Much of what I have to say about special effects master Ray Harryhausen–who died today at the age of 92–was already covered in this post from 2009, so I’ll wait here ’til you get back.

…

I can recall one time–I’m guessing that it was sometime around 1978–sitting down with a big sheet of paper on a kitchen table and meticulously drawing a mural that included at least one monster from every one of Harryhausen’s films. I thought that it was pretty good at the time. I wish that I still had it.

Growing up a fan of monster and sci-fi flicks, Harryhausen loomed large. It wasn’t just because of his talent or because of the near monopoly of his chosen profession he enjoyed throughout the ’50s and ’60s. He made quality fantasy films, and he made a lot of them. After apprenticing on 1949′s Mighty Joe Young, he worked on fourteen more, from 1953′s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms to Clash of the Titans in 1981. Twelve of them were with producer Charles H. Schneer, whose own contributions should not be underestimated. If there was a science-fiction or fantasy spectacle made during the middle of the 20th Century, odds are it either came from producer George Pal–who also started out as a stop-motion animator–or from the team of Harryhausen and Schneer.

Harryhausen wasn’t just the special effects guy for hire, he was the one dreaming up the action set-pieces around which those stories were built. Admittedly, the scenarios tended to be episodic, with dramatic scenes existing mostly to fill the time between monsters. But what monsters! The seven-headed hydra, the cyclopean centaur, the tragic Venusian Ymir, and the vicious dinosaur Gwangi were only a fraction of his large and varied menagerie.

Ray retired after Clash of the Titans, and never returned to filmmaking. I’m sure that he could tell that the days of the lone animator meticulously animating puppets by hand over a period of months would be ending, due in no small part to the incoming generation of people that he had inspired.

These days, there are vast hordes of anonymous effects artists filling out the endless credit rolls of our modern blockbusters. And this is not a knock on them, but none of them can ever be Ray Harryhausen. For a time, he wasn’t just one of a few, he was one of a kind.

Dave Movies obituaries, Ray Harryhausen

I am not about to get up on my high horse about the intrinsic value of independent film. I like soulless, studio-driven, explosion-delivery systems as much as the next popcorn-muncher. But it’s fun to be swept along in the joy expressed by an indie filmmaker pursuing something he or she loves, financial compensation be damned.

Last week I was introduced to The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, one of the least commercial–and most joyful–films I’ve seen in some time.

It achieved notoriety by being the lowest-grossing film of 2012, though that’s a technicality. According to director Paul Bunnell, after winning an audience award at the Kansas International Film Festival–which is apparently something that exists–it received the prize of a one-week run at a single Kansas theater, where it made $117. Admittedly, there weren’t a lot of people at the midnight screening I attended, but surely we doubled that gross.

Johnny X is a pastiche of ’50s drive-in fare, specifically 1959′s Teenagers from Outer Space. But it’s more ambitious and entertaining than that low-budget junk, a semi-musical with song stylings ranging from surf guitar to rockabilly to Sondheim.

It concerns a gang of alien punks, led by the eponymous Johnny, who are “sentenced to Earth.”  (The Grand Inquisitor is genre veteran Kevin McCarthy, wearing a Devo hat in his final performance.) In addition to his non-comformist ways, Johnny is being punished for his theft of the powerful Resurrection Suit. Oddly enough, he still has it when he’s sent to Earth, but it’s best not to think about that.

His on-again, off-again girlfriend is Bliss, played by De Anna Joy Brooks, who steals the show with the vamp number “These Lips That Never Lie.” She grabs the suit and runs off with a soda jerk, with the Ghastly gang in pursuit.

Reggie Bannister (from the Phantasm film series) shows up as a club promoter looking to score with a concert by legendary rocker Mickey O’Flynn (Creed Batton, formerly of the band The Grass Roots) who is, unfortunately, dead. Did I mention that there’s a Resurrection Suit?

The Ghastly Love of Johnny X could’ve used a trim: at 106 minutes, it’s a good twenty minutes longer than the movies to which it pays homage. Still, the music is catchy and the whole affair is fascinatingly weird.

