It's 06/06/06. In honor of this most dubious of days, how's about a little stroll down memory lane?
We all love the eighties. However, there can be no denying that the "Hugs Not Drugs" decade saw the creation of some of the most nightmarish characters ever to grace the silver screen. Which of us isn't still a little scarred by
The Black Cauldron? Sure, watching it years later you realize the movie was lousy, but when you're only four feet tall and you don't know any better, that damn cartoon was scary as hell.
Kids don't have anything to worry about nowadays. Their playgrounds are made of soft plastic. They've never even seen a merry-go-round or see-saw. "Scary" for them is Lord Voldemort who, let's face it folks, just doesn't have that "nightmare factor" that those 1980s movie monsters had. Maybe that's because our fantasy movies took themselves VERY seriously. No crotch jokes. No poo-poo humor. No anachronistic asides. No Ron freakin' Weasley.
After a lot of consideration and personal reflection, I've put together a little list of the top movie monsters who wrecked havoc on my childhood. There were so many that I didn't have room to mention them all (which made this list really tough to call seeing as how I was convinced for
years that Gremlins were living under my bed).
Give a shout out to your favorite. And remember, Damien, it's all for you.
The 42nd Floor's
06/06/06 Top 6
Scariest Movie Monsters of the 1980s
The Wolf, The Neverending Story, 1984
We all grew up with stories of big bad wolves. But, as most of us weren't raised by woodland creatures, it was difficult to imagine what a big bad wolf would actually look like. Sure, we had big bad wolves in the cartoons. But we knew, deep down, that real wolves don't wear hats and kid gloves. Real wolves bite. Real wolves hunt you down no matter where you go. Real wolves can talk and want to eat you. The Wolf in The Neverending Story did all those things. Dear God, weren't the muddy swamps, dying horses, enormous sneezing turtles, giant racing snails, evil talking sphinxes, rock monsters, luck dragons, gross little elf-people, the end of the world, and androgynous princesses enough?
David Bowie/the Goblin King, Labyrinth, 1986
By the time Labyrinth came out in 1986, I had had enough. I would never be able to handle this one. I saw the trailer and knew David Bowie would give me nightmares. He walked upside-down through Escher-inspired stairwells. He kidnapped babies. He was evil through and through. And he sang. I didn't need that in my life. I saw it for the first time just a few years ago and knew I made a good choice steering clear of this one.
The Seskis, The Dark Crystal 1982
I might have been able to handle Labyrinth if it hadn't been for this little crash-course in New Age Buddhism masquerading as a puppet show of grotesquerie. Those dag-blamed "Mmmm!"-ing vulture monsters. I mean, who comes UP with stuff like this? What child wouldn't be scarred for life upon seeing the ailing Seski Queen, black, withered and gurgling, holding what looks like a baby's rattle, crumble into dust while cackling "I'm still the Queen!"--I just can't go on. The green, one-eyed witch was pretty freaky. Sucking the souls out of cuddly elf people was freaky too. But the vultures. The humming vultures. No way. No damn way.
The Clown, Poltergeist, 1982
The tree that ate Carol Ann was one thing. The muddy swimming pool that tried to eat her older sister was another thing. But the scowling demon clown that tried to eat the little boy is in a class by itself. I don't know what my parents were thinking when they let Forko, Forkette, and me watch this little slice of hell. I remember thinking, "Why does that little boy have a life-sized clown in his bedroom?" I could tell, even at my tender young age, that a clown in your bedroom is a terrible idea. Kids used to love clowns. They don't anymore. You do the math.
Large Marge, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, 1985
She's been described as the Wicked Witch of the West of the eighties--the movie monster one must summon up the courage to overcome, or forever be ruled by. As far as I'm concerned, nobody ever really stopped being scared of Large Marge, despite claims to the contrary. The vivid excesses of the butch truck-driving spectre's horrible tale ("There was a sound like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building! Yessir...it was the worst accident...I ever seen...!"), immaculately delivered with a mounting terror you could cut with a knife, could only have been topped by a little of Tim Burton's stop-motion weirdness. She was only on screen for two and a half minutes, but she'll haunt our nightmares forever.
The Wheelers, Return to Oz, 1985
If there's one movie monster that appears on everybody's list, it's Dracula. If there's another, it's Frankenstein's Monster. But if you say, "Think more...80s" they'll pause for a moment. Then their eyes will go wide. Then they'll politely excuse themselves. That's because they've suddenly remembered the Wheelers, who seem to exist only to answer the question, "What could possibly be more terrifying than a pack of flying monkeys?" The Wheelers shrieked like banshees through an apocalyptic Emerald City, laughing insanely, their rusty wheels-where-their-hands-ought-to-be squealing like nightmare gurneys in a psycho ward. If they catch you (and you know they will), they throw you into the Deadly Desert which turns you into a human sandcastle the second you touch it. And I haven't even mentioned the evil queen with removable heads. It's as if some Hollywood producer was really ticked off at his bratty kid and thought, "I know, I'll make an official sequel to 'the Wizard of Oz', only I'll take out the songs and goofy midgets and throw in a few horrors. That'll show 'em!"
Horror-able Mention: The Alien Queen, the R.O.U.S.es, the Gremlins
