Film historian Max Alvarez returns this Halloween for another nerve-shattering romp through the history of “creature features” spotlighting the screen’s most memorable monsters, mummies, werewolves, oversized insects, outer-space invaders, and aquatic predators. In this multimedia presentation, Alvarez surveys Hollywood’s on-again/off-again infatuation with monsters starting in the 1930s and ’40s when makeup genius Jack Pierce was at the height of his frightful powers at monster-friendly Universal Pictures.
Although movie monsters fell out of favor as the Universal horror cycle wound down by the end of World War II, these anti-social abnormalities were soon in hot demand as the Cold War gathered steam during the 1950s. With drive-in theaters on the ascent and a new generation of moviegoers in search of major scares, cinema screens were soon inundated with crab monsters, wasp women, giant leeches, and beasts with a million eyes. Most of the Eisenhower-era shockers were modestly budgeted black-and-white studio chillers or low-budget scream-a-thons from such indie mavericks as the late Roger Corman and American International Pictures. Nevertheless, monsters occasionally landed employment in “A”-level productions such as 20th Century-Fox’s CinemaScope/color chiller The Fly and Hammer Films’ initial foray into Technicolor screen horror, The Curse of Frankenstein.
Changes in technology breathed new life into monsters/creatures during the 1980s and ’90s once special effects masterminds were able to stage in-camera werewolf transformations (1981’s The Howling) or bring monsters to life through complex computer technology (such as Jurassic Park and its sequels, the several Alien spinoffs, and the ongoing Godzilla cycle). Since then, there simply is no keeping movie monsters out of multiplex cinemas and home entertainment platforms where the Monsterverse thrives as never before.
Among the highlighted films are The Mummy (1932), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Mighty Joe Young (1949), Monster From the Ocean Floor (1954), Poltergeist (1982), Tremors (1990), Alien 3 (1992), and Godzilla Minus One (2023).
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