United States Movies

Mysterious Island, The

Loosely based on a Jules Verne novel, the movie features Barrymore as an inventor under attack by evil men who want to use his submarine as a weapon. Originally made as a silent film, sound sequences were added later. Features an appearance by a giant octopus and some sort of dinosaur, probably an alligator "in costume."

King Kong

Everyone knows the story. A giant ape is found on a remote island, he falls in love with a woman, is captured and brought to New York City as a show attraction until he escapes. The movie is classic in every way, from the early fog shrouded scenes on the island teeming with dinosaurs, to the big ape's demise at the top of the Empire State Building.

Son of Kong, The

Carl Denham returns to Skull Island in the wake of Kong's rampage and finds more dinosaurs and Kong's albino son! Mini-Kong is friendlier than his Pa, but an earthquake sinks the whole island before anything truly interesting can happen. Son of Kong starts out well enough, with an inspired reason for Denham to head back to the last place he'd ever want to go again. Unfortunately, Kong's son is too cute and there are too few situations of any real danger for this movie to be considered a worthy sequel to King Kong.

Mighty Joe Young

Time for some monkey business. Promoters find a giant gorilla that follows the commands of young woman and put them both in show business. The gorilla goes on a rampage one night and it takes an act of selfless heroism to make people realize who the real victim is. It's kind of like King Kong shrunk down, with more humor and heart.

Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The

Ray Bradbury story-turned-movie was one of the first atomic monster movies and is widely credited as one of the inspirations for Godzilla, the most famous atomic monster of them all. Ray Harryhausen provided the film's animation effects.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Verne's classic tale of underwater adventure is given a most lavish screen treatment in this 1954 Disney production. Even if the cutesier Disney touches leave you cold, you gotta admit that giant squid is pretty darn cool.

Them!

Maybe it's the short-but-ominous title. Maybe it's the catatonic little girl who goes nuts from the trauma of her encounter with Them. Or maybe it's that creepy chirping sound you can hear when They approach. Whatever it is, Them! seems to be responsible for more than its fair share of childhood nightmares and fuzzy b-movie memories.

Certainly, it is a film worthy of being remembered -- the script is tight, the cast more than capable, and the science behind the story is, if not perfect, at least aware of the basic life cycle and behaviors of ants in general. Gordon Douglas (In Like Flint, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off) was the man at the helm for this picture, in which giant ants invade a small New Mexico desert town and eventually make their way to the Los Angeles sewers where the Army must weigh the safety of the local populace against the safety of the world. (For a similar -- but not nearly as competent -- look at the same material, see The Beginning of the End. Let's just say the outcome is different.)

Likable actors James Arness, Joan Weldon, James Whitmore, and Edmund Gwenn battle the ants with all seriousness, something that probably couldn't be done in today's hyper-self-aware Hollywood. Watch for Olin Howlin (one of the old drunks who may or may not have seen the ants in L.A.), who had an unfortunate encounter with The Blob a few years later.

Reviews: Attack of the 50 Foot DVD!

It Came From Beneath The Sea

Giant, radioactive octopus attacks an atomic submarine and then moves on to destroy San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Special effects, in particular the stop-motion animated octopus, were created by Ray Harryhausen. The one major flaw? In most scenes, the beast only has five arms. Maybe he was using the other three to tread water.

Review: 3-B Theater

King Dinosaur

The first manned (and womanned) space flight to another planet discovers an alien world where giant lizards run rampant. So low budget the entire cast is listed above! King Dinosaur also recycles footage from One Million B.C. and was seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Panther Girl of the Kongo

Pleasant Saturday-matinee-type serial features the gorgeous Phyllis Coates and a handful of overgrown crayfish. A lark, but not exactly what you'd call rompin'-stompin' entertainment.

Beast of Hollow Mountain, The

American cowboy Jimmy Ryan thinks his disappearing cattle are being rustled, or worse. Unfortunately for Jimmy, the real culprit is a 30-foot tall dinosaur living in the swamp near his land. Watch as our rancher hero tries to get rid of the monster himself!

