– Tom Huddleston, Directors: Merion C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack, Sexually frustrated ape inadvertently invents base-jumpingAnyone who has never shed a tear as this love-struck great ape uncomprehendingly swats at his tormentors from the top of the Empire State Building is as stone-hearted as Skull Island itself. Browse. Which is no reflection on the film itself: horror-comedy is overfamiliar nowadays, but this only makes Landis’s achievement more impressive. – Adam Lee Davies, Two faces have IMarking himself out as a key innovator with his spry putting-on-a-show yarn ‘Applause’ and the lively Gary Cooper gangster thriller, ‘City Streets’, Rouben Mamoulian proved that he wasn’t just a theatre director in moviemaker’s jodhpurs by producing one of the most scandalous and tense early monster movies. We already have this email. – Tom Huddleston. – Tom Huddleston, I got worms!Kevin Bacon managed to cast off the man-meat pin-up shackles he’d become bound in to as a result of films like ‘Footloose’, ‘She’s Having a Baby’ and bike-courier no-no ‘Quicksilver’ as the charming Southern huckster who manages to take on a giant, flesh-eating sand worm and win. Both, too, offer some of the most inventive, revoltingly tactile and lovingly crafted gore effects you’re likely to see on film. Before your cinematic universes and extended galaxies and interconnected constellations, there were the Universal Classic Monster movies. ‘The Fly’ is a catch-all metaphor: is it about ageing, cancer, Aids, or simply destructive transformation and dark self-discovery? It might be sentimental at times, but when it scares – and it really does scare – it’s a chilling reminder that, no matter your age, clowns are terrifying. But they’re still, you know, plants. You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . From Asia to Europe and beyond - Expand your cinematic horizons with our top picks from across the globe. – Adam Lee Davies, It creeps, it crawls, it slithers up the walls…One may fondly remember it as a cheesy, fusty proto-teen romp featuring a young Steve McQueen, but ‘The Blob’ did nothing less than lay the groundrules for every mega-budget disaster movie that came after: gloopy alien force whose survival rests on annihilating humanity (‘The Thing’, ‘War of the Worlds’); disbelieving authorities (‘Jaws’, ‘Volcano’); stultifying deus ex machina (‘Knowing’, ‘Mars Attacks!’); impossibly jaunty theme song (erm…). As the title suggests, the flick revolves around a … The 12 Best Foreign Horror Movies You Can Stream Right Now Dim the lights, grab some popcorn, and hold on tight as you travel the world in search of some Halloween frights. When it comes to teen sex in film, Hollywood too often remembers to bring the condom. Just take care to avoid Ken Branagh’s soupy, luvvie-stuffed remake. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy. – Adam Lee Davies, Sexy beastRarely does the monster movie tackle the sexual impulses of its beast with such garish candour as in Borowczyk’s censor-baiting fable that dared to stare down that perennial societal no-no – bestiality – with cheekily sympathetic eyes. ‘The Howling’ is, however, notable for having one of the most magnificently seedy and unsettling openings in cinema; shame it can’t quite maintain that level of tension. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. The result is a film as paranoid, morally equivocal and randomly violent as the decade which gave it birth. 21. ‘Basket Case’ was his early '80s calling card, the tale of a browbeaten, morally ambiguous twentysomething and his homicidal, basket-bound vestigial twin as they undertake a mission of vengeance against the doctors who separated them against their will. Ladies and gentlemen, attention! Thanks for subscribing! But then again, when you’re the bastard son of man and lungfish (as the labcoat-wearing boffins solemnly inform us), perhaps you’re born with a built-in inferiority complex. Here’s how writer-director Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host proves that monster movies are better as foreign horror. El Diablo!Now the dust has finally settled, can we agree on the fact that Guillermo del Toro’s baroque historical fantasia (‘Alice In Wonderland’ meets ‘Land and Freedom’, as one wag put it) is not the masterpiece everyone said it was. Unfortunately for the dollar-eyed cowpokes, the little equine wonders are the prey of the 'Gwangi', a ravenous Allosaurus intent on bringing Jurassic mayhem to the Old West. That said, the fact that Arnie goes up against the beast with an ethnically diverse crew of sweaty grunts probably does for that theory. The