Christine Mattschei (00:07):

Welcome to The Horror Analysis, a podcast that takes a psychological deep dive into all things horror and macabre. Here are your hosts, Frank Horror, writer, director, filmmaker and podcaster with a background in counseling psychology. And Dr. Elliott Rotman, a clinical psychologist with a background in acting and the arts.

Frank Horror (00:45):

The monster movie. Classic monster movies seemed to really enjoy their heyday back in the 1950s and the 1960s. These creature features carried the torch for horror for a time, but as audiences got a little more savvy, demands on film studios moved away from the simplistic plot lines of having just a giant bug, a creature, some sort of monster invade and then be confronted by townspeople or the army. Let's face it, I mean, how many times can you stomp on Tokyo before you need something new and something fresh?

Frank Horror (01:16):

Now, with greater practical makeup effects and greater CGI tech there has been a mini resurgence of the monster movie, and although it doesn't reign supreme over modern horror, it is still a viable subgenre.

Frank Horror (01:29):

This is a subgenre that, it can be supernatural in nature, but not always. It's more about the creature invading our space. It's come and it's threatening us. We're trying to get rid of this creature, or creatures. It could be something as simple as Jaws, where it's just a giant shark and it's come predating on the people of this town, of Amity. Or it could be multiple, it could be a swarm. Look at Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. You've got just a flock of birds that have turned murderous for no reason that we can discern. That's a monster movie. But it can have a supernatural element, too. It can be something like Frankenstein. Frankenstein's a monster movie.

Elliott Rotman (02:18):

Oh, absolutely. And actually, I'm not sure I would say there's a supernatural element. In Frankenstein, science was used to, and then intention wasn't to create something evil or destructive. He was doing this out of research.

Frank Horror (02:37):

Hm.

Elliott Rotman (02:38):

It simply took a turn. But I think it's useful if we talk about the nature of monsters in general. And I have a definition here in terms of the etymology of it. "Monster derives from the Latin monstrum itself derived ultimately from the verb moneo; to remind, warn, instruct, or foretell. And it denotes anything strange or singular or contrary to the usual course of nature, by which the gods give notice of evil. It could be a strange, unnatural, hideous person, animal, or thing, or anything monstrous or unusual."

Elliott Rotman (03:11):

So, monsters go back through thousands of years of history. In Greek mythology, there were monsters. There was Minoes, Minos, rather. There was the Minotaur, who was in a maze. So, half man, half bull, and pretty malevolent. Medusa, whose hair was made of snakes. So, this all was part of literature, it was part of culture, and it's going back to Greek and Roman mythology.

Elliott Rotman (03:47):

So, when we talk about something being monstrous it's also being used as something large. "I had a monstrously good meal. I had a monstrously great time." We have monster trucks. We're not afraid of those trucks, but they're really big. They have big wheels and big engines and they do stuff that other trucks don't do. For something to be a monster it could be anything that is just larger. You could go back to The Princess Bride, of all things, where if you remember, they're caught in the swamp and they have rodents of unusual size that were threatening.

Frank Horror (04:24):

Yes.

Elliott Rotman (04:25):

And they were certainly scary, but you would say, "Those are monstrous rodents."

Frank Horror (04:29):

Size, and I would argue, their power.

Elliott Rotman (04:32):

And their power, yes.

Frank Horror (04:33):

And so same thing, not to go back to Jaws again, but the shark defied the rules of what a normal shark was able to do.

Elliott Rotman (04:41):

Right. And I think the nature of someone or something being a monster is, in terms of literature, history, art, they're depicted as something dangerous and aggressive, deformed in some way, and they're totally unique creatures. They could be mutants, ghosts, spirits. Zombies would be considered monsters because they're outside of the usual realm. And all sorts of other elements can go into this in terms of spirits. The way we think about monsters now in terms of films and books and such, is that there's something, they pose a threat. They could be identifiable in some ways, but they're similar to us potentially or different. It could be an animal. You could then have a Saint Bernard, a friendly Saint Bernard and then you could have Cujo. And Cujo's a monster. You could have your garden variety moth, but then you have the Japanese character Mothra who then fights Godzilla. And they're both monsters because Mothra is huge.

