Baron's Bestiary - Chapter 1

My last post’s thumbs up for monsters set my brainbox ta’jigglin’. In my day I’ve rubbed elbows with a monster or two. Times ten to the sixth. Which monsters have made my timbers the shiveriest?

Culling this down to a mere, shopworn Top 10 would be a transgression against popular culture on par with greenlighting Flavor Of Love. My knowledge on this subject is entirely too encyclopedic for that sort of brevity. I will, however, commit to ten at a time and in no particular order. This will give those of you viewing at home the chance to chime in and play along. Fun! Here are the rules:

1) The monster may come from any medium: urban legend, movies, litter-at-chore, comicbooks, anything.
2) I will accept a “villain” or “bad guy” as a monster as long as he, she or it has an unnatural element. This element may be supernatural, paranormal, extraterrestrial, cryptozoological, downright bizarre or generally freakish.
3) The monster needs to have panache, preferably in its actions as well as its attributes. The kind of monsters that lesser monsters were spun off from.
4) The first person to say Darth Vader gets rabbit-punched in the Adam’s apple.

Ready? Ding ding! Round 1!

THE GILL-MAN aka THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON



WHY? The Big Five. The Classics. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy and this guy. Universal’s stable of monsters is arguably the most iconic in American culture and the Gill-Man stands out not only for being the only one that was not based on myth or classic literature, but for looking so damn good doing it. THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON came out over half a century ago and the character design (attributed to make-up artist Bud Westmore but actually created by Disney animator Millicent Patrick) is still superior to 90% of the monster work produced today.
TRIVIA: A CFTBL remake has been in the works since 2001, in the aftermath of the catastrophic and unexplainable success of Universal’s blockbuster turdapalooza, THE MUMMY, and may or may not be released in 2009. In this version, the Gill-Man is no longer an evolutionary throwback but the result of pharmaceutical companies tampering with nature – so there’s cliché strike one right there. The film is being directed by the son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Breck Eisner, whose film credits include being the son of Michael Eisner.

THE MONSTER SQUAD GILL-MAN



WHY? Because Fred Dekker’s cult classic THE MONSTER SQUAD is one of the only monster movies out there that lives up to the oxymoron of being “fun for all ages” and the magnificent detail of the Gill-Man suit, created at Stan Winston Studios by my favorite monster maker ever, Steve Wang, achieves the unenviable task of being a worthy second act to the original Gill-Man.
TRIVIA: Since THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is the only one of the aforementioned Big Five that is a strictly Universal Studios property, Dekker avoided being sued back into the Bronze Age by referring to the monster only as “the Gill-Man” throughout THE MONSTER SQUAD.

THE TAR-MAN



WHY? As the first zombie released from its military canister in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, Tar-Man’s glassy stare, melting flesh, spastic movements and warbling hiss cemented him in position as The Best Zombie In The History Of Ever. Tar-Man’s sequence in ROTLD should be required viewing for any filmmaker that sees CGI as a default.
TRIVIA: The Tar-Man was played to gangly perfection by professional mime and Jim Henson Company puppeteer, Allan Trautman. That means Tar-Man has had his hand up a Fraggle’s ass.

THAT PASTY GOBLIN FROM THE EIGHTH EPISODE OF ‘TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE’



WHY? Dubbed “Lizzie” by her creator and director, horror fx legend and execrable actor Tom Savini, this cuddly bundle of snuggles helped wedge the first season of TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE into the aorta of horror fans everywhere. Shrunken, slimy and with a taste for co-eds, I can personally vouch for the nightmare-inducing qualities of that particular episode.
TRIVIA: For years I thought that Lizzie was one of the most original creature designs I had ever seen. Then I saw a copy of STRANGE TALES from October 1932.



Let this be a lesson to you all. Never throw away your old comic books. You never know when a 50 year old illustration will make you seem clever.