reasons for this are manifold, but one stands out: there’s just no way to make plants scary. Not an ideal arrangement, but one that worked well enough until Sir Ralph Richardson’s permanently flummoxed wizard turns have-a-go pensioner and sets up a nice revenge saga for his young apprentice. When he interacts with the children, he drools, as if starved, ravenous to consume them and their fear. Also worth noting is the sly reappropriation of Bernard Herrmann's seminal 'Psycho' score which, it being 1985 an' all, has been augmented with some echo drum beats. With creator Mike Mignola onboard and Ron Perlman at his best since his 'Penitenze Agite!' Streaming Guides. Cheers! – Tom Huddleston, Good fun until someone loses an eyeAnother movie which, like ‘The Howling’ (see above), actually gets less scary once the monster shows up. – Paul Fairclough, The movie that time forgotSeemingly inspired by the kind of logic-free games enjoyed by eight-year-old boys, this rarely seen gem pits cowboys against dinosaurs in a stark New Mexico. The Jewish TV drone who became a blaxploitation legend. For a kids’ film (c’mon nerds, it is!) – David Jenkins, Say hello to my little friendOnce a byword for inventive cinematic sleaze, the name of Frank Henenlotter has been all but forgotten by modern horror enthusiasts. All 43 Universal Classic Monster Movies Ranked. What it's about: In this French movie, cops find the body of a man's wife and suggest he's a suspect in her death. – Tom Huddleston, ‘I am Godzilla. By Liz Cantrell The shocking, infamously bleak ending divides opinion, but it sure as hell sticks in the memory. – David Jenkins, One school you don’t want to get intoThe jewel of the post-‘Jaws’ nature-on-the-loose boom, ‘Piranha’ was also one of the last and greatest movies from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in its ’70s heyday. And ultimately of course there’s intense and profound shit-yer-pants terror that comes with being faced with an unstoppable fury that can’t be reasoned with, bargained or bought. Either way, ‘Cat People’ is, as Jacques Tourneur no doubt intended it, the ultimate Freudian stew, offering a different meaning to every viewer, but delighting all equally. The Host (Korean: 괴물; RR: Gwoemul; lit. Which, it transpired, was precisely what the public didn’t want, as proven by the massive global success of ‘An American Werewolf in London’, in which John Landis indulged in all the subversive slapstick splatter which Dante had so conscientiously avoided in his own movie, but which would later come to define his career. Recut and dumped on a disinterested public, ‘Nightbreed’ remains a shadow of Barker’s original vision. It was based on an unrealised project of King Kong creator Willis O'Brien, and the great man's protege Ray Harryhausen lent eerie life to a host of prehistoric gobblers as a two-bit Wild West show discovers a herd of tiny prehistoric horses in a remote desert valley. – David Jenkins, It’s not such a wonderful lifeThe ‘80s were a boom-time for unchecked malice and bonecrushing violence masquerading as children’s entertainment, but nothing came close to the full-tilt mayhem of Dante’s extravagantly chaotic sideswipe at consumerism, conformity and conspicuously observed small-town values. – Adam Lee Davies, What a croc!Let us, for a moment, pause to examine the career of Steve Miner. type to search. Starring Doug Jones - who’s fast joining the ranks of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and Nicolas Cage in the pantheon of classic screen demons - as the faun who offers inquisitive young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) three tasks in order for her to be reunited with her absent father, the film never manages to find a happy medium between fantasy and reality, though it does show the breathtaking results of sticking some googly eyes onto the palms of your hands (see above). Well, that appears to have been the inspiration behind embittered bogman Swamp Thing, originally created for the pages of DC comics to suggest that when we discuss the environment, we must consider hideous mutated avenging vegetable men as well as majestic redwoods and fresh bunches of azaleas. The actual Blob itself is about as scary as a clear plastic bag full of mixed-fruit jam, but this cracking little film nonetheless oozes thrills and drips with charm. From its opening shot of two horses having sex in which the wagging, steaming genitalia are filmed in extreme close-up, there’s the suspicion you’ve stumbled onto something genuinely seedy and illicit. The long set-up, following the party preparations of a bunch of well-heeled NY twentysomethings, is