Elliott Rotman (06:00):

So they're usually described as being seen as threatening or having some capacity for causing destruction. And I think what is considered to be a monster, monsters aren't necessarily scary. They can also be misunderstood. Frankenstein starts off as just really helpless. You feel bad for the guy. He was created. He didn't ask for this. And it's only when he's pushed and he's no longer able to be controlled and he starts feeling things. So the one thing that makes him a monster to the villagers is his appearance, although, he looks human like. Because when you think about the way Frankenstein is depicted it's like he's got two eyes, two ears. Yes, he's got bolts coming out of his head and he's bigger than average. But then gets labeled as the other after he, in the original story when he kills that little girl, largely out of fear, that then he becomes a monster.

Frank Horror (07:09):

Yes. And like you said he's misunderstood much the same way as a monster like King Kong is. King Kong, who starts off being scary, at the end you empathize with him. You feel for this monster that is more human than maybe some of the humans in there that have exploited him.

Elliott Rotman (07:30):

And the island where he was originally, if I recall, he was worshiped as a God. He protected things there. He really didn't threaten the humans there.

Elliott Rotman (07:41):

So there's an element to monster films. Sometimes the monster is just there by his nature. So you've got vampires, Dracula, however he got to be a vampire, he's there. He does what he does. And he exerts power over things. And other times they have certain human characteristics.

Elliott Rotman (08:07):

Humans, unfortunately, suffered deformities. So the word monster's been used when you have a birth that if you have, could be genetic deformities, but the term is no longer used, but the term monster has been used medically that if a baby is born that has two heads, that has multiple body parts or is extremely deformed they're defined as monsters. And if you go to the Mutter Museum here in Philadelphia, they're in jars. And this is particularly during Victorian times how they were referred to. It was a valid medical term. And when we look at it and we are potentially horrified because it's like us, but it's not like us. And it's like wow, thank goodness I didn't end up that way or my kids didn't end up that way.

Frank Horror (08:56):

Sure, and back in the day that was seen as a moral defect. So when there was an anomaly to the actual order that upsets people. And so it was a moral defect in either the person that became monstrous, that grew the horn out of their head, which speaking of the Mutter Museum, that's one of the things that fascinated me. They showed someone whose actually has grown a horn, calcium deposits, from their head. So clearly they're in league with the devil or demons or they've done something immoral to the point of having deformed children where that immorality, that had happened for a reason. That choice fell on the parents. What evil did the parents do? What pact did they make to have this child turn out the way that the child did?

Elliott Rotman (09:46):

And in some instances, if you think about John Merrick, who was called the Elephant Man, who had Proteus Syndrome that causes body parts to grow abnormally large. He was horribly deformed at the time. He was initially in a freak show and he was called The Elephant Man. That became a play and it was a movie. They tried to humanize him at the time and to introduce him into upper class British society. And it kind of worked for him at least in terms of what the literature shows in that originally he was this freak who was just regarded as sub-human. But it turns out he was artistic. He was able to build incredible models. He built this model of a cathedral when he was in the hospital where he was being cared for, for all these years.

Elliott Rotman (10:43):

So once he was humanized he was no longer as scary, at least to the people who knew him. But he would certainly be described as a monster even though underneath all the physical abnormality he was a very grounded, very religious, very moral individual.

Frank Horror (11:02):

And it's like the WWE wrestler, Andre the Giant. He's of enormous proportions. It was very easy to make a spectacle when he came into the ring and make him the villain. How easy is it to get people to turn on someone who's different? But then when he was in The Princess Bride, which you've referenced, he was funny and he was a likable character. And so that was the height of his popularity. After that film people really loved him. And then, I'm giving away my past interest in wrestling as a young man, but after that film despite being at the height of his popularity Vince McMahon had him become a villain again. And so as hard as that would be to take someone who the audience loves and who's so charismatic and endeared and effectively turn them back into a villain I think that had to be made easier by the fact that he was different.

