[dark music]
I like supernatural,
I like monsters...
[suspenseful music]
"Alien" was the first movie
that I legitimately thougt
I had a disease afterward.
- [screams]
- [screams]
[moaning]
John Carpenter's "The Thing"
is the greatest monster movie
ever made.
[snarls]
The world of "A Quiet Place"
felt very real.
Even an audience member,
what you're drawn in with
is that you can't make
a sound.
♪♪
[roars]
I don't think of King Kong
as a monster
because you love him.
The real monsters are
those bastards sh**ting him.
[roars]
It's a complete metaphor
for the tribulations
of the black male
in American white society.
[laughing]
Monsters are a different
thing to different people.
[breathing heavily]
Some people are afraid
of that huge ugly monster,
and some people are afraid
of the existential monster.
- [laughs]
- [screams]
But if you can't k*ll it,
well, there's no real story.
[roars]
- [screeches]
- Oh!
[roars]
♪♪
[screams]
[scary music]
♪♪
[screaming]
♪♪
narrator: Horror is a big tent
with room for a circus
full of attractions.
Aah!
[g*nsh*t]
narrator:
Outrageous slashers...
Apocalyptic comedies...
[roaring and g*nshots]
Cringe inducing body horror...
♪♪
[roars]
narrator: But many of us
first came to the genre
for the monsters.
Aah!
[kids screaming]
When you're a kid,
you want monsters,
and the more monsters
the better,
and if they've got zippers
up their back,
that doesn't matter
as long as they're...
as long as they're monsters.
[roaring]
Later you get
a little bit more discerning,
and you start to realize maybe
the less you see the monster,
the scarier he might be.
narrator: There may be
no better example
of the power of
slowly revealing a monster
than Ridley Scott's "Alien."
[dramatic music]
"Alien" was the first movie
I saw
that I legitimately thought
I had a disease afterwards.
It made me so incredibly
anxious and uncomfortable.
[hissing]
It was all about the mouth
inside the mouth.
That shiny slick chrome dome
with the mouth that comes out.
Krikik!
Chhhk!
Pfft!
Ugh.
Get out of the room!
narrator: "Alien" grew out
of a film called "Dark Star"
made by two promising
USC film students,
John Carpenter
and Dan O'Bannon.
O'Bannon took
his comedic premise,
bedraggled astronauts
doing battle with a monster
in a beaten up spaceship,
and turned it into one of
the scariest screenplays
of all time.
[screeching]
narrator:
"Alien" tells the story
of a commercial starship crew
diverted from their mission
by a mysterious order
from their employers
known only as The Company.
Seems she has intercepted a
transmission of unknown origin.
She got us up to check it out.
A transmission?
Out here?
Yeah.
narrator: The film's main
characters
are beleaguered
Captain Dallas,
no nonsense Warrant Officer
Ripley,
and Ash, the science officer
with a hidden agenda.
They come upon these eggs
on a planet,
and while exploring,
one of them is infected.
[screaming]
The creature,
which would come to be known
as a facehugger,
you know, has attached itself
to his face,
nobody knows what's going on,
and then of course,
all hell breaks loose.
[high pitched tone]
- Good God.
[sizzling]
The crap's gonna eat through
the hull.
The performances
in that movie are phenomenal.
I mean, the famous
chestburster scene,
it is... I think the reason
it's so potent
is because of the lead up to it
feels so natural,
making it feel so familiar
to you.
The food ain't that bad, man.
[laughs]
You've been in a restaurant,
you've been in a diner,
you've seen somebody,
maybe someone started choking,
or someone has a heart att*ck.
That panic, it taps into that,
and then it takes it into,
"What if a thing burst out
of the..."
[laughs]
- [screams]
- [screams]
It takes it to
this other level,
which is, um, so brilliant.
- [screeches]
- Aah!
Oh!
[moans]
Oh, God!
It's obviously this kind
of perverse
gender reversed
birth scene, right?
[squeals]
♪♪
narrator: The crew learns
the hard way that,
an insect,
the monster undergoes
a dramatic metamorphosis,
and to their bosses,
it's a valuable commodity.
[screaming]
They have no way
of understanding
what they're up against.
The corporation is hiding it
from them.
