The Ten Monsters That Scared The S@#* Out Of Me

Alright guys, I’m about to kick off my favorite month of the year – Spookytober – with a scary little list of the monsters that scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve listed favorite monsters a couple of times on this blog, but this is really the first time I’ve listed monsters And as a consequence the movies) I don’t watch very often because they are genuinely terrifying to me. Your mileage may vary, of course, because Horror is subjective and depends almost entirely on the mindset of the individual involved.

Now there are a helluva lot of scary movies out there and there’s a few that didn’t make this list but are terrifying just because they’re terrifying. What you will notice that’s absent from this list are the more traditional monsters like vampires and werewolves, and it’s not that I don’t find some of them scary, but there really aren’t enough vampires that are scare me, for example, to make a ten item list. This list focuses on Creature Features, but there’s whole other list to be made for Supernatural and Slasher films, and I might list those later, but here goes: The Most Terrifying Monsters in Horror.

He Who Kills From Trilogy of Terror

Now the other monsters are not in any particular order but I had to bring this guy in at number one because this was truly the very first monster that actually scared the bricks out of me (and quite frankly he works pretty good at it today). There’s a reason I’ve only watched this movie about three or four times in the last thirty years. I read the short story its based on Prey by Richard Matheson about the same number of times because the movies is extremely faithful to the story. One of the more interesting aspects of this monster is that looked at under the correct light it is deeply funny. I mean, it is just a puppet and you might laugh at it for about five minutes, but by the end of the movie he is a lot less funny, because the movie is filled with some genuinely suspenseful moments.

I first saw this movie late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, and waaay too young to be looking at it, which may be the reason I now have “doll fear”. Now, I didn’t fear my own “plastic” dolls. I got along fine with them, so this wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but this movie definitely contributed to my general fear of wooden puppets, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and other humanoid shaped wooden objects that are not supposed to be moving, but are kinda doing that anyway. So yeah, Chucky, Pinocchio, a few of those Japanese puppets, the creature from the 2016 movie, The Boy, and that puppet from the 1978 Anthony Hopkins movie, Magic, they can all catch some of this smoke.

The Xenomorph from Alien

I remember seeing the first trailer for this movie when I was about nine or ten years old and being very excited about it. The trailer was immediately intriguing to me because it was dark and ominous and told you absolutely nothing at all about the movie. I loved it! And then, when that Summer passed, I kinda forgot about it, until I watched the movie for the first time on late night TV when I was about fourteen, and y’all, I was not ready! Since the trailer didn’t really tell you anything, I had no idea what to expect. Talk about sitting on the edge of your seat!

I was following along with this movie just fine and it was alright, until the last fifteen minutes. I will not spoil it for those of you too young to have watched it yet, but that last scene contains what is possibly one of the greatest jump scares in film history and cemented the Xenomorph as one of the most terrifying monsters in Horror for me.

The H-Man 1958

I won’t list the original Blob because while that movie was definitely disgusting, it was also kind of funny. The H-Man makes this list because I’ve been terrified of watching this movie ever since I first saw it. I’ve told you about my issues watching acidic, sentient snot devouring people alive and this movie is probably the reason why. I’m serious. Like quicksand, this is an actual problem! In japan this movie is called Beauty and the Liquid People, a very poetic name for what is probably one of the ickiest movies I’ve ever watched. The only other movie about acidic slime that maybe tops this one is the remake of The Blob made in 1987, and while that movie is certainly disgusting, its also kind of fun. This movie wasn’t fun. There’s nothing in this movie that’s played for laughs.

I think I’ve watched this movie about two and a half times over forty years. The last time I tried watching this was about three years ago, and I had to stop, because it was the middle of the night when it aired, and it totally creeped me the hell out so badly, I had to stop! I mean this movie literally makes my skin feel crawly! Yes, I had a hard time falling asleep with the lights on.

The Thing of The Thing

It’s not that the monster isn’t scary, but more the idea of the monster is what’s so terrifying. It’s this idea that the monster can look, act, and sound exactly like someone close to you, that you’ve been living in close quarters with, and that its mimicry is so good, that you literally cannot tell the difference between it and someone you think you’ve known for months, is what contributes so well to the movie’s feelings of dread and paranoia. For the first thirty minutes of the movie the monster is only ever referenced, and not shown, but once it does show up, its worth the wait, because Carpenter does a righteous job of its depiction.

The mood of this movie is incredible. In fact, the 1982 remake of The Thing is sometimes referred to as a perfect Horror movie, which despite its age, has not done badly. The monster, the practical effects, the environment, the cinematography, and characters, all still hold up very well over thirty years later.

The Medusa from Clash of the Titans

So, for comparison I watched the Clash of the Titans remake and let’s just say I was less than whelmed by the remake’s depiction of the Medusa. I mean she was alright, and she definitely had them bow and arrow skills but there’s just something about the original Harryhausen version that is both terrifying and wonderful. There’s something about the stop motion that lends itself well to her character that didn’t work well with the computer generated version in the remake. Also the remake decided to make the Medusa conventionally attractive, which is faithful to the original story, but is not scary.

