50 Fun Facts About Monster Movie

The 1933 King Kong brought its giant ape to life with what technique?

Willis O'Brien's models were combined with live actors via rear-screen projection; Fay Wray recorded all her screams in one session.

Which New York landmark does Kong climb in the 1933 film's finale?

The building had opened only two years earlier; the 1976 remake moved the climb to the World Trade Center.

Which actress played Ann Darrow, the woman offered to Kong, in 1933?

The film's novelisation accidentally fell into the public domain, so the characters and story are free to use even though the film isn't until 2029.

Before settling on a dinosaur-like creature, effects director Eiji Tsuburaya proposed Godzilla be a giant what?

The 1954 film pioneered 'suitmation', with Haruo Nakajima in the suit stomping through miniature sets.

Which American actor was spliced into the 1956 US re-edit, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!?

Body doubles and trick editing made it look as if the future Perry Mason had been in Tokyo all along, while the anti-nuclear themes were toned down.

Who directed the original 1954 Godzilla?

Guinness recognises the franchise it launched as the longest-running film series in history.

Godzilla Minus One, made for a reported $10 million, won which Academy Award in 2024?

It was the first Godzilla film ever nominated for an Oscar; the visual effects team took eight months on the shots.

Japanese cinema's giant monsters are known collectively by what term?

Tokusatsu is the effects-driven genre they star in; Mothra, who hatches from an egg and spins a cocoon, is one of the few heroic ones.

Which giant moth-like kaiju is accompanied by twin miniature fairies who speak for her?

She debuted in a 1961 novella and film and later joined the Legendary Monsterverse in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Which actor played the Monster in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein?

Jack Pierce created the flat-head-and-bolts make-up; Colin Clive played the scientist Henry Frankenstein.

Which make-up artist designed the look of Frankenstein's Monster for Universal in 1931?

The film was adapted from a 1927 stage play by Peggy Webling rather than directly from Mary Shelley's novel.

In Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Elsa Lanchester plays the Bride and which other role?

The film opens with Shelley telling Byron and Percy Shelley what happened next; Ernest Thesiger's Dr. Pretorius does the blackmailing.

Who played the title role in Universal's 1941 The Wolf Man?

He reprised the part in four sequels, starting with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943; Werewolf of London had come out six years earlier.

Which two Universal Monsters were original creations rather than adapted from novels?

The series ran from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913 to The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956, with Abbott and Costello crossovers along the way.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is discovered by scientists in which river system?

The Gill-man was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning underwater, and the film was shot in polarised 3D.

Them! (1954), the first 'big bug' movie, finds giant irradiated ants in which state's desert?

The final battle takes place in the storm drains of Los Angeles, and the film earned an Oscar nomination for its effects.

Which future superstar had his first leading role in The Blob (1958)?

The amoeboid alien arrives in a meteorite near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and grows redder and bigger the more people it eats.

Which stop-motion master animated the Rhedosaurus in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)?

The dinosaur is thawed by an Arctic atomic test, a plot the following year's Godzilla echoed; the film was based on a Ray Bradbury story.

The animator of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms called his trademark stop-motion process what?

He learned under Willis O'Brien of King Kong and went on to Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, retiring after 1981.

The Jaws crew nicknamed the mechanical sharks 'Bruce' after whom?

Bruce Ramer was the attorney; the sharks broke down so often that Spielberg mostly implied the fish with John Williams' two-note theme.

Jaws (1975) was mostly shot on location on which Massachusetts island?

It was the first major film shot on the open ocean, which is why it ran wildly over budget and schedule.

Which film ended Jaws's two-year run as the highest-grossing movie in history?

Between them the two films invented the summer blockbuster: wide release, heavy TV advertising and simple high-concept premises.

Which Swiss artist designed the creature in Alien (1979)?

The chestburster's look was inspired by a Francis Bacon painting, and Nigerian design student Bolaji Badejo wore the adult suit.

What did the Alien cast not know before filming the chestburster scene with John Hurt?

They'd seen the puppet, but not the high-pressure pumps and squibs; their horrified reactions are real.

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) is set at a research station on which continent?

The shape-shifting alien came from John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, previously filmed in 1951 as The Thing from Another World.

Which effects artist made The Thing's creatures, spending $1.5 million of the $15 million budget?

The film flopped against E.T., which opened two weeks earlier with a much cuddlier alien, and was only later hailed as a classic.

