Monster Week - Godzilla

Happy Halloween!!

Arggh! It's GODZILLA!!!

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Dad pulled our Ford LTD into the parking slot, careful to get as close to the post as possible without  hitting it.  He rolled the window down and set the speaker from the pole on the window, rolling it back up to hold it in place.  As the scratchy, tinny music played, Mom would pass back the paper bags filled with popcorn and bottles of soda.  My sister and I would lean over the seat as the fanfare started and the words zoomed onto the screen:  Godzilla!

There he is!  Cower in fear, Tokyo!  Gojira!

Movie night at the drive in--the highlight of the week.

These were the smashy arms guys!  Godzilla vs. Magalon.

Ooo!  Mothra gets in a good one!

We loved the Godzilla movies, fakey as they were.  We saw them all:  Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Son of Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Megalon (a personal favorite).  When we were little, we would be glued to our seats--unless we were leaning over Mom and Dad's shoulder to get a better view.  We saw them on the big screen, then on television.  As we got older, we laughed at the campiness--remember how the monsters (can't remember which movie) communicated by clapping their forearms together?  We'd do it along with them.  Oh, and let's not forget mimicking that fabulous Japanese dubbing!  (mouths moving...moving..moving.  "Look out!"  moving...moving...)  We had Godzilla rubber toys, just as lifelike as the 1950s models.  And I will go to my grave remembering that distinctive "screeeeaaaaa--yaru!" that was Godzilla's roar.

Godzilla has long influenced our culture.  The first movie came out in 1954 and became the defining standard of Japanese monster movies.  To date,

• Godzilla (1954)
• Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
• King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962)
• Godzilla Vs. Mothra (1964)
• Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
• Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero (1965)
• Godzilla Vs. the Sea Monster (1966)
• Son of Godzilla (1967)
• Destroy All Monsters (1968)
• Godzilla's Revenge (1969)
• Godzilla Vs. Hedorah (1971)
• Godzilla Vs. Gigan (1972)
• Godzilla Vs. Megalon (1973)
• Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
• Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
• Godzilla 1985 (1985)
• Godzilla Vs. Biollante (1989)
• Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
• Godzilla & Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992)
• Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993)
• Godzilla Vs. Spacegodzilla (1994)
• Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah (1995)
• Godzilla (1998)
• Godzilla 2000: Millennium (2000)
• Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus (2000)
• Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
• Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)
• Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)
• Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)

He started out, or so the story goes, as a metaphor for the United States, then for the horrors of nuclear power, but the awkwardly moving monster with the electric back plates and the nuclear firebreath proved a versatile character.  There have also been Godzilla cartoons, comics, books and video games.  He's also been the subject of numerous songs, parodies, and has influenced other monster movies as well. 

If you're interested, there are some of the old movies and series on Netflix.  And, if you're wondering where our favorite radioactive monster has been, he's coming back in 2014.

Drive-ins are pretty much a thing of the past, but this October, pop up some popcorn in a brown paper sack and curl up with Netflix and a good ol' fashioned monster movie.


Monster Week -  Creature from the Black Lagoon - The Mummy - Vampires - The Thing 

Monster Week - Vampires

A reminder: The Coffin Hop Blog Tour continues! 

 Comment here daily through Oct. 31 to win a copy of the new DEATH BY DRIVE-IN Anthology (& buy a copy to benefit literacy! ) New posts here daily to 10/31!

COFFIN HOP runs October 24-31 at WWW.COFFINHOP.COM  with more than 75 artists and authors, partying it up, bringing the treats and the tricks to an online audience of thousands.

Although I love writing about zombies, I have to admit, there is a very special place in my heart when it comes to vampires. I find them totally fascinating - from the suave and charismatic to the terrifying and grotesque. I just can't get enough of either.

My passion for these alluring creatures-of-the-night began at a fairly young age. I can still remember watching the old black-and-white movies on the edge of my seat,  in breathless anticipation of what would happen next -would the vampire sink his teeth into the leading lady before the hero arrived to save her, or would she be turned into a vampire and become his eternal bride of darkness?