In a not-entirely-dissimilar vein comes The Whisperer in Darkness, the second feature film produced by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Like Johnny X, it was a long-gestating project kept alive by passion. And it too is an intentionally retro flick.

In 2005, the HPLHS released The Call of Cthulhu, their adaptation of the core work of horror author Lovecraft’s mythology regarding slumbering alien gods. In a clever conceit, they filmed it as if it had been a “lost” film produced in 1926, the year that the short story was published. As a silent movie utilizing impressionistic sets and low-fi special effects, it effectively disguised its low budget and amateur crew.

For their follow-up they went bigger.  The Whisperer in Darkness was published in 1931, so they intended to approach it as a sound film of the same era as the early Universal Studios horrors. And while Cthulhu was a brisk 47 minutes, Whisperer more than doubled that at 104.

In one sense, it’s less successful than its predecessor: as a 1931 pastiche, it fails. Keep in mind that ’31 was the year that the Bela Lugosi Dracula hit theaters. Dracula, for all its cultural influence, is crude and stagy, with sparse musical accompaniment provided by a couple of classical music pieces, notably “Swan Lake.” Whisperer appears considerably more polished, and features a full orchestral score of the type that wouldn’t be introduced until two years later when the original King Kong debuted.

Unlike the intentionally-jerky stop-motion animation employed for Cthulhu, the filmmakers this time opted for CGI. It’s an understandable decision, as the monsters are on-screen quite a bit and would’ve taken months to film by traditional methods. Yet, despite an attempt to “dumb down” the effects to make them appear more like stop-motion, they’re simply much smoother than would’ve been possible two years before (or really, twenty years after) Kong.

Most damning of all, it’s in widescreen. While that format existed in the early ’30s, it didn’t come into common usage until 1953, when it was seen as a way of bringing television viewers back to the theaters.

Aside from the opening titles, the entire film looks much more like something that would’ve emerged from the sci-fi boom of the ’50s. And honestly, that’s okay. The HPLHS might not have achieved their stated goal, but they made something that’s as good as some of the better genre flicks of the mid-20th Century.

Matt Foyer is appealing as the central character Albert Wilmarth, who travels to rural Vermont to investigate a farmer who believes that he has been beset by buzzing aliens emanating from a nearby mountain lair. The stories of the Mi-Go are just folklore, right? Right?

Whisperer incurs the potential wrath of Lovecraftians by extending the film past the end of the short story. The original tale concludes with a twist that would normally ring down the curtain on Act Two. Instead, there’s an action-packed third act which sees Wilmarth infiltrate the Mi-Go caves and attempt to escape their wrath in an old plane. Ultimately, it goes to a place no less bleak than Lovecraft’s own writings.

The only real downside to it is a mustache-twirling human villain who wears a cultist get-up that charitably can be called “unfortunate.”

Still, grouses about the authenticity of its alleged time period aside, it’s still a fine film straddling the line between fan effort and something more professional. I hope that the HPLHS will tackle The Shadow Over Innsmouth next!

Dave Movies H.P. Lovecraft, reviews, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, The Whisperer in Darkness

We all pay tribute to the fallen in our own ways. My way to honor the memory of Roger Ebert is to offer you this opportunity to watch Infra-Man, the only film that he retroactively rewarded an an additional half-star.

The first segment will play in the window above, but here’s the entire thing.

Dave Movies Infra-Man, Roger Ebert

You may loathe your job and despise your coworkers, but take solace in this: no matter what you do for a paycheck, somewhere out there in the infinity of worlds someone has it far, far worse.

Consider, if you will, the work of the beacon keepers of Gondor, one of the medieval-esque nations dotting Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

The entire point of the beacons–at least, as depicted in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film adaptations–is to summon help from the nation of Rohan. Telegraphs haven’t been invented, and you can’t depend on the eagles to show up and carry your message, so the only recourse for sending a quick S.O.S. to the horsemen of the Golden Hall is to construct a series of bonfires set many miles apart. And since they need to be seen from a long way off, the best places to put them are on mountaintops.