The only person on the crew
who understands
is the... the robot,
the AI guy, you know,
whose lying the whole time.
The company views
its employees
as expendable, but...
the creature,
which is not even a person
or being of any kind,
is more valuable
than the people
that they have employed.
There is an explanation
for this, you know?
[mutters]
narrator: "Alien's" dark view
of labor relations
was a challenge
to the status quo,
as was the film's disturbing
production design
which powerfully associated
sex with death.
H.R. Giger's
biomechanical designs
played on the audience's
deepest sexual anxieties.
There's this Freudian
term "Overdetermination."
An object in a dream
may have , ,
, different meanings.
"Alien" is probably
the... the greatest example
of a movie
that's overdetermined
in every possible direction,
because you have
this space ship
that is basically shaped like
the lower half
of a woman's body
with this vast vaginal
opening in it,
and inside this vaginal
opeing are these eggs
that pop open and reveal
these marauding penises
that impregnate people
through their mouths
and make them burst open
and give birth to further
marauding penises.
This is the essence
of overdetermination.
There's...
How do you pick this apart?
narrator:
The film's sexual politics,
subversive for its time,
are embodied in the figure
of Ripley,
played by "Alien's" breakout
star, Sigourney Weaver.
"Alien," ,
had a female hero.
An unexpected female hero.
- Who gets to go into the vent?
- I do.
No.
Ridley Scott sets up
the movie
where Dallas is the hero
until Dallas is k*lled.
Wait, the other way!
[beeping]
[static]
- Dallas?
So that movie
completely flips
in a way most movies couldn't
even have imagined back then.
Ripley becomes the iconic hero.
[fan thumping]
narrator: By the end,
only Ripley is able to escape
the doomed spaceship.
[expl*si*n]
But the greatest test of
her heroism is yet to come.
I think it is one of
the most terrifying scenes
in any movie
is that last part of "Alien."
♪♪
When she's alone
in the... in the escape pod,
she's gonna go to sleep,
it's gonna be fine,
and then she realizes
the alien's in there,
and that it's in the wall.
Aah!
It's like getting in your car
and realizing there's
a big python in the backseat,
and you turn around,
and the thing just starts
to kinda uncoil,
and at some point,
it's gonna realize
I'm in... in the car with it.
[laughs]
And this
is not gonna be good.
What do I do?
[heavy breathing]
You know, it's just one
of those wonderful, like,
so well-conceived moments
of horrific suspense.
[screams]
And what a beautifully
paced film.
It was so slow
and patient and quiet
and still,
and uh, always that...
that trembling horror
beneath the surface.
♪♪
narrator: One alien
trapped on one spaceship
is frightening enough...
But what if
a horde of alien monsters
overran Earth?
[humming]
[zapping]
[screams]
narrator: Monsters from outer
space invading planet Earth.
[roars]
narrator: They've been
a staple of horror movies
since the s.
[screaming]
narrator: And just when you
think it's all been done...
someone comes along
and breathes new life
into the genre.
narrator:
Someone like John Krasinski
with his wildly
successful film,
"A Quiet Place."
[screaming]
The plot of "A Quiet Place"
is that a new
invasive predatory species
has att*cked the human race.
[uneasy violin music]
[growls]
And these new creatures
hunt us
and have exterminated,
probably most of us
and they have done it
through sound.
[tense music]
♪♪
So the only way humans
are going to survive
is if they stay quiet,
and we follow a family
which is trying to survive
on the fringes of the planet,
trying to carve out
an existence in a farmhouse
in a world where
we are no longer
the top of the food chain.
[beeping tune]
[snarls]
You're immediately thrown
into this world
where you got John Krasinski,
Emily Blunt, and their family
who are just...
They've got a ritual now.
Like, they have a ritual
to their day to day life,
and I think the movie
does it so brilliantly
showing you they only
have to step on
these parts of the road,
they can't step on that.
♪♪
It's such an immersive film,
that what...
even as an audience member,
what you're drawn in with is
that you can't make a sound.
[tense music]
[grunts]
Even the people
eating popcorn next to you
are making you jump.
♪♪
What I admire so much
about "A Quiet Place"
is that everything that happens
and the whole... the whole setup
of the movie is... is organic.