THOSE PRUNY GOBLINS FROM ‘DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK’



WHY? Creepiest. Made-for-TV movie. Ever. Kim Darby plays a young wife struggling with a schizophrenic disorder, so why would anyone believe her when a clan of tiny, furry demons that look like Edward Horton try to pull her into the fireplace? They wouldn’t. Too bad, so sad, buhbye Kim Darby.
TRIVIA: Tick tock goes the remake clock. Miramax is already helming a redux of DBAOTD that will be directed by Canadian comic book artist, Troy Nixey. Sounds iffy, huh? What if I told you Guillermo Del Toro was producing it? See that? See how it seems so awesome now? Hu-hoh yeah.

CTHULHU



WHY? Millions love him while millions more have never heard of him. H.P. Lovecraft is at once the most influential and under-appreciated horror author I can think of. His most enduring work are the “Cthulhu Mythos,” an entire ecosystem of cross-dimensional monstrosities, complete with its own pantheon of bubbling, tentacled Elder Gods of which Cthulhu was boss. Octopus headed, toad bodied, enshrouded with rotting, leathern wings, Cthulhu was supposedly so malignant and antithetical to human existence that just dreaming of it would drive a man utterly bonkers. Lovecraft’s ability to describe the indescribable in his writing blazed a trail for dozens of writers including Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth – even Stephen King dipped his toe in Mythos with THE MIST – but ironically, this talent of Lovecraft’s may be exactly why so few of his works have been successfully translated to film. The cosmic terror of a Cthulhu is just too massive and indefinable to be captured by anything except the imagination. The most faithful film adaptation of a Lovecraft story is probably Dan O’Bannon’s THE RESURRECTED, a faithful retelling of Lovecraft’s short story THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. And if one imagines the monster from Dean Koontz’ PHANTOMS to be Shub Niggurath (translation: Cthulhu’s slutty sister), that movie instantly gets better. We just need to keep hoping that Guillermo Del Toro still wants to do THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS after he’s done cashing all his HOBBIT checks.
TRIVIA: Despite being the most powerful of all the Elder Gods who ruled the earth millennia before the Dawn of Man, Cthulhu is perhaps best known today for playing Davy Jones in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies.

SANTANICO PANDEMONIUM



WHY? Important safety tip. If one is frequenting a gentlemen’s establishment for, say, le boobies, one should expect to hear the DJ announcing succulent moisties going by names like “Cinnamon” or “Dakota.” Safe, established stripper aliases. But if a hot toddy is telling you her name is “Santanico Pandemonium” up front, that’s a clue. Grab your sack and run.

I’ll own up to my bias. Santanico as one of the coolest monsters ever? Oh sure, reptilian snake vampiresses are way up there, but for pure monstrosity I think that both Amanda Donohoe in LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM and Jacqueline Pearce in Hammer’s THE REPTILE are far more engaging. But this one goes out to the little baron. Salma Hayek could not be hotter if she was made out of wasabi and napalm. I have never had a conversation about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN with a straight man that did not revolve around Santanico’s table dance. And I have never had a conversation about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN with a gay man.
TRIVIA: Besides this legendary appearance in FDTD, Salma also appears in Robert Rodriguez’ often overlooked bodysnatcher flick, THE FACULTY, a movie that ranks high on my roster of guilty pleasures. When you consider her willingness to work with (high profile but still) counter culture directors like Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, while still having the chops to pull off a tour de force like FRIDA, she might well be one of Hollywood’s coolest actresses in addition to being the hottest.

THE CENOBITES



WHY?
“HEY! You got your bondage sex in my horror! “
“HEY! You got your horror in my bondage sex!”
“HEY!!! That’s terrific!!!”

Clive Barker and his leather-clad demon daddies did as much to open up the horizon of horror as Giger’s design for the xenomorph in ALIEN did for sci-fi. As if the burning lake wasn’t bad enough, HELLRAISER opened up our minds to the notion that eternal torment could just as easily involve fishhooks and our poop chutes. Stay in school, kids.
TRIVIA: Pinhead is considered a sex symbol in Japan. Which is why you should never have sex in Japan.