So, your job as Gondorian beacon keeper is to sit on a mountain and watch a pile of sticks. They need to be lit at a moment’s notice, so you’d better keep them dry. You’ll only know that it’s time to light them up when you see the next beacon in the chain aflame. And that other pile of sticks is on a distant peak, so you’d best keep an eye on the horizon.

Now, bear in mind that they are only to be lit in an emergency. (Important: do not set your torch too close to the beacon.) And, according to the Encylopedia of Arda, the only recorded incident of their use since they were constructed in year 2510 of the Third Age occurred on March 8, 3019…509 years later. So, odds are good that they’ll never be needed in your lifetime. Or in your father’s lifetime. Or your son’s lifetime. (You can pretty much bet that this is a job that gets passed down familial lines, same as male-pattern baldness.)

But when they’re needed, they’re needed NOW. So keep your torch lit, and keep watching that mountain waaaaaay over there.

Dave Movies Lord of the Rings, worst jobs in the multiverse

I was in no rush to watch The Dark Knight Rises, the allegedly final film in director Christopher Nolan’s triptych about everyone’s favorite rodent-themed superhero, Mighty Mouse Batman. I was already predisposed against it; I had begun to resent the overrated previous installment, Dark Knight: The Jokering. Then the shootings in Aurora–sadly, only the second most horrific mass killing in America last year–dulled whatever remaining interest I’d had.

However, as I’ve previously stated, I prefer to bitch about things with authority. So last Saturday I spun a Blu-Ray of Rises. And…

I kinda liked it. It wasn’t the best Batman movie ever, but it didn’t actively annoy me either.

The main beef I had with it was its relative lack of Batman. There are thousands of movies I can watch that don’t have Batman in them, so I prefer my Batman films to feature frequent appearances by Batman. Instead, there were long, Batman-free stretches which found Bruce Wayne too mopey to Batman it up.

The previous installment ended with Batman taking the rap for the death of Harvey Dent, the crime-busting district attorney who, unbeknownst to Gotham City, had been transformed into the villainous Two-Face. This deception was deemed necessary to prevent undoing the progress Dent had made against organized crime.

Rises begins eight years later, with the gangs brought low under draconian sentencing laws and Batman fading into legend. Gotham is by no means crime-free, but people seem content with the current state of low-level thuggery.

While Bruce Wayne’s sacrifice made a certain amount of sense as I was watching the film, something nagged at me afterward. Okay, I can see that Batman would see great value in eliminating organized crime. Yet the mobs had nothing to do with the traumatic event that spurred his lifelong crusade: his parents’ murder at the hands of a garden-variety mugger. It struck me as out-of-character for Bruce to allow street-level crime to continue in his self-imposed exile.

Rises piles on the villains. As with The Dark Knight, there are three* of them: Catwoman, Bane and a third whose reveal is meant to be a surprise but is pretty easy to guess if you’re more than passingly familiar with Batman’s comic book history.

Of them, Catwoman was the one I enjoyed the most, and not only because Anne Hathaway in skin-tight leather trips at least a couple of my triggers. She was the only one who seemed to be having fun being bad. Happily, Rises expunges the “licked back to life by cats” backstory from Catwoman’s last two movie appearances, and gets back to the original idea of a cat burglar who shares a mutual attraction with Batman.

Bane is a character I’ve greatly disliked since his first appearance. He was everything that I hated about ’90s comics: an impossibly-muscled, ‘roid-raging brute with a badass name. (Also an inexplicable resemblance to a Mexican wrestler. Not that I have anything against luchadores.) He improbably managed to defeat Batman despite a glaringly obvious vulnerable spot that the World’s Greatest Detective failed to notice for the editorially-mandated reason that the “Knightfall” storyline had another forty-skillion issues to run.

Anyhow, the Rises version of Bane does away with the super-steroid tube and the wrestling get-up. Which, honestly, are the only visually interesting things about the character. Instead, he gets a weird breath mask that (somehow) helps him manage his constant pain…and also makes him difficult to understand. (I didn’t have as much trouble with this as did theatergoers; watching it at home without background noise helped.) Bane also gets a fur coat, so there’s that. Overall, he’s effective enough as a generic terrorist baddie, as well as a bait-and-switch for the actual mastermind.

