The Creature/Cryptid Movie Thread (Tremors, Piranha, Shark Attack, Leviathan etc.)

I love them!!!

That Anacondas 3 was a nightmare, but it was dumb fun.

Don't forget Frankenfish. I really dug that one, it was actually pretty good.

I enjoy them when they're done well (ie - The Prophecy, Tremors, Them) or when they're essentially comedies (Eight Legged Freaks, Arachnophobia). However, there's a whole lot of horrible ones out there too - avoid Bloodthirst 2: Revenge of the Chubacabra at all costs. The cover to the DVD looks great, but a horrible CGI creature and a plot that doesn't even center around it ruin what might have been at least an amusing B film (in premise at least).

Night of the Demon (1980) A bigfoot movie like no other. No one talks about this film, and apparently very few have seen it, but it is GLORIOUS. Night of the Demon is the kind of B-movie that I love. It's totally about selling gory kills and sleazy sex, but it doesn't really appear to be winking at the audience, and it's funny in all the wrong ways. Basic plot is that a group of college students led by Professor Nugent (Bob Collins, an actor with the kind of look that would pass in the 70's but doom him as the lead in anything but a comedy today) visit a very backwoods community in the hopes of solving the mystery of several murders and disappearances attributed to Bigfoot. What they find is a bumpkin cult of Bigfoot worshippers, and a woman named 'Crazy Wanda', a backwoods hermit, the daughter of an abusive, religious zealot of a father and the harborer of a dark secret (she really does know what Bigfoot's dick smells like, I'm not joking).

Then there's Bigfoot himself, a black stuntman named Shane Dixon, whose revolutionary makeup apparently consists of strategically placed pieces of shag carpet and some clumpy facial prosthetics. Shoddy Bigfoot design aside, this fucker gets some awesome kills in the film. He disembowels one character then flails about their intestines like a mace against other victims, he grabs two girl scouts by the wrists and forces them to cut each other up with their little hunting knives, and my personal favorite, he pops out of shrubbery to snatch a urinating biker by the cock and proceeds to twist it off (they show the prosthetic cock, the blood gush and everything). God, I love this film.


The Being (1983) - A little boy gets turned into a cyclopean beast via exposure to toxic waste and tear-asses through Idaho. Frankly it's pretty shitty, but it's still dumb, gory, and thoroughly unambitious fun. I first saw it as a Saturday Matinee movie in the late 80's, but not until much later did I recognize Martin Landau in a "pivotal" role, slumming for the rent.


Gargoyles. No description necessary, it just needs to be mentioned.

I always liked Tremors 2 much more than Tremors and I will defend this till the day that I die.

There's a nice tribute to some of my faves here.

FYI: Back when I was working for a video store, I avoided seeing a flick called METAMORPHOSIS (:The Alien Factor) due to its crappy coverbox. Boy, was I wrong. I discovered it was intended to be a sequel to THE DEADLY SPAWN and found it to be good cheesy-fun and goopy schlock with latex and stop-motion galore! Not to be watched for the acting or dialogue. Check it out!

The terrible vhs cover from years back...

The goodness that the film actually contains...



This is one of my favorite subgenres hands down. I'll be back.

EDIT: To add...
Chud List: Ten Great Bad Giant Monster Movies
CHUD'S FORGOTTEN MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, DAY TWENTY-FIVE (I think the thread was lost in the server move... FOUND IT).
Favorite Monster Movies - the good, the bad, the cheesy
Practical make-up and effects at their finest

I'm still waiting for somebody to make a Mokele Membe movie.

Ummm.....

Ok, lemme qualify:

I'm waiting for them to make a GOOD Mokele Membe movie.

I'll take none of this Baby badmouthing in stride!

Being an 80's child, I can't get enough of Creature Features. None of this new shit though.

Giant Spider Invasion is worth a mention on this list and, if you have never seen the MST3K version, you need to track it down now.

I can't believe nobody's mentioned the Carnosaur Trilogy yet.
Not to mention Rutger Hauer's Split Second with Kim Cattrall.

Someone actually said "good movie. awful trailer?" Jeez, try the other way around. If that.

How's that thorazine treating you?

Tremors is the greatest movie ever made. End of story.