DOCTOR TERWILLIGER



WHY? Played to megalomaniacal perfection by the irreplaceable Hans Conreid, the title character from the 1953 musical fantasy, THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T., is an ivory key despot imprisoning 500 young children in his impossibly fantastic piano camp gulag, where every non-piano playing musician in the world is being kept in the dungeon. Think Lex Luthor meets Liberace. Among his henchmen are a pair of rollerskating Siamese twins connected by their ZZ Topp beards. I guarantee you that Tim Burton has worn out his DVD of this film about eight times.
TRIVIA: The 5000 FINGERS OF DR.T is the only full length motion picture to be written by Dr. Seuss. You can only rhyme ‘hop’ and ‘pop’ so many times before you snap like a Kit Kat and write something entirely misanthropic.

THE DALEKS



WHY? Have you ever wondered why so many “aliens” from “different” worlds all have two legs, two arms, more often than not, a face, as well as an uncanny grasp of the English language? Buh-HOR-riiiiiiing. That’s why I love the Daleks so much. Not only are they singlemindedly genocidal, but they pull it off looking like giant pepper mills. Seriously, how menacing do you have to be to compensate for having a plunger hand. Lots menacing. And yet, the Daleks have been pulling it off in the various incarnations of DOCTOR WHO for the better part of half a century. Just last year, these villainous vibrators were voted the “scariest” of the Doctor’s villains by a poll of BBC viewers. (Now, if there was a Dentist Who, then those Brits would really be crapping their knickers.)
TRIVIA: The Daleks were created by veteran BBC production designer Raymond Cusick because a 25 year old set designer by the name of Ridley Scott turned the gig down. Too bad – that Scott kid probably could have made a name for himself if he hadn't been such a slacker.

(ahem)

And the Daleks make ten. A fine maiden outing, says I. I’ve already got the next ten lined up but please, try and complicate my life with your own observations.

Looking Forward to DOOMSDAY

Last Friday, Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC opened on what I’m sure is an ungodly number of screens. Without reading a single review, I’m confident that this film will be another $100,000,000.00+ nail in the coffin of this writer/director’s checkered career of big budget hackery. The commercials for your little caveman movie want the world to remember you as the director of INDEPENDENCE DAY, Emmerich, but to me – oh-ho-ho – to me you will always be the cultural blight that shat out the American bastardization of GODZILLA. My contempt for your “art” is a seeping wound that never heals, a scab I will pick until worms feast on my bowels. Or on Matthew Broderick’s, whichever comes first.

The good news for you faithful fans of fearsome frolics is that you only have to hold your nose at the box office for a few more days until Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY opens this Friday. As confidently as I’ve assumed that 10,000 BC will suck a cueball through a key hole, I know in my coal black heart that DOOMSDAY will kick 31 flavors of ass. Because Neil Marshall is a god. Emmerich doesn’t deserve to have his last name spelled from the same alphabet as Neil Marshall.

Now please, prepare yourselves. I’m tabling my trademark cynicism in order to gush.

Marshall has only been on the big screen twice, both times for films that he wrote as well as directed, and both times he popped it deep into the cheap seats. Granted, two films isn’t nearly as impressive as, say, John Carpenter’s run from DARK STAR in 1974 to IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS in 1995 but compared to other horror directors that have started their careers in this century, Marshall is at the front of the pack. If not leading it.

To wit, for your werewolf dollar, Marshall’s DOG SOLDIERS (2002) is rock solid. Shot for less than THE PHANTOM MENACE’s donut budget, DOG SOLDIERS follows a squad of British Army soldiers through the Scottish Highlands as they search for a lost special ops squad whose special op, as it turns out, was to catch a werewolf. Things do not go as planned and hi-jinx ensue. The soldiers end up holed up in a shack in the middle of nowhere, with very few options and very many werewolves scratching at the doors. Great story, confident direction, and a solid cast spinning characters that you’d prefer that the monsters not kill for a change. And unlike other recent films like Wes Craven’s big budget werewolf suckfest, CURSED (2005), the werewolves in DOG SOLDIERS aren’t CGI. Their realism comes from the simple fact that they’re there. Way too often, Hollywood seems to forget how real real monsters can seem. (If any Hollywoodsmen are actually reading this, please feel free to file that bit of advice away for future reference. Put it under D for “duh.”)