I was confused by the part in which Bane left the broken Bruce Wayne in prison–ostensibly to rot while Gotham burns–but in the care of two guys who made it their personal mission to rehabilitate him and motivate him to climb out of the pit. Did they not get the memo? I was waiting for one of them to turn out to be a disguised Michael Caine, but it was not to be.

I did enjoy the excesses of Bane’s inverted version of Gotham, particularly the kangaroo court presided over by Jonathan Crane (aka the Scarecrow) perched atop an enormous, improvised judge’s bench.

The film’s conclusion puts a coda on the Caped Crusader’s career. In the context of the trilogy’s overall story arc, this works well enough. It does, however, strike a note of dissonance in that it suggests that Batman’s eternal quest for justice is something he can take or leave.

In the end, I generally enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises, yet it’s just not what I’m looking for in a Batman film. As a longtime fan of DC Comics’ stable of characters, I find it repeatedly frustrating that I have to look to the Marvel Comics adaptations for the fun and adventure I want when I plunk down my money for a superhero flick.

*Or five, if you count the out-of-costume cameo by the Scarecrow and the surprisingly knowledgeable hallucination of Ra’s Al Ghul. Seriously, if Bruce is imagining Ra’s, how is it that he knows things that Bruce doesn’t?

Dave Movies Batman, reviews

Yes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is too damned long. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s made not by the Peter Jackson who ruthlessly and wisely cut Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire from The Lord of the Rings, but by the Peter Jackson who made his King Kong remake 83 minutes longer than the original. To this Mr. Jackson, more is more.

Yet, as someone who owns–and prefers–the extended editions of the three Rings films, I have no true cause for complaint. I like spending time in Middle Earth. I like seeing the “off-screen” parts of the story. So, if Jackson’s revised plan to split The Hobbit into three movies means that we’re seeing the equivalent of extended editions in the theater rather than waiting for the DVD release, so be it.

That’s not to say that An Unexpected Journey isn’t excessive in other ways as well. At times it lapses into video game mode, with on-screen antics resembling an action “platformer.” This isn’t new: even The Fellowship of the Ring had that damned swaying staircase. But both the stone giant and Goblin Town sequences in The Hobbit go far beyond the believable. (The collapsing Goblin Town platform is both ridiculous and oh-so-fake.)

It shares another trait with The Fellowship of the Ring in that it inserts a villain to provide a more personal threat. (A “mini-boss,” in video game terms.) While Fellowship’s Uruk-Hai captain Lurtz was wholly invented, Journey‘s  Azog the Defiler is at least a Tolkien character, albeit one who was supposed to have been long dead. While I don’t know that he’s entirely necessary, I don’t think he significantly detracts from the story. (Besides, “Azog the Defiler” is a pretty rockin’ name.)

One way in which it differs from Fellowship is that it goes out of its way to insert Tom Bombadil. Okay, he’s actually Radagast the Brown, an off-screen character from Tolkien’s novels, but like Bombadil he’s a quirky nature lover. It’s fun to see former Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy up on the big screen.* Thankfully, he does not play the spoons.

Martin Freeman is simply terrific as the titular hobbit Bilbo Baggins. I wasn’t sure what to make of the casting at first, but he nails the fussy Englishman aspect of the character. He’s especially good playing off Andy Serkis as Gollum in the dead-perfect “riddle game” sequence.

The visuals are for the most part absolutely gobsmacking. I audibly said “wow” at least twice.** The 3-D is really good too, aside from a few early sweeping pans that my eyes were unable to process.

I cannot comment on the controversial 48-frames-per-second version, as I would’ve had to trek to either Chicago or Indianapolis to sample it. And, given what I’ve heard from people who seem like they’d be inclined to like that sort of technological advance, it sounds as if it’s better avoided.

