The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Monster Movies concern creatures that go amok, causing damage and threat to the social order. Monsters can range from vast titans like Godzilla and King Kong, giant robots, aliens and Giant Animals to human-sized monsters such as zombies or Mutations or smaller menaces such as Animals Amok and swarms of regular-sized Bugs. Some common monsters have been spilled over and been given their own pages – see Vampires, Frankenstein Films, Zombies, Werewolves and Mummies.
Monsters can be created by science, be supernatural or mythological in nature, of alien origin, from other dimensions or from beneath the ground or ocean. A monster is usually blind in its rampage, having the intelligence of an animal or some instinctual drive (monsters are rarely capable of speech). Its rampage can be due to hunger and the need for some type of sustenance, to breed, or else it can be hurt or because humanity has awakened it or disturbed its natural territorial domain. It can cause mass devastation or work on a smaller scale (such as hunting people in a contained space).
There have been many other monsters that are not Monster Movies. Not all Giant Animals are monsters, while many films treat monsters sympathetically and are about friendships or misunderstandings. There is another whole field of Children’s Monster Movies.
There is another body of monsters that appear in fantasy such as Dragons or mythological creatures like the Cyclops or giants. These are covered under a separate entry Monstrous Encounters. Here the monsters being encountered do not necessarily threaten the social order (or if they do it is rarely depicted beyond a few villages being attacked), rather they are nemeses that are fought and vanquished by heroes. There is a world of difference between a Godzilla film and its spectacles of mass destruction and the adventures of Sinbad, St George or Siegfried and the dragon.
A subcategory is the Japanese Monster Movie, which does engage in mass destruction spectacles but treats monsters as combatants in gigantic wrestling matches with defined heroes and villains where Godzilla or Gamera is usually portrayed as being the defender of Japan from other monsters.
Spanish director Amando De Ossorio gained a cult for his Blind Dead films. Here he makes a film about The Lorelei, a woman who sits on the banks of The Rhine tempting men to their deaths
The first sequel to the massive success of Jurassic Park where Steven Spielberg returns to direct with a script that seems a mishmash of loose ends that only weakly rehashes the original
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
The original Filipino exploitation classic, this pumps the 1940s mad scientist film up with gore, toplessness and tropical locations. A reasonable hit but surprisingly dull and sedate despite
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
Film about a dog that has been experimentally crossbred with DNA from other animals that proceeds to go amok. The film proceeds to collapse into the completely ridiculous
B-movie in which a chemical spill at a lab causes a mass murderer to turn into a giant mosquito hybrid. An efficient cobbling of cliches that comes out as a B budget variation n The Fly.
Fascinatingly torrid US-Japan production about a man who develops a second head on his shoulder that takes over his personality
The sequel to the Jason Statham starring killer shark film, bigger and more over the top than before. The surprise is seeing cult director Ben Wheatley turning to making a big, dumb film
If you could take it seriously, Mega Piranha would be a strong contender for a bad movie; however, its awareness of its own absurd shortcomings becomes its saving grace. The sight of giant piranha skipping down rivers and impaling themselves in the sides of buildings has an appealing delirium
The Asylum had hits with Mega Python vs Giant Shark and Mega Piranha, both featuring former teen pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany as the leads. This pits both Tiffany and Debbie together in an epic bitch-fight against the backdrop of clashing giant animals with rather entertaining results
The first sequel to The Asylum’s Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and marginally a better film. This is less sparing with the cheap effects, while in every other regard it plants tongue-in-cheek and tries to make a virtue out of the sheer ridiculousness of the action
The Asylum’s first venture into the gonzo shark movie that would spin off a series of sequels and culminate in the Sharknado phenomenon. Despite one of the great attention grabbing titles of all time, this is an unmemorable affair
Third in The Asylum’s series of Mega Shark films where they borrow the Godzilla series’ idea of Mecha-Godzilla and pit the Mega Shark against a robot copy of itself. Here the Mega Shark series is starting to approach the entertaining silliness of their Sharknado films but still flounder amid tatty effects
In the vein of their Mega Shark films and Mega Python vs Gatoroid, The Asylum make a monster movie about a giant-sized snake. Cheesy with a B movie competence.