20 Million Miles to Earth

Venusian space critter named Ymir is the only one to return from a manned flight to Venus. Although his capsule is at first discovered by locals in a Sicilian fishing village, the American and Italian governments come looking for little Ymir, who eventually grows into a humongous Ymir, and the girl-grabbin', landscape-stompin' fun begins. Ymir was brought to life by Ray Harryhausen, and he steals the show completely.

Amazing Colossal Man, The

When Stan Lee wrote his version of this story (man rushes out of protected bunker to save clueless would-be victim of experimental bomb test), he ended up with The Incredible Hulk, the grumpy gray/green giant who burst forth from a nerdly young scientist whenever he became angry. In this film by Bert I. Gordon and Mark Hanna, however, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning finds himself growing without limit. Who can blame him if he goes a little nuts in the process? This is Gordon's most famous film, which is not to say it is his best, but it does have a certain charm and the pseudo-science (which accounts for Manning's insanity, but not for his violations of the laws of conservation of mass) is sure to drive any actual scientists in the room completely bonkers.

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Giant mutated crabs lure victims into their caves with psychic calls before decaptitating the poor bastards. The strong script makes this one genuinely creepy; a good film to watch to see what made Corman's early work so compelling.

Beginning of the End

Bert I. Gordon was a man in love with all things giant, and Beginning of the End was one of the first films that proved he could put them on screen. Perhaps he didn't put them on screen terribly well – at times the atomically-enlarged locusts that threaten mankind in the movie don't seem to be climbing buildings so much as defying all laws of physics – but at least he pursued his vision fearlessly. Peter Graves stars as Dr. Wainright, the scientist hero who must find a way to lure the locusts away from Chicago before the Army resorts to nuking the city. (!)

Black Scorpion, The

Enormous scorpions emerge from volcanoes to rule their Mexican playground. Director Ludwig was known for adventure stories, but he also directed Big Jim McClain the hilariously bad anti-Communist film set in Hawaii and starring John Wayne in the title role.

Cyclops, The

Either Susan Winter (Gloria Talbot) is truly and deeply in love with her fiancé, or she's terribly hard up. Three years after he disappears into a mountain range in Mexico, she gathers a band of explorers to go look for him. What she finds is a string of irradiated and enormous creatures, including a gila monster (probably on his way to his own movie), a gopher, and the Cyclops -- Susan's fiancé, who has been mutated into a horrible giant with a deformed face and a single eye. We guess he wasn't as keen on the idea of marriage, though -- he tries to lock her away in a cave. Yet another Bert I. Gordon film!

Deadly Mantis, The

The Deadly Mantis would be yet another atomically-enlarged insect movie from the '50s, except for the fact that nuclear radiation doesn't come into the picture. Instead, the big bug has been on ice (literally), frozen in the Arctic and naturally able to come right back to life after millions of years, albeit with one hell of a case of frostbite. Perhaps that explains its disposition, and the fact that it sneaks its way South, busting up military installations as it goes. This isn't Nathan Juran's finest work -- it's a little too heavy on the stock footage -- but it is a bit different than the other giant bug movies.

Giant Claw, The

B-movie experts agree: the giant space buzzard in The Giant Claw is quite possibly the worst-looking monster ever committed to film. A production so completely on the cheap, we're surprised they actually hired actors at all, much less b-movie luminaries like Mara "Tarantula" Corday and Morris Ankrum, whose career playing military officers lasted longer than most actual military careers. We suppose this movie could be fun at a party, if things get slow. Make sure everyone has a drink, though.

Review: And You Call Yourself A Scientist!

Kronos

A mysterious meteor hurtles towards the Earth, and even a volley of nuclear missiles won't deter it. Fortunately, the meteor makes a soft landing in Mexico, but within lies Kronos , the giant robot with an appetite for electricity who seems to be made completely of metallic right angles. Kronos' master has the government all wrapped up, so it's up to super-scientist Leslie Gaskill (Jeff Morrow) to save the day with the aid of his trusty sidekicks, Arnold (George O'Hanlon, the voice of George Jetson) and Vera (Barbara Lawrence). A lark from the '50s that should please any b-movie fan, especially now that it's available in a widescreen format.

Reviews: Stomp Tokyo.

