Monster Movie Madness Everyone can remember going to the theater with their friends and watching the newest horror movie. Watching horror movies is almost a rite of passage: sitting in the dark, the music intensifying, waiting for the “monster” to strike. However, the “monster” can take several different forms in horror movies. The “monster” can take the form of animals or aliens, traditional human-like monsters, evil spirits, or insane, murderous people. Therefore, based on the type of monster, horror movies can be classified into four different groups: “Creature Features,” “Humanoid Horror Flicks,” “Evil Spirit Cinema,” and “Classic Slashers.” First of all, there is the “Creature Feature,” in which the monsters are animals, aliens, or something in between. Sometimes they attack in groups, like in The Birds, where large flocks of birds start to attack people for seemingly no reason. In other movies, the creature acts alone. In the movie Lake Placid a giant crocodile terrorizes a research team studying attacks on local residents. However, the creatures are not always from earth. In The Blob, an asteroid carrying a blob-like alien crashes in a small town where the alien attacks the townspeople. Another good example is the movie Mosquito, in which a radioactive meteor crashes in the swamp and causes the mosquitoes to mutate and kill everyone in the local area. Next, there are the “Humanoid Horror Flicks;” in these films, the monsters are the classical type and are in human-like form. These are more traditional types of horror movie monsters, like vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, and similar beings that used to be human. Some of the earliest and most famous monster movies fall into this category, like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and many others of the like. Movies like these have inspired the imaginations of scores of different people over the years. Because of their popularity, movies in this category constantly appear in theaters or video stores and are probably some of the most well-known films in the business. One of the best known modern films in this category is An American Werewolf in London, but other films that are usually well known are Dawn of the Dead (a zombie movie) and Nosferatu (a vampire movie). “Evil Spirit Cinema” is the next group. Movies in this category involve some type of malevolent spirit, usually a ghost or a demon, although it occasionally can be other intangible entity. Sometimes the spirits are angered by the people in the movie. In The Haunting, the mere presence of people in Hill House angers the evil ghost living within. Sometimes it is a ritual or object that disturbs or wakes the spirits. In Hellraiser, a puzzle box opens the gate to Hell and sets free demons that terrorize a family. Maybe the spirit is some other sort of entity, like in the movie Poltergeist. The spirits might not even need provocation
