Saturday 28 April 2018

AtoZ2018 - Y is for ... #MovieMonsters #AtoZChallenge


Y is for ...

And we reach the penultimate day for the AtoZChallenge. I have three monsters for you today, but, please be warned, the last one is a huge, huge spoiler for the film Identity. So if you haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled, don't read the last entry :). I've done the old fashioned thing of putting in spoiler space so scroll down carefully to read the rest and head to the bottom to read the spoiler filled last monster.

Scariness Rating


The little skulls by their name are my scariness rating as to how monstrous and scary I think the creatures are when seen in their films.
  •  1 skull (not scary at all) - 5 skulls (very scary)
  •  and there is a special rating for a few - 5 red skulls (utterly terrifying)

Ymir (20 Million Miles to Earth)

So this is a little bit of a cheat because in the final release of 20 Million Miles to Earth, the beast is never named, but the original title of film was The Giant Ymir, so I think he counts.

This is another example of humans doing something stupid and wondering why destruction ensues - just like King Kong.

Ymir comes from Venus. He was brought back as unborn embryo in a tank on a human space craft, but it crashed and his pod was found by a young boy. A scientist then put him in a cage and expected everything to be okay.

Of course it wasn't as he grew and grew very quickly to a huge size.

He wasn't even very monstrous unless provoked, but of course, the humans in the film insist on provoking him and electrocuting him to knock him out. When the power fails he was bound to go on a rampage.

This is another Ray Harryhausen classic with a wonderful stop motion monster.

Yeti (Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon)

So for this one, think 'Alive' but in the Himalayas instead of the Andes and add in Yeti to make things even more dicey.

A plane carrying a college football team and their entourage crashes in the Himalayas, leaving the survivors with very little food and not a lot of shelter. Then comes the big white monster of a Yeti, who is a scavenger, but doesn't mind fresh meat either.

When the survivors disturb the Yeti in its cave it attacks them. Of course things only go downhill from there.

As you can see from the piccie, this is not a film with an immensely high budget, and it's not going to win any Oscars, but you have to give them points for trying :).

I'm going to add in my question and participants link here before my last entry at the bottom of the page, in case you don't want to scroll down.

Q: Have you seen Identity - did you enjoy it? If faced with a monster from Venus, what would you do?

AtoZ List of All Participants

SPOILER SPACE

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SPOILER SPACE

Timmy York (Identity)

So on to my huge spoiler :). If you haven't seen Identity, it is a fabulous film staring John Cusack.

Eleven strangers end up stuck in a motel in the middle of nowhere thanks to a storm and one of them is a killer. One by one they start to die, and with each body is a room key, counting down from 10 to 1.

Since I am already spoiling the most important point of the film, I shall spoil the rest as well. All eleven are actually personalities of a convicted murderer, Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and the motel is a mental reconstruction of where one of his personalities killed several people.

The killing off of the personalities is part of the process of stabilising Rivers and convincing a judge that the murderous personality is dead.

Unfortunately, while one of the personalities is that of a convicted felon, he's not the rage filled murderer. What is so brilliant about this monster is that Timmy is the one child personality, and he is the one with the murderous edge. It makes perfect sense as well, because Malcolm's mind fractured when he was a child so it's quite possible Timmy hold all the trauma from the event that caused it.

He never says a word through the whole film, not until the very end, and Bret Loehr does the most amazing job of conveying emotions with virtually no lines at all. Timmy hates with an unrivalled passion and it makes him the perfect monster which spills over into the real world.

10 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    A monster from Venus? Try to befriend it, of course. That's my go-to action in all situations! If it's not met wel, then back off and observe. Then try again. I'm stubborn that way! YAM xx

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  2. I've never seen any of these films, though obviously I'm familiar with the yeti. Identity looks really interesting.

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  3. I've only ever heard of the first one and I don't have it. Pity! There were two boxed sets of Ray Harryhausen films available at one time and I only bought the fantasy one. Rats!

    I think I'd just wait till the monster from Venus died from trying to breathe our air... ;-)

    Aussie Children's Writers: Y Is For Erica Yurken

    https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/a-to-z-blogging-challenge-2018-y-is-for.html

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  4. Identity actually sounds super creepy. And Ymir is the frost giant from Norse mythology so its interesting to see the name used for a lizard creature, even if it is a giant. As usual, you come with a really fascinating list. How do you do your research?

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  5. So I see Harryhausen and automatically think of the restaurant in Monsters Inc.

    Dena
    https://denapawling.blogspot.com/

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  6. I love the concept of the movie you had in the spoiler, I'll have to check it out!

    Song a Day
    Y is for Yggdrasil

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  7. I've never consciously seen any of these films, although I've been a Ray Harryhausen fan since the early days - well almost.

    Ymir is also the frost giant lord and war & storms in the game Conan Exiles that I did for C.

    My Y: https://rolandclarke.com/2018/04/28/y-is-for-ys/

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  8. I've never heard of Identity before, but it does look intriguing, even if I have read the spoilers!

    You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift

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  9. Wowzers, Identity sounds freaky! Haven't seen any of these, but that's probably just as well.

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  10. Identity sounds like an awesome movie! Can't wait to watch it :-)

    Ronel from Ronel the Mythmaker A-Z road-tripping with Everything Writerly: Y is for Y-not

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