Monster That Challenged the World, The

Navy researchers encounter humongous man-eating "snails" in California's Salton Sea. Thoughtful script and credible performances by Holt and Conreid rescue this movie from mediocrity.

Review: SciFilm.

7th Voyage of Sinbad, The

In the first of the Sinbad movies to feature Ray Harryhausen special effects, Sinbad (Mathews) toils to free a princess from a sorcerer’s curse. The sorcerer’s island features the usual menagerie of mythological monsters, including a Cyclops, a dragon, and a giant two-headed vulture. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad isn’t as much fun as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), but the effects are great.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

There's an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain Resort, and one of 'em says "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says "Yeah I know, and such small portions."

- Woody Allen in Annie Hall

It's hard not to feel like those two old women when watching Attack of the 50 Foot Woman; there's so much buildup to the title character that her eventual appearance almost can't help but to be a disappoinment. Then, after waiting an hour for the not-so-special effects that bring the enlarged Nancy Archer to life, the 50 Foot Woman is brought down in less than ten minutes, and the film is over.

There's plenty to watch before Allison Hayes goes tromping through her character's small home town, most of it the sick human drama in which Nancy's weaselly (and adulterous) husband Harry (William Hudson) tries to have Nancy committed to an asylum so that he can gain control of her considerable personal fortune. Fortunately, there's also the apperance of Yvette Vickers as Harry's mistress, Honey Parker, and the brief foray into more traditional science fiction when the Sheriff stumbles upon the giant spaceship (and accompanying alien) that got Nancy into this trouble in the first place.

Despite the wretched superimposition and back projection effects that create the illusion of Nancy's height -- and the giant papier maché hand that will inspire laughter in most viewers -- Hayes' performance as the enraged Nancy is mesmerizing. Unfortunately for Hayes, however, the sassy Vickers is the predomninant screen personality for the rest of the film. Writer Mark Hanna also co-wrote The Amazing Colossal Man.

Blob, The

A remarkable depth of character development and some earnest acting make The Blob not only enjoyable as a monster flick, but also quite respectable as a movie in its own right. From the poster you might expect only the typical b-movie in which a bunch of bumpkin schoolkids discover a monster. Ten minutes of staring into Steve McQueen's baby blues, however, will probably convince even those whose eschew scary movies to hang around.

McQueen (who was 28 when The Blob was made) plays the high school kid named Steve who brings an old man to the town doctor. The "old timer" (Olin Howlin, who was also in another classic giant monster movie, Them!) is the unfortunate first victim of a gelatinous mass that arrived on Earth inside a meteorite. The Blob "consumes flesh on contact, like an acid" and pretty soon it has eaten the old man, the doctor, and the attending nurse. Steve tries to convince the town police that there's a monster on the loose, but naturally the Blob has moved on by the time they arrive to investigate. The goofy theme song "Beware the Blob!" and images of movie-theater patrons fleeing before the enormous quantities of pink goo have become legendary in monster fandom.

A semi-sequel was made by Larry Hagman in 1972 (Beware! The Blob), and a gorier remake (which is actually well-regarded by some) was made in 1988.

Reviews: Attack of the 50 Foot DVD.

Earth vs. the Spider

The notorious B.I.G. (Bert I. Gordon) pumps out yet another "creature grown to giant size" movie. Not the best giant insect movie ever made (that honor would probably go to Them!, and yet not the worst either. Not to be confused with the 2001 film of the same name.

Giant From the Unknown

Archaeologists comb a small town in California, searching for the remains of a legendary conquistador from ancient times. They get more than they bargained for when it turns out that the conquistador is not only alive and well (suspended animation, natch), but also responsible for a string of recent livestock mutilations. Widely regarded as director Cunha's best film. Not that that's saying much.

Review: Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension.

War of the Colossal Beast

Sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man Glenn, now horribly scarred after his trip off the Hoover Dam, goes on another rampage. Whatever cure they may have found for Glenn's condition is conveniently forgotten for the sake of more crash-and-trash action. Shorter than the original but still padded with some footage lifted from the first film. Unless you really dug Colossal Man, don't bother with this even sadder sequel.