Part of the reason this Medusa is frightening is the general mood and environment, and we can’t forget the novelty of having seen her for the first time. The low lighting and frozen bodies with their terrified expressions, and her disregard as she knocks them over during her pursuit, is simply disturbing. There’s also her facial expressions. She doesn’t just look angry or mean but a little melancholy. She is one of my favorite monsters and I keep imagining what it would be like to encounter such a being. Let’s face it, it would be terrifying!

Jean Jacket from Nope

One of the most terrifying things about the monster from Nope is that it appears more or less harmless ,and turns out to be anything but that. Part of the reason Jean Jacket so terrifying is its general demeanor. It’s really fast moving, and stealthy, and there are things about it that are just a complete mystery. We think its an alien because it resembles stories we’ve been telling ourselves about aliens, (and that attitude is what gets most of the people in the movie killed) but we don’t actually know what it is, where it came from, what its going to do next, how smart it is, or even its purpose.

There are somethings Jean Jacket does in the movie that are just puzzling and we can’t make any sense out of, like the rain of blood, or the final threat display that shows what it actually looks like. There’s a lot of conjecture among fans about this. So a large part of the terror of this monster is all the things we simply don’t know about it and I’m glad Peele didn’t bother to try to explain.

The Grey Widowers from The Mist

I think I mentioned before that along with “Doll Fear” I also have “Spider Fear”, its not as bad as when I was younger. I can at least look at them in movies, but these guys are simply horrifying because of their size, acidic webbing, and near human faces. These guys are inhabitants of one of the greatest monster movies ever made (simply because of the sheer number of horrors in it), Frank Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation of The Mist. I mean, I don’t like spiders because they’re bad enough at the size they are in the Amazon, but these guys spit acidic webbing! WHY?!!! Why would anyone think of that?!

If you are a fan of Creature Features than this is definitely the movie for you because it has all kinds of great, barely glimpsed, monsters strutting around in the Mist, devouring and chopping up various people who insist on running out into it. There’s the Giant Lobster creature that haunts a parking lot, and the giant mosquito creatures with poisonous venom, and the extra giant sized Kaiju… okay, lets face it, most of the monsters are of enormous size, but still I very much suspect that the Grey Widowers, as they are called by the film’s creators, are the top dogs in this monster ecosystem. I think one of the saddest scenes in the movie is when the lead characters drive past an overturned bus containing the desiccated bodies of school children. Darabont has no problem killing children in this movie, and this also makes The Mist one of the saddest and most shocking Horror movies of the 21st century.

The Entity from It Follows

I wrote two whole essays about the meaning of the invisible entity that stalks the lead character in this movie becasue there is a lot deeper stuff going on here than the surface plot of an STD monster that stalks and kills people. There are some very concrete reasons why the monster does what it does, and appears the way it appears in the movie. The entity here has some of the same issues that came up for The Thing. It can look like anyone, including people you know, and the victims wouldn’t know that it was dangerous to them unless they’d either been forewarned, or the person it was imitating was standing right next to them. In one instance in the film, a victim was warned, and still wasn’t ready when it attacked him.

My theory was that the monster shows up as personifications of the things its victims either fear the most (like rape, or growing old), or have the most anxiety about (their relationships with friends and family), and that the longer it tracks its victims it starts to attune itself to their very specific fears, which is why it will show up looking like their mother or their best friend, especially if they have any lowkey anxieties about them. What forms the monster takes can tell us a lot about the victim, and I thought that was kinda terrifying in an existential type of way.

Pennywise (from the It remake)

Okay, this entire movie (both parts) was simply deliciously terrifying and kind of awesome. I liked this movie far more than I enjoyed the original movie, which for me was simply meh! I am usually not impressed with remakes, and I was prepared not to like this, but after some thought and a couple of re-watches, I have to admit, this movie was very good, and part of the reason for that is the attention to detail of the monster and our care for the characters. Pennywise is actually very well done and very scary, and I like that his presence is often preceded by the appearance of a red balloon. I distinctly remember reading the original story by Stephen King, and being captivated by the opening scene of the clown in the sewer, and this terrifying scene was wonderfully depicted in this film, almost exactly the way I imagined it.

The monster is genuinely scary in all of its incarnations, but most especially in the second half of of the movie when it keeps showing up in various spider forms. It also doesn’t hurt that I actually cared about the characters and either rooted for them or condemned them based on their actions.

Normally, I would add a bonus round right here, but I think I’m going to start a new post. Next time my focus will be on the Scariest Traditional Monster films like werewolves and vampires and stuff. I think that’s with a look and allow me to expand this list of most terrifying monsters in Horror Cinema.