Take a moment to think about horror and all the subgenres. A few of them probably come to mind immediately. You might be thinking of slasher flicks, particularly those of the 1980s and 1990s. Maybe you’re thinking of the paranormal movies with ghouls and ghosts that were present in decades past, but really hit the mainstream in a big way in the 2010s. Perhaps your mind went to the more bloody, violent things where people get tortured and maims in various, excruciating ways. Each of these genres has been a major part of horror at different times. None of them have endured as much as the monster movie.
You my not think of monster movies as such a huge horror subgenre, but when you dive deeper, you will realize that they tie into pretty much every other subgenre of horror. Take the slasher, for example. On the surface, a slasher is about someone killing a bunch of characters one by one. That person could be considered a monster, though that might not be everyone’s definition of a monster movie. There are a bunch of slashers that have literal monsters, though. Freddy Krueger is the burnt spirit of an evil man who haunts the dreams of teenagers. That’s pretty much a monster. Jason Voorhees became a zombified version of himself by the midpoint of the Friday the 13th franchise. Monster. The leprechaun from Leprechaun, the Djinn from Wishmaster, the various possessed objects beings from Jack Frost, The Gingerdead Man, and Child’s Play… All monsters. Slasher movies are filled with monsters.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Paranormal movies are also monster movies. What are ghosts and demons and such but different kinds of monsters? The supernatural movies that are all the rage right now are monster movies at their heart. The zombie movies that have been popular since George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead are monster movies. Vampires, werewolves, gill men… They’re all monsters. Horror thrives on monsters and has done so forever.
What I want to look at, however, goes a little bit deeper than simply considering most horror to be monster movies. There’s a part of monster movies that deserves special recognition for how creative, or dull, it could be. See, with every monster comes an origin. The monster came from somewhere. Something caused that monster to be. There must be a reason for why it is roaming free, monstering everywhere it goes. Something must have put it on that monster path.
When a movie doesn’t take time to explain where a monster originated, it usually means that it exists in nature. Follow my train of thought. If a group of people was out in the woods and some sort of mystery creature began attacking their cabin, that would likely be some sort of creature out in nature. Unless the movie explicitly gave another reason. It was simply a monster that existed that people didn’t know about, and it was now out for the kill. You never find out the exact origin of that creature. You don’t need to. The force of nature aspect of it is enough to frighten you. A creature like that could be outside right now, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to come across its path.
A movie that perfectly exemplified the “existing in nature” origin was Tremors. The first film in the long-running franchise was about the residents of a small desert town dealing with giant killer worms called Graboids. There was no explanation for where the Graboids came from. They were just there one day. As the franchise progressed, there were different growth stages introduced. In Tremors 2, there were Graboids found in a different location, and they grew into Shriekers. Tremors 3 introduced the final growth form, the ass-blaster. Some history of the Graboids was given in the prequel film, but there has never been a definitive answer on where the monstrosities came from. It didn’t change the threat level. A creature was being a creature and trying to eat the people.
This doesn’t only work for the creature features, either. Sometimes, the standard monsters are given a non-origin that could be defined as them simply existing. Vampires and werewolves frequently get this treatment. There are specific ways where they can create more of their kind, but the origin of the species is never really delved into. There just happened to be a first vampire or a first werewolf that then led to a bloodline, or “lack of blood” line, that eventually led to modern vampires and werewolves.
Similar to the nature origin is the space origin. It involves the same sort of logic as something existing in nature, except the nature isn’t within Earth’s biosphere. The monster will have alien origins. The movie points this out in some way, big or small. It could be something that lived on another planet and travelled to Earth. Aliens are a predominant form of this kind of monster. Or it could be some sort of creature that sprouted from a meteor. That’s another common source of space monster. There are even instances where people from Earth travel into space and encounter a monster. Monsters don’t only do their monstering on Earth.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space was pretty forward about the origin of the monsters. The monsters were alien clowns. They came from outer space. The title laid that out there for everyone to see. The movie also hinted at it. It sometimes went beyond hints as well, going so far as to feature the spacecraft in which the monsters travelled. There was no question about how the race of alien clowns began. The origin was that they were from a distant planet. That’s all that was needed to satiate audiences who wanted to know.
Again, the space origin is just like the nature origin. The only thing that gets clarified between the two is where the monster came from. If it came from Earth’s ecosystem, no mention at all is necessary for people to understand. If it came from space, there should be some sort of hint about that, lest people think the monster is from Earth. There may not be any further explanation beyond simply noting that the monster is extra-terrestrial, however, which is why these two origins are so similar.
