Many, many moons ago (October of 2012, to be precise), I wrote an article for this very site listing 12 of the oddest, shoddiest, and least frightening menaces to ever grace the silver screen. From disembodied heads in lab pans to alien invaders made from carpet samples, from giant bunnies to Rosey Grier and Ray Milland sharing the former’s body, the devilish dozen chronicled there seemed to cover all the bases for bad cinematic monsters. But, as any good genre fan knows, there’s always room for a sequel. So settle in and join me for a second chronological trip into the land of unintentionally hilarious horrors:
The Ape Man (1943) – Following his one-and-done performance as Mary Shelley’s monster in Universal’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Bela Lugosi wound up back on Poverty Row in this B-shocker. Demented doctor Lugosi injects himself with spinal fluid collected from a gorilla and transforms into the titular missing link, and must collected more fluid from human “donors” in an attempt to reverse the process. It’s a premise that borrows heavily from another Monogram release, 1940’s The Ape with Boris Karloff. But where that one had Karloff’s mad medico merely donning a simian costume to continue his work, here Bela actually changes into…well, look at the picture on the right. The filmmakers can call him an ape man all they want; I say he’s an Amish farmer.
It Conquered the World (1956) – Given the limited financial resources of his studio, American-International Pictures, it’s a wonder that B-auteur Roger Corman and his staff managed to come up with any halfway decent creatures for their horror/sci-fi outings. For It Conquered the World, the story of an evil Venusian being summoned to Earth by a well-intentioned scientist (Lee Van Cleef), Corman’s go-to monster maker, Paul Blaisdell, crafted a squat, fanged alien that, frankly, looks more like a giant sentient turnip (see above). When co-star Beverly Garland arrived on the set and first eyed “It,” she reportedly exclaimed, “That conquered the world?”
The Alligator People (1959) – After finding unlikely success in the man-into-animal thrills of 1958’s The Fly, 20th Century-Fox tried to repeat it by picking up this indie shocker which moved a little higher up the evolutionary ladder. The crocodilian title characters are subjects of a Louisiana scientist’s experiments in restoring damaged tissues and limbs with reptile hormones and radiation. One small problem: the treatment turns them into human/gator mutants. At least, that’s what the movie says. As the photo on your left attests, it looks more like they slipped into an ill-fitting alligator suit with immovable faces, wrinkled shoulders, and visible zippers. Once again forced to act opposite a less than terrifying antagonist, the indefatigable Beverly Garland recalled, “The hardest thing in that movie was simply to keep a straight face.”
The Killer Shrews (1959) – On a remote island, yet another eccentric researcher is hard at work, this time studying animal growth and metabolism with the perfectly logical goal of shrinking humanity to half its size to ease the burdens of overpopulation. His work with shrews, however, goes in the opposite direction and turns the ravenous little mammals into dog-sized predators with razor-sharp fangs and venomous saliva. Appropriately enough, director Ray Kellogg decided to put real-life canines–coonhounds, to be precise–under some shaggy furs and rubbery masks so that they could play the title critters. The results are, to put it mildly, less than convincing.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – In the previous article we saluted this twisted transplant tale’s titular anti-heroine, the detatched noggin (Virginia Leith) that fans have dubbed “Jan in the Pan.” There’s another creature, however, lurking in manic medico Bill Cortner’s (Jason Evers) laboratory closet, “the sum total” of all his mistakes, “a mass of grafted tissue” brought to life by his serums. And when this monstrous mutant finally manages to break down the closet door and step into the light of day, the result is…well, take a look above you. Yes, decades after Schlitzie appeared in Freaks and years before Zippy made his underground comix debut, this unnamed pinhead (whose mask strings are clearly visible in one shot) managed to steal the film’s final minutes, killing lab assistant Kurt, taking a bite out of Cortner’s neck and tossing the bloody remnant on the floor, setting the lab on fire, and walking away with an unconscious victim whose body was going to be Jan’s new home before the fadeout. One can only assume they lived happily ever after. Fun Fact: The monster was played by seven-foot-plus sideshow star Eddie “The Jewish Giant” Carmel.
They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1963/1968) – What’s worse than Jan in the Pan? Why, Adolf in the Jar, of course! This low-budget espionage tale (originally released as The Madmen of Mandoras, then retitled and reissued five years later with extra footage to make it long enough for TV airings) would have you believe that German scientists were able to cut off and preserve the head of “Mr. H” just before his Berlin bunker fell. Nazi loyalists tuck “Der Fuhrer” away in the mythical Latin American country of Mandoras until the time is right to try to launch a nerve gas attack that will kickstart the Fourth Reich. In his roughly five minutes of screen time, Mr. H (Bill Freed) does nothing except leer, look confused, yell “Mach schnell! Mach schnell!” (his only dialogue), and then slowly melt away in the backseat of a burning car. good riddance.
Octaman (1971) – A U.S. scientific expedition journeys to Latin America and encounters a fabled aquatic mutant that’s almost human. They capture the beast, but it escapes and goes on a murderous rampage, leading to a final showdown in a cave. This, of course, is the basic plot for the Universal horror classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s also the basic plot for another, less memorable picture written and directed by Creature co-scripter Harry Essex, the ultra-low-budget shocker Octaman. Yes, over 30 years before Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus battle a certain wall-crawling hero in Spider-Man 2, another eight-limbed antagonist stretched his tentacles across the big screen. What’s more, the title monster’s design was the first screen credit for future Oscar-winning effects maven Rick Baker. As for Ocky himself…let’s just say Rick got better at his work.
The Mangler (1995) – In Christine he made you fear a 1958 Plymouth Fury. You learned to stay away from trucks with Green Goblin grill masks in his Maximum Overdrive. And here, horror author nonpareil Stephen King shows you the terror that can lie within…a laundry works’ ironing and folding machine? When some human blood is accidentally spilled on the title washday equipment, it develops a taste for the stuff and starts…well, mangling…anyone clumsy enough to come into contact with it, and it’s not long before the townsfolk are sacrificing their children to it to appease the Mangler’s appetites. Based on a King short story, this mix of The Little Shop of Horrors, The Wicker Man, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. tragedy was directed and co-scripted by Tobe Hooper–who teamed with King for the original Salem’s Lot–and starred Freddy himself, Robert Englund, as the sadistic sweatshop owner. Even with three such genre notables at work, it’s hard to make appliances scary without descending into goofiness.
Killer Condom (1996) – See, there’s a reason those hygiene films you saw in high school warned you about “taking precautions.” This German-made comedy (I promise that’s not an oxymoron) was based on an actual comic book series and follows the goings-on at an rundown New York City “quickie hotel” (cleverly named the Hotel Quickie) where male patrons are being attacked in the most sensitive of areas by an unknown assailant. It’s up to a pair of detectives–one gay, one straight–to track down the perps, which becomes a personal vendetta when one of the lawmen loses part of his anatomy to them. As you probably guessed from the title, the attackers turn out to be small, rubbery-looking creatures that resemble prophylactics. Well, they resemble prohpylactics with the mouths of lampreys and a taste for chowing down on male privates (plus, in one case, a woman’s nose), but absolutely no interest in promoting “safe sex.” Fun Fact: Famed artist H.R. Giger (Alien) had a hand as a “special design consultant” on the film.
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008) – Nuff said.
Hey, FanFare readers! What are some of your bad monster movie memories? Let us know in the comments below.