[screeches]
The idea of sound
being the enemy really.
So having a deaf character
in the movie is genius
because conflict
is immediately established.
[no sound]
narrator:
For much of the film,
the monsters
are only seen at a distance.
[roar]
narrator: They're mysterious
and unstoppable.
♪♪
[snarling and roaring]
When you can't see
them clearly,
your imagination goes to work.
What must they be like?
How revolting are they?
[snarling]
"A Quiet Place" creature,
at the end of the day,
was an extremely fast,
you know,
a blur of...
of just limbs going by.
So we looked at all sorts
of creature forms,
proportions, to try and find
the right one for John.
I saw those elements
that he happened to like,
these long attenuated
front legs
and kinda like that hyena
low squat with the hind legs.
[snarls]
narrator: To survive,
the film's heroes
have to find
the monsters' hidden weakness.
There needs to be
an Achilles' heel.
If you can't k*ll it, then
well, there's no real story.
The Achilles' heel
of this creature
was the fact that it was
a giant ear.
[loud ticking]
[timer ticking]
[rings]
[snarls]
Having this Achilles' heel
allowed there to be a way
to have a narrative arc
that we have this discovery,
and we have a w*apon now
to hopefully take them down.
[feedback tones]
[snarls]
And there's such
an emotional charge at the end
when Emily Blunt
and her daughter
discover how to take
these things out.
I saw the movie
at South by Southwest
and when she cocks
that shotgun,
the entire audience
lost their minds
because what Krasinski
did so well
is just take you on
a very strong emotional journey
and made it a great
creature feature as well.
narrator: "A Quiet Place" had
a message about humanity
that is now more relevant
than ever.
What will save us in the end
from destroying ourselves
is our ability to adapt.
Most species cannot do that.
We can adapt to a new paradigm
especially when survival
is on the line.
[snarls]
narrator: The aliens
in "A Quiet Place"
were forces
of unstoppable evil.
But one of the most famous
monsters of all time
is neither good nor evil...
he's simply Kong.
[roars]
He was a king
in the world he knew,
but he comes to you now
a c*ptive.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I give you, Kong,
the eighth wonder of the world!
[roars]
[screams]
narrator: From his star making
first appearance in ...
To his latest incarnation
as an enormous
hairy superhero...
[roars]
King Kong has captured
the imagination
of every monster lover.
[crowd screaming]
What explains
his enduring appeal,
and why, despite
its dated special effects,
is the original "King Kong"
still considered one of
the greatest monster movies
of all time?
The original Kong is...
it's the Beatles.
You know?
It's Elvis Presley, it's...
This is what this is.
This is the best version
of this thing.
narrator: The story is simple.
A movie producer takes
a film crew
to an uncharted
tropical island
and discovers
the ultimate special effect.
[suspenseful music]
[screaming]
The towering
ape-like monster
the natives call Kong.
[roars]
We came here
to get a moving picture,
and we found something
worth more
than all the movies
in the world.
narrator: He captures Kong
and takes him to New York
intending to exploit him
for profit.
Kong escapes but is undone
by his affection
for a dazzling starlet.
In the early s, no one had
ever seen anything like it.
"King Kong" was a smash.
Even though
it was made in ,
the effects,
the stop-motion animation
of the King Kong character
by Willis O'Brien is just
really incredibly entertaining.
You know,
he fights a giant snake.
He fights an Allosaurus.
He fights pterodactyl.
There's all kinds
of great sh*ts
of people being crushed
by King Kong's foot.
He's eating people.
Aah!
He's destroying things.
So it's really a movie
that really delivered.
There was something dark
about it.
The black and white
just makes it otherworldly,
and it's the weird sexual edge
of it
with Kong and,
you know, Ann Darrow.
None of the other movies
ever came near it.
[screaming]
When you look at
the white woman in peril,
which was such a big deal
back in the era
when "King Kong" was made,
this idea black male energy
as a menace
and as a menace specifically
to white women,
and "King Kong,"
it seems kind of obvious that
there are racial undercurrents.
[screams]
♪♪
[crowd screaming]
It's complete metaphor
for the tribulations
of the black male
in American white society.
[speaking German]
Ah!
