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"I Think, Therefore I Ant."
April 18
10 Movie Monsters From Way Back – Where Are They Now? (Part 8 of 10
-- Gwangi)
The streets of
Monster Island are littered with the broken dreams of wanna be movie monsters
who gave it a shot but crashed and burned as only a movie monster can…
Thanks to fleeting
B-Movie fame, these creatures were mostly consigned to one glorious moment in
the radioactive sun and then cast away to an ignoble and usually unintentionally
comical end.
Oh sure, it looked
glamorous enough; what with the easy money and all the humans they could eat,
but showbiz is brutal and even if you’re 500 feet tall, Hollywood can crush
dreams like, well, a movie monster can crush an army tank… So, what became of
these things? Where are they today? Much like the movies they starred in, the
answers ain’t always pretty…
MONSTER: Gwangi
MOVIE: The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A hybrid of T-Rex
and allosaurus who reigns over a desert valley in 1915 Mexico. Gwangi is
captured by a wild west show and is taken to Mexico city to be put in a
sideshow. There he escapes, fights and kills an elephant, and scares the pinto
beans out of the locals. Gwangi meets a fiery end inside a burning cathedral.
(The only scene in film history where a dinosaur goes to church.)
WHERE IS HE TODAY?
“Being a hybrid
between a T-Rex and an allosaurus was probably the original reason for my
identity crisis,” Gwangi says, “making that movie really brought out my latent
homosexuality. I mean, my God, so many cowboys – and all that rope!”
An
advocate for Homosexual Movie Monsters, Gwangi defends his outing of other
monsters. “Look, a lot of movie monsters are queer and unless they admit it to
themselves and the public they’re not doing themselves any favors. “
Gwangi
admits gay Movie Monsters still have a long way to go but they are making
strides. “I was thrilled when I learned that King Kong had signed to star in the
sequel to La Cage
aux Folles. He was considering the sequel to
Brokeback Mountain! But,
hello, that’s so done. Still, Kong’s the best. Did you see how well he faked
it with Naomi Watts in the Jackson flick? I adore him. It’s like we gay
monsters say: Once you’ve gone Kong, everything else just feels
wrong.”
April 17
MONSTER: Tarantula
MOVIE: Tarantula (1956)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A mad scientist
creates a giant spider that roams the deserts of New Mexico and scares the beans
and coffee out of the local ranch hands. It gets torched by napalm lobbed by
pre-stardom fighter pilot Clint Eastwood.
WHERE IS HE TODAY?
“Don’t talk to me
about Eastwood,” Tarantula says, “Oh, and I also won’t talk about how I was
barely in a movie that starred me. Can you believe that? And I ain’t going to
comment on the theory that big spiders have plenty of image but not much actual
personality, except to say this – bullshit! Jesus, I studied The Method, worked
off Broadway for years and one lousy movie destroys my entire acting career.
Look at me now, my cultural significance is that I’m mentioned in the opening
song of that god awful Rocky Horror Picture Show.
April 16
MONSTER: Konga
MOVIE: Konga (1961)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A deranged
scientist uses an evolutionary serum from a rare plant, transforming a little
monkey into a King Kong knockoff, which then proceeds to terrorize London,
scaring the bangers and mash right out of the locals.
WHERE IS HE TODAY? After Konga was killed in a hail of bullets beside
Big Ben, he reverted back to chimp form. These days he’s a mild mannered
primate living in a small flat in suburban London. The bowler hat wearing chimp
is polite, but guarded about his past. When bribed with a bunch of bananas, he
tells the usual movie monster litany of woe: Of never getting paid, draconian
working conditions, and producers that made him cry. He just wants to be left
alone, to carry on using his opposable thumbs, and to keep trying to blend in as
regular Englishman. No easy feat considering that in order to succeed at this
he must shave himself 15 times a day.
April 15
MONSTER: The Deadly Mantis
MOVIE: The Deadly Mantis (1957)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A prehistoric
preying mantis of massive dimensions, it was thawed out of the arctic ice,
scares the blubber out of some perturbed Eskimos, and wends its way skyward
toward New York. There the army gasses the big bastard back to extinction. Or
did they?
WHERE IS IT TODAY?
Yup, they did: Deadly Mantis. Born 1957. Died 1957.
