The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Monster Movies Ever Made

The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Monster Movies Ever Made

The monster movie genre is incredibly popular, but can be awful in the wrong hands. For every Frankenstein or Jaws, there’s a lazy Hollywood cash cow.

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There’s something enjoyably primal about watching a monster movie. Whether a monstrous creation pieced together from pilfered body parts is begging a pitchfork-wielding mob for mercy or a 164-foot tall lizard is kicking its way through the streets of a major city, monster movies are an absolute ton of fun.

The genre has plenty of terrific entries, but they’re not all so great. Unsurprisingly, a lot of filmmakers have used a genre whose only expectation is widespread destruction to take a backseat and lazily phone in their job as director. Here are the five best and five worst monster movies ever made.

10 Best: Frankenstein (1931)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is widely considered to be the first science fiction story ever written, and it remains one of the greatest. James Whale translated that story to the screen beautifully in 1931. Like Shelley’s novel, Whale’s film begs the question of who’s the bigger monster: the monster, or the monster who made the monster?

Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster is surprisingly emotionally resonant, while Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein (whose name change from Victor was studio-mandated) is devilishly monstrous.

9 Worst: Troll 2 (1990)

Widely regarded to be one of the worst movies ever made, Troll 2 was produced as a comedy called Goblins (its monsters are goblins; it doesn’t feature any trolls) before being forcibly retooled into a Troll sequel after Troll was unexpectedly successful and marketed as a horror film.

Unsurprisingly, the result of this cinematic Frankensteining is a complete mess of a movie. If its terribleness wasn’t fascinating, it would be unwatchable.

8 Best: Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon concerns a half-fish half-human creature residing in the Amazonian jungle. A team of scientists try to capture it, and the creature targets a beautiful woman played by Julie Adams.

It’s one of those movies that has been copied so many times in the years since its release that it now appears to be riddled with clichés, but those clichés originated with Creature from the Black Lagoon.

7 Worst: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

Guillermo del Toro’s original Pacific Rim movie was far from perfect, but there was a majestic grace in the filmmaker’s meticulously staged robots-versus-monsters action. It was a large-scale, city-smashing ballet that was a popcorn-munching joy to watch on the big screen.

Unfortunately, Steven S. DeKnight, who took the reins for the 2018 sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, is not as visionary as del Toro, and his movie is dull, mindless, and repetitive.

6 Best: Jaws (1975)

In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws revolutionized Hollywood cinema. It’s the reason why every summer since (except for the current one, because movie theaters have all been closed) has been filled with high-concept blockbusters. It tells the simple story of a 25-foot great white shark terrorizing an island town during the peak tourism months.

With the shark barely making an on-screen appearance, but the terror still ever-present, Jaws is a Hitchcockian thrill-ride. Jaws’ true strength is that it’s not about a shark; it’s about the three very different guys who are forced to work together to hunt the shark.

5 Worst: From Hell It Came (1957)

Initially, in this tale of a wrongfully convicted prince returning from the dead as an ancient tree monster seeking revenge, there’s some campy fun to be had. But that wears off very quickly in Dan Milner’s mindless schlock-fest.

Former wrestler Chester Hayes played the monster, with the costume constantly falling apart, cutting into his skin and revealing his pants underneath. It’s a very low-rent production.

4 Best: King Kong (1933)

Some of the best monster movies are the ones that make you feel sorry for the monster. In King Kong, the “monster” is a giant ape with a soft spot for would-be movie star Ann Darrow; the real monsters are the humans who capture the ape and turn him into a tourist attraction.

Willis O’Brien’s groundbreaking stop-motion animation changed big-screen spectacle forever, while director-producers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack kept the story focused on the ape until the tear-jerking finale atop the Empire State Building.

3 Worst: Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (2019)

Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla remake was criticized for hardly ever showing the monster, which was clearly intended as a Jaws-ian suspense-building move ⁠— but a 164-foot monster tearing through a city and a 25-foot shark hidden beneath the ocean’s surface are two very different things.

But at the very least, Edwards’ movie brought a modern blockbuster sensibility to classic B-movie fun. Its 2019 sequel, King of the Monsters, doesn’t even bother with basic plot and character development.

2 Best: Godzilla (1954)

The endless slew of Hollywood remakes have fundamentally misunderstood the point of Godzilla. Director Ishirō Honda conceived the Japanese original as a symbolic take on the devastating effects of the H-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one scene set in Japanese Parliament, the monster is described as a “child of the H-bomb.”

Most of the movies that have been inspired by or outright based on Godzilla have ignored the subtextual meaning and just focused on the giant monster smashing skyscrapers.

1 Worst: Godzilla (1998)

Speaking of Godzilla remakes that have missed the point of the original, Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version of Godzilla doesn’t even succeed at reveling in the fun of a giant monster smashing skyscrapers.

The visual effects have dated poorly, and the film doesn’t have an exciting enough plot or interesting enough characters to make up for it. Plus, the remake’s changes to the Godzilla mythology are bizarre.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-worst-monster-movies-ever-all-time-frankenstein-pacific-rim-jaws/

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