When it comes to giving an actual origin for a monster, beyond a species having existed long before the story of the movie unfolded, there are two main ways that origin could unfold. The first is a hand-wavey sort of half-assed origin. The writer will toss in something small as a reason that the monster came to be but won’t elaborate on it. This is where bites come into play, and where science can rear its ugly head. How did something happen? Science, that’s how. What’s the science? That doesn’t matter.
Track of the Moon Beast fit right into this category of monster origins. Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) was a mineralogist studying rocks outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. He made friends with his former professor, John Salinas (Gregorio Sala), and the professor’s new students. Paul’s girlfriend, Kathy Nolan (Leigh Drake), became concerned when Paul’s sleeping habits changed, and people began dying near the town. Could the two things be connected? She teamed up with Professor Salinas to find out.
It turned out the two things were most definitely connected. On their first date, Paul and Kathy had gone to the top of one of the hills outside town. They wanted to watch a meteor shower in the night sky over the town. They got a little too close, however, when a meteor careened toward them. Paul shielded Kathy but was hit in the head by the space rock. It was later revealed that the rock was lodged in his head. It was mutating him into a moon beast at night, a sort of werewolf-type situation. Human during the day, monster at night. There was no way to counteract the space rock’s mutation. Paul would never be fully human again. All because a space rock was lodged in his head. That was the origin of the moon beast.
You didn’t need to know how the space rock worked its mutation within Paul. The origin was simply that a space rock was in his head, and he was a monster. It was as much information as having a werewolf or vampire bite someone. It was as much information as saying corpses were rising from their graves because of some meteor that passed by Earth. None of them really go into depth about how the origin truly created the monsters. These origins are basically a “here’s A and it caused B” sort of thing, with no elaboration.
That brings us into the final kind of origin for monsters, the full elaboration origin. This is the kind of origin where you get a full explanation of how a monster came to be a monster. Some of them might feel similar to the origins that get a kind of hand-wavey explanation. There might still be some sort of hand-waving going on when it comes to the more complicated elements. But there’s more elaboration about how the monster came to be and what motivates the monster to do what it does. There’s just more depth. Instead of a moon rock mutating someone, there might be some nefarious reason that the moon rock hit that person specifically. There could be a bunch of scientists in a laboratory who accidentally released a DNA-altering disease. There could be an evil book that summoned monsters when read aloud. There’s just more explanation.
The best way to explain the difference between the hand-waving and the elaboration is to use The Toxic Avenger as an example. Toxie wasn’t always the monstrosity that people saw him as. He was a dorky janitor at a health spa who was picked on by the punks who frequented the place. It was while they were picking on him that he fell into a vat of toxic sludge and became The Toxic Avenger. This might seem about as much information in the origin as was given in Track of the Moon Beast. But it’s the monster that Toxie became that informed us about how much information we were actually given. With his newfound powers, he set out to get rid of the punks who tormented him. He became a superhero, cleaning up the city. He was changed into a monster through the toxic sludge but was also changed into a hero through the way he was tormented. With his new toxic powers came new scum-fighting responsibility. We were given a deeper understanding about what made Toxie into the monster he was.
So there are four different ways that origins could be given about monsters in monster movies. It could be assumed that the monsters exist in nature. They could have been in the natural ecosystem of another planet. The origin could be explained offhandedly, or there could be some depth given to the origin. If I had more time to write this post, I’d go into greater detail about the origins of movie monsters. I’m writing most of this post the night before it has to go up, which would explain how messy it is. Maybe I’ll go into more depth in a later post. You never know.
Monster movies have been a major part of horror since its inception. Monsters are a part of ancient legends, with minotaurs and Medusa and such creatures looming around various corners. Literature like Dracula and Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus have been around for centuries. When silent films transitioned into talkies, the Universal monster movies were there to get attention. People like to watch monsters do monstrous things. The question is whether they want or need the origin story. At what point does the monster necessitate an origin?
Now I’ve got a few notes:
- Movies that were brought up in this post include Wishmaster (week 410), Jack Frost (week 54), The Gingerdead Man (week 69), Tremors (week 360), Tremors 2 (week 360), Tremors 3 (week 360), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (week 361), and The Toxic Avenger (week 110).
- Have you seen Track of the Moon Beast? What did you think? Do you think they could have done more to give an origin story? Could they have explained where the meteor came from, or was space enough of an answer? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Or you can find me on Twitter to discuss the movie.
- Another thing you can do on Twitter or in the comments is suggest a movie for me to watch as part of Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always open to suggestions. I’m always open to movies I may not have thought of.
- Make sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram. There’s fun stuff always going up there.
- With that, it’s time for a look ahead. There was a time when the Blue Collar Comedy Tour was a big deal. They were all over the place. Each of the guys involved became a successful comedian, and they made attempts to bridge their success into other avenues. Namely, they branched out into television and movies. One notable example will be coming up next week when I watch Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. I’ll see you then for the post.
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