Review: Don's MST3K site

Attack of the Giant Leeches

Florida swamp country is invaded by overgrown leeches, who do away with a cast of country bumpkins. Of particular interest is Yvette Vickers, 1950s b-movie sexpot queen.

Giant Gila Monster, The

Come for the giant monster, stay for the swingin' tunes! A small New Mexico town is terrorized by a giant gila monster, whose existence goes completely unnoticed until it raids the local hoedown. (He was probably drawn by multiple performances of that treacly "Laugh Children Laugh" song our hero loves so much.) The tagline for this film was: "Only hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!" Apparently God's destructive vehicle of choice is a hotrod loaded with nitroglycerine.

Teenagers From Outer Space

At one famous point in Teenagers from Outer Space (well, famous to watchers of MST3K at any rate), one character tells another that "The high court may well sentence you to TORTURE!" Presumably that torture consists of watching movies like this one, in which simpering good-guy aliens cozy up to the local inhabitants of planets like Earth when what they should be doing is preparing those inhabitants for invasion, as their more law-abiding alien companions try to remind them. The whole point of the invasion is to colonize Earth as a farming planet for the aliens' main food source, the gargons (giant lobsters). Uh, guys? Isn't it a little dangerous to breed food animals that can eat you too?

The plot is pretty slow and the effects are bargain basement (witness the great alien plan to bury the spaceship underground, thus saving costs on flying saucer props), but it's one of the goofy greats that every genre film buff should see at least once.

Jason and the Argonauts

Ancient Greek hero Jason and his fellow sailors aboard the Argo encounter the 600-foot statue of Talos on the Island of Bronze. When the argonauts inadvertently steal some of the treasure Talos was created to guard, the statue comes to life and pursues our heroes. Another amazing movie created by Ray Harryhausen.

Mighty Gorga, The

Movies like Konga (1961) and A*P*E (1976) have proven that all you need to make a King Kong rip-off is a ratty gorilla suit and some bad models. But what if you only have half a gorilla suit? That’s the question The Mighty Gorga strives to answer.

Mark (Eisley) runs a circus under threat of foreclosure. To save his business he flies to Africa and recruits hunter Tonga Jack (Taylor) and his daughter April (Timothy) to help him capture Gorga, a giant gorilla worshipped by the native tribe.

Even in a sub-genre known for being cheap, The Mighty Gorga is very, very cheap. Gorga is only ever shown from the waist up, suggesting that the filmmakers didn’t have the bottom half of the costume, and the face has a frozen expression and bugged out eyes. As added bonuses The Mighty Gorga also features one of the least realistic dinosaurs in cinema history and an incredibly cheesy lost treasure.

Valley of Gwangi, The

It took nearly thirty years for The Valley of Gwangi to be made, and it's probably a better film for the wait. Although Willis O'Brien (the special effects pioneer best known for the classic King Kong) had the idea for a movie featuring cowboys and dinosaurs way back in 1942, the film wasn't actually produced until 1969. By then, the color film technology and stop-motion animation techniques so desperately needed to bring this wild fantasy to life were more easily accessible, thanks to special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen.

The plot is pretty simple: cowboys discover the Valley where dinosaurs still live and bring back an Allosaurus to use as a circus attraction. This, as you might guess, turns out to be a Very Bad Idea. James Franciscus spends the rest of the movie trying to pick up the pieces. A few pieces of anatomical inaccuracy may make dino-purists cringe (are those bat wings on that pteranadon?), but for most folks it's just good dinosaur fun.

Beware! The Blob

Tongue-in-cheek sequel to the original The Blob features the gelatinous monster's return from the Arctic wastes where it was left at the end of the last film. This installment was filmed by Larry "J.R." Hagman in high '70s style, by which we mean there is no joke too low-brow, no sight gag too cheap, and no potential victim too sacred for the Blob to consume. Before the movie is over our antagonist will have absorbed a kitten, a wheelchair-bound priest, and an entire bowling alley. Cameos by the likes Burgess Meredith and Cindy Williams should give you some idea of the low-end Hollywood clout Hagman had at the time. Hagman himself even appears briefly as a hobo.