Elliott Rotman (11:56):

He was different. And if you encountered him on the street he would look different. He had that very prominent brow and just his overall size. So what gets labeled as a monster in our society is, sometimes the monster is very much in human form. And I know we'll get to talking about that when we talk about just people who seem to be very basically evil although they look normal. We talked about serial killers and they look just like us except you don't know what's behind it.

Elliott Rotman (12:31):

But in monster movies it becomes a whole other thing that the monster's usually pretty well defined as someone or something really different that threatens us in some way.

Frank Horror (12:44):

Yes. And then you usually have the lone authority figure or hero who battles that monster, who drives that monster back be it Chief Brody in Jaws or Beowulf who fights back Grendel.

Elliott Rotman (12:57):

Right. And sometimes monsters, you could have alien space monsters that Flash Gordon fights. And it's like well, they're different, but we're not really scared by them. But I think the way we've presented monsters it often goes to sometimes where we are in the state of society. Post World War II, post Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese is a way of, I think, representing the trauma of nuclear war. The consequence was, well, you now had Godzilla. You had Mothra. You had Gamera. Which were all these, for all we know Godzilla was originally just an iguana somewhere. But now he becomes this enormous fire breathing thing that's destroying Tokyo because, well, they're always going after Tokyo.

Elliott Rotman (13:51):

But it's a consequence of human action who created these monsters. And then we just watch them or try to battle them. And humans are shown as weak. In those movies the monster's all powerful. Then sometimes Godzilla got remarketed as someone who could defend Tokyo from some other huge insect or reptile or something. And we let them fight it out and then we become spectators. But it's not really so scary at first.

Elliott Rotman (14:30):

So I think in terms of what is considered monsters it's how much can we identify it? How much is there an actual threat to us? And how much control do we have over it? And monsters could be everything. What was that movie with Kevin Bacon about the giant worms underground?

Frank Horror (14:49):

Tremors.

Elliott Rotman (14:50):

Tremors. Okay. It was brilliantly done. And there was comedy in there, but it was huge worms that are going to eat you and they're underground and they've been living there the whole time. That's part of the scary part. So, if they just stayed there we could have co-existed. They could have co-existed with the monsters out in the desert. Once they-

Frank Horror (15:11):

They encroached on our space-

Elliott Rotman (15:12):

Yes.

Frank Horror (15:13):

... and that's a theme, the monster encroaches on our space. It upsets our society or the natural order that we accept.

Elliott Rotman (15:20):

And then they have to be defeated.

Frank Horror (15:22):

They have to be defeated or driven back.

Elliott Rotman (15:23):

Right. Monsters played a who role in Game of Thrones with dragons. Dragons were considered monsters. And because they could decimate anything they wanted or what they were ordered to do. But the question is if you watched that were you afraid of the dragons? No. As a viewer I certainly wasn't because they were a tool. You knew that they had to be contained because if you let them go they would wreck havoc on society. But they served a really key role in moving the story forward and a very strong element in terms of developing the human characters.

Frank Horror (16:10):

And they served as an ally, as transportation and as a weapon for one of the people who was a protagonist at that point in the story. I think that's different. When the monster's on your side that's a whole different story as when the monster's coming for you.

Elliott Rotman (16:25):

Right. So there's lots of genres. There's the Hammer Productions that came out in the 1950s that were largely around Dracula and almost romanticizing the era. So Dracula is a monster, but he's kind of an elegant guy. He can entertain you. He'll serve you wine. He won't drink it. He'll serve you food. He won't eat it. But what makes him a monster is that he can change and you know that he is going to predatory. But the Hammer films, I think, were very powerful that way in that they were costume dramas and they used very garish colors and they had good actors and there was a dramatic part to it. So at some point Dracula would get defeated at the end until he came back again.

Elliott Rotman (17:21):

Of course, there was The Curse of Dracula, The Horror of Dracula, Dracula's Middle Age, I don't know! But that was a kind of horror film that worked at a number of levels because there was a story to it. There was romance and there was a little bit of gore, but it was contained. And they were able to create a lot of tension.