[laughs]
I know a lot of people
watched "Inglourious Basterds"
and after that card game,
people went back,
and they rewatched the film
in a way
that they never had before.
I'm sure there's quite
a few subtextual writers
who've written about it
before "Basterds."
I'm not saying that you were
the first one
to write about it.
- Yeah, yeah.
But you were the first one to
put in a pop culture movie...
- Put it in a pop culture...
- That has nothing to do
with King Kg
or subtextual sl*very.
Yeah, yeah.
You're just watching
this w*r movie,
and suddenly you get
this nugget of information
that really stuck with
a lot of people.
[horrific musicalsting]
narrator: Kong of
was created
using stop-motion animation.
Small figurines
were fabricated, posed,
and photographed one frame
at a time,
by cinematic pioneer
Willis O'Brien.
The true auteur
of "King Kong"
is Willis O'Brien.
Because if you look at
the original posters
of "King Kong,"
Kong is far more a monster
and like, he has teeth,
that like...
almost like
a saber-toothed tiger.
- Yeah, canine teeth, yeah.
- The canine, rrr!
Willis got rid of all
of the monstrous touches,
and the whole idea
was to make him
as human as possible,
and so we respond to Kong,
not as monster,
but as a true character.
That is why
that movie not... not just
a movie about a giant monkey.
It's a character that has
survived since the ' s
as a pop cultural icon.
[roaring]
[screaming]
narrator:
"King Kong" was so iconic
that no one dared
to remake it
until maverick producer
Dino De Laurentiis
mounted a production
in the mid- s.
[dark music]
My relationship
with King Kong is...
started really with...
with the ' s "King Kong"
with Jeff Bridges
and Jessica Lange.
That was amazing to me
as a kid.
"King Kong" is mostly played
by Rick Baker
who is an incredible makeup
artist.
One of the great guys
and built this incredible
ape suit
and really played
the character of Kong.
He wore the mask, and
of course, the eyes wre his
with contact lenses, and
I think that was really key.
You know, everything else,
the facial movements,
all of that was done
via animatronics.
[crowd screaming]
narrator: In ,
director Peter Jackson
released a lavish remake
of "King Kong"
using photorealistic
digital effects.
[growling]
I had the time of my life
working on
Peter Jackson's "King Kong."
[grand music]
It was his, like, love letter
to this old masterpiece.
narrator: Jackson's Kong
was in a way
played by another man
in a suit...
a motion capture suit worn
by actor Andy Serkis.
Serkis's performance
was painted over by a computer
then placed
in digital environments.
The technology had changed,
but the story followed
the same tragic arc.
[roars]
[dramatic music]
I don't think of King Kong
as a monster
because you love him.
♪♪
[roars]
He's... he's got... he's got
a sweetness to him.
You kind of root for him,
and the real monsters are
those bastards sh**ting him.
Well, gentlemen,
the airplanes got him.
[somber music]
Oh, no.
It wasn't the airplanes.
It was beauty k*lled the beast.
♪♪
Fly, fly!
Three...
But no monster with good
box office truly dies.
[roaring]
[both screaming]
[roars]
"Kong on Skull Island."
Like, I watched it,
and I thought, "These fight
scenes when he's fight...
are so spectacular..."
"But I feel like I don't care
that I'm watching it
at the same time."
Like, it looks incredible,
but I think it just looks
so incredible
that it's, you know,
it's kinda like...
sometimes you see
an old black and white photo
that's out of focus,
and there's just
something about it.
Each remake of it comes out
and within ten years
it is made obsolete.
[suspenseful music]
Because all their special
effects have moved on,
and now
it's a whole different thing.
But the original "King Kong"
always will be a go-to
to both film fans,
children seeing the movie,
anything.
[roaring]
narrator: It took decades
for other giant creatures
to challenge King Kong's place
on the monster throne.
When they came,
they came in droves.
[roaring]
narrator: The Japanese hae
a word for them...
[crowd screaming]
- [roars]
narrator: Kaiju.
Giant monsters.
[dramatic music]
Oversized and unstoppable,
the spawn of the atomic age
have rampaged across movie
screens for nearly years.
You know the atomic b*mb
brought World w*r Il to an end,
but on one level, it didn't.
It was just the beginning
of new anxieties
and new fears
and the prospect of an even
more terrifying w*r to come.