Reviews: Stomp Tokyo

Night of the Lepus

Bunny injected with an experimental serum escapes into the desert and sires a population of giant killer rabbits. Fortunately, Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, and DeForrest "Bones" Kelley are around to save the day. Goofy pseudo-science tries to explain why rabbits would turn carniverous, and goofier special effects try to convince you that they're giant-sized. Based on the novel, Night of the Angry Rabbit. We swear.

Reviews: Cavalcade of Schlock, FoyWonder.

Flesh Gordon

When Emperor Wang (ruler of planet Porno) bathes the Earth in Sex Rays, Flesh Gordon and Dale Ardor must swing into action and save the day. Of course, "saving the day" means lots and lots of gratuitous nudity and more than a few naughty acts. If that's not your idea of entertainment, though, at least at the end you'll find the monstrous, stop-animated Nesuahyrrah (spell it backwards), with whom Dale recreates a famous scene or two from other, better movies. In case we have to tell you, this one's definitely not for kids.

Review: The Bad Movie Report

Giant Spider Invasion, The

The Skipper - er, Sheriff (Alan Hale Jr) and friends fend off, well, an invasion of giant spiders. Of course, they're only invading Wisconsin, so you can be forgiven for not caring all that much. An interesting wrinkle in the plot is that the spider eggs are apparently composed of diamonds, which causes the populace to behave a wee bit irrationally, even in the face of humongous, slavering death-monsters.

Food of the Gods, The

Goo bubbles out of the ground and causes the local wildlife and livestock to grow to huge size while the local humans try to figure out how to make money off the situation. Giant rats are the main aggressor, though in one memorable scene someone is attacked by a giant chicken.

Review: Stomp Tokyo

King Kong

Updated version of the classic giant ape movie falls short in too many ways to count. Sure, Jessica Lange is a hottie, and some of the Kong effects are breathtaking, but the script is a mess, the acting is all over the place, and there aren't even any freaking dinosaurs! Instead Kong fights a very immobile giant snake.

The plot sticks pretty close to the original, except that the film crew is now an oil prospecting expedition and our hero is a monkey-lovin' primate paleontologist (Jeff Bridges). When the prospecting crew turns up Kong instead of crude, their fearless leader (Charles Grodin) decides to make lemonade from lemons and shackles the goliath up for a trip back to Manhattan. The usual monkey business ensues.

Reviews: Stomp Tokyo.

Crater Lake Monster, The

A meteorite lands in a remote lake. Six months later a plesiosaur appears and devours anyone on or near the lake, until it is subdued by a local sheriff using a bulldozer. This low budget film has good stop-motion animation by Jim Dansforth, but you will have to sit though a lot of filler featuring embarrassing rural stereotypes to get to it.

Last Dinosaur, The

An Antarctic drilling company owned by billionaire/big game hunter Maston Thrust (Boone) finds a lost world inside an extinct volcano. Thrust arranges an expedition in to the volcano, but when the last living Tyrannosaur attacks everyone is stranded. Thrust becomes obsessed with killing the last dinosaur.

The dinosaurs in this laughable American/Japanese co-production were realized via suitmation, and they are only believable compared to the awful acting and dialogue. Incredibly, The Last Dinosaur was intended to be a theatrical movie, but someone realized it was a stinker and it became a network TV movie instead. It was released theatrically some places overseas, and a longer letterboxed print was available on Japanese laserdisc.

Q

Is it true New Yorkers never look up? Apparently so, because this movie would have us believe a giant winged reptile is nesting on the top of the Chrysler Building and killing people who spend too much time on rooftops. It sounds cheesy, and it is, but it's also fun and Michael Moriarty is great as a thief who tries to sell the beast's location to the cops.

Ghostbusters

Although the film mainly focused on paranormal critters of roughly human size, Ghostbusters did feature the unforgettable appearance of a 112-foot tall Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. The jolly sailor took a stroll in Manhattan's Central Park West and crushed the roof of a church before the Ghostbusters toasted him with their proton accelerators. Break out the graham crackers and chocolate bars.

