io9
Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. Back in the 1950s, it seemed like every monster was created by radiation: giant ants, a giant tarantula, and even a giant dinosauroid thing called Gojira. But ever since the 1970s, an even scarier byproduct of human invention has been creating gloopy crawlies: pollution. These aren't your friendly Toxic Avenger "fall into a vat of waste" types though. These are the real deal, created by environmental pollutants and industrial waste dumped into the natural world. Read on if you want to take a look at movie mutants who were made by our environmentally-degraded world . . .
No list of pollution mutants could begin without first paying homage to Hedorah, AKA The Smog Monster (1971). He lands on top of Tokyo's smokestacks and sucks the smoke out to grow bigger, and meaner, and more red-eyed. He literally shits all over the city, big slimy rivers of diarrhea. But he also does nice things, like use his grody powers to prevent us from having to hear one more folk song from a bunch of psychedelically-dressed hippies playing guitar in the middle of a field. Eventually Gojira kills him by grabbing a couple of weird glowing white balls from inside his stinky body. There are also a lot of messages "from the children" in this movie, which was allegedly inspired by letters from Japanese children saying the scariest thing they could imagine was pollution.
One of the greatest filmmakers at work in the U.S. today, John Sayles (director of Lone Star), got his start writing cheesily great pollution monster flick Alligator (1980). The fact that this movie is both funny and politically-minded is entirely due to the accident of Sayles needing some money to fund his indie movies. A pet alligator flushed and released into the sewers of Chicago starts slurping up growth hormones that people are pissing and pooping out into his home. Then he grows into a ginormous, mutant alligator who eats pets . . . and people!
A terrific and fairly obscure entry in the pollution mutant genre is Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973), directed and written by outlaw filmmaker Fredric Hobbs. "Gaseous vapors from an ancient mine" have turned a gentle sheep into a guy dressed in a fucked-up sheep suit, but that hardly matters in this strange sendup of life in a small Western town. As the town's racist mayor tries to prevent a nice black guy from buying real estate in his town of apple-cheeked whiteys, the mutant sheep rampages and tries to make it with a hippie chick. Eventually, there is some serious racist violence that takes the film from happy mutant romp into more sinister territory. Like Alligator, this is good political satire masquerading as a cheesy monster movie, and it will please you by succeeding at being both smart and gooftastic.
The best kind of pollution mutant is a rampaging, pissed-off animal, and that's why Prophecy (1979) is such a terrific flick. Bears who have been eating mercury-saturated fish in the rivers near an industrial factory have turned into massive, yucky bears who basically look like they have been turned inside-out. Rampaging and eating of humans follows, and some of the special effects are actually pretty cool. Directed by John Frankenheimer, who helmed the original (and great) Manchurian Candidate (1962), as well as a whole bunch of pretty good horror/actioners, this flick never spawned the billion cheesy sequels. Instead a supernatural movie with Christopher Walken called THE Prophecy got a bunch of awful sequels instead. That's what you get if you keep dumping mercury in the water, kids: bad sequels from a movie with the same name. It's Mother Earth's way of punishing you.
And no list of this sort would be complete without our generation's return to the pollution beastie: The Host (2007), a terrific scifi-horror-comedy about a giant thing (carp? whale? eel? combo platter?) that comes out of the waters near Seoul after a lameass military dude from the U.S. orders his underling to dump a zillion tons of old formaldehyde in the water. Bad move. Now a very angry combo platter is eating people and looking very much like the coolest special effect ever. When the mutant kidnaps the youngest girl in a family of quirky outcasts, they go on the offensive, tracking down the beastie in its lair to get their little girl back. This is the best mutant monster movie to come out in years, and like many entries in the genre it's well-written and has a social message that anybody who hates pollution can get down with. 
Comments
All hail The Host, read that they're making a prequel. Isn't Cloverfield a pollution monster as well?
@Ghost Particle:
Not known.
I dug Prophecy- seeing a mutant bear knock a guys head CLEAN OFF at a Drive In theater was quite amusing.
Now if only HORRORHEAD was it's own site. And we need a Fantasy one, too.
@Ghost Particle: Based on what the filmmakers said, Cloverfield was a really ancient monster who had just come out of the water. So probably not pollution -- though pollution might have pulled him out of the water I guess.
According to the Gamera reboot, Gamera & Iris are left-over bioweapons, and Gaos are pollution-spawned. I think it was in G v. Iris where a submarine found a Gamera dumping ground: rows of giant turtle shells, reminiscent of the airplane graveyard in AZ.
@Plague: If you want a lot of good horror coverage, I recommend [www.bloody-disgusting.com] I LOVE that site.
I know they come from the pre-pollution monster days of the radioactive 50s, but the giant ants from "Them!" are the scariest giant monsters I've ever seen. That weird high-pitched noise they made? Still freaks me out. I went into a grocery store once, and the AC unit was making that noise.