This was where
the very new and original
kinds of, uh, fright films
of the s
came from... atomic anxieties.
Five, four, three,
two, one.
♪♪
narrator:
To Japanese audiences,
the nightmarish imagery
of Ishiro Honda's "Godzilla"
was a jarring reminder
of a national trauma.
It was made
just after nine years
after atomic bombs leveled
the cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
[roars]
♪♪
[crowd screaming]
narrator: The film begins
when an H-b*mb test
rouses Godzilla...
- [roars]
- [screams]
narrator:
A radioactive monster
addicted to mass destruction.
Haunted scientist,
Dr. Serizawa,
has invented a device
that could stop the monster
but he's afraid his invention
will be turned into
another super w*apon.
[speaking Japanese]
It was a very somber film,
and there was nothing campy
about that
very first Godzilla film.
It's a very
disturbing film, even today.
narrator: In the end, Serizawa
kills the monster and himself
taking his lethal invention
to his grave.
[speaking Japanese]
This was a movie that really
caught the zeitgeist of Japan,
postwar Japan,
and it's interesting that none
of the other Godzilla pictures
are as serious
as the first one.
[roaring]
They're all kind of stepping
on tanks, you know, basic.
narrator: "Godzilla's"
enormous popularity
at the box office brought
the monster back to life
for a series of entertaining
but increasingly
outlandish sequels.
With sequel after sequel
and reappearance
after reappearance,
uh, Godzilla ultimately became
a kind of a creature of...
of fun.
- [roaring]
- [roaring]
Only then to be, uh,
resurrected as
a terrifying monster again.
So it's like there's
a pendulum swing
with... with monsters.
narrator: Godzilla used
the figure of the monster
as a stand-in
for manmade disaster.
♪♪
[crowd screaming]
The same can be said
of "Cloverfield."
[roars]
"Cloverfield" is probably one
of my favorite monster movies
of recent memory.
[group screaming]
Take "Godzilla" but filter it
through a found footage movie
and make it feel very grounded
and feel very real.
[crowd screaming]
narrator: "Cloverfield"
tells the story
of a group of friends
trying to survive
a giant monster att*ck
o New York City.
[crowd screaming]
The shaky handheld footage
is unmistakably similar
to the videos sh*t during
the t*rror1st att*cks
of September th, .
[crowd screaming]
The Cloverfield monster
was an all CGI creation
conceived by
producer J.J. Abrams
and designed by
producer Neville Page.
J.J. didn't really specify
at the beginning anything
other than he wanted it
to be large and terrifying.
It's a newborn,
and this infant is horrified
and afraid of this new world
that's going on around him,
and that gave us motivation
to crash into buildings.
As it's turning around,
it's clumsy.
It's just starting to develop
its ability to walk.
They just hit!
They hit it with...
Oh, my God!
narrator: Tapping into
the memories of the chaos
of the / att*cks
grounded "Cloverfield"
in real life horror.
Oh my God.
narrator: And it gave
audiences a safe way
to deal with national trauma.
As a film maker,
as a storyteller,
writer, or whatever it is,
you will be fed
with the emotions
of the world you live in
at the time,
and it will come out somehow
creatively.
Definitely the horror movies
in general
and possibly also monsts
more specifically
are a product of their world.
narrator:
In the paranoid world
of John Carpenter's
"The Thing,"
anyone can be a monster
in disguise.
Aah!
[horrific musical sting]
narrator:
In the early days of movies,
monsters were distorted
versions of humans,
actors concealed
under incredible makeup.
narrator: By the s,
the state of the art was
the full body monster suit
as well as the giant creatures
made out of papier-mâché.
♪♪
[horrific musical sting]
[both screaming]
In the s, there was
another seismic shift.
New materials
let special effects artists
upgrade the rubber monster
suits with robotic parts
leading to amazing creations
like Stan Winston's
"Pumpkinhead."
And the queen mother
in James Cameron's "Aliens."
♪♪
The era's crowning achievement
was John Carpenter's
"The Thing"...
[snarling]
narrator: What many consider
the greatest monster movie
of all time.
men stationed in
an Antarctica weather base
find themselves under siege
by a shapeshifting monster.