King Kong Lives

It turns out that when King Kong fell in King Kong (1976) he was only mostly dead. For ten years he's lain in a coma, as scientists perfected an artificial heart at his scale. Unfortunately they need someone to give the big guy a blood donation. Luckily an explorer (Kermin) has found a female Kong in Borneo, and brought her back to the States. Will love bloom between these two apes?

Blob, The

In this remake of the classic The Blob (1958) the eponymous goo drops from space into the woods near a mountain town aboard a manmade satellite. The blob grows quickly and kills a variety of town people in various horrific ways. A new wrinkle is added to the plot when the U.S. military quarantines the town, allegedly to keep the blob from escaping – or is there a darker motive?

The Blob is a good updating of the original movie, with some good twists on what was a simple story. The special effects are good, and the way the blob is neutralized is clever. Be warned though, this movie was made when splatter movies were at the height of their popularity, so some of the deaths are very grotesque.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

This modern-day remake was played for laughs but should have been a lot funnier, especially coming from Christopher Guest, the creator of some extremely funny films like This is Spinal Tap and Best In Show. Unfortunately it takes itself just a smidge too seriously while dabbling in domestic-abuse parable and becomes dreadfully boring as a result. There's not enough giant monster action here to justify sitting through the scenes in which Darryl Hannah's character throws herself a pity party. Skip it and watch the original instead.

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

At some point these films were based on a Stephen King story, but that was a long time ago. Two orphans from Gatlin, Nebraska are adopted by an urban family, and then the fun begins. One of the kids is good, the other evil, and pretty soon there's corn and dead bodies all over the place. The climax occurs when the a huge monster that looks something like a rat pushed through a meat grinder sprouts out of the ground and starts eating people. Presumably this is "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," the deity worshipped by the Gatlin kids.

H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon

An anthology of three segments based on stories by H. P. Lovecraft. In "The Drowned" a man pines for his dead wife, and it's revealed that a giant monster, possibly Cthulhu itself, lives under his house. Ironically this segment was directed by Gans, and not Kaneko of Gamera, Guardian of the Universe fame.

Frostbiter

Was your chief complaint about Evil Dead that it didn't have enough snow? Then you might enjoy Frostbiter, a movie with no more ambition than to be an Evil Dead rip-off set on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some hunters break a mystic circle and release an evil force called Wendigo. The Wendigo starts killing people and possessing chili. No, really. The big bad turns out to be a giant centaur-like creature.

Zarkorr! The Invader

Zarkorr! The Invader is a film that reminds you of that old film adage: Before you start shooting your movie, perhaps it is best to write a script. Simply put, Zarkorr is a lousy giant monster movie. The acting is painful, the script was written to fit the existing monster footage, and the monster itself appears on screen far too infrequently.

Review: Stomp Tokyo.

Lost World: Jurassic Park, The

Steven Spielberg returns to direct the sequel to Jurassic Park, which improves on the original only in that it features a wider variety of dinosaurs. The plot is too complicated to recount here; suffice it to say that characters old and new return to the Jurassic Park facility -- this time, "Site B," where most of the actual science took place -- and find themselves hunted by dinosaurs yet again. More violence, more gore, dumber dialogue. At least we get a T-Rex loose in civilization and the obligatory Godzilla homage.

Gargantua

A FOX TV movie about a marine biologist who finds a family of giant bipedal salamanders living near a Pacific island. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie is that the main characters keep finding larger and larger salamanders, culminating in the adult male, which is about 60 feet tall. Beyond that, the movie skimps in every department, especially city destruction. When one of the monsters come ashore it doesn't so much knock down buildings as knock over marines with rocket launchers who accidently fire them as a result. There's also a cute little mini-salamander for the kiddies.

Godzilla

Godzilla is given the big budget treatment, courtesy of the guys who made Independence Day. An iguana is irradiated by radiation, then attacks New York City. Easily the best special effects of any Godzilla movie, shame about the script.

Kraa! The Sea Monster

Overgrown critter that looks something like The Gill Man (but not much) terrorizes Earth while the Planet Patrol struggles to overcome the evil space genius who set Kraa loose. (We are not making this up!) As inept as it is goofy.