Perhaps I would’ve been less inclined to enjoy An Unexpected Journey if my expectations hadn’t been tempered by the needlessly harsh reviews, but I found it a great deal of fun.

It’s not Tolkien’s The Hobbit, it’s Peter Jackson’s. I’m okay with that. People bitched when the early Harry Potter films hewed too closely to the books rather than offering freer adaptations. Jackson’s script even remarks on how tales evolve in the telling. And Tolkien himself wrote of the “Cauldron of Stories” that authors draw from for their own works. (Though, given what he had to say about the first guy who attempted to write a Lord of the Rings screenplay, I’m not sure he’d agree with my take.)

* This movie is geek heaven in that it features not only a former Doctor, but also Magneto, Arthur Dent, Ash (from Alien), Agent Smith and Dracula (or Count Dooku if you’re too young to remember Hammer horror films).

**Both times for establishing shots of fantasy environments, specifically the halls of Erebor and the vast catacomb of Goblin Town.

 

Dave Movies reviews, The Hobbit

The older I get, the more I think that I understand the disappointment of the previous generation. They see the world slipping away from them. For good or ill, their time has passed.

Our popular culture is codified by demography. Marketers endlessly chase 18-34 year-olds. They might invite the 35-49s to peer under the tent, but once one hits the big five-oh, the circus packs up and rolls on to the next cow town.

Which is a long and melodramatic way of saying that I’m a grumpy, old man who doesn’t care much for your newfangled James Bond.

Now, I know that you didn’t truly enjoy Quantum of Solace either. But you thought that Casino Royale was the best thing since shaken martinis, and that the latest installment, Skyfall, was even better.

And what I have to resign myself to is that you and I just want different things. I want my James Bond to be less mopey. Ruminating about his mortality is something Bond should do on his own time, not mine.

I think that my dissatisfaction with what passes for a James Bond joint these days is exemplified by his meeting with the new Q. The young quartermaster hands him his gadgets for this adventure: a pistol and a radio. Granted that even Bond is disappointed. Q tells him that they don’t do exploding pens anymore.

Well, why am I watching, then? Bond isn’t Bourne, or that Mission: Impossible guy. What separates 007 from every other homicidal secret agent is that he’s the one with the magnetic wristwatch and the car that turns into a submarine. There are all manner of action heroes who don’t battle cat-stroking masterminds in volcano strongholds.

In their place, we get Javier Bardem as a former MI-6 agent gone rogue. He’s flamboyant enough to be a decent 007 villain, but his scheme is decidedly low-wattage. He wants to kill Bond’s boss, M. And…that’s it. Okay, he wants to humiliate her first. That’s something, I guess.

But everything else–exposing embedded agents, blowing up MI-6, getting himself captured–is all part of a needlessly-complicated plot with the sole endgame of putting a cap in Judi Dench’s ass. This isn’t a movie about a super secret agent saving the world. It’s about spies killing spies, with the rest of us caught in the crossfire.

The opening sequence–by far the best part of the film–is a thrilling chase through city streets, across rooftops and finally atop a speeding train. It’s endearingly over-the-top, climaxing with Bond recoupling the train using a convenient backhoe. For those few minutes, I had hopes that the franchise was at last emerging from the doldrums. Unfortunately, that was the action highlight.

Bond spends the next half hour or so being pissed off at M for ordering a fellow agent to take a risky rifle shot which hits him instead of the target. Pity he had none of that concern for the literally hundreds of innocent pedestrians and motorists injured during their damn-the-torpedoes chase.

The fact that (MAJOR SPOILER) Bond ultimately fails to save M renders even more pointless the lost lives of all those thugs, assassins, agent provocatrixes and unlucky security guards that fell along the way. (SPOILER ENDS)

Like the early Star Trek feature films, the major theme of Skyfall is age. I’m not certain that it’s a great idea to acknowledge that Bond is aging out of the moviegoing demographic. It’s not like there won’t be another actor in the role in five years or so. Besides, it begs the question of when in 007′s timeline this is taking place. On one hand, the beloved Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger comes out of mothballs for a final road trip, yet the film concludes with Bond being formally introduced to Miss Moneypenny, the secretary who appeared in every last one of the non-Daniel Craig 007 films, including four with Judi Dench’s M.