I fled.
@zeppelined: When I was a kid, I saw Tarantula, which was another atomic giant monster movie. Holy crap it scared the pulp out of me. I think it was the giant pool of venom it would leave behind.
@Annalee Newitz: true too. Im still in the dark on what the Tarugato company deal is with the viral story, is it pollution or...what and what. Is it simply a satellite falling into the sea waking the thing up? The more u think about the movie, the more it sucks and the more I think The Host is one of the best monster movies of all time.
I honestly don't know what people see in The Host. It's terrible. It's badly written, the motivating plot points are all contrived, and worst of all, the pacing completely sucks. The first two points would be forgivable if it was actually supposed to be a comedy, but I'm pretty sure it's not.
What am I missing here that makes The Host so good to people? Is there some overarching political message that I don't understand because I'm not from Korea? Is there a subtext that I didn't see because I mistakenly thought it to be a monster movie?
I'd honestly like to know, because right now it's rating out better than Oldboy, which I feel to be one of the greatest Korean films ever made.
Prophecy is such a bad movie. I think you are a little harsh on The Prophecy, yes sequals are god awful but I enjoyed that movie and Viggo Mortensen plays Lucifer perfectly.
@Metropolis: Yeah, I had forgotten about Viggo! I should rewatch.
@Plague: I would have to say that the best part in Prophecy was the "stuck in my sleeping bag" scene.
Hop,hop.
Giant bear paw swings.
*Poof* Feathers everywhere.
Thanks Metropolis. I couldn't agree more. I remember seeing Prophecy as a kid and enjoying the mutant bears. Saying its better than a movie that casts Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortenson as angels is completely insane though.
"Japanese children saying the scariest thing they could imagine was pollution"
That's amazing - had these children somehow never been exposed to their nations popular culture, or were things different back then?
I mean, it seems like being raped to death by some sort of extradimensional horror/demon/government scientist/robot would be worse than pollution, and that's just the anime/manga you can get in the US...
-Kle.
@Plague: I second Plague's request. Horror and Fantasy blogs for all.
@artistentropy: Viggo's role alone should push Procphecy off a 'bad' list. Let alone Adam Goldberg's comedic romp as a corpse/zombie. And throw in Eric Stoltz, Elias Koteas, and Virginia Madsen, and you've got very good sci-fi groundwork.
Also, Host rocks. So much fun. And female archers are hot. Or something.
Time for an Amazon movie! [only we'd have to tape down a breast to make it look like they cut it off, damn]
@Annalee Newitz:
I find BloodyDisgusting to be rather fanboy in its approach, unlike the (mostly) intelligent discussions we have on here.
Also, it only covers film. Too limited in scope for my constant craving for useless information.
But, just to throw them out there- movies sites I visit: CHUD, Cinematical, Dark Horizons, Movie Morlocks, Twitch.
That pretty much covers every freakin' genre.
@Plague: Yeah, it's true they only do movies and they're fanboyish, but I still ogle the site all the time. CHUD is also teh awesome.
I am instantly struck by how much the cover for Prophecy looks like the cover for Alien.
@aspiringexpatriate: We don't really have to. There's a lot of debate as to whether the "A" in "Amazon" is a negatory or an augmentive syllable. So, maybe "Amazon" means "no-breasted," but, hey, it could also mean "large-breasted." Wooo.
Female archers are hot.
@Bellatrixie:
Both 79, so who came first?
Hedorah scared the poop out of me as a kid.
Don't forget, it was only the second Godzilla movie to show mass civilian casualties (hedorah spews sulferic acid mist that dissolves people, fairly gruesom).
But, he spares a kitten early on.
Weirdest Godzilla movie ever.
One could make the argument that (Jack Nicholson's) Joker is (the/one of the best) pollution-spawned monster...
@CyberKender: But he's more like Darkman or Toxic Avenger or any other hero/villain created when somebody falls into a toxic vat. He's not created by pollution in the environment. I realize it's a kind of hair-splitting distinction, but there you go.
@Klebert: If you are thinking of Overfiend (and I think you are!) you have to remember that The Smog Monster was 1971 -- a couple of decades before the Overfiend was sending his atomic bomb sperm flying over Tokyo.
Come to think of it, I do need to see if I can find the "Save The Earth" song from Godzilla vs The Smog Monster. It's priceless.
How did you write this entire article without going "the power is yours!" at least once?
@Jonn: No, the real question is how did I write this whole post without showing you guys a picture of my Hedorah action figure? Yes, I have one! With bendy arms!
@acceptablerisk: Im not from korea either but if ur a SF fan...then the feeling of seeing an SF movie is universal. Asian movies always have soul, just like Oldboy, the host hit all the right notes.
Hedorah would win in a fight hands down.
@annalee:
Well, sure - but not just Overfiend... Maybe the Anime/Manga world was a lot milder when I was 5.
-Kle.
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