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Special: Monster Legacy’s Monstrous Hundred – Part 4
In the last part of the Monstrous Hundred, here’s a carousel of films from the 2000s onwards!
Pitch Black (2000)
This film packs a clever, outside-the-box narrative with an equally interesting subversive man as its main character, pitting him and an unlikely crew against swarms of truly outlandish alien creatures that are neither hammerhead sharks, nor bats, nor birds of prey.
Special: Monster Legacy’s Monstrous Hundred – Part 2
We continue with the second part of the Monstrous Hundred. Now we dive in he 70s and the glorious 80s, which saw a renaissance of practical effects.
King Kong (1976)
Probably the weakest of all Kong films (not including the abhorrent Skull Island), and one with a remarkably extended and multi-limbed controversy behind it. Regardless, this 70s colossal doesn’t fail in portraying the lonely and tragic nature of its main character, whose death is particularly well-orchestrated and effective.
Special: Monster Legacy’s Monstrous Hundred — Part 1
Back in 2002, I was a small kid watching Free Willie on a local channel. During an ad intermission, a trailer was broadcast for what was coming afterwards. It didn’t have a hard time selling it to my young eyes — “monsters from beneath the Earth! Now they’re back, badder and hungrier!” were all the words I needed to hear. The film was Tremors 2: Aftershocks and it may very well be the reason Monster Legacy has been and continues to be a thing since 2011.
Lupin
There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws.
-J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Larry Talbot
Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night;
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.
Four-Legged Hound from Hell
JACK
You really scared me, you shithead.DAVID
Are you going to help me up?Jack takes David’s extended hand to help him up when
THE WOLF MONSTER SPRINGS!EXT. MOORS – NIGHT
The lunging beast brings Jack down in one fell swoop.
David falls back on his ass. Jack is screaming and
struggling as he is torn to shreds. David scrambles to
his feet and runs in complete panic. Jack’s screams
and the wolf’s roars combine.-John Landis, An American Werewolf in London script draft
Howling Beasts
In adapting Gary Brandner’s 1977 seminal horror novel The Howling director Joe Dante hired John Sayles — a writer he had already collaborated with on Piranha — to completely rebuild the story, after the first drafts — written by Jack Conrad and Terence H. Winkless — proved unsatisfying. “One guy tried to adapt the book,” Dante told Combustible Celluloid, “and it really wasn’t working. That’s when I hired John Sayles. He wrote this picture after Piranha. He wrote Alligator and The Howling together at the same time in the same hotel room. You’d knock on the door, and he’d ask who it was, and you’d tell him either The Howling or Alligator and he’d slip the appropriate pages under the door.”
Monster Legacy 