Perhaps James Bond is getting forgetful? He’ll be a grumpy, old man himself one day soon.

Dave Movies grumpy and old, James Bond, reviews

For the third and final part of my examination of the monsters from the cult horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods, I’ll run down the miscellaneous menagerie, including some that may exist solely in behind-the-scenes footage.

 

Japanese Stringy-Haired Ghost

aka Kiko, who is now living in a happy frog.

 

Horned Gorilla

No, his name isn’t “Buenos Aires.” This is a screengrab of one of the failed international scenarios. So, is the horned gorilla a traditional Argentinian horror?

 

Giant Spider

Yeah, I’ve got a better picture of the giant spider than this, but I hate spiders so you’ll have to make do.

 

Kraken

Poor Amy Acker. Always getting killed.

 

Killbot

A scorpion-like, buzzsaw-armed robot. It’s also among the initial batch of monsters at the elevators.

 

The Suffocators

Name taken from an interview with director Drew Goddard. One appears on the monitors. Photo from the Cabin wiki.

 

Creepy Girl

You never see her face. She walks slowly down the hall, singing “Hush Little Baby.”

 

Cyclops

I haven’t spotted him in the film. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Little Guy with a Hatchet

Another mystery, another Visual Companion photo.

 

The Ancient Ones

What it’s all about. Arguably, they’re us.

 

And the Rest

Some unidentified humanoids seen in the rampage. Perhaps one of them is the Reaver (from Joss Whedon’s TV series Firefly) that’s alleged to appear?

 
This cow-skull-headed giant is on the DVD’s behind-the-scenes featurette.

 
Not pictured: several creatures from the videogame Left 4 Dead appear in the holding cells. They’re holdovers from the abandoned plans to create Cabin-themed downloadable content for the popular horror game.

The special effects artists of The Cabin in the Woods created holding cells in different sizes in order to make insects and costumed actors appear giant. Here are a bunch of creatures that they used to fill out the prison, many of which defy easy categorization. However, you will note knock-offs of The Blob and The Fifty-Foot Woman. Also the Ku Klux Klan.

 

And that’s all for now, unless someone finds a photo of Kevin! Hope that you found useful this guide to the forthcoming apocalypse!

(Part One!) (Part Two!)

Dave Movies monsters, The Cabin in the Woods

Part Two of my guide to the monster menagerie from The Cabin in the Woods (Part One was published last week) covers the right column of the whiteboard. Let’s take a look at it again.

 

The Scarecrow Folk

A flock of these break into the control room and attack Truman before being blown up by an errant grenade. Photos from the Cabin Visual Companion.

 

Snowman

So far, no one seems to have spotted this one.

 

Dragonbat

The dragonbat is very prominent, breaking into the security booth and later smashing through a wall.

 

Vampires

The Nosferatu-style vamps are mostly off-screen. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Dismemberment Goblins

You can barely catch a few glimpses of the goblins, which is too bad because they’re charmingly goofy. During the elevator massacre, they rip a soldier in half and fling the body at the camera. Later on you can see them driving a golf cart. According to the novelization, they use it to run down pedestrians. Photos from the DVD and Visual Companion.

 

Sugarplum Fairy

She’s the lamprey-faced ballerina Marty sees in the holding cells. Later she performs a bloody dance of death on the big monitor. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Merman

“I’m never gonna see a merman.” Photos from the Visual Companion.

 

The Reanimated

Not positive about these. The Cabin wiki thinks that they’re the ceiling-crawling humanoids with the upside-down heads.

 

Unicorn

Guess this lab worker wasn’t a virgin.

 

The Huron

Snagged this photo from the Cabin wiki. I don’t know where they found it. I haven’t seen the Huron in the film myself.

 

Sasquatch/Wendigo/Yeti

I love that no one is certain whether its a sasquatch or a yeti. Or possibly a wendigo. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Dolls

Four Dolls emerge from the elevators. They’re also on one of the monitors, carrying a can of gasoline and setting people on fire.