An Italian exploitation film intended to take advantage of the 80s makeup effects revolution of the day as a scientist injects himself with an untested serum and transforms into a monster
The Y2K Problem was a now largely forgotten social apocalypse that never happened so why someone is making a film about it now is a scratch of the head. This is a Backwoods Brutality film that abruptly jumps tracks to become a monster movie
This was the second film from Guillermo Del Toro, a modest and quite good Alien copy with Mira Sorvino hunting evolved insects in the New York subway tunnels
This was the first of two sequels to Guillermo Del Toro’s intelligent insect film Mimic, although this has now becomes more of a regular and unexceptional monster movie
Produced by Wes Craven and his son, this started as a third Hills Have Eyes film but ends up a generic Alien copy with a mutant monster hunting people in a desert laboratory
Frank Darabont delivers one of the best Stephen King adaptations where the story of people at siege in a supermarket from unseen creatures in a mystery fog outside becomes a study in fear and prejudice. With one of the great unforgettable endings
Another low-budget monster movie for the Syfy Channel. Between Sean Patrick Flanery’s unconvincing adventurer hero and the filmmaker’s failure to even vaguely approximate what Mongolia or its locals look like, this quickly slides down into a tatty, indifferently made copy of Tremors
A very underrated 1950s sf film … Neither quite alien invader film nor monster movie, it features some of the most original creatures of the era – rocks from a meteorite that grow into massive geodes that devour everything in their path – and eerily atmospheric direction
Obscure 1970s film about a monster emerging from a Colombian lake. The film taps a bunch of subplots and cliche themes but fails to make any of them even remotely interesting. The entire show though is plunged into bad movie stakes by the emergence of the ridiculous monster at the end
A monster movie that consists of a mother and daughter cowering in a crashed car on a remote stretch of road. The effectiveness of the film comes in the incredibly raw emotional groundwork laid in the first half
This has the mildly amusing idea of taking the idea of films like Dracula vs Frankenstein et al one step further and actually pitting various classic monsters against one another in a wrestling match. Beyond its mimicry of televised wrestling though, there is almost nothing else to the film
Following the collapse of Amicus Films, producer Milton Subotsky went on on his own to make this horror anthology, the bread and butter of Amicus in their heyday. Though he brings in some major horror names – Vincent Price, John Carradine – the jokey tone failed to find any success
Possibly the worst film to be made out of the 1950s giant bug cycle concerning giant wasps marauding in Africa. All the dramatic scenes are composed of scenes cannibalised from other adventure films, while the effects have a shoddiness that frequently reduces you to laughter
One of the first films produced by Roger Corman, a routine B monster movie that has mostly been made around obtaining the use of a one-man submersible
Another Z movie attempt to join the 1960s beach party movie fad with the additions of monsters that ends up being fairly ridiculous on all counts
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero giving the film a certain LGBT community relevance in its day. Contains quite an impressive cast list, including featuring both Paul Walker and singer Fergie as kids
One of the better mockbusters from The Asylum, timed to come out at the same time as the US Godzilla, King of the Monsters and actually far more modestly enjoyable
The Asylum conduct a monster bash – a crossover between the Famous Monsters – and actually do a modest and quite enjoyable job that pays affectionate homage to the characters
Minor and largely undistinguished 1950s monster movie. The monster is a blatant copy of The Creature of the Black Lagoon and similarly has biologically improbable designs on the heroine. Routine on all accounts
One of Jack Arnold’s lesser films, a Jekyll and Hyde story where a scientist finds himself reveting to a caveman after scraping his hand on a prehistoric coelacanth
Rather charming effort where the Famous Monsters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Creature – are revived and pitted against a group of kids. The film has a great deal of affection for the originals and the encounters are delightful
Average entry in the atomically enlarged animal cycle of the 1950s concerning a giant mutated mollusc on the attack
The sixth Godzilla film, the first where the series combines elements of space opera – a typical entry of the era and colourfully entertaining about it too