Frank Horror (17:42):

And you're never quite safe. Once you defeat the monster there's always the threat that another one's coming. That goes back, I mentioned Beowulf. That goes back to defeating Grendel. What happens next? Here comes Grendel's mom. So there's always another monster, a bigger, scarier sequel waiting to come for you.

Elliott Rotman (18:00):

And we've defined monsters sometimes, certain kinds of animals such as bats. There's the devil bat, giant bats. Bats are scary. Why? Because if they attack you they bite you and they are considered, they will suck your blood. Of course, they're vampire bats. And there's that intimacy that makes them scary. Why are bats used as a scary image for Halloween? You could go outside depending on where you live and on summer nights see them at dusk. And they're just flittering around. They don't bother anyone. They eat mosquitoes. But we've associated it culturally with Dracula, with spookiness, with scariness, with the macabre. And because they're not inherently cute looking they get labeled as monestrous.

Frank Horror (18:56):

Yes, although I would say when you see a bat up close I think they're cute. But I see what you mean. That association has been built and so bats have been vilified.

Elliott Rotman (19:06):

Bats have been vilified. They look scarier with their wings out, but if you've ever seen a common bat in terms of how big they are, they're basically a mouse with wings.

Frank Horror (19:19):

Yes, yes.

Elliott Rotman (19:19):

Now, what is attributed to them that makes them more frightening and threatening is they carry rabies. So if one bites you, you would have an issue there. But arguably, so do raccoons.

Frank Horror (19:34):

That's true. Why don't vampires turn into raccoons and savage people?

Elliott Rotman (19:40):

Well, because raccoons are furry. They have that mask so we think, oh, they're just little bandits! They're just going to go through our garbage cans. And the things that we attribute to being scary or monstrous are usually animals that we don't, that are sufficiently different from us. Insects, snakes. There have been horror films, what was it? Anaconda, 20 foot snake. We don't identify with snakes. There are people who, if they see a little garter snake in their lawn they will freak.

Elliott Rotman (20:23):

But it's interesting, I've encountered snakes, little ones. If I'm moving something outside and one of them scoots out there's something about the motion, the movement of it that throws you off. It's startling because it's so different from what you might see. So snakes can become, if you make them big enough and they can eat you, they become monsters. You could make any creature a monster. You could have, if you make a chipmunk 12 feet high it could be a monster chipmunk. We would call it a monster. But we don't associate scurrying chipmunks, they'll just go across the road or go across your lawn as scary because oh, we could identify that they are mammals and they're furry. So furry things are generally not seen as monstrous. And when they are that throws us off.

Frank Horror (21:20):

But you're right it's the scale that we see a scary.

Elliott Rotman (21:23):

It's the scale.

Frank Horror (21:24):

Back in the '50s or '60s the black and white films we had giant tarantulas, giant ants. We even had The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Elliott Rotman (21:33):

Yes, we did.

Frank Horror (21:34):

We all survived that, luckily.

Elliott Rotman (21:35):

Yes, fortunately, we did.

Frank Horror (21:39):

So I think we've covered all of our bases when it comes to monsters. We had mentioned that though not always the case some monsters may be supernatural in nature. And that dovetails nicely into the topic of our next show, actually, which we examine the sub-genre of supernatural horror. So I want to thank you once again, the listeners, for joining us and for your continued morbid curiosity. Please join us on our next episode as we delve into the spooky world of the supernatural scare.

Frank Horror (22:09):

The Horror Analysis is a Frank Horror Production and is brought to you by Frank Juchniewicz, Elliot Rotman and William Rizzo. Audio engineering and the original theme music to The Horror Analysis were provided by William Rizzo. Audio editing provided by Frank Juchniewicz. Sound mastering was provided by David Parsons. The opening credits introduction was voiced by Christine Mattschei.

Frank Horror (22:37):

To learn more about our show visit us online at frankhorror.com.