For some reason I have always confused mokele mbembe with this guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Death_Worm

Now that one needs a film!

I love the original Carnosaur. It's pretty bad but has always been extremely watchable to me. Sequels are alright. The second one is a big old rip-off of two fairly well-known Jim Cameron sequels. Three seemed pretty good when I first saw it but repeated viewings said otherwise.

The worst though is Raptor. The movie Corman made from recycling all the dino footage from Carnosaur and a few of his old James Horner scores. Can't hate the guy for trying.

I think Corman did the same thing for BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. But yes, RAPTOR is real bad. Nearly 40% of the film is recycled footage from the first 2 films.

With the added bonus of Eric Roberts as the Sheriff.


Deep Star 6, I always have a soft spot for that flick. Sure it ain't no Leviathan, but Miguel Ferrera's death is always one that I'll never forget.

Yeah, I'm never going underwater, ever.

Deep Rising should get some mention in this discussion...

But the thing is...its not scary. I love DEEP RISING, but that VAN HELSING guy made it, remember?

SQUIRM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAbTN1bpCoQ

And

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xulXFB3-A3c

That is all.

I just always thought that Tremors 2 was alot more fun. I have not seen them in a while though, maybe I should dip back in.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the entire franchise set for $10-15 at WALMART, etc. I own them all individually, otherwise that would be a nice price.

So much for "defending that to the day I die" (I kid)

SQUIRM is all kinds of nutty fun. (Supposedly Don Johnson & Kim Basinger were passed over in the casting-would've been fun to see Crockett battle deadly worms)
Does OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN count? Used to love pimping that one hard. Still holds up.

Love PIRANHA & ALLIGATOR. Sayles really knew how to do it right.

Also, EQUINOX was a lotta fun.

Can't remember if RAZORBACK sucked or not.

Tremors 2 is awesome. Yes, the eventual procreation cycle of the graboids doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the movie is just fun. It isn't like it's just a redo of the first movie, nor does it just ignore it either. They use the knowledge of the first movie to figure out a way to kill them for the second.

It's kind of like Alien and Aliens actually. More action, and the experts come in from the first one to help stop them the second time around.

There was actually a Tremors TV series. It had Michael Gross and members of the original Tremors cast in it. They even used the same sets.

Anyone here seen it.

And yes...Tremors is a great film. That "pole jumping" still brings a smile to my face after all these years. No matter how many times I've watched it.

Tremors 2 was better than most sequels..

Saw the TV show..kinda monster of the week deal. With one albino endagered graboid.

Did anyone ever notice that on the movie poster, the graboid had teeth..but in the movies..not so much.

Yep, I've seen it. I'm pretty sure quite a few others here would have also.
I found it a fun series but short lived and depended alot on Michael Gross's character Burt. There were a few episodes without him in it and you can definately see the show suffered for it.

RAZORBACK holds up surprisingly well. That pig is like a tank, smashing through shacks, etc. A bunch of the cinematography is actually more artistic than I'd expect from a Mulcahy flick.

EDIT: Rene (Mr.Eko) started a thread about a while back, here it is.

I was going to see Tremors 4 but then I saw Tremors 3 and learned that 4 was set in the 1400s or some shit. I would rather have eaten a bullet.

No one has been in here since 2008. bummer.

I just bought Alligator on DVD. So dumb and awesome. The walking the plank scene was so beautifully heartless.

The other night I watched Razortooth. well, I watched the beginning and then watched the end. Judging from those two parts, anything I missed in the middle was not worth hunting for.

Alligator is a brilliant monster movie... that walk the plank scene did a number on me when I saw it as a kid, almost as much as Jaws fucked and still fucks with my irrational fear of the sea!

Speaking of which, I am just about to watch Enzo Castellari's infamous Jaws rip-off THE LAST SHARK (AKA GREAT WHITE).

I have heard it is shit but enjoyable... this made me buy the DVD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iI6yMSV-cQ

It's got great moments of cheese, but also lots of padding in-between. It's worth a look.

I remember seeing it as a kid when it came out in the states. The only week it was out, before Universal won a lawsuit to have it pulled from theaters. Not sure if it made it to a second weekend, but I believe it was actually the number one film on that first weekend.