in itself a brave stylistic choice. Spielberg has never been one to skimp on the ketchup, and there’s a goodly amount of goo, guts and gore flying around a film that’s as red in tooth and claw as anything on this list. The irony is that the film responsible for ‘Piranha’s very existence, Spielberg’s world-masticating box-office behemoth, would also be the film that unwittingly wiped out everything New World stood for: once the B-movie had become the new A-movie, there’d be less and less room for the kind of madcap invention and subversive undertow that Joe Dante and writer John Sayles packed into this giddy, grisly little fish story. But let’s confine ourselves to the films that were clearly derived from their groundbreaking predecessors: “nudie cuties.” This British effort makes a decent fist of it, particularly in the eerie early scenes in which the entire global population is blinded by a convincingly psychedelic meteoric light show. Plus, ‘Monsters Inc’ is just comic genius, running the gamut from daft, Zucker-esque wordplay (‘Business Shriek’ magazine, Harryhausen’s restaurant) to some of the most sophisticated quickfire visual comedy Pixar ever produced. Good Girls Recap: Rio's Backstory Reveals His Family's (Very) Long Game — Plus, Did Beth Choose a Side? – Paul Fairclough, Directors: Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, Don’t you know that you’re toxic?Remember when low-budget horror movies were more interested in wit and invention than flat-out gore? These movies don’t fuck around. Déjà vu! It’s a rip-roaring success, fusing to-the-minute anti-social commentary with fabulously icky critter effects and fountains of gore. favorite favorite favorite favorite ( 8 reviews ) Topics: 1960s, foreign films, horror Sci-Fi / Horror 121,644 122K That element is present, to be sure, but this is a much more sympathetic and heartfelt picture than such a description suggests. Given Barker’s subsequent work as a writer – including ‘Coldheart Canyon’, surely one of the most awful books ever written – it could be unwatchable. It sees Boris Karloff as the ancient Egyptian priest who springs back to life when a British expedition team interrupts his slumber, and it marked yet another quality entry in Universal’s worldbeating canon of classic horror yarns. – Adam Lee Davies, Out of the pastBrendan Fraser may have been co-opted as a kid-friendly Indiana Jones-a-like to star in Stephen Sommers’s mediocre modern ‘Mummy’ franchise, but Karl Freund’s 1932 original (of which the aforementioned was a fairly close remake) remains the definitive stab at bringing that iconic, muslin-swathed zombie killer to the big screen. And what about Mike Wazowski, Sully and the rest of the critters from ‘Monsters, Inc’ (perhaps)? – Tom Huddleston, Up jumped the devil…...or did he? – David Jenkins, Finally nailed it!Adapting one of his own short stories and utilising a budget of just £1 million, Clive Barker created one of the most absorbing and otherworldly horror movies in recent memory. Juanito’s all grown up, full of the titular trauma, and now a — pardon me — absolute fucking monster. Fold your dark arms about me. – Tom Huddleston, Weird and gillyWhat is it with ancient, primeval beasts attacking hot chicks in bikinis? Billy Warlock – third banana on TV nork-fest ‘Baywatch’ – finds himself literally knee deep in family entanglements when he discovers that his blue-blood parents and all their preening yahoo friends are in fact not just a pack of wheedling, self-obsessed poshos, but a sub-species of mutant, body-melding cannibals given to orgiastic bacchanalia, eating the poor and a ghastly practice known has ‘shunting’ that looks only slightly more inviting than grinding one’s genitalia into overcranked farm machinery. If the sign of a truly great monster movie is that it provokes broader emotions than mere horror, then ‘The Fly’ is a masterpiece. Sure, sex has been a primal urge since the dawn of time, but you’d think studs like King Kong, Jaws and the fish-faced hero of this frenetic ’50s frightener might not have to resort to terror tactics to lure in the opposite sex. 161,154 views made by Nickintex. it’s a pretty scary beastie to plonk just prior to the final good (dwarf) versus evil (old woman) showdown, especially when it chooses to wolf down some of the extras between fiery breaths. – Paul Fairclough, Baby, it’s cold outside John Carpenter’s remake of Howard Hawks's tense ’50s sci-fi thriller ‘The Thing From Another World’ is enough to make you forget Keanu Reeves in ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ or Nic Cage in ‘The Wicker Man’, proving that ploughing old furrows can throw