In 2005, Marshall followed up with THE DESCENT. This happy little girl-power jaunt reminds me of an episode of SEX IN THE CITY; if by IN THE CITY you mean IN AN UNCHARTED CAVERN and if by SEX you mean BEING EATEN BY A RAVENOUS HORDE OF SLIMY, MUTANT BAT PEOPLE. Lord knows I mix those up often enough. With the possible exception of the ham-fisted metaphor of the main character, Sarah, being reborn as an ass-kicking Amazon out of a pool of clotted blood, we’re looking at another brilliantly crafted script with believable, likeable characters and REAL monsters. Rent the unrated DVD and watch it with the original, European ending that the American studios pussed out on.



Marshall has found a formula that works and he’s sticking with it. Take a group of people related in some way (a unit of soldiers/spelunking Spice Girls), strand them away from the comforts of civilization (in a shack/cavern), threaten them with a horrible demise that defies a comfortable explanation (being eaten by werewolves/ Bat Boy), and make a film not about the monsters but about how well the people facing those monsters cope.

Now, since my dairy-white ass isn’t nearly famous enough to rate a screener copy of DOOMSDAY I only have trailers to go on but it’s a fair bet we’re looking at another heapin’ helpin’ of that ol’ Marshall magic. This time, his group of related people is an entire populace infected with some sort of horrible plague that threatens to wipe out mankind. The seclusion are the walls built around said sick people by the rest of the world and the horrible demise is the almost certain, agonizing death that thousands of otherwise innocent human beings will suffer because their fellow man found it most expedient to turn their backs on them. The catch? Some of the sick people get better and get really pissed. They cobble together a bitter, post-punk society a la THE ROAD WARRIOR, united by the perfectly reasonable assumption that anyone on the healthy side of the wall is a right fuck what deserves to be eaten. So of course, now the incongruously hot Rhona Mitra has to venture into this predictably hostile 28 DAYS LATER meets LORD OF THE FLIES meets ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK scenario in order to do…something. Find a cure or some genetic Messiah or Oprah’s car keys, hell, I dunno. More importantly, I don’t care. Marshall is about to hit 3 for 3 and my local Cinemark is about to get another nine of my hard-earned dollars. Maybe even thirteen if I kowtow to their usurious snack pricing and get Red Vines.

GORGOID, The Stuff From 20,000 Fathoms: My Cloverfield Theories

Make no mistake, I loves me some giant monster movies.

My love is pathological and unreasoning. I saw GODZILLA’S REVENGE on a Saturday afternoon creature feature when I was nine and after that, I had a radioactive lizard on my back. Greatest giant monster movie ever? GAMERA 3: THE REVENGE OF IRYS (Japan, 1999). Worst giant monster movie ever? THE GIANT CLAW (USA, 1957). I have seen them all, except for the really obscure Korean ones like SPACE MONSTER WANGWAGWI. I don't mean for that to sound like bragging. I am merely stating my credentials up front.



In case you somehow missed it, CLOVERFIELD comes out this Friday and as far as pre-opening hype goes, it’s easily 2008’s SNAKES ON A PLANE (which in turn was 2006’s BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Unlike SNAKES, though, CLOVERFIELD might actually be something that people would want to spend nine dollars to see. In fact, the CLOVERFIELD teaser campaign could be so effective that the movie will flop: at approximately 22:40 hours later today, Thurdsay, 1/17/08, half of CLOVERFIELD’s main audience of sci-fi fanboys and Internerds will die of brain aneurysms brought on by the pressure of over-conjecturing about what the damn monster is.

So far, actual details about the film have been scarce. No one outside of the film’s cognoscenti has any verifiable intel regarding the monster and that’s driving many an Internerd crazier than Lindsay Lohan at a pharmaceutical tradeshow. The theories and rumors, however, are rampant and range from the truly moronic to probably better than the actual film. I am here to sift through some of those and posit one or two of my own.

Here’s what we know.

