All credit to my writing partner, Ben Acker, who initially came up with the title I’ve used for this week’s newsletter. He wrote an episode of our “Beyond Belief” segment of The Thrilling Adventure Hour and gave it this very funny title. You can listen to the episode here.
I’ve written before how my favorite sub-genre of horror movies is “creature features.” This definitely comes from when I was a kid, watching the “Creature Double Feature” on WLVI with my dad. Boston’s Channel 56 would run back to back Godzilla or Hammer or Universal horror movies. It was my introduction to all of the classic characters and tropes.
I distinctly remember one afternoon when they ran The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D. We had to run around looking for the red-and-blue 3D glasses from local gas stations. My glasses were too big, and my dad held them on for me while we both sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, immersed in the movie.
I’ve been hooked on creature features since then. Dad took me to see Gremlins when I was eight years old, and I was absolutely terrified. But it was also the time of my life. Gremlins is still a top 10 movie for me, and it’s that giddy combination of fear and excitement that I’m chasing with every horror movie I see.
Creature features are tough to get right. A lot of this has to do with budgetary constraints, right? It’s more economical to do ghosts, zombies, serial killers. But nothing hits like a well-designed monster.
The other hurdle that frequently inhibits monster movies is that the monster is too often just a monster. The writers and/or director aren’t working the metaphor. And it doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Even if the creature just represents an emotional hurdle for the protagonist (as in the underrated Crawl, which I’ve mentioned before), its defeat is all the more satisfying when that work is done.
See Monsters
Okay, so, some recommendations for these last few days of spooky season viewing. For the record (there’s a record, right) my all-time Creature Feature Hall of Fame includes Gremlins (the tone! the anarchy!), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (hands down best monster design ever), Tremors (genuinely funny and [as a kid] scary!), King Kong (if you’ve not seen the 1933 original, it is more fun and accessible than you might imagine!) and, of course, Alien.1
I’ve revisited occasional Godzilla movies in the years since my childhood, but none instilled the same sense of childlike awe that I had when I saw them as a six-year-old. Until I saw Godzilla Minus One (2023) last year and Shin Godzilla (2016) in its 4k re-release earlier this year.
Godzilla Minus One is as close to a Godzilla-via-Spielberg movie we’ll likely get (okay, maybe Jurassic Park is?). Godzilla is a rampaging monster, as shown in his entrance to the film, which I won’t spoil for you but is a moment I still think about. Minus One functions much like an adventure film (like Jaws), in which the haunted hero has to enact a plan to rid Tokyo of this destructive force. It’s compelling, the characters are complicated, and it looks amazing.
Shin Godzilla has the true feeling destruction of cities and real stakes. The terror I projected onto the series as a kid is actually in this movie. I went in knowing nothing, and I highly recommend the same, because everything is a delightful, scary, weird surprise in this movie. You’re gonna love (or hate) the creature design.
And Shin Godzilla is also my OTHER favorite kind of movie: process porn. As much as the movie is about an uncontrollable monster, it’s also about the bureaucracy of dealing with a never-before-seen natural disaster. Like All the President’s Men or Moneyball, Shin Godzilla makes paperwork riveting.
Do people know about Alligator (1980)? It had been on my Letterboxd watchlist for some time, but I never was in the mood to pull the trigger. I’m so glad I finally did! Look, this movie is contrary to everything I said above about what makes a good monster movie. The titular creature is just what it is: an alligator mucking about in the Chicago sewers, frequently eating people. The alligator is being pursued by a grizzled cop played by the platonic ideal of grizzled Chicago cops, Robert Forster. It was one of dozens of post-Jaws rampaging animal knockoff movies made for cheap.
But Alligator is so, so much better than it has any right to be. The script is by future indie auteur John Sayles who, like Forster, knows exactly what this thing is and how to have fun with it. The dialogue is quick and clever—a lot of hay is made of the fact that Forster had new hair transplants. It’s not camp. It treats the threat of a giant wild alligator seriously so the stakes land (even if, at times, it seems like Forster wants to arrest the reptile?). And the practical effects are incredibly strong.
I watched Alligator on Peacock in a kind of shoddy transfer with commercials, which is a bummer. I only found out after watching that there’s a new 4K from Scream Factory with lots of terrific extras, and I’m adding that to my wish list.
One of those bluray extras is an extended interview with a kid who was a production assistant on the film, sharing his memories of his first Hollywood job.
That kid?
Bryan Cranston.
I cannot wait to watch this bonus feature.
A fun one from just this past year that you may have missed is Your Monster (2024) from writer/director Caroline Lindy. It’s a kind of “Beauty and the Beast” story but Lindy elevates her concept by being exceptionally adept at writing both the horror and romantic comedy genres she plays in. She understands and has fun with the tropes of both genres, but she also never loses sight of the reality of her story—this is about relationship between a human woman and a monster.
Lindy also had the good sense to cast Melissa Berrera and Tommy Dewey in the leads, and she directs both to winning, empathetic, and frequently very funny and/or scary performances. Can’t wait to see what Lindy does next. Don’t sleep on this one.
btw, my other scariest movie of the year:
What are you watching this Halloween? Send me your recs!
Jaws, my #1 movie of all time, is obviously creature-feature-adjacent, but it’s more of an adventure movie than a horror movie. That said, we caught the 50th anniversary re-release in theaters this summer, and it does hit pretty hard on the big screen.
I loved Creature Double Feature! I definitely saw a lot of Godzilla movies for the first time on Saturday afternoons on WLVI ( part of living...) Man, between that and The Movie Loft in channel 38, I don't know which one I miss more.
Ah! I saw that same broadcast of Creature from the Black Lagoon on Channel 56! My family all gathered around with 3D glasses. Where we got them, I have no idea. Thanks for bringing back that awesome memory!