It infiltrates the base
disguised as a friendly Husky,
but this is a very bad dog.
[dogs barking]
[scary music]
The creature effects
were so mind blowing
and so outrageous
because there were no rules
to the monster.
[dogs barking]
So the first time that
the dog goes into the kennel
and splits open and just starts
turning into the...
I didn't even know where
to look or what to think.
[roars]
narrator: Special effects
wizard Rob Bottin
created an
ever-changing monster.
[skeleton crackling]
An alien shape-shifter
that absorbed bits and pieces
of life forms
from around the galaxy
and can imitate
anything it touches.
[bellows]
What's great about that film
and the creature designs
in "The Thing"
is the fact that
it's trying to evolve
in a very short period of time,
and each version,
it's a bit of a mess.
[roaring]
[chirping]
[screeching]
And that's also what lends
itself to be so horrifying
because if it came out as
a fully resolved creature,
I don't think that would've
been anywhere near as scary
as these mutations that
you felt the pain of it,
even an alien,
that it's assimilating
these people.
You felt the pain that it's not
quite figured out how to be,
uh, fully resolved.
[gagging]
narrator:
Trapped in a nightmare,
the men are consumed
by fear and paranoia.
[overlapping yelling]
narrator: Any one of them
could be
the monster in disguise.
It all kinda deals with
the fear of conformity
but also trusting people.
I think that's a thing
that a lot of people fear,
you know?
Trust is a tough thing
to come by these days.
"The Thing," for a film
that has some of the best
monster effects of all time,
even by today's standards,
still the most tense scene
revolves around them
giving a blood test.
You see, when a man bleeds,
it's just tissue.
[tense music]
But blood
from one of you things
won't obey when it's att*cked.
Because you haven't seen,
like, a massive, um,
shapeshifting monster
in your lifetime,
but everybody's cut
their thumb.
Everybody knows
what that feels like.
♪♪
They're seeing
who's the monster,
and that's a beautiful
analogy of, you know, life,
like, you know,
the banality of evil.
You could... the monster
could be sitting right here.
Ted Bundy
looked like a normal guy.
Palmer now.
The climax is in such
a great shock
where they're holding
the Petri dish.
It wasn't until I watched it
for the third time
that I realized,
"Oh, this is like a fake hand
that he's holding,"
and it's a fake hand because
a monster is gonna go whaaaa
out of the Petri dish.
We'll do you last.
[screeches]
♪♪
I've always been a big
proponent of special effects
that are practical,
that happen on the set.
In "The Thing" the chest
that splits open
really sort of
amazed everybody
standing around.
- Clear.
- Clear.
- [bellowing]
- [screaming]
As a result,
you get a reaction I think,
from the... from the characters
and the actors
that is a lot more significant
than if they were just looking
at a green object.
[dramatic music]
narrator: For an aggressively
violent film,
"The Thing" ends on a note
of quiet paranoia...
two men about to die,
neither one sure
if the other is the monster.
Won't last long though.
Neither will we.
narrator: "The Thing"
is now considered a classic,
but the film's horrific
imagery did not go over well
in .
Well, "The Thing" had
the unfortunate bad luck
to come right after "E.T.,"
and people were looking
for lovable aliens,
and they certainly didn't
get any in "The Thing."
I just remember how
devastated everybody was
that the picture didn't...
not only didn't it open,
it got bad reviews.
People were saying, you know,
"This is... this is
practically p*rn,
this is so violent."
Honestly, it's stood
the test of time
and now, you know, people have
a chance to appreciate it.
Aah!
narrator: Today
the ever-improving quality
of digital effects
makes it possible
to bring even stranger
monsters to the screen...
[cries]
narrator: Drawn from the
darkest parts of our psyches.
[roars]
Stop following me!
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna get you outta here.
narrator: Two recent films,
"It Chapter Two..."
- [screams]
- [screams]
narrator: And "Scary Stories
to Tell in the Dark..."
Are the state of the art
of modern monster movies.
[screams]
narrator: Both tell
supernatural stories
about human fear,
and both blend practical
effects with computer graphics
to push creature design
to the limit.
[shrieks]
I know it's kind of in vogue
to sort of crap on CG
and just go to practical,
but not all practical effects
look great, you know?
