My Top 5 Creatures on the Loose Movies

It’s a tale as old as the movies itself. Man does something stupid, or brilliant, or brilliantly stupid, and finds/discovers/invents/stumbles across a monster, and then spends the rest of the movie trying not to get eaten.

I’m not talking about Japanese Kaiju movies, although they are certainly a part of the larger discussion (and, FYI, will get their own Top 5 List at a later date). I’m referring to the things that are larger than humans, but smaller than Godzilla. Or, optionally, man-sized, but far from man-like. The monster in question doesn’t have to be a giant animal; indeed, the best of this type of movie are monster that never were, or thought to have been myths, or just plain aliens.

There’s also a hunter versus hunted component to this kind of movie. Whatever is chasing us for food triggers these primal fears within us that we typically suppress. As a country that is mythically saturated by a fear of the unknown, the Other, the Outer Darkness, these movies are at their biggest and best the every thing our ancestors feared when they huddled in their cabins for warmth. Our cabins are way better now, with wi-fi and air conditioning, but the fear never really goes away. 

My Top 5 Favorite Devils and Demons Movies

Possession and a loss of personal control, as I said earlier elsewhere in this series, are one of the things that most scares me in horror movies.  It’s no surprise, then, that I approach the subject of demon possession movies with some trepidation. I think with these movies, the phrase “Your Mileage May Vary” is terribly appropriate, because if you aren’t scared by these movies, or the ideas they contain, your list will be very different from mine.

Demons and devils in movies seem to be of two different varieties: The havoc-wreaking kind, and the possessing and controlling kind. There is frequent cross-over, too, as some uglies will possess a victim and then use that person to wreak havoc.

Curiously, there are very few “deal with the devil” movies, although that motif is still widespread in literature and short stories. I wonder why that is. I love those stories, myself. But these movies below kept me up at night, thinking and wondering, and concocting elaborate contingency plans for what to do if I ever come across a moldering old tome in a deserted cabin.

My Top 5 Favorite Ghost Story Movies

Ghosts are everyone’s first exposure to the horror genre, unless you came from weird parents that didn’t let you watch Scooby Doo as a child. Despite the proliferation of Vampires and Zombies, ghosts and ghost stories remain the most prolific (and oldest?) form of horror story. Even children’s picture books include stories about ghosts. They are, figuratively (or literally) everywhere, depending on your beliefs.

Maybe because ghost stories are so commonplace, it’s easy to dismiss them as “not that scary” or effective as a vehicle for blood-curdling horror. I, of course, disagree with that. In fact, I think ghosts are the most versatile means of scaring the bejeezus out of someone.

A good ghost story, in print or film, should linger long after you’ve finished it, like too much garlic in a pasta salad. Done well, a good ghost story will have you questioning your perceptions of what constitutes reality. And it doesn’t hurt if it makes you not want to sleep for three days, either.

My Top 5 Favorite Monster From the Void of Space Movies

Few things inspire more terror in people than the idea that not only are we not alone, but that the bug-eyed monsters from the outer galaxies are buzzing cornfields in Kansas and picking up random chuckleheads and performing medical experiments on them. Who knows where that comes from, but ever since the Roswell incident, this has been a Going Concern for movies and television, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds notwithstanding.

These movies usually fall into two categories: The misunderstood monster, such as Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, or the confused being that doesn’t mean to hurt us (the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth comes to mind). I like those movies, but that’s not what this list is about. This list is all about the scary stuff out there—the things that want to eat our faces, literally. There’s something deliciously thrilling when you combine the monstrous with the idea that it came from Out There, where we can’t go and can’t imagine what else might be waiting for us.

My Top 5 Favorite Zombie Movies

I don’t think it’s unfair to call zombies the new vampires. I mean, can you honestly fathom the cultural alchemy that would make a show like The Walking Dead one of the most popular, most watched shows in the history of television? I find the phenomenon around the “pop culturalization” of zombies more interesting than zombies themselves. Before George Romero got ahold of them in 1968, the zombie was a second stringer—a minion of the villainous zombie master or witch doctor or other magic-savvy boogem. They were little more than a plot device until Night of the Living Dead, but we’ll get to that in a second.

I like that the zombies are a cultural stand-in for us—the empty, rabid consumer, and this characterization can be shaded by religion or science, sped up or slowed down, to further delineate what the filmmaker is trying to comment on. Of course, some would argue that the zombie movie is more of a post-apocalyptic exploration of humanity, rather than a simple horror film. I say there’s room for both, and the best zombie movies split the difference handily.

Since this is a movie list, you won’t see The Walking Dead below. The show owes so much to the Romero zombie movies, and everyone knows it anyway, so I’ll just assume if you’re reading this list, you know it already, too. If you show these five zombie movies to a person who’s never seen a zombie movie before, these five movies would encompass the full range of all that is cool about the modern zombie movie.

My Top 5 Favorite Vampire Movies

Vampires. What used to conjure up images of a pale, aristocratic gentleman in formal dinner wear has now been supplanted by pale, haunted-looking teenage boys who twinkle. No matter. The vampire tradition is as old as the cinema itself, and much older, still. Every country has their own version of the vampire in their folklore, and believe me, no two are alike.

So, how come all of the vampires in the movies are so...Dracula-esque? Have you ever looked at the sheer number of vampire movies that have Dracula in the title? It’s a lot. As literary figures go, Dracula is one of the most successful, most popular of all time.

Maybe that’s why I gravitate to different vampire stories. I like ‘em monstrous and feral. Oh, they can look human at first, and they can even be attractive and seductive, provided they ugly-up when the blood spills. I watched a lot of Dracula films as a kid, and I kinda burned myself out on them. Now when I want vampires, I go in a different direction. These films below pretty much sum up what I’m looking for in a vampire flick.

My Top 5 Favorite Werewolf Movies

Werewolves are my favorite monsters. I’ve always been fascinated with transformation—moving from a weaker to a more powerful form, or unleashing the monster inside of man. This is the crux of the werewolf story, and mostly where the horror is rooted in. Similar to Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the afflicted leading man (or woman) is usually a model citizen, normal and average in every way, except for when the moon shines full and bright in the sky... 

The flip side to my fascination with werewolves is my fear of a loss of control, which is what most people pick up on in werewolf movies. There are exceptions, of course, and the movies I like the best in this genre tend to be the ones that play with those expectations, as we will see. I should mention before you dig into the list that there are minor spoilers, so don't read too carefully if you haven't seen the movie in question.