This tries to go one up on Sharknado and offers a tornado made up of assorted animals and prehistoric life. A completely ridiculous film from prolific British producer Scott Jeffrey
Video-released compilation of above average horror short films all set around the titular website
Australian exploitation homage that is like a collision between Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! and a monster movie. Low-budget but this has an authentic recapturing of the spirit of trash cinema
Film in which Christina Ricci fears her son is being drawn to a monster in the lake, this hangs around a very contrived twist ending
South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film with swordsmen up against a hulking monster
Another effort in the sad slide into shabby amateurishness that marked that latter years of Tobe Hooper’s career, a muddled effort set around a mortuary involving body-snatching fungus and deformed relatives in the crawlspaces
A ridiculously stupid giant bug film, albeit not unentertainingly so. This is a monster movie that has been premised solely on the provision of ridiculous creature effects every few minutes and very little else that one can take seriously beyond that
The most successful of the original monster movies Toho made after the success of Godzilla, the only one to spawn its own sequels, and one of the best kaiju eiga of the era
Very typical 1980s horror film steeped in an enthusiasm for the genre that makes a beeline for cheesy mutant monster effects
Gimmicky B-budget film about a hi-tech future prison built at the South Pole. Thus has been thrown together with a giant snake amok plot. A passably routine effort
An incredibly dreary film about an alien monster menacing a small town. The alien invasion cinema equivalent of watching paint dry. Unseen during its original release, it was then resurrected in the VHS era as an E.T. copy called E.T.n – The Extra-Terrestrial Nasty
The second directorial film from Clive Barker is a hugely ambitious work concerning the discovery of a city of monsters – containing some extraordinary makeup creations – but proved a box-office flop
From the director of the Sharknado films. This concerns a family dealing with tragedy caused by a lake monster. Unlike Sharknado, this a work that is taking itself seriously
This creates quite reasonable atmosphere as an undocumented Mexican girl takes a room at a boarding house that has sinister secrets
Jordan Peele seems to have arrived at the same position that M. Night Shyamalan was in in the early 2000s. In his third film as director, he makes a film about UFOs that becomes a baffling scratch of the head
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
A monster movie from the screenwriter of The Creature from the Black Lagoon that should have a place in any list of bad movies
B-budget mix of giant animal film and submarine drama with impoverished effects and a script only notable for its ludicrous improbabilities
Sequel to the ridiculous Octopus, this is slightly less cheap but no less absurd in its premise of a giant octopus attacking New York
Hilarious Jan Svankmajer film about a mother who decides to treat a log as a child. Full of blackly funny humour before transforming into a macabre monster movie
Retelling of the epic legend of Beowulf in SF terms where Grendel becomes an alien monster
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
A rather dull 1950s atomic monster movie about a series of bodies that are found on a seashore that lead to a scientist who has created a radioactive mutant monster
One of the best and most underrated Dean R. Koontz adaptations, which creates eerie atmosphere out a town where the residents have disappeared due to what is revealed as a uniquely different creature
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
The 1978 Piranha is remade as a cable tv movie but has excised all the humour and witty genre in-referencing of the original
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
The film that James Cameron would prefer we forget about. A nominal sequel to Joe Dante’s enjoyable tongue-in-cheek Piranha, this misses that film’s sense of humour and lets the show sink amid absurd effects
Sequel to the Piranha remake. Much the same as before but up one cup size. Well not really, the sequel is more like a joke that was funny the first time that becomes belaboured in the retelling
Part of the gonzo shark film’s ongoing quest for the most ridiculous title mash-up, this involves a horde of genetically engineered shark-piranha hybrids loose in New York City
Amid the spate of deliberately ridiculous monster movies of the 2010s, we have also seen a fad for absurd hybrid creatures. In actuality, the piranhaconda is just a giant snake – and served by some incredibly bad effects in this negligible effort from B-budget hack Jim Wynorski
As formula monster movies go, this stands out from the rest – it takes itself seriously, has a better budget than usual, which allows some luxurious location shooting in Belize, and a better standard of effects
Bafflingly surreal film from Andrzej Zulawski in which Isabelle Adjani gives birth to a tentacled monster in a subway. Nobody has any idea what the film is about but it has become a cult work since
Obscure Australian film about people being hunted by a mythical creature known as The Yowie
One of several killer crocodile films that came out in 2007. This has some big-budget CGI effects but is cliched and was overshadowed by far better entries from the same year with Rogue and Black Water
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
Typical 1990s video-released effort that stands out by dint of a far-out idea – a cyborg werewolf – even if in the end the film does nothing with it and everything only boils down to a standard monster movie that takes everything from the Alien playbook
The most violent, brutal, blood-drenched films one has seen in recent memory, a South Korean entry about a monster loose aboard a prison ship
The once celebrated John Frankenheimer flopped with this monster movie about a mutant bear with laughable effects and inflated pretensions to message making
Shabby copy of Alien with shipwreck survivors facing a genetically engineered monster on an oil rig
Reasonable low-budget revived dinosaur film with not bad CGI effects and an often witty, genre savvy script
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
A monster movie where the major distinction is that the monster is drawn from Ancient Egyptian mythology and the locale is an unearthed pyramid. The film is too conceptually slim to do much with such an interesting background but it does deliver some solid jumps
One of the more likeable among the 2000s fad for low-budget CGI monster movies, this is aided considerably by a sense of humour and a line-up of oddball characters
Larry Cohen is a cult director and this, which concerns a Quetzalcoatl bird amok in New York City, is the best of his films, peppered with side-splitting dialogue and Michael Moriarty giving the performance of a lifetime
A remake of the first Quatermass story conducted as a live broadcast tv movie. Quite a considerable technical achievement considering the limitations and one that works with quite reasonable results
The first of the Quatermass films and the first major genre hit for Hammer Films. Nigel Kneale creates a literate work of science-fiction horror about a returned astronaut mutating after exposure to an alien fungus
An uncommonly effective film that takes place in the aftermath of an invasion by creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing where the survivors must maintain an existence that requires not making the slightest sound. Director (also lead actor) John Krasinski uses the set-up to create unbearable tension
The third in the trilogy of A Quiet Place films, this is a prequel that takes us back to the start of the invasion
The first A Quiet Place was No 1 on this site’s Best of 2018 list. John Krasinski still pulls off great set-pieces a second time but reveals the pitfalls of trying to extrude a premise to make a sequel
Typical Syfy Channel monster movie directed by actor David Hewlett. Hewlett seems to be taking little of the film seriously, while the two lead characters are played as strung-out thrill-seeking skateboarders
This is the one of worst films to come out in the gonzo killer shark fad – it is surely the killer shark genre’s equivalent of The Room. The effects hit a level of terribleness not seen since Birdemic, the rest is full of ridiculous continuity gaffes, bad acting and bad dialogue
A Finnish film that comes as appealing anathema to the rosy sentiments of most Christmas films – more like a monster movie where Santa is a monster that punishes bad children
Early Clive Barker adaptation made just prior to his gaining fame with Hellraiser about a the revival of a monstrous pagan pagan that suffers from shabby treatment and a rubbery monster
Russell Mulcahy, a director fresh from success on the early days of MTV, returned to his native Australia to make this extraordinary variant on the Animals Attack film. Mulcahy piles on amazing photography, turning the landscape into something otherwordly
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children’s movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
The sort of film that might make Troma radioactive green with envy they didn’t make it concerning a giant rampaging ass. Mind-boggling and willing to be stupid and in frequent bad taste
An initially low-assumption film that rapidly becomes highly watchable thanks to some way out jumps and creature appearances that propel it into real WTF territory. Where it falters is its arrival a well and truly cliched twist ending but the ride there is undeniably memorable