Wither Monsters?

About a year ago I went through a phase of watching all of the Hammer horror films from the late-1950s until the mid-1970s. They're a bit campy and melodramatic, but the environments are lush, the bosoms heaving, and the gore technicolor. Hammer Studios out of England made stars out of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing who collectively starred in 85% of the studio's output. Hammer began doing remakes of the Universal Classic monster movies and expanded to doing a brand of horror all their own, and even a little sci-fi. Between 1957 and 1974, they turned out 9 Dracula movies, 7 Frankenstein movies, and 4 Mummy movies. They also dallied with werewolves, zombies, phantoms, ghosts, and more vampires than you can shake a fairly large stick at. Hammer films represented Gothic horror at its most theatrical and were hugely successful for their time. A fair amount of the films they made were less than stellar, I'm looking at you "Satanic Rites of Dracula," but for all the stinkers, they made monster movies in the classic sense of the word.

The reason I bring up Hammer and their House of Horror is that for some time now I've begun to lament the dearth of acceptable monster movies produced in recent years. It seems to me like all of the classic monsters have been picked apart, dissected, analyzed, and cauterized until they aren't scary anymore. The post-modern horror movement has made forays into modern horror very passe. Most of the classics have been done to death and if one tries to revitalize it, it ceases to be classic. Yet, I ask: Can there be a truly original yet classic horror monster in this day and age? Let's run down the ol' favorites to see if they can be made relevant again.

Vampires. Vampires are dead. Well, yes, I know the creatures themselves are dead, specifically undead, but the monster as an entity in popular literature is dead, which is a shame. Vampires and their historical context could make for fascinating films forever. However, since the bloodsuckers got turned into tortured, brooding, lovelorn pansies, they have lost all their mystique. We've gone too far into the mind of the vampire and given him too much pathos. What makes Dracula such an interesting character is that he is despicable and yet still alluring. Vampires are now just sissies who happen to need to drink blood. Anne Rice is partly to blame, but I'm going to lay most of it on the Goddamned Twilight franchise. Vampires will no longer be scary until they can shake off the tween image and stop shimmering or sparkling or whatever the hell they do in those stupid books.

Frankenstein. Frankenstein is a very specific story, about a brilliant but arrogant scientist who thinks he's better than God and attempts to create life on his own. There is very little else to be done without it just being a rehash, so lets break it into its two base elements: the mad scientist and the man-made monster. Mad scientists have been around since science was first borne. There have always been those who sought to use science for nefarious purposes. Science is where it becomes difficult to use them in this day and age. As technology and medicine advance, so too would the mad scientists' aspirations. It's conceivable in today's world, but his evil plan would have to be pretty monumental and then it might run the risk of being silly. The man-made monster angle has been relegated to victims of nuclear fallout or chemical warfare. Usually now they're the product of an unseen group and not a particular person. For them to work in this day and age, it surely would involve some genetic test gone awry.

Mummies. There wasn't really much hope of making these monsters viable again, but after the increasingly crappy Brendan Fraser vehicles. After destroying Egyptian mummies and tainting Chinese terracotta army, the only ones left to ruin are Inca mummies from Peru and Chile. And lets face it, there are only so many ancient curses that can be unleashed upon unsuspecting adventurers.

Zombies. I love zombie movies. In many ways they're the punk rock monster, less a character than a force. They began as mindless drones controlled by voodoo, then in the late 1960s, thanks to George A. Romero, they became a unstoppable horde of flesh-eating corpses that represented a revolutionary society literally and figuratively devouring the old regime. Zombies lost their mojo in the 80s and 90s until "28 Days Later" revitalized the genre. Now, unfortunately, zombies are played out. The 2000s saw a barrage of Romero impostors and re-hashers, to the point where it seems every fourth horror movie is at least partially based on zombies. And with movies like "Fido," the zombie has again lost its potency. Once you slow dance with a zombie, it ceases to be scary. While the thought of a zombie apocalypse is still haunting, there isn't much more that can be done cinematically with this particular breed of shuffling ghoul.

Werewolves. Werewolves are the one classic monster I think could have a good turnaround. Since Universal's monster heyday, there've only been a handful of really good movies to discuss lycanthropy, the best in my opinion being 1981's "An American Werewolf in London," which achieved the rare distinction of being both funny and genuinely frightening. There, sadly, have been very few films in the cycle, and even fewer are worth watching. For instance, skip entirely any of "The Howling" films. The recently released remake of "The Wolfman," though I've heard good things from some people, remains a financial flop and a critical mess. Still, despite their connection to the "Twilight" realm, I think it's only a matter of time before a really good werewolf movie crops up again.

So out of four classic and one contemporary monster, only one is still a possibility for good, old school horror. That's a shame. I only hope one day, when the pigtails and acne cream set has gotten their fill of them, that these once noble figures of fear will regain their place as the Sultans of Scream. It might take a studio like Hammer to fully jump start their careers again, and that would definitely be a good thing.

Some Hammer films to check out:
Curse of Frankenstein (1957) dir. Terence Fisher
Horror of Dracula (1958) dir. Terence Fisher
The Mummy (1959) dir. Terence Fisher
The Brides of Dracula (1960) dir. Terence Fisher
Curse of the Werewolf (1961) dir. Terence Fisher
Paranoiac (1963) dir. Freddie Francis
Nightmare (1964) dir. Freddie Francis
Kiss of the Vampire (1964) dir. Don Sharp
Plague of the Zombies (1966) dir. John Gilling
Quatermass and the Pit (1967) dir. Roy Ward Baker
The Devil Rides Out (1968) dir. Terence Fisher
Scars of Dracula (1970) dir. Roy Ward Baker

You're welcome.
-Kanderson