So it is finding the balance
between the two,
but when you solely rely
on one or the other,
I do think they kind of
need each other.
narrator: Adapted from
the popular children's books,
"Scary Stories to Tell
in the Dark"
follows a group of teenagers
who break into a haunted house
and discover a book
that seems to write itself.
Oh, my God.
narrator:
Over the next five days,
the unlucky teens fall victim
to a rogues' gallery
of monsters.
It has all these
amazing creatures
that Stephen Gammell drew
for the books,
and we just really made sure
that what we put in the movie
was that.
- [screams]
- [screams]
We didn't want
to reinvent the wheel here.
narrator: One of the most
innovative monsters
in the film
is the Jangly Man...
a creature that assembles
and reassembles itself.
♪♪
The Jangly Man was really
tough because we had to, like,
he was gonna be so twisty
and body parts
and coming together
and doing all this and that.
So the combination
of real effects,
an amazing contortionist,
and some digital enhancements.
[snarls]
To create what we were hoping
for... an iconic face
and design,
then make that come alive,
and there was a lot
of challenges to that.
[screams]
narrator: The monsters
in "Scary Stories"
are all grotesque embodiments
of teenage anxiety.
Aah, aah!
narrator:
From being suffocated
by a mother's love...
[heavy breathing]
narrator: To being d*sfigured
by the world's
angriest pimple.
[moans]
[screaming]
narrator: Confronting
the fears of youth
is also the central theme
of "It Chapter Two,"
the sequel to Andy
Muschietti's adaptation
of Stephen King's "It."
[screeches]
- [screams]
- Give me fat boy.
[screams]
narrator: The now adult
members of the Losers Club
return to the town
of Derry, Maine
to do final battle against
their childhood nemesis.
Your dirty little secret...
narrator:
Pennywise the clown.
One-nuh...
narrator: Bill Skarsgard
once again
plays the demonic
shapeshifter Pennywise.
You're supposed to say three.
narrator:
With the help of CGI,
his body constantly
twists and morphs
into terrible new shapes
that match his victims' fears.
[screams]
I go practical
as much as... as I can,
but there's a limit,
and like, a lot of people
complain about CG,
but CG can be great
if you bring
an original design
and it's, like,
ex*cuted properly.
[grunting]
I tend to draw a lot.
All the creatures that appear
in my movies, I sketch first.
[groaning]
narrator: One creature effect
calls back to a famous monster
of the movies.
I love horror movies.
I love... I grew up
loving monster movies
and loving those kind of...
those kind of films,
and I was like,
well, if you have a, you know,
head that turns into a spider,
I mean, that's from
"The Thing."
[snarls]
And Andy was like,
"Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah."
And we talked about it,
and I was like,
I should say...
- You gotta be [...] kidding.
And I remember we watched it
on my phone,
you know, to make sure
we got the line right,
and I said it
in the right cadence.
You gotta be
[...] kidding.
[laughing]
[screaming]
- [roars]
You're a weak old woman.
narrator:
At the epic conclusion
of "It Chapter Two,"
the Losers Club finds
the monster's Achilles' heel,
and they turn their own fears
against him.
[all chanting]
That's what both
"It" movies are.
It's about people
living in fear
and what the horrible things
we do as... as human beings.
Pennywise is
the representation of fear.
[horrific musical sting]
[cries]
[laughs]
That's why we make movies.
We want to people to see
these movies
and try to understand
that that's the worst thing
we can do, live in fear.
- [snarls]
- [screams]
[snarls]
[screams]
[grunts]
narrator: The monsters of the
movies are from outer space...
[snarls]
narrator:
The creations of magic...
or the products
of science gone wrong...
[thunder rolls]
But whatever they look like
and wherever they're from,
at heart they are
all walking, crawling,
or slithering representations
of our very human fears...
[roars]
narrator: The fears
we must face and defeat
less they consume us all.
02x02 - Monsters
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Masters of horror -- icons and stars who define the genre -- join writer/produder/director Eli Roth to explore horror's biggest themes and reveal the inspirations and struggles behind its past and present.
Masters of horror -- icons and stars who define the genre -- join writer/produder/director Eli Roth to explore horror's biggest themes and reveal the inspirations and struggles behind its past and present.