Back in those days, I desperately wanted the hero to save the girl. These days, however, I sometimes find myself rooting for the vampire- they live longer and need someone to share their lives with, too, don't they? It only seems fair as eternity can be a long and lonely road. Of course, there are some vampires that aren't looking for love or romance, their only interest is satisfying their hunger to feed. They don't care if their victim is a voluptuous super-model with cute dimples or an acne-prone Domino's pizza delivery boy, they are out for the rich, succulent taste of human blood, regardless of the package it arrives in. Now, for me, these horrifying, bloodthirsty monsters are also very intriguing, especially the ones in the book that I just read called  The Draculas: A novel of Terror by Jack Kilborn, F. Paul Wilson, and Blake Crouch. Those are the kind of vampires that will take you down without hesitation. They are grotesque, ugly, and have a mouth full of choppers so outrageous, that once their victims become vampires, the teeth grow right through the skin, kind of reminding me of those fish they talk about on the Discovery Channel...

The Draculas: A Novel Of Terror....If you like a chilling, nail-biting type of read, I highly recommend it!

Dracula

One of the most popular and earliest fictional tales regarding vampires is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel about the vampire, Count Dracula, and his battle with a small group of people led by  Professor Abraham Van Helsing as he tries to move from Transylvania to England. Now, although Stoker didn't invent the vampire, he defined it into a much more modern form, which helped to spawn other books, movies, and television interpretations.  It is also said that Stoker then spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires.

Folklore

Interestingly enough, however, the very first tales of what was thought to be real vampires date back to prehistoric times, although the term "Vampire" was not used until the eighteenth century, after superstition in Western Europe began to surface, causing mass hysteria. It began with some cases of alleged vampire attacks from Peter Plogojowitz, who died in 1725 in Serbia. After his death, nine people perished, some claiming that Peter had visited them at night. His wife had also claimed to have seen him when he returned home and asked for his shoes. It was also believed that Plogojowitz came back another night and murdered his son after he refused to give him food. Later, when Plogojowitz's body was exhumed, they found that his hair had grown, his body hadn't decomposed, and there was blood on his lips. After finding this, the frantic put a stake through his heart, which caused fresh blood to appear out of his ears and mouth.  Afterwards, they burned the body.

Another similar case was of Arnold Paole of Serbia, who claimed that he'd been inflicted by a vampire, but had cured himself by eating the soil surrounding the vampire's grave and smearing his body with blood. Then, tragically, in 1725 he broke his neck and died. Within thirty days of his death, several people claimed to have been somehow "plagued by Paole" and his grave was opened up. Upon viewing the body, they noticed it had not decomposed, that his nails and hair had grown, and that there was fresh blood coming from his eyes, ears, and mouth. Concluding that he was a vampire, they impaled him with a stake and it was said that Paole groaned and bled before he was also burned. Pretty crazy, right?

 Movies

Books are wonderful, but hey, to me, nothing beats a bowl of popcorn and a late night watching a horror flick about vampires. Especially, the classics. From the creepy Nosferatu, played by Max Schreck in 1922 or Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula in 1931, to the sexy and alluring guys in Interview With The Vampire, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in 1994, these creatures of the night have been portrayed in many different lights, although one thing still holds true for all of them - the thirst for blood.

I'm sure everyone has their favorite vampire movie, and I won't bore you into why I prefer one over the other. I will share most my favorites, however, just in case you're looking for something new and haven't seen some of them. Like they say, sharing is caring!

Horror Of Dracula - 1958
Dracula - 1931 and 1979
The Night Stalker - 1972
Lost Boys - 1987
Fright Night - 1985 and remade 2011
Bram Stoker's Dracula - 1992
Salem's Lot - 1979
Von Helsing - 2004
30 Days Of Night - 2007
Underworld - 2003
I am Legend - 2007
John Carpenter's Vampires - 1998

Monster Week -  Creature from the Black Lagoon -  The Mummy - The Thing - Godzilla

Monster Week - Creature from the Black Lagoon!

It's MONSTER WEEK! here at the blog.

Today we begin a series of Halloween Posts celebrating our favorite movie monsters. Enjoy... and BEWARE! Heh-heh-heh....

A reminder: The Coffin Hop Blog Tour continues! 

 Comment here daily through Oct. 31 to win a copy of the new DEATH BY DRIVE-IN Anthology (& buy a copy to benefit literacy! ) New posts here daily to 10/31!

COFFIN HOP runs October 24-31 at WWW.COFFINHOP.COM  with more than 75 artists and authors, partying it up, bringing the treats and the tricks to an online audience of thousands.

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   Welcome to one of my friends, favorite author and monster fan Stephen D. Sullivan who's agreed to share his memories (and tell us of his enviable recent outing!) related to his favorite monster, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!

THE CREATURE THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

I learned to swim from a monster movie.  Seriously.