Mighty Joe Young

Remake casts the story of Mighty Joe Young in a more modern, eco-friendly light, but it's best to ignore the script and enjoy the visuals: Charlize Theron, of course, but also the technically impressive Joe, who appears as a computer animated gorilla and also as real-life men in suits and the animatronic creations of Rick Baker. Sweet and competently made, but definitely a movie for kids.

Blood Surf

A camera crew in Australia to film a new extreme sport called blood surfing (basically, they surf with sharks) is stalked by a giant saltwater crocodile. The characters in this movie are even dumber and more annoying than usual for these films. As a matter of fact at one point some characters root for the croc to eat another character. The giant reptile is portrayed with decidedly old school methods, with a hand puppet doing heavy duty.

Crocodile

A giant crocodile stalks teens on spring break in Southern California. This may be the classiest of the recent giant reptile cycle, with passable acting and some good special effects. It is also stands out for not kiling the giant animal at the end.

Octopus

Look at that video cover. How could this movie possibly be so boring? Somehow it manages. An American sub transporting some kind of super-terrorist comes under attack by a giant octopus. Incredibly, there was a sequel.

Spiders

Spiders on a space shuttle flight are injected with alien DNA. The shuttle crashes and the infected spiders take over a secret government installation and grow to gigantic size. Obviously, this film isn't much more than Alien rip-off, complete with spiders bursting out of people's bodies. The end does pick up a bit though, with a 20 foot tall spider rampaging through town.

Beneath Loch Ness

Shot in California, this alleged thriller follows a group of scientists and documentary filmmakers (who never use cameras!) who are looking for the Loch Ness Monster. Or not. They seem pretty surprised when they find a monster in Loch Ness, and it's killing people. But maybe the monster in Loch Ness that is killing people isn't the Loch Ness Monster. Slow and poorly made, you probably won't care. The bottom line is that there's a plesiosaur and some sort of large mosasaur both living in the lake.

Dagon

Director Stuart Gordon (The Re-Animator) returns to Lovecraft territory after years away. A computer programmer and some friends get shipwrecked off the coast of Spain. They take refuge in a fishing village, only to find that the villagers years ago made a pact with an undersea god. This pact has given the villagers wealth and prosperity, and resulted in most of them being mutated into horrible monsters who sacrifice normal humans to their deity! A giant monster, presumably Dagon itself, makes an appearance for the climax. Dagon is probably the best Lovecraft-based movie in years.

Evolution

Small-town scientists (Duchovny, Jones) thwart an invasion by super-fast evolving alien organisms in this campy spoof. Reitman reportedly wanted to make Ghostbusters 3, but in light of the salary demands by some of the returning stars, he apparently opted to make this instead. The highlight for giant monster fans is a journey up the alien's, uh, Uranus.

Boa

A giant prehistoric snake has accidently been released from hibernation and is snaking on guards and prisoners at a new "escape proof" prison 12,000 feet beneath Antartica. Time to call Dean Cain, playing a professor of paleo-herpetology, to come in and save the day. Even as giant snake movies go this one is pretty silly, but it does have some pretty good special effects.

Octopus 2: River of Fear

We want to know who asked for this sequel. A giant octopus lurks in New York harbor, occasionally killing people while our cop/hero tries to convince everybody there really is a huge cephalopod. The best scene in the film is also the biggest cheat. On July 4th the octopus climbs up the Statue of Liberty, knocking the statue down. But it's actually a dream, and only serves to remind viewers of how cool this movie could have been.

Reign of Fire

Dragons are released from a mine near London and destroy most of humanity. Decades later a few British holdouts live in a castle, eking out a pitiful existence. they are visited by an American military unit, the leader of which thinks he has plan to kill off the dragons once and for all. Not the all-out action movie you might expect, but the few dragon scenes are reasonably exciting. It's a shame they didn't work on a more unique and memorable dragon design.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

A giant prehistoric shark eats people off the coast of Mexico. More or less a rip-off of Jaws 4: The Revenge, which is one of the last films anyone should be aping. The sixty foot long shark is most often created by compositing footage of a normal sized shark behind people in boats so to make the shark look huge. Bert I. Gordon would be proud.