 

The Doctors

Seen here about to operate.

 

Zombie Redneck Torture Family

So much for their “100% clearance rate.”

 

Jack O’Lantern

A skinny, pumpkin-headed, fire-breathing humanoid in an old-timey suit.

 

 Giant

Presumably this guy, seen here in a behind-the-scenes shot from the DVD.

 

Twins

You don’t get a very good look at them, but these two little girls–presumably a riff on The Shining–are briefly glimpsed both in the cells and on the monitors.

 

Come back next Monday for Part Three, in which I’ll cover the deep roster of The Cabin in the Woods, including quite a few monsters you never saw.

(Part One!)

 

Dave Movies monsters, The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods–a sly meta-commentary on the entire horror film genre–is one of my favorite films of the year to date. The DVD recently came out, allowing me the opportunity to indulge in a bit of filmic archaeology: an attempt to unearth as many of its many, many monsters as I can. The infamous betting board listed quite a few, but numerous others were glimpsed during the film and still more showed up only in behind-the-scenes footage.

My sources for this series of articles include the DVD, the Visual Companion (highly recommended) and The Cabin in the Woods wiki. The “system purge” sequence of the film is so fast and furious that it was difficult to get clear screencaps; in some cases I’ve had to resort to book scans and various websites.

(Okay, heads up. Total spoilers ahead. If that bothers you, do not read the rest of this post, much less the forthcoming parts two and three.)

To begin, I’m going to run down the whiteboard list in order.

 

Werewolf

Prominently featured in the movie, the werewolf moved fast enough that it was hard to capture him in focus. Here he is from the Visual Companion.

 

Alien Beast

The facehugger-esque creature leaps out of an elevator onto one of the soldiers. The production photos from the Visual Companion give a better view.

 

Mutants

Seen on one of the monitors vomiting on a victim. Marty shoots one in the head. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Wraiths

Dana and Marty see one in the holding cells. During the purge, it whooshes down a hallway.

 

 Zombies

You don’t have to look very hard to find lots of zombies participating in the rampage. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Reptilius

I’m presuming that’s the creature below, seen in a screengrab from the DVD’s behind-the-scenes feature. Part of this scene shows up on one of the monitors, but all you see is its foot.

 

Clowns

Clowns are scary. And this one is  impervious to bullets.

 

Witches

During the elevator attack, one of these flies overhead and rips out a soldier’s soul. Photo from the Visual Companion.

 

Sexy Witches

As far as I know, these never appeared on-screen. Unless you find the above witch sexy.

 

Demons

Any number of miscellaneous horrors might fit under this heading. See the forthcoming Part Three.

 

Hell Lord

aka Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain. He’s a piss-take on Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, complete with puzzle ball.

 

Angry Molesting Tree

Another specific film reference, this one a callback to the tree-rape scene from The Evil Dead. It pulls one of the soldiers into an elevator. The torrent of blood that ensues is also reminiscent of the Evil Dead films.

 

Giant Snake

Note that he’s a combination cobra/rattlesnake!

 

Deadites

Also an Evil Dead reference. I haven’t positively identified any, but deadites are close enough in appearance to zombies that it’s hard to be sure.

 

Kevin

Ah, the legendary Kevin. Director Drew Goddard swears that he’s in the film. However, since he’s supposed to be a blandly-normal person (who can exsanguinate a victim in a second) he might be hiding among the office workers.

 

Mummy

I’m not sure that he appears on-screen, but here’s a shot from the behind-the-scenes featurette.

 

The Bride

Not sure about this one. The Cabin wiki thinks it’s the gauze-covered, skinless creature below. That doesn’t explain the sledgehammer it’s wielding. You can see it hammering on the sides of its cell. Later it’s visible on one of the monitors.

“The Bride” could also be a Kill Bill reference, suggesting that something in the cabin’s basement might summon Uma Thurman.

 

That’s the left column of the whiteboard. Come back next Monday for Part Two, when I tackle the right column!

Dave Movies monsters, The Cabin in the Woods