Sure, growing up with a house on a pond and a grandmother’s house on Cape Cod, my learning to swim was probably inevitable, but it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon that spurred me on.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 fright flick, and it features what most experts consider the last of the great monsters to come out of the Universal Studios horror factory.

  The film, part of the original wave of 3D movies, stars Richard Carlson, Julie Adams (billed as “Julia”), and Richard Denning as scientists who travel up the Amazon River seeking rare fossils.  What they discover, instead, is a missing link between water and land animals: the gill-man, a.k.a. “the Creature.”  From there, things rapidly go downhill for the scientists as their expedition turns into a fight for survival against the titular monster.

The gill-man costume is a brilliant design--considered the best monster suit ever by many Monster Kid experts (including me)--created by Millicent Patrick, who was working at Universal in the studio of famous makeup artist Bud Westmore (who took credit for the design for nearly 50 years). (See link for some interesting facts and a great pic!)

My first encounter with the Creature was as an Aurora model kit in the early 1960s.  I wasn’t even old enough to hold an X-Acto blade, but I remember my dad helping me put the kit together and paint it.  It was a thing of beauty!

Not as cool, though, was finally seeing the Creature on TV several years later.  The part of the gill-man was played by two actors in the original feature.  (Two sequels, each with a different land-suit performer, followed.)  Ben Chapman, a strapping 6’ 5” actor, played the Creature on land, but it was the submerged gill-man--played by professional swimmer and underwater cameraman Ricou Browning--that really made an impression on me.

Working in the scaly skin-tight costume (and without an oxygen tank), Browning’s swimming made the Creature come alive.  As he chillingly mirrors Julie Adams by swimming on his back beneath her as she swims on the surface, you could well believe the Creature was a real, amphibious monster.

Browning’s gill-man seemed completely at home in the water.  He was fast, powerful, and graceful, and moved through the Amazon (really a lake in Florida) with an eerie twirling/undulating motion.  Later I learned that Browning, who had an amazing lung capacity, worked by taking a gulp from an underwater air hose and then holding his breath while swimming throughout the long takes.  In the film, though, it seemed as though he must be breathing through the gills on his neck, because surely no one could hold their breath that long.

As a kid, I thought the Creature was the coolest thing ever, and imitating his iconic swimming style helped me move from the dog paddle to a full array of aquatic strokes.  Even when swimming today, I will submerge and do a few yards of “the Creature Crawl” just to amuse myself.  It’s still fun to swim like Ricou.

My fondness for the Creature didn’t just end with swimming, though.  His films helped turn me into a lifelong Monster Kid and spurred my career as a fantasy-SF-horror author and artist.  Only Godzilla and the works of Ray Harryhausen have had a similar influence on my life and career.

That inspiration continues to this day.  Just last year, I featured a gill-man character--named Reeko in honor of Ricou Browning--in my second Tournament of Death novel.  And earlier this summer I ventured down to Chicago to attend a 3D showing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (at least the third time I’ve seen the film in 3D on the big screen).

At that showing, I had the pleasure of meeting Julie Adams, who is astonishingly spry and lovely at age 87.  Amazingly, she still tours the country, accompanying prints of the movie, chatting with fans and doing interviews after showings of the film.

I was lucky enough to get an autograph and a picture with her.  She recently released her autobiography, The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from the Black Lagoon.  If you get a chance, I’d highly recommend you venture out and meet her.

As for me, I’ll keep swimming, and the Creature will no doubt continue influencing my life and work. There are no gill-men in my current monster project, Daikaiju Attack (serialized free online every week), but who can say what the future might hold?

And, if I’m really lucky, by the time you read this, I will have secured a Ricou Browning autographed picture to go along with my Julie Adams.  Happily, he’s still swimming along at 83--and more power to both of them.

What the doctors say must be true: healthy living and bit of exercise--and a good monster movie--can do wonders for your health.

See you backstroking in the Black Lagoon!

Stephen D. Sullivan is the author of numerous books and stories, including Daikaiju Attack--www.daikaijuattack.com--and out now! The novelization and new script of the classic horror film White Zombie. (More details to come!)  

Filmography:

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Revenge of the Creature (1955) - captured and sent to an aquarium, the gill man, after seeing another lovely, escapes and kidnaps her.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) -in this version, he's turned into an air-breather, and being unhappy, escapes again and wreaks havoc.

IMDB says there is a remake in the works but no information is given.

NEXT: Monster Week - The Mummy - Vampires - The Thing - Godzilla

Creature from the Black Lagoon TV Spots: