Monster of the Day, #1

Ericb

Cutsie is scarier.

Talisman

…and his name is Gojira.

Rock Baker

“Monster of the Day” is a good concept. Will this be a regular (by Jabootu standards anyway) feature? Day #45 should be interesting, I figure it’ll be the Astounding She Monster. But the Creature from the Black Lagoon HAS to be in the top 3! (that assumes you’re hitting the top of the heap first, since you started with Karloff’s monster as seen in Bride of Frankenstein, and working your way down from there. Is that the idea, or will this be totally random?)

Ken Begg

Yes. I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while, and should have one up every day, Monday to Friday. I figure it can give people the chance to give anecdotes and thoughts on that day’s subject.

Nice catch on this being from The Bride of Frankenstein! (You can tell from the missing hair and burn scars evident from the Monster surviving the windmill conflagration.) I’ll probably go with popular / most iconic monsters first for a while, but even there are there a lot. It might actually get more fun in a few weeks when we start getting to the less obvious ones.

BeckoningChasm

Okay, I have to ask a stupid question: Would the Creature from the Black Lagoon be considered a “monster”? Normally I think of a monster as an aberrant creature, one that has been altered from a typical template. Frankenstein’s Monster is a good example, as is Godzilla–both of them are sui generis so to speak, and not part of a species. But the Creature just seemed to be a typical member of an undiscovered species and not a mutation. Perhaps I’m overthinking this…

Ken Begg

I’m going basic: If the ten year-old me would call it a monster, it’s a monster.

Sandy Petersen

A creature from an unknown species can be a Monster. Heck, a really big shark can act like a monster. Or a scarred human.

I showed my daughter-in-law Frankenstein & Bride of Frankenstein for the first time this year and she LOVED them. It had all the impact on her it must have had on the less-jaded movie-govers of the 1930s. Or maybe being jaded isn’t as bad as we fear, because I still love that movie too.

Karloff is amazing. It’s quite clear that his hands (for instance) are just bolted on, from the way he moves and walks. I think Debbie (the DiL) expected the monster to be an emotionless goon, and so the creature’s pitiable nature was a big shock.

Rock Baker

Karloff was the first and best Frankenstein monster, for the very reasons Sandy touches on, but I’d be interested to see how Glenn Strange measures up in a popularity test. (Like how the first Godzilla may be the more “important” film, but the flicks from the 60s and 70s are much more fun to watch and thus have more fans)

Ken Begg

Good job starting with those, then, rather than the Glenn Strange (or Chaney or Lugosi) ones, where the Monster was, basically, an emotionless goon. Son of Frankenstein was the third and last of the Karloffs, and although the Monster was starting his downward spiral, Karloff still brings a lot to his signature role. I was lucky enough to see Frankenstein in a theater earlier this year, although Bride of Frankenstein (and Ghost and Mr. Chicken) played, ironically enough, while I was down visiting Sandy.

I have a friend who as an adult I got hooked on the Marx Brothers. It’s a satisfying feeling to introduce someone to the classics.

The Rev. D.D.

This was the second classic Universal horror movie I saw (after Creature). My mom bought it for herself because she loved it, and naturally I watched with her. I rewatched it several times. A year later she introduced me to The Mummy.

Thanks to her, I’ve been a Karloff fan from a very early age.

P Stroud

“Okay, I have to ask a stupid question: Would the Creature from the Black Lagoon be considered a ‘monster’? Normally I think of a monster as an aberrant creature, one that has been altered from a typical template.”

Any creature that carries off our women is a monster!

Ken Begg

Another insightful criteria!

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