up in a giant, windowless facility and soon discovers that she's not alone. She shares this prison with gill-man otherwise known as the Missing Link, Dr Cockroach; a mad scientist who overdid the insect DNA, a brainless blue blob called BOB, and, oh yeah, Insectosaurus, a squirrel-bug-dinosaur kind of thing that towers over even Susan. They have all been collected by a super-ultra-secret military division and kept imprisoned so the world never has to deal with the inconvenient knowledge of their existence. And that's the way it's going to be... until an intergalactic tyrant shows up looking to collect the power from the meteorite that started everything for Susan.
Monsters vs Aliens is better than average work from Dreamworks Animation. Well, let me be more specific; the story is better than average. The animation is weirdly stilted at times. Characters frequently goosestep inappropriately. Things don't move dynamically but remain rigid. Character design and art direction really lack the kind of inspiration that would make MvA truly special. The most disturbing are the normal humans. I would guess that they're all built on the same skeletal frames, then basically draped with meat. It results in some mechanical movement taking place within slack, dangling flesh. I think the root of the problem is the split that the animators targeted between cartoony and realistic. They seem to be trying to have it both ways and end up having neither. Obviously not everyone cares as much about that kind of thing as I do.
I still really enjoy (have enjoyed and will enjoy again) Monsters vs Aliens. The story has heart. The characters you're supposed to like are actually likeable. Susan's personal breakthrough feels earned. There are some big laughs, and lots of little homages to monster movies of the past.
As crazy as the title sounds, it really does nothing to express how babblingly insane the film itself is. Right off the bat, it helps to think of this as a cartoon that just happens to have people acting it out. The characters are all over-the-top exaggerations, perhaps best expressed by the high school social clubs to which they belong, including Lolita fashionistas, a suicide obsessed "wrist-cutters" club, and a ganguro club trying to emulate African Americans to an offensively caricatured degree. The principal of the school dresses as a kabuki performer, and doubles as a mad scientist assisted by the school nurse at night. However nutty that all sounds, I can assure you that you really have not grasped the full madness of this film.
Everything plays out in the biggest, craziest possible way. Monami is the new girl in school. It turns out she's also a vampire who has set her sights on Mizushima. To seduce him (and draw him into her world) she gives him chocolate laced with her blood. Unfortunately, Mizushima already has a girlfriend; Keiko. When Keiko figures out what's going on, she confronts Monami which leads to her falling from the school's roof It just so happens that the Kabuki/mad scientist principal is also Keiko's father, and he and the nurse conduct one of their experiments on Keiko's body to bring her back to life. Thus she becomes the titular "Frankenstein Girl" to Monami's "Vampire Girl."
And so the stage is set, and it won't be done until the stage is mopped with a bucket of blood. I can't call it a good movie, but it's ridiculously entertaining -- and I do mean ridiculously.
In the Venn diagram of Universal Monster crossover fans and sufferers of OCD, House of The Wolf Man is where they overlap. A modern film made to look like the completion of the 1940s "House of..." films with a nerd-pleasing trilogy.
Sadly, I am unable to discuss it in any greater depth as I have not yet been able to see it.
The next day (after some interpersonal drama), their little group has to overpay a driver to take them anywhere near the site, then hike the rest of the way in. They find a pyramid covered with vines, and no apparent sign of Matthias' brother and associates. The moment they approach the pyramid, they're surrounded by a group of natives, waving guns and arrows, and shouting at them in their tribal tongue, so their intentions are difficult to ascertain under the circumstances, but clearly all is not what it appears. Misunderstandings go from bad to worse, and someone ends up getting shot. The vacationers retreat up the pyramid, where the natives are unable, or unwilling to follow.
Atop the pyramid, our group of imperiled white kids find signs that Matthias' brother and team have been there, but disappeared, and probably in a hurry. Deep inside a shaft in the pyramid, they can hear the occasional ringing of a cell phone, despite the fact that none of the rest of them have been able to get service. What becomes evident to us long before it becomes obvious to the characters is what kind of threat the pyramid contains.
There now, I didn't spoil as much as I thought I'd have to. So, The Ruins doesn't have good characters. That may not matter in ways, because you get to look forward to them dying. However, if they had been better characters, the horror of what they go through would be even harder hitting. The story isn't remotely original (vacationing young people get picked off), and while that might be semi-unavoidable given the conventions of the genre, a little bit of cleverness could have gone a long way here. Why did they have to be vacuous college kids (other than that also being the film's key demographic)? Why not the initial archeological team, or urban Mexicans enjoying their own country, or missionaries, or smugglers, or Hondurans emigrating to America, or, or OR...? The fact is, they could have come up with a hundred different back stories (and yes, I know the real reason they're all pretty young white people) for their leads, but instead they offered us an effortless reprise of what we've seen over and over already. Perhaps I'm being too hard on them here, given that The Ruins came out before The Cabin in the Woods, which did a pretty good job of stripping down the "5 isolated young people get killed" horror movie trope. What The Ruins did RIGHT, however, was the fear, the desperation, the skin-crawling dread and the deeply unnerving viscera, and for that, it definitely deserves a nod, because after all, it IS a horror movie.