up treasure as well as dried-out old cowpats. Taken more simply, as the tale of a woman so constricted by social propriety that she becomes a monster, it’s no less rigorous and challenging. "Monster") is a 2006 South Korean monster film directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona and Go Ah-sung.The film concerns a monster kidnapping a man's daughter, and his attempts to rescue her. – Tom Huddleston, There’s a bad moon risingIt would be interesting to see polling data showing exactly how many fortysomething Brits recall John Landis’s hysterical gore-spattered masterpiece as that all-important pubescent rite of passage: their first 18. The A.V. Pure joy. We all grew up with some pretty frightening monsters waiting in the netherworld to haunt our dreams. – Tom Huddleston, Superfreak!After his success with the inimitable ‘Hellraiser’ (see No 19), it was inevitable that erstwhile novelist Clive Barker would secure a deal to direct again. List of Foreign Movies on Netflix US Netflix US was a diverse range of international cinema in their library including neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves and Hong Kong classic Internal Affairs. Richardson steals the film despite his early immolation, but the Industrial Light & Magic special effects come a close second and, nearly thirty years on, have an ethereal charm that CGI-drenched descendants like Beowulf can't match. Okay, so he kills a kid, but we’ll let him off because he’s all lumpy and cute, and doesn’t really, you know, get it. In addition to this, the first ‘Evil Dead’ film also contains one of the most spectacular (and elongated) death scenes in modem film, as we witness an actor covered in flaps of latex reduced to a pool of bubbling Plasticine pus. Very little in Noughties horror comes close to the authentically clammy, claustrophobic dread of this sequence – but sadly, director Victor Salva can’t quite apply the same atmosphere to the remainder of the film, and once the winged fiend shows up things trundle towards an enjoyably bleak but hardly breathtaking finale. Protect me in your black embrace.' – Adam Lee Davies, Danger: heavy plant crossingAs anyone who watched TV this Christmas knows only too well, the definitive version of John Wyndham’s template-setting apocalyptic masterpiece has yet to emerge. In honor of The Shape of Water, we've pulled together a list of some of our other favorite human-monster couplings. – Tom Huddleston, It’s a real pea-souperIn this benighted decade of torture porn and unnecessary remakes, one American director dared to buck the trend with a defiantly old-school slice of politically motivated monster schlock, and created the most unfairly overlooked horror movie of the Noughties. Skip to the list Adrienne Fuller Updated May 1, 2020. All rights reserved. score: 32 of 150 (21%) required scores: 1, 5, 16, 33, 53 list stats leaders vote Vote print comments. Hubristic at best, then, for an elderly Scottish flim-flam man (Dickie Attenborough) to revivify the most ferocious species imaginable: including the T Rex and the Velociraptor – and parade them through an ill-maintained Costa Rican petting zoo. Time Out is a registered trademark of Time Out Digital Limited. Aside from the jaw-dropping panoply of in-camera effects (the cross-fade transformation scenes are extraordinarily convincing considering the time they were shot), the film is notable for its towering performance from Fredric March and its fearlessness in presenting Jekyll’s vile alter ego as one of the screen’s most shockingly violent sexual predators. The Gremlins themselves are way past crazy - as if the Alien had cross-bred with a toilet brush - and exhibit all the manners of a revved-up pit bull while decimating the Xmas jubilations of idyllic backwater hamlet Kingston Falls. A guide to the best streaming horror movies free on Amazon Prime Video, including scary films like Suspiria, Gretel & Hansel, Midsommar, The Last House on the Left, and more. avg. Are sentient aliens like ET or Chewbacca eligible? Abe Sapien's disdain for dry sherry and his watery inability to attend the Seattle Philharmonic's opening nights put paid to that beautiful illusion, but in blending humanity and monstrous action, ‘Hellboy’ and its even more monster-stuffed sequel have raised the stakes when it comes to bringing inky imaginings to the big screen. type to search. With nothing in the way of explanation (no pipe-smoking astro-boffins here), and mercifully few sightings of what turns out to be a slightly duff monster, New York becomes in effect a huge haunted house in which a confused populace takes on the role of Screaming Babysitter.