What Scares You?
Monster Movies Today
and Yesterday
Overview
• One: Where do Monsters Come
From? – Myth, Folklore & SciFi.
• Two: History and Technology of
Monster Movies – 1900 to
1950’s.
• Three: History and Technology of
Monster Movies – 1950 to Today.
• Four: Fear and Reason – Why do
we enjoy being scared/ Hidden
meanings.
Quiz
•“Know Your Movie
Monster”
Discussion Point
• What is a movie monster?
What makes a monster?
• A giant: someone or something that is
abnormally large and powerful.
• freak: a person or animal that is markedly
unusual or deformed.
• a cruel, wicked and inhuman person
• For our purposes a movie monster is not a person.
“Know Your Movie Monsters” Quiz
Frankenstein's
Creation
Godzilla
Miss Swamp,
your 5th grade
teacher
The Mummy
Charles Manson
(Mass murderer)
Malevolent robot
King Kong
Tiger
Movie Monster Quiz (Continued)
Muppet with
Cookie fixation
Bridge Eating
Octopus
Your spoiled
Niece
Alien
Shark from the
movie “Jaws”
Undead skeleton
warriors
Ted Bundy (Serial
Killer)
Colossal Squid
So what is a Monster Movie?
(also known as a “Creature Feature”)
• No specific academic genre (‘zhän-rə) of that
name.
• Term is usually applied to films in the
horror, fantasy or science fiction genres
that involve fictional creatures. Especially
applies if creature is gigantic or powerful.
• Movie monsters differ from traditional
villains in that they are often not evil, but in
circumstances beyond their control.
• Often audiences will feel sorry for the
monster.
A Monster Movie is
(for the purposes of our class)
• Any film that centers around a fictional
creature(s) who finds themselves in conflict with
humans.
• Especially if the creature is in circumstances
beyond its control.
• Humans only count if they have been changed
physically in someway that makes them freakish
or deformed to the point of being non-human.
• Fictional creature: one from myth, or imagination
or is an oversized version of a real animal.
Where do Monster Movie
Ideas come from?
• Myth
• Folklore
• Science Fiction
– Usually before a
monster story makes it
to the screen it had been
dramatized in a book or
a stage show (or both).
Monsters in Myth
• A myth is a traditional story
accepted as history.
• Often serves to explain the
world view of a people.
• The ancient Greeks pictured
a number of monsters and
mythological animals in their
stories.
Cyclops
• A one-eyed race
of giants
fathered by the
Greek god of
the sea,
Poseidon.
Origin of Cyclops
• One theory is that
prehistoric dwarf
elephant skulls –
about twice the
size of a human
skull – that may
have been found
by the Greeks.
Cyclops
• In the Greek poet
Homer’s Odyssey,
the hero Odysseus
has a confrontation
with Polyphemus
(pol-a-fem-us), a
cyclops.
Odysseus and the Cyclops
Scylla & CharYbdis
• Scylla (sil-ah) and
Charybdis (ker-rib-des)
are two sea monsters of
Greek mythology.
• They lived on opposite
sides of the Strait of
Messina.
• Presented sailors with
an “impossible choice.”
Medusa
• A female monster,
with snakes for hair.
• Anybody looking
directly at her face
would turn to stone.
• Perseus killed her by
watching her
reflection in a mirrorlike shield.
Medusa and Perseus
Monsters in Folklore
• Folklore :The tales,
legends and
superstitions of a
particular people.
• Many folktales
include supernatural
monsters.
• Many folktales have
roots in
Roman/Greek myth.
Dragons
• The word can be traced
back to Roman times.
• The root is word draco in
Latin.
• To the Romans this
word referred to any
giant snake, such as a
python from India or
Africa
European Dragons
• Reptile creature
with bat-like wings
and two or four
legs.
• Live in an
underground lair or
cave.
• Usually portrayed
as evil.
Oriental Dragons
• Usually depicted as
snake-like.
• Associated with
water.
• Thought to be good
and wise.
• Sometimes capable
of human speech.
Dragon Dance
Dragons (Cont.)
• Dinosaur fossils
were occasionally
mistaken for the
bones of dragons.
Dragons in Fiction
• Bram Stoker (who also
wrote Dracula) wrote tale,
The Lair of the White
Worm, based on the
legend of an English
dragon.
• The 1937 fantasy novel
The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien, featured a dragon
named Smaug.
Vampires
• Tales have existed
from ancient times
about demons that
would drink blood.
• Most of things we
associate with vampire
legends come from
the Balkans countries
and South-Eastern
Europe
Vampires
• Folktales hold that Vampires are people who
return from the dead (sometimes they are
referred to as “the living dead” or the
“undead.”)
• To continue to exist they must drink the
blood of others.
Vampire Causes
• A vampire might be
created if a animal
jumped over a corpse.
• A body with a wound
that had not been
treated with boiling
water.
• Someone who had been
a witch or rebelled
against the church.
Vampires (cont.)
• In the 18th century, there
was a vampire panic in
Eastern Europe, and many
graves were dug up and
corpses damaged to
prevent them from returning
from death.
• Driving a stake though the
body or beheading were
considered ways to keep a
vampire in his grave.
16th Century 'Vampire' Grave Discovered
• Italy: The grave of a woman, apparently believed to
be a vampire at the time of her death, has been
discovered in a mass grave on the island of
Lazzaretto Vecchio. The woman had been buried
with a brick in her mouth.
• The wisdom of the time was that female vampires
were responsible for the devastating black death
which swept across Europe. It was thought that
these vampires fed on other corpses to gather the
required strength to rise again.