Holy shit! Henry Silva is so bugnuts amazing in ALLIGATOR! Truly a performance for the ages.

Oh, and Robin Riker is really, really cute.

You could say that the film was quit a bite...

Just picked up the Corman Classics DVD release of Piranha with new anamorphic WS print. When my Piranha II. director's cut arrives in the next couple days, it's double feature time.

Finally watched The Deadly Spawn.

Thoroughly enjoyable Z Grade horror. There is some definite love put into the creature effects.

Has James Gunn ever talked about this being an inspiration for 'Slither'?

Honorable mention for the killer plant segment from Dr Terror's House of Horrors. I love the shot of the plant putting out the fire.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite MST3K episodes, with the way they tore apart Wisconsin rednecks limb from limb; Tom, Servo, and Mike, I mean, but so did the spiders.

Come to think of it I haven't seen too many of the movies that would qualify for this thread (although I've marked out hard for Tremors for years) but just last week I saw the new release of the original Piranha, and I enjoyed seeing that movie for the first time. It's really cheesy but it's a lot of fun also, and the print looks great.

Funnily enough, earlier this year SyFy did show a Mongolian Death Worm movie. From everything I hear it's a typical movie you'd expect on that channel, so it's no good. It's a shame that the channel shows movies with many great and wacky creatures and yet most of the films are pretty worthless, with the most predicable of stories and characters, and special effects that happens to be HORRIBLE CGI that looks so fake you can't enjoy it.

I know it was mentioned in another thread on the board, but last week's release of the "killer tiger in a house" movie known as Burning Bright. The plot sounds batshit insane, created by someone under the effect of hallucinogens. A young lady and her younger autistic brother are trapped in a boarded-up house with a killer tiger that her stepfather bought from Meat Loaf in order to start up a safari park on the loose... like I said, batshit insane. Yet, the movie is actually pretty great for what it is. The tiger you see is legit and not an awful CGI creation. Plus, the acting's actually good here. Sure, you get some sleaze with seeing Briana Evigan spending a lot of time in tiny PJ shorts and a white tank top (and some shots of her cloth-covered boobs and butt) but it's not a trash movie. I swear, it's actually good.

Oh wait, one more thing... one movie I know I saw way back when was 1998's Atomic Dog, a film I really remember nothing about, except that I was disappointed it didn't have the George Clinton song. Seriously. Has anyone seen it and is it as awful as I'm sure it would be if I saw it today? It's a movie about a dog who gets contaminated with radiation from a nuclear plant, so I am sure it is pretty awful.

I love Deep Rising, Tremors, Lake Placid, Pitch Black (alien planet, native monsters serve as background for a character study of two killers.), Ravenous, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dead Birds.  Fire in the Sky and The Forgotten are both quite good.

I enjoy when the movie is made seriously but the characters say funny things (like real people.  This is how the book Fletch was, as an off-genre example; serious story about a funny guy, but the movie did not have the same style).  Though for slapstick plot humor the deck-whack with Sam Jackson's "The Man" in Deep Blue Sea is classic.  Deep Blue Sea, Tremors, Lake Placid, Slither, and Ravenous have a perfect balance of humor and action without the humor detracting from the action.  The others I've mentioned are det serious.   If anyone can recommend others like any of them, please do.

On the minus side, I don't know what it was called but I remember one where the CGI croc swam with its feet, like a dog; whose nephews are all the writers and artists who make movies for "scyfy" anyway?  Good artists cost the same as bad ones.  Fer real.

I also hate when they use a real myth and ignore the real properties, behaviors, nature, etc. of the myth.

Sorcerors are not exactly cryptids, but for a reality/myth-based interpretation of Navajo skinwalkers, BTW check out Shadow Hunter (Shadowhunter?).  Hollywood werewolves can be fun (Dog Soldiers, Wild Country) but have little resemblance to real skin changer magic/myth.

Mirrors did the research and showed it in a decent doc in the special features.

Mimic and The Burrowers come to mind. The latter is a monster movie set in the old west.

 

 

Other way around.  Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend came out a solid 8 years before Jurassic Park.

 

 

 

Anyway, I'd like to toss out some more love for Rutger Hauer's Split Second with its Venom-esque mutant serial killer.