A Monster Day for The Monster Men
Yesterday was a very busy day here on the Ponderosa. My Monster Bud, Jack Campisi, came over so we could film a boatload of Monster Men podcasts. We made it through 7 before fatigue and too much beer consumption wores us down, where we then sat on our asses for the rest of the night watching two movies (the sad Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie and the tense, Aussie shark drama, The Reef). Then it is was on to random episodes of Tosh.0 (always hilarious and politically incorrect), Monster Quest, and a few more beers.
Despite all that, Jack did manage to get up early and finish the edits for a quickie rant we did on the new Underworld flick, and the franchise in general. Just click on the Monster Men logo below to see what we think. If you like it or hate it, please forward it so we can get the villagers good and rankled. It’s been a while since I saw a procession of torches coming up the lane.
Underwhelmed by Underworld
5 Monsters the World Has Forgotten
I’m holding out hope that I’m not the only person left who remembers some of these lesser movie beasts. I’ve always had a special fondness for monsters, be they ugly or mean or downright murderous. Think of it. If you looked half as ghastly as them, wouldn’t you be a bit on the irritable side, if not downright homicidal? Everyone knows about Jason and Godzilla and Frankenstein, but there are so many others out there that just came and went. Here are 5 that left an impression on my warped little brain over the years. Please seek them out, but don’t put your fingers in their cage!
I rememeber seeing this in the drive in when I was a kid. The thing about this mad beast that really got to me was the piercing scream he’d let out every ten minutes, turning my little bladder to ice. In the late 80’s, I rented this at a video store and was accused of never giving it back, so this movie really sticks in my head. You can’t beat the synopsis I found at IMDB. “Woman is raped at cocktail party. Years later, her son grows up to be a big hairy murderous monster who stalks a group of teens shipwrecked on his island.”
This has a great cast of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas. While on a train to God-remembers-where, a monster thaws from its icy prison and begins to murder the passengers. What scared the spaghettios out of me at the time was this dude’s face. Seriously, out of all the horror movies I’d watched as a kid, this face is the one that haunted me right through adulthood. Let’s just call him scary-red-eyed-Jesus. And he’s not even the monster that took over the train!
Think a bunch of maneating, shambling plants can’t be scary? Guess again, sucker. These things moved with the slow, measured assurance of a Michael Meyers decades before he donned his William Shatner mask. This is an all time great, but sadly forgotten monster movie. Check out the book that inspired it. Both are excellent.
4. FROM BEYOND
This gem is from the mid 80’s by the same team that brought us Reanimator. This was another loosely adapted Loevcraft story where a mad scientist (score!) develops a machine that lets us see into other dimensions. Unfortunately, they can come into ours as well, and some things are just not meant to be, like Justin Bieber’s career. What the crazy doctor eventually becomes is nothing short of awesome.
5. CREEP
I’ll end with a relatively recent movie that very few people ever bring up. The creep in this fantastic British flick is a deformed man living in the tunnels and passageways of London’s underground. He wails like a rat and looks like all kinds of hell, plus he has some wicked strength, despite the seeping infections all over his flaky, gnarled body. If I stumbled across him in a subway, I’d probably drop dead immediately.
Those are my 5. I know there are tons more out there. Which ones did I miss that you love and remember, in a twsited kinda way? Let me know so I can include them in a future post!
To see the monsters I lived with in Forest of Shadows, click here.
Interviews & The Monster Men Review Paranormal Activity 3
And the hits, or in this case, interviews, keep on coming. I did some interviews for a couple of blogs and one magazine that have posted over the past couple of days.
- Author Paul D. Dail came up with some unique questions that were a blast to answer. You get to find out a little known fact about me and the name of one of my all time favorite books.
- Super dude, Jonathan Janz, sat down to talk to me about Forest of Shadows, scary books and the Monster Men.
- For a special treat, Ravenous Montser Magazine interviewed me and fellow Samhain authors, W.D. Gagliani and Brian Moreland. Super in-depth and a must read for any horror fans.
For those of you who haven’t signed up to my Facebook Fan Page, I post a way easy, sometimes fun contest on Saturdays. Signed magazines, gift certificates, shirts and all kinds of goodies are given away every week. Like the page and join in the fun!
Monster Man Jack and I hopped to the theater so we could check out Paranormal Activity on opening weekend. Here’s our quick review in the parking lot. You may be surprised by what we say.
For more paranormal fun, click here.
The Thing Review and Halloween Contest
Fellow Monster Man Jack and I took one for the team and spent our hard earned money to see The Thing. Here’s our first ever quick video review, shot right outside the theater moments after the final credits.
We’re also rolling out our first Halloween contest. We already have some great pics and can’t wait to see more! Get yours in to be included in our post-Halloween episode.
Movie Review : Super 8
It took me a few weeks to haul my butt off the couch and see Super 8, despite the fact that the first time I saw the coming attractions, I decreed it THE MOVIE TO SEE for the official start of the summer. (On a side note, the actual must-see movie for me this year is Captain America. This from a guy who has Cap’s shield tattooed on his arm. ‘Nuff said) Why the delay? you might ask. Well, despite some decent critical reviews, I’d heard enough from my peers to make me think twice about spending my hard earned money. Even the folks in Twitter Land warned me against it. 
Well, twits and friends be damned. I came. I saw. I ate too much popcorn. I liked. I liked it alot, and here’s why. The movie is set in 1979 and centers around 5 boys and 1 girl, all around 12 and 13 years old. Well, that’s pretty much my age in 1979. The entire movie, for me, was a trip back to my childhood. There were the Famous Monsters models I used to put together! There’s the Keep on Truckin’ poster my friend had on his wall! Look at those awful clothes! And most of all, being a kid was damned near perfect and magical before Pac Man invaded. I kept watching and saying (softly and to myself), “That’s little me up there. Go kid, go!”
I’m not going to bore you with a breakdown of the movie. Plenty of other people and places have already beaten me to that punch. Suffice to say, the boys and girl, while shooting a zombie movie by the train tracks, witness the most horrific train derailment you’ll ever see. Something is released from the wreckage, a monster you don’t really see until the end (kudos to director J.J. Abrams on that one), the military takes over the town and it’s up to the kids to save it as well as themselves. I have to say, the cast of kids was the best since The Goonies. Abrams is a bright student of the Speilberg film school (who produced this) and he manages to touch on all the right pressure points. Yes, there are some gaps in logic and the end is less than satisfying. But I finally have a movie I can show to my kids and say, “Now THAT is exactly how I grew up. We only wished there was a monster wrecking the town. It would have given your old man a great excuse to unleash some of his stash of M-80s.”
Nothing beats a good old monster movie. There’s magic in Super 8 that has been sorely missed. Don’t you miss it, too.
Hunter Shea 