I grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman’s ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’ along with a plethora of movie tomes and wanted to write about film with a sense of personality, passion, and humor.
Kids go crazy for the Krampus tradition and dress up as little monsters – they have beautiful masks, handmade from wood. Our village in Austria puts on a special play in which the creature tells an old beggar to repent his sins; when he refuses, he’s beaten up by lots of Krampuses at once.
I love monsters.
A lot of people think I must be like Vince Noir. He’s a bit like a child. He doesn’t have any malice. He’s even friendly to monsters. I am like that, I guess. I talk to anyone.
My plan for the online version of ‘Famous Monsters’ is to become an online ‘uncle’ to an entire group of people who have never read or heard of ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland.’ The site will not be written in a scholarly fashion. It will be written in a playful, ‘Hey, check this out!’ kind of way.
I don’t think of ‘Monsters, Inc.’ as existing in the same space as Carl Frederickson from ‘Up,’ or whatever, you know? They seem like completely different universes to me.
Human divisions would be child’s play for any reasonably competent alien overlord to exploit – check the masterful ‘Twilight Zone’ episode ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ for an example of how that might play out.
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
Monsters just outside our peripheral vision are scarier to contemplate than monsters miles away or in someplace only a fool would set foot in.
I love monsters the way people worship holy images. To me, they really connect in a very fundamental way to my identity.
There’s a ton of stuff in mythology and folklore that is loaded with wonderful creatures that I haven’t drawn yet, but that’s kind of my retirement plan. Theoretically, I won’t be doing comics any longer, and I’ll just be drawing and painting whatever the hell I want. Most of that will be monsters.
A game like ‘Myst’ may be a gorgeous slide show that preserves its beauty at the expense of speed. A game like ‘Doom’ sacrifices almost everything for action. But the eye soon adjusts: the degree of detail more than adequately conveys infinite claustrophobic labyrinths populated by howling monsters.
If you look to the few films that have been really successful, ‘Insidious,’ ‘Paranormal Activity,’ it’s all basically the old monsters.
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
I revel in movies where the monsters tower more over the tiny budgets than the characters they threaten.
I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.
All wrongfully convicted people are portrayed as monsters. But there’s a special kind of monster that is a woman.
I’m just happy the city has something to be proud of. The Cavs, the Indians, the Monsters. It just shows that we are the land of champions.
We always started these albums as making demos, that went right on until Scary Monsters.
Watching monster movies as a kid, liking monsters, building monster models. TV shows like ‘The Munsters,’ ‘Addams Family’ and ‘Twilight Zone.’ It intrigued me. The music came from that.
I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.
Sometimes, like in ‘Invisible Monsters,’ I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.
A lot of people are surprised by my love of heavy metal. I fell in love with heavy metal almost before any other genre. One of the first concerts I went to was a Donnington Monsters Of Rock concert.
There often is a dark secret in books… There is often a gathering sense of dread; there’s a gap sometimes in the text from which all kinds of monsters can emerge.
You get to choose what monsters you want to slay. I’m sorry to say this again, but let’s face it – the Force is with you.
It’s so great in Hollywood now. You have people past 40 sitting and talking about serious stuff, writing and making movies and TV, but there’s laser pistols and superheroes and alien monsters involved. It’s viable and mainstream.
I want to be a vampire. They’re the coolest monsters.
I grew up loving monsters. I’m just a total monster geek. When I was a kid, I had the Aurora monster models, and I would make them. I loved the Universal horror movies and the Hammer movies. I just had an affinity for them.
Children with Down Syndrome are not monsters, but uncommonly gentle human beings who can and do lead full lives.
The scariest monsters are human beings and what we will do to each other.
Monsters almost always are culture’s way of working out their fears and are thus inherently incredibly interesting and powerful.
I have caught eels from Loch Ness, as we did a River Monsters episode which started off there. They weren’t very big – just 18 inches. I’m sure there may be bigger eels, but you’re only talking about 10lbs.
I don’t understand why, to rise to the level of being president of my country, one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it’s been held by a long line of monsters. We don’t have to support our administrations to love our country.
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.
I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’ magazine.
My three years in politics was very instructive about the way in which the appetite for political power can destroy a human mind, destroy principles and values, and transform people into little monsters.
As far as I know, the guys at Pixar are opposed to a Monsters, Inc. sequel.
I’m very scared of water. When you don’t see the water… I imagine monsters – stupid things.
I have an idea for a Godzilla movie that I’ve always wanted to do. The whole idea of Godzilla’s role in Tokyo, where he’s always battling these other monsters, saving humanity time and again – wouldn’t Godzilla become God? It would be called ‘Living Under the Rule of Godzilla.’
The most fascinating and satisfying encounter so far was the goliath tigerfish of the Congo. I first caught one in 1991, and then again while filming the second season of ‘River Monsters’ in 2009. Its appearance is quite unbelievable, like a giant piranha, with inch-long interlocking teeth.
Every Sunday on Channel 6 in Guadalajara, where I lived, they dedicated most every Sunday to black-and-white horror films and sci-fi. So I watched them. I watched ‘Tarantula.’ I watched ‘The Monolith Monsters.’ I watched all the Universal library.
Monsters are the patron saints of imperfection.
L. Ram Saran Das was a member of the revolutionary party which was held responsible for many a violent deed. But this by no means proves that revolutionaries are bloodthirsty monsters, seeking pleasure in destruction.
We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id.
The thing I love about vampires that I find so fascinating is that, unlike other sci-fi creations, they aren’t monsters from the get-go, they’re human beings first… and so what kind of human you are would dictate what kind of vampire you would be.
I know what it means to do a job… I worked in a factory. I respect people in the service industry. What irritates me more is when people aren’t respectful. There’s a lot of nonsense behavior, especially in a place like Hollywood. The money, the power, they create little monsters.
But someone like Claude Chabrol tries to make a connection between the society in which we live and the social reasons which make monsters out of some people.
It’s ironic, but until you can free those final monsters within the jungle of yourself, your life, your soul is up for grabs.
Monsters can be scary, and they’re great, but they’re only really scary when they’re reflections of us and they show you the things you’re scared of might be true about your own nature.
I just don’t think CGI is up to manipulating the human face yet. I feel like you can get away with it with aliens or monsters or something that’s intentionally foreign, but I have yet to see anything digital to do with the human face that doesn’t just look ridiculous.
The world of superheroes is black and white; the world of monsters is not. Sometimes you need evil to fight evil.
There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us where we park our anxieties, whether its over-powerful women, death or damnation. We make our own monsters.
One reason I loved ’80s monsters is after I watched the movie, I could go into my room with crayons or markers and I could very simply draw these monsters that I fell in love with.
Tottenham is not a club that always wins, but we are trying to create something. It’s not easy to fight against European monsters, but it is a motivation.
