Horror fans love monsters. That’s what got many of us into the genre as children. We love to see creatures that don’t exist, that we can imagine existing in our world. Monsters we could imagine ourselves actually taking on, which is why The Monster Squad is the perfect film for young fans. From the actual creature design to the very idea of some archetypal beast, big or small, that is beyond the natural world. Kids love to imagine what might be out there. Each monster they encounter or create carries with it some spark of imagined realness, for however long it can last.
Sadly, though, the monster movie is something we don’t see much of, anymore. It used to be a cornerstone of the genre. Hell, there was a time when it was the genre. Back in the beginning, the Universal Monsters were the big money makers, they were what really popularized the horror film in the US and proved that the genre could be a major moneymaker for the studios. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, all of these guys captured the imaginations of audiences and launched long-lasting franchises. All of them were hits.
Like the franchises of today, they were pounded into the ground by over-saturation, endless sequels and mostly needless crossovers. Although Frankenstein vs. The Wolf Man and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein were standouts. The 40s had worn out the classic creatures, but it was OK. Their heyday was right around the corner.
But in the 1950s, nearly all horror was science fiction. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the bomb had not only been created but actually used, science was what terrified the world. Even the country that had dropped the bombs in the first place. We were so afraid of what we could do to each other, of how far science had come that it could create this kind of devastation, that supernatural archetypes like vampires and werewolves no longer felt like any kind of considerable threat.
This was the atomic age of horror and it was the golden age of the monster movie. On the big budget and no budget levels, everyone was making their own creature feature. It’s no surprise that the film that best encapsulates these fears would go on to be known as one of the biggest—in many ways—monster flicks of all time. That was Gojira, introducing audiences to the beast we’ve come to know as Godzilla. It was recut for America and released as Godzilla: King of the Monsters. As campy as that franchise is, people tend to forget how powerful that first movie was. It’s about a man made destructive force wiping out Japan. It’s told, essentially, through newsreel footage. Many of the shots look almost identical to shots of Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. Horror always reflects the cultural fears of the time. As such, Gojira might be the defining horror of the atomic age.
And we even had new icons. Taking the reigns from the classic monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, we now had Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Pinhead and Chucky.
Like the ‘50s, the monster films of the 1980s were produced on big budgets and small budgets, alike. There were major studio remakes like The Thing, The Fly and The Blob, but then we also had the rise of the video market and more and more creature features being made for smaller and smaller budgets. This allowed us the best of both worlds, from the major studio thrills of Aliens to the low budget camp of Rawhead Rex.
The 2000s saw a return to the cultural fears of the 1970s, allowing for more films to take on the grindhouse tone of that decade—evidenced by pictures like High Tension and Wolf Creek. That time even saw remakes of most of the classic ‘70s horrors, the way ‘50s features were remade in the ‘80s. We got remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and so many more. Like the ‘70s, most supernatural or sci-fi horror came in the form of plagues, namely zombies. Terrorism and biological warfare were the major fears of the time and so they were what dominated the screen. We didn’t get many monsters in the 2000s because, by and large, people seemed to be more focused on real life threats.
I don’t know what it’s going to take to get fun, practical creatures back on our screens. I’m not one of those people who’s inclined to believe that just because we don’t have monsters now it means we won’t ever. At least I’d like to think I’m not one of those people. There’s an answer out there somewhere. There’s a way to turn this around. We just need to figure out what it is. We’re getting Godzilla and King Kong on the screen again. We have new Alien and Predator flicks on the way. That can only be seen as a good omen for monsters making a comeback on the studio level. If they do, that could be the answer. Like the ‘50s and the ‘80s before, all it takes is one big hit at the studio level to produce all the indie creatures we can stand. However many that is, I can’t wait to find out.