April 14
MONSTER: The Rhedosaurus
MOVIE: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)QUICK
BACKGROUND: The
Rhedosaurus is a prehistoric monster that makes its way from the arctic
wastelands to Coney Island, where it scares the Coney Island Fries right out of
the locals. A wrangle in a Coney Island rollercoaster structure occupies its
attention sufficiently to allow it to get shot in the throat with a radioactive
needle. WHERE IS HE
TODAY? Wizened,
raspy voiced, cantankerous, smelly, rambling, possibly senile and living with
his put upon kids, Rhedosaurus is a pale imitation of his former glory.
“I was
the monster that started the giant beast craze,” The Rhedosaurus boasts while
pounding its now pigeon shaped chest. “I was the first film to take advantage of
the country’s paranoia regarding bomb culture. Me! But where am I in the scheme
of things? A footnote at best! Conflab it, it ain’t right. And movies today. Dag-nab-it
– trash! All those probing tongues, naked bodies, and fornicating. It’s Satan’s
work… We’re breeding a nation of whores, harlots, harridans, homos, infidels and
not enough bomb paranoia culture. They’re all going to hell in a hand basket.
And another thing…”
April 13
MONSTER: Reptilicus
MOVIE: Reptilicus (1961)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A gigantic flying
serpent who starred in a (cheap) Danish film (no lie, a cheap Danish film),
featuring Copenhagen as the target city of destruction, with Reptilicus scaring
the smorrebrod out of the locals.
WHERE IS IT
TODAY? After
the movie’s release he wrote a soft-core paperback novelization of the story
that sold well. A sample of his writing abilities: "She stood still
momentarily, letting him look at her perfect breasts...in a matter of seconds
his clothes were strewn all over the room..." From there he moved into
writing, directing, and starring in his self produced porn films. “I never
looked back,” he says, “unless, of course, I had to in one of my movies. Ha,
ha!”
April 12
MONSTER: The Crawling Eye
MOVIE: The Crawling Eye (1958; aka The Trollenberg Terror)
QUICK BACKGROUND:
A big slimy eye
the size of a Buick, it hails from outer space, slithers through the Swiss
mountains in a radioactive cloud, scares the cheese right out of the locals, and
looks fairly disgusting as these things go.
WHERE IS IT TODAY?
Blind thanks to
diabetes. The Crawling Eye lives in a run down, inner city apartment in Oklahoma
and spends its days fighting off its seeing-eye dog. “It’s always trying to
walk me into oncoming traffic or lunging after me and trying to tear out my
retina,” the Crawling Eye laments, “at least I think it’s my retina, I dunno, I
can’t see a thing. My life sucks.”
April 11
MONSTER: The Ymir
MOVIE: Twenty Million Miles To Earth (1957)
QUICK
BACKGROUND: A
creature from Venus, brought back by astronauts. He begins life as less than a
foot in height. The earth’s atmosphere causes him to grow to “outlandish
proportions.” Visits Rome, where he fights and kills an elephant and scares the
pasta out of the locals. Peaceful unless roused. Ymir gets shot off the
Coliseum. Clearly, it had been roused.
WHERE IS HE TODAY?
Living in a
Retirement Home for Movie Monsters. Suffers from osteoporosis. Surprisingly
upbeat. His only sore spot about his show biz experience is his brief sex fling
with co-star William Hopper’s mother, the rampageous gossip columnist, Hedda
Hopper, who terrorized Hollywood with her muckraking column and demands that
movie stars behave in a "decent, respectable" fashion (read: no sex for anyone,
unless it's matrimonial) or she'd ruin their careers.
The
Ymir’s blog, “Hedda Hopper – Total Bitch” (www.ihatehedda.com) is filled with
his droll, often merciless and always rambling screeds, memories and insights on
the woman.
“She was a way more
aggressive monster than I ever was,” The Ymir says while sipping on a glass of
Pink Champagne, “and she was a hypocrite. She injected morphine and slept with
every Movie Monster in Hollywood and Japan. We were pretty hot and heavy
at one point and then she tossed me aside and wrote an article claiming I was a
flaming homo. Bitch. Suffice to say there was no Twenty Million Miles to
Earth sequel.”
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Shopping Days Left Until Xmas!
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