• It was the job of gravediggers to identify these
'vampires' and ram a brick into their mouth so
they couldn't feed. According to Dr Matteo
Borrini the trickle of blood that came from some
plague victim's mouths at death probably
started the fallacy.
Vampires (cont.)
• The short story "The
Vampyre" published on
1819 by John William
Polidori was the first
modern “romantic”
vampire story.
• Bram Stoker's 1897
novel Dracula provided
the basis of modern
vampire fiction.
Discussion Point
• List everything
you know about
Werewolves!
• (Example: How
do you become
one? What kills
one?, etc.)
Werewolves
• A werewolf is an
animal from folklore.
These creatures can
change from human
to wolf form and back
again. It is believed to
consume human flesh
or blood.
Half-man, Half Beast
• The root of the word
werewolf goes back
to the old German
word wer which
means man. A
werewolf is therefore
a man-wolf: part
human, part beast
How to Make a Werewolf
• People originally became
werewolves by covering
their bodies in a salve or
though some pack with the
devil.
• It has been suggested that
the salve may have
contained chemicals that
gave the person a
hallucination that they had
turned into a wolf.
Werewolf Legends
• Most of our werewolf
legends came from
Europe where the wolf
was the most feared
predator.
• In England, were wolves
were wolves were
eradicated in the 1500’s,
werewolf legends are very
rare.
Beast of Gevaudan (j-vau-dan)
• Some werewolf tales may have roots in
real events: Between 1764 – 1767 a huge
wolf terrorized parts of France killing a
number of people.
• The wolf was shot several times but did
not die.
• The king was forced to send French
soldiers to hunt down and kill the beast.
Medical Conditions
• Individuals that suffer from the genetic
disorder known as hypertrichosis
(hīpər-trĭ-kōsĭs) may grow hair all over
their bodies.
• The psychological condition of
believing you are a werewolf is known
as lycanthropy (ly-KAN-thruh-pee).
• In 1589 a man named Stubbe Peeter
was convicted of a series of murders
and cannibalism. He claimed he did
these murders as a wolf.
hypertrichosis
Fear of Werewolves
• Fear of werewolves was very real in the
middle ages.
• Records show that in France alone
between the years of 1520 and 1630 over
30,000 people were suspected of being
werewolves.
• Many people found themselves accused of
being werewolves, then investigated and
even tortured into confession.
Fear of the Full Moon
Modern Additions to Legend
• Some 19th century
writers of werewolf
tales added many of
the conventions we
associate the
legends including
fear of silver bullets,
fear of wolfbane
and changing under
a full moon.
Zombies
• A zombie is a creature in
folklore that appears as a
reanimated corpse or a
mindless human being.
• Stories of zombies originated
in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual
belief system of Vodou. In the
stories zombies are people
being controlled as laborers
by a powerful sorcerer.
Zombie Powder
• In 1985 a scientist named
Wade Davis wrote a
book, The Serpent and
the Rainbow, claiming
Vodou priests used a
strong drug that
include the poison from
puffer fish to put people
into the Zombie
condition.
The Narcisse Case
• Davis claimed he had investigated the case
of Clairvius Narcisse who was drugged by
his brother, a Vodou priest, to simulate
death.
• After his burial the brother dug the grave up,
revived Narcisse and then drugged him into
a zombie while he worked as a slave on his
farm.
• Narcisse only returned to his normal state
after his brother died and the drugs wore off.
Zombie
• In 1988 The Serpent
and the Rainbow was
made into a horror
film loosely based on
Davis’s book.
• This origin of
Zombies is different
that those found in
most recent Zombie
films
Scifi - anOther Source of
Monsters
• Science fiction - A form of
fiction that draws
imaginatively on scientific
knowledge and/or
speculation.
• Science fiction has provided
us with a number of more
modern monsters in the form
of aliens, dinosaurs, etc.
Science Fiction Roots
• Probably the first true
science fiction story
was Somnium (Latin
for The Dream)
written around 1625
by the scientist
Johannes Kepler. It
describes a trip to the
moon.
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein
• Another early example of
Science Fiction was Mary
Shelley's novel Frankenstein.
• It tells the tale of a scientist
the creates a man by
stitching together parts of
dead bodies.
• Shelly was only 19 when it
was published in 1818.
Jules Verne
• Verne (1828 –1905) was a
French author who helped
pioneer science-fiction with
books like From Earth to
Moon, Journey to the
Center of the Earth and
20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea.
Nautilus & Squid
• 20,000 Under
the Sea gave us
the ultra giant
squid seen in the
1954 movie.
The Verne book
actually pictures
an attack by
several smaller
squid.
H. G.Wells
• Herbert George Wells
(1866 – 1946) was an
English author, best
known for his work in
the science fiction
genre.
• He is best
remembered for The
War of the Worlds.
The story of an attack
on Earth by Martians.
Golden Era of Science
Fiction
• Is sometimes
recognized as the
period from the late
1930s through the
1950s during which the
genre gained wide
public attention and
many classic stories
were published.
Science Fiction Today
• Science Fiction remains an important
genre today with sub-genre including:
• “Hard” SciFi
• “Social” SciFi
• Cyberpunk
• Steampunk
• Time Travel.
• Space Opera.
A Monster Movie Proposal
• Over the next four lessons we will work in
groups to create proposal for a monster
movie.
• Today’s objective will be to select a
monster.
• Each group will have a packet they will
work on to complete the movie proposal.
Homework Reading, etc.
• Read the short story “The Fog Horn” by
Ray Bradbury.
• View a “Creature Feature” of your choice
and fill out the study guide (Not due to the
last class in this unit on Nov. 3rd)