Sunday, January 22, 2012

Oh my God no!! It's Sharktopus!!!!!!



From TCM Movie Morlocks

Monsters Among Us!
Posted by Richard Harland Smith on January 20, 2012


This week, two screenwriter friends of mine were retained to write monster movies for a new production company called The Monster Machine. David Rosiak and Matthew Chernov have already written the made-for-TV chompalooza SHARK SWARM (2008) and are pushing forward to craft more supersized and hybridized horrors for the producers of DINOSHARK (2010) and SHARKTOPUS (2010). I’m happy for my friends and the news evoked in me the kneejerk response “Good… I miss monsters.” And then the strangeness of that reaction struck me — there are monsters everywhere these days, so what’s the big deal? Watch any SyFy and it’s back-to-back ads for video games and made-for-TV movies and theatrical releases offering all manner of freakish folderol and dedicated reality TV shows for Bigfoot, river monsters and ghosts foreign and domestic. We’re actually living in what could be called, quantitatively, a monster renaissance akin to the glory days of the 1940s and 1950s, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and sent real estate values crumbling like so many scale model metropoli… but it’s not the same. It’s just not the same.

Sixty years ago, monster movies were crumbs cast off from the major studios, chicken feed for the kids and the punters who liked to eat popcorn and have something big to look at while doing it. Titles like THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), THEM! (1954) and IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) and others were not staffed with movie stars but cast instead from the ranks of the contract players, workaday actors who owed some time or some years to their home studios, or who were on loan-out from another. Most of the people doing the movies had no love for the genre, for horror, for le fantastique — it was just rent and gas money, alimony, braces for the kids, a down payment. From the directors down to the writers, actors and technicians, monster movies were the cinematic equivalent of the $2 betting window at the race track… a place where a little money could be made and better things financed. Sure, some studios (Universal, for one) made bank off the tendering of horror and science fiction but the category was still considered down-market, common, dumb. Happily, crafty artisans used the medium to sneak in ideas and techniques that were brash, blasphemous and novel at the time and in retrospect a lot of monster movies of the Classic Age of Hollywood play better now than they did originally, now that we can appreciate their subthemes and hidden motifs

What’s great about old monster movies is that there is always a reliable level of craftsmanship, of competence and reliability. If the script is dodgy, the playing is persuasive. If the acting is wooden, the script will offer thought-provoking ideas or smart dialogue. Even if the scenario boils down to little more than a guy in an ape suit and gabardine slacks or a mollusk puppet dripping Noxema from its molded rubber maw, the effects entertain, sometimes fascinate, and invariably charm while reality is worked in from the side through the matter-of-fact playing of the ensemble and the insistence on the part of everyone involved of absolute professionalism. And some of the time — and THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) comes immediately to mind — book, performance and production come together to give us something truly unforgettable… something our children and grandchildren will be talking about long after we’re gone.

for the rest go here:http://moviemorlocks.com/2012/01/20/monsters-among-us/#more-45817

10 comments:

teddy crescendo said...

"Red Tails" is such a ludicrously out-moded piece of film-making, it belongs in the 1940`s not the 2010`s.

eddie lydecker said...

Ed, i know what you`re talking about my old mate, some of those 50`s monster movies have still got an incredible cultish charm and re-watchability factor to them, a re-watchability factor that todays CGI oriented films just dont seem to have.

David Sanction said...

Its ture that all the special effects extravaganza's we`ve seen over the last 35 years are derived directly from the success of Star Wars in the summer of `77 but i actually think they owe almost as much to Ray Harryhausen.

Ed Gorman said...

I agree Dave, for me Ray Harryhausen is quite simply GOD ! ! !.

steve prefontaine said...

Eddie is right, CGI is bull-shit in comparison to those magic old movies from the 50`s.

Steve Oerkfitz said...

I'm sorry but I find most old monster movies only watchable for the cheese factor. Ray Harryhausen never worked for me-never looked in the least bit real. How effective would Jurassic Park be without CGI? Altho I admit most CGI drenched movies leave me cold-but its mainly because of the lack of decent story/script.

Archibald "self-righteous" ineptitude said...

Steve, why is your surname so absurd ?. By the way, its specifically the "cheese factor" that makes them so rewatchable, "Jurassic Park" for all its majestic visual magnificence and astonishingly convincing monsters didn`t have that all important "cheese factor" so, for me, one veiwing was enough. Where-as i`ve seen most of Harryhausen's films over 100 times each.

Steve Oerkfitz said...

Hah, you`ve got the nerve to say "Oerkfitz" is an absurd surname, with a surname like "ineptitude" i wouldn`t be so keen to go around trashing other peoples names if i were you, you bloody silly tosser. By the way, the rest of your name is ludicrous as well ! ! !.

jervaise brooke hamster said...

I thought this post was supposed to be about how great old monster movies are, not how idiotic certain peoples names are.

Steve Oerkfitz said...

The second post with my name on it was not posted by me.