Who won the first-ever Best Makeup Oscar, for An American Werewolf in London (1981)?

John Landis had written the script in 1969 and shelved it because backers thought it too scary for a comedy and too funny for a horror.

Which of these is NOT one of the three rules for keeping a mogwai in Gremlins?

Stripe and friends sabotage Billy's bedside clock to trick him into a post-midnight snack, and Kingston Falls pays for it on Christmas Eve.

Complaints about violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom led the MPAA to create which rating in 1984?

Steven Spielberg, executive producer of Gremlins, suggested the change himself and it arrived within two months of the film's release.

Who provided the voice of Gizmo the mogwai?

The word 'gremlin' comes from RAF folklore about mischievous creatures blamed for aircraft malfunctions in the Second World War.

What are the giant subterranean worms in Tremors (1990) called?

The film is set in Perfection, Nevada, and unusually stages most of its monster action in broad daylight; Reba McEntire made her acting debut in it.

Which actor plays handyman Val McKee in Tremors?

The film debuted in fifth place at the box office and only became a cult favourite through video rentals.

David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) gave popular culture which tagline?

Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis won the Oscar for the make-up that slowly turns Jeff Goldblum into Brundlefly.

Cloverfield's untitled teaser trailer was first shown before which 2007 blockbuster?

The title was revealed in a second teaser attached to Beowulf, after months of online speculation about the monster called Clover.

Which landmark's severed head lands in a Manhattan street in Cloverfield?

Producer J. J. Abrams conceived the found-footage monster movie; it made $172 million on a $25 million budget.

Bong Joon Ho's The Host (2006) features a monster spawned by chemicals dumped into which waterway?

It was inspired by a real 2000 incident in which a US base employee ordered formaldehyde poured down a drain; Wētā Workshop modelled the creature.

In Pacific Rim (2013), what are the giant human-piloted robots that fight the Kaiju called?

Two pilots share the mental load through 'the Drift'; the film made $136 million in China alone, more than in the US.

Who directed Pacific Rim?

It became his most commercially successful film and is an open love letter to kaiju, mecha and anime.

The creatures in A Quiet Place (2018) hunt using which sense?

The blind aliens made near-silence the film's gimmick; John Krasinski cast a deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds, as the daughter.

The Meg (2018) pits Jason Statham against a 75-foot example of which prehistoric shark?

Disney bought the rights to Steve Alten's novel in the 1990s and the film then spent two decades in development hell.

According to genre convention, which of these is a classic origin for a movie monster?

Radiation, destroyed habitat, outer space and a prison it escaped from are the other stock explanations.

Which town does the great white terrorise in Jaws?

Roy Scheider's Chief Brody, Richard Dreyfuss's Hooper and Robert Shaw's Quint go after the shark; Murray Hamilton's mayor wants the beaches open.

Which 2016 hit led to a Legendary contract that barred Toho from live-action kaiju films until 2020?

The wait gave Takashi Yamazaki three years to write Minus One, set in postwar Japan with a former kamikaze pilot as its hero.

Who played Count Dracula in Universal's 1931 film, having already played the role on Broadway?

Universal first wanted Conrad Veidt, then Lon Chaney, before settling on the Hungarian stage star whose accent defined the vampire for generations.

An excerpt from which Tchaikovsky ballet plays over the opening credits of the 1931 Dracula?

No original score was composed for the film because of cost, and the same excerpt was reused for The Mummy a year later.

Who starred as Conde Drácula in the Spanish-language version shot at night on the 1931 film's sets?

George Melford directed the Spanish version after Tod Browning wrapped each day; a good print was finally found in Cuba in the early 1990s.

Who directed The Mummy (1932), his first US film as director after shooting Dracula as cinematographer?

Freund named Karloff's lost love Anck-es-en-Amon after Tutankhamun's only wife, whose body was missing from the pharaoh's tomb.

Which alias does Karloff's resurrected Imhotep adopt in modern Egypt in The Mummy (1932)?

Make-up artist Jack Pierce studied photos of Seti I's mummy to design the character; the film was shot in about three weeks for $196,000.

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) was inspired by which classic Universal film?

Set in 1962 Baltimore, it became only the second fantasy film to win Best Picture, after The Return of the King.

Which actor, a long-time del Toro collaborator, played the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water?

He had already played creatures in Mimic, Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, including a different amphibian man in the Hellboy films.