Creature Features

Few things are more comforting for me at the end of a hard day than watching a crowd of panicked humans screaming and running for their lives from a massive, monstrous threat. Of course, a small bit of my comfort comes from the natural feeling of schadenfreude, which acts like a sinfully delicious, ethereal dessert on my juicy brain. Sometimes I’ll mentally put the face of someone who irked me that day in the crowd, usually politicians. It’s just nice to pretend that Ted Cruz can express emotion.

However, it’s not the crowd that fires up my ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It’s the thought of what’s behind the crowd making them run and scream like fleshy banshees.

There’s no shortage of classic cinema in this category. Right now, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the innovative creator of the summer blockbuster and perhaps the greatest movie ever made. Unfortunately, its three dismal sequels dropped off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote-style. (Read more about Jaws screenings in this week’s Night & Day.)

Then there’s Godzilla. Japan’s most famous kaiju not only has a catalog of classics but also made a brilliant comeback on the big screen, starting with 2023’s Godzilla Minus One (Amazon Prime, Fandango at Home, Netflix).

These aren’t your only options to watch massive freaks of nature gobbling up humans like Peanut M&Ms. Here are some brilliant, entertaining, and just damn fun creature features that you can watch on streaming services, tangible media, and even in the theaters.

You can’t do a creature feature collection without at least one Troma film. Blades (Amazon Prime, Plex, Roku) is far from the plucky indie studio’s most famous movie. In fact, you’ll probably start scratching your head so hard when you hear the premise that you may strike brain. It’s a blatant rip-off of Jaws, but instead of a giant killer shark menacing the beaches of a small island town, it’s a giant killer lawnmower menacing golfers on a country club course.

The film follows the same beats as Jaws, except it’s on land, and, again, the killer creature is a giant lawnmower. It takes the plot super-seriously in an Airplane!-esque fashion, where the jokes come from everyone playing absurd premises with the straightest of faces. It’s worth watching if you can come to terms with the fact that you’re watching a movie about a sentient, giant, killer lawnmower. It might not be a traditional “creature,” but this thing is alive!

Trying to choose between the original Blob starring Steve McQueen and the ’80s remake with Shawnee Smith and Kevin Dillon is my biggest horror movie Sophie’s Choice. Don’t make me pick just one! They both deserve to live and feed! You can stream the 1958 version on HBO Max, Roku, and Criterion Channel and the 1988 remake on Tubi.

The original, directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth, is the archetype of monster B-movies that still deliver an A-class experience. The roving pink mass of killer gelatin eats its way through a typical American town with an appetite that cannot be sated. The effects are simple and cheesy but oddly satisfying.

The 1988 remake kicks the concept up a few gears by infusing practical effects with globs of on-screen glop and gore. You literally watch people being consumed, mutilated, and dissolved by this living, breathing pile of pink snot that can reduce flesh, organ, and bone to nothing while its victims are still alive. Both Blob films deliver some truly gruesome and creative kills that make you wish human tissue weren’t so malleable.

A great creature film doesn’t have to feature a snarling pile of teeth and hair that looks at humans as giant, cartoon steaks with legs. It can have personality, emotions, and even the ability to communicate and still feel just as menacing. Horror-comedy genius Frank Henenlotter, the man who gifted the world with the killer conjoined twin from Basket Case, elevated the potential of exploitation films with his satiric and slimy Brain Damage (Roku, Sling TV, Tubi) in 1988.

The film stars Rick Hearst as the chemically addicted host of an alien parasite named Aylmer that feeds on human brains. Hearst succumbs to the meaty worm’s demands for human sustenance in exchange for an injection of its hallucinogenic toxin that renders him numb to the world. Aylmer looks like a sock filled with sausage that someone baptized in printer ink, but he speaks with perfect diction and can be quite persuasive when the carrot he’s dangling on a stick in front of Rick becomes more and more addictive.

Brain Damage may look like another bloody ’80s alien love/horror story, but it’s so much smarter with its honest and unflinching look at the struggle of chemical addiction and the indifference the world pays to people who are genuinely suffering and need more than punishment and poverty to pull themselves out of their chemical prisons.

Along with the streaming options listed above, you may be able to see Brain Damage at Weird Wednesday at Southside Preservation Hall (1519 Lipscomb St, Fort Worth, 817-926-2800), hosted by Fort Worth Community Cinema Club, on Wed, Aug 6. (This film is one of seven on the “Wheel of Weird.” One lucky attendee will spin the wheel to select the evening’s mystery movie.) Doors open at 5pm, and early arrival ensures that you have time to shop at the night market with local vendors. At 7pm, the Vintage Video Preshow showcases a collection of the weirdest movie trailers, music videos, and oddball clips curated by the Movie Mutant.

A creature feature collection wouldn’t be complete without one contribution from makeup maven and monster movie master Tom Savini. He’s the MacGyver of macabre who has built some of the most terrifying and revered effects and monster costumes in cinematic history. My favorite of Savini’s work is the creature that he and the crew dubbed Fluffy for Creepshow (Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Netflix). George A. Romero’s ingenious anthology brought to the big screen the classic horror comics that the ’40s and ’50s used as scapegoats for juvenile delinquency.

The menacing creature in the crate eats anyone dumb enough to open its lid, and the story shows just enough of Savini’s toothy beast to work up your nerves to the final kills when you finally see Fluffy in all of his flesh-devouring glory. He’s got those glowing, unflinching eyes that peer through his enclosure, piercing your last nerve, and a jaw packed with razor-sharp teeth that could consume Adrienne Barbeau’s entire torso in one bite.

There are two things I fear most in this world: dark, enclosed, narrow spaces and physical activity. Those, however, aren’t the main reasons The Descent (Fandango at Home, Roku) is scary and fun as hell. The wall-crawling creatures known as Crawlers that lurk in the dark crevasses of this British flick make the whole experience feel visceral and unnerving. It’s like a 4-D movie that injects you with some kind of fear-heightening serum like Dr. Crane’s “Scarecrow” powder or Axe Body Spray.

Six women go on a spelunking excursion in an underground cave inhabited by these flesh-gnawing monsters who look like their genes were spliced from pigs, albino bats, and that gross layer of slime on the inside top of Spam cans. The Descent creates an enveloping sense of pure fear as the climbers try to fight their way back to the surface through narrow passageways while utilizing the Jaws rule of creature revelation: Don’t show the beast in the first frame. Make your audience wait before you even start to throw out hints of what kind of unspeakable horror is crawling around the darkness to pounce when filmgoers’ guard is down. The Crawlers in The Descent are the kind of movie creatures that make you wish the concession stand sold extra pairs of clean underwear.

When you hear the term “foreign film,” you may think of some black-and-white snooty fest where pale people do nothing but smoke cigarettes and stare off camera for 90 minutes. This is not that. The Host (HBO Max, Hoopla, Hulu, Kanopy) is a must-watch monster movie for every aspiring horror filmmaker and fan. It’s really hard to describe the giant fishy monster that emerges from a polluted waterway and starts gobbling up innocent bystanders in a gripping opening scene of pure marvelous mayhem. Yes, that’s how the movie starts!

The Host’s greatness doesn’t just lie in its monstrous star. Director and writer Bong Joon Ho takes a monster movie concept and makes you care about the human characters who survive. Song Kang-ho plays one of the witnesses of the attack and loses a family member in the process. The film takes you through the rest of the monster’s rampage, but it also delivers an amazing emotional journey with real stakes and genuine feeling before the great showdown between man and the man-eating, mutant mackerel.