Dragon Storm

Set sometime in during the Dark Ages, Dragon Storm is about dragons that fall to Earth in meteorites and start wiping out nearby towns. A cowardly, evil king (Rhys-Davies) is forced to ask for the help of a much nicer local king, and that nicer king appoints a huntsman (Caufield), his daughter (Boris), an alchemist, a Chinese guy, and a woman who happens to have her own a ballista to kill all the dragons. Typical low budget fare, but the animation of the dragons is above par.

Hulk

Like the comic book it's based on, Hulk is the story of scientist Bruce Banner (Bana), who is accidently irradiated by gamma rays and becomes a monster when he gets angry. But director Ang Lee took that premise and has made Hulk a dark drama about Bruce struggling with memories of his long lost father, who may be more responsible for Banner's transformations than would seem possible. Besides playing with the Hulk's origins, the biggest change Lee has made to the Hulk is that the monster gets larger as it gets more angry, reaching twenty feet tall during some scenes.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

The third and apparently final installment in Rodriguez' Spy Kids series is a crushing disappointment, with none of the subversive humor that made the first film (and, to a lesser extent, the second) so entertaining. It's a good thing, then, that there are giant gorilla robots roaming the landscape at the end of the movie to distract you from the treacly family messages and shoddy script. Perhaps the biggest monster of all, however, is Sylvester Stallone, who plays four separate parts in the film, as aspects of the main villain's psyche.

Boa vs. Python

At one point in Boa vs. Python a marine scientist played by Playboy Playmate Jamie Bergman yells, "I'm dying to know what kind of situation could possibly require the use of his boa and my implants!" This is the kind of movie where you're not sure if that was meant to be a joke.

Despite the title implying that this is crossover between the Dean Cain vehicle Boa (2002) and the Python series of films, the connections are not obvious. A rich big game hunter with his own computer generated 747 has bought a giant snake in Russia with the intent of releasing it on his property and having a bunch of rich guys help him hunt it. His plan goes awry when the snake escapes near Philadelphia, but the hunter just moves the hunt.

Meanwhile the CIA takes an interest and, apparently having turned the project over the Department of Wacky Plans, decides to have a marine biologist (Bergman) wire up a giant boa bred by a herpetologist (Helwett) for sound and picture and let it go in the same area as the python, apparently because the boa will naturally hunt the python down. Was there no giant mongoose available?

Dinocroc

Everybody likes dinosaurs, right? And people like crocodiles, right? How about both in one monster?

From producer Roger Corman comes this new cheapie. A bipedal "dinocroc" escapes from a genetic laboratory and wreaks havoc on a lakeside community. The cast is a little bit higher quality than the usual in this kind of movie, but the CGI is bad and you don't get much of a look at the monster until the very end. This movie even has "monster-vision" which is a cliche that's long overdue to be retired.

Frankenfish

When mangled bodies start showing up in a Louisiana swamp, coroner (Tory Kittles) investigates and finds giant Chinese snakehead fish are the culprit. A middling Jaws (1976) rip-off.

Incident at Loch Ness

Werner Herzog attemts to mount a serious expedition to Loch Ness while his Hollywood producer (Penn, playing himself) surrounds the unknowing director with actors trying to make things more interesting. Is the monster real, or not? When something attacks Herzog's boat what's true and what's not is up to the viewer.

A witty and fun mockumentary, and certainly the best movie ever made about Loch Ness.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

In the year 1939 giant robots attack cities all over the world. A mysterious madman named Totenkopf is behind the mayhem, and it’s up to mercenary pilot Joe Sullivan (a.k.a. Sky Captain) and reporter Polly Perkins to find the elusive Totenkopf and keep him from destroying the world.

Besides the giant robots, giant monster fans will probably be amused by the fact that the climax of the film takes place on Skull Island (home of King Kong), and there’s even a cameo by Godzilla.

King Kong

Peter Jackson's upcoming movie will be a period piece set in the 1930's, and will likely have many dinosaurs.

On April 1st of 2005 Peter Jackson announced that he was going to make Son of Kong and King Kong: Into the Wolf's Lair, back-to-back sequels to King Kong where Kong's son is taken to Europe and fights Nazis. He was kidding.