First, we know that bad stuff happens. The opening of the trailer says:
MULTIPLE SIGHTINGS OF CASE DESIGNATE "CLOVERFIELD"
CAMERA RETRIEVED AT INCIDENT SITE U.S.447
AREA FORMERLY KNOWN AS "CENTRAL PARK"
So right off the bat, we know that the people taking the video were unable to deliver the camera themselves (dum dum dum!) and that however things went down, Central Park didn’t survive (dumdumdum DUMMMM!!!). CLOVERFIELD is a faux documentary shot by the folks living it, just like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and this doom and gloom set up certainly implies that the heroes don’t fare any better than those hippie kids did.

We also know that the film is being produced by JJ Abrams (LOST, ALIAS) and was written by Drew Goddard (LOST, ALIAS, BUFFY, ANGEL). There’s not a lot of big screen experience here, but there’s a lot of imagination and good judgment so that’s a good sign. The film is being directed by Matt Reeves (FELICITY, and, um, FELICITY) but since he’s vetted by Abrams that’s pretty much an all season fast pass.

CLOVERFIELD was originally a crafty codename intended to keep the film a secret. It’s the name of the street in Santa Monica where the movie’s offices were. Other working titles have included CHEESE, PARASITE and SLUSHO. This Slusho thing is either key or a brilliant red herring. To wit:

CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL SLUSHO WEBSITE

AND CLICK HERE FOR SLUSHO’S EVIL CORPORATE PARENT CORPORATION, TAGRUATO



Slusho is a fake Japanese soft drink that first appeared in ALIAS. If you’re paying really close attention, the character Jason (Mike Vogel) is sporting the Slusho brand on his t-shirt in the CLOVERFIELD trailer. Coincidence? From the guys that brought us the Dharma Initiative? Let’s assume not.



The Slusho site tells us that Slusho’s secret ingredient, “Seabed’s Nectar”, is some mysterious ooze from the bottom of the ocean – so it only makes sense that the Japanese would be the first to eat it. It also states that Slusho is so addictive that you will become a “small whale” from drinking it. My gut is that this is a rare case of too much truth in advertising.

Other pages inform us that the FDA “and other such organizations” haven’t approved it for human consumption yet. Curioser and curioser. Assume something sinister and ascribe mind and body altering effects to your Slusho habit; the customer quotes from the Happy Talk page become quite ominous. My favorites are “she is one of them” and “Slusho makes my stomach explode with happy.” The picture below is from the trailer. Somebody’s stomach is sure exploding with something but from the screaming, “happy” isn’t my first guess.



We also know two things about the monster thanks to a recent press release by Abrams. He says that the monster is “a baby. He’s brand-new. He’s confused, disoriented and irritable. And he’s been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.” Abrams goes on to mention that our skyscraper sized baby is host to “parasites” that he sloughs off in a sort of “post-birth ritual.” And of course, once a giant monster’s giant parasites lose their meal ticket, they’re going to hook their claws into whatever else looks most edible. One one hand, I love this plan. It only makes sense that a monster the size of Rhode Island would have its own ecosystem. There’s a hint of this idea in 1954 in the original GOJIRA, when investigators find a living trilobite in one of Godzilla’s footprints. There’s also a glimpse of this sort of symbiosis in Frank Darabont’s THE MIST, at the end when the giant whatever steps over the car, with flocks of something-or-others circling it. On the other hand, if these minimonsters turn out to be baby Cloverfields we’ve got the same cheap Jurassic Park rip-off that Roland Emmerich’s blasphemous 1998 GODZILLA travesty devolved into. That’s the point where I kidnap Abrams and sell his kidneys on the black market to get my ticket money back.

Roving packs of five-foot whale lice would indeed bring the horror down to the street level with the five partiers and their handheld video camera. After all, the Japanese know that the best way to focus on a giant monster for a whole movie is to have it fight another giant monster, and CLOVERFIELD shows no signs of that.



So from what little info we have, we can discount many of the fanboy theories. It’s not another American GODZILLA film, nor is it a legitimate American licensing of the true Toho GODZILLA. (Abrams has said on numerous occasions that he’s looking to make his own mark on giant monster cinema so look for an original beastie.) Robots don’t have parasites so it isn’t VOLTRON. It’s comes up from the bottom of the ocean so making it an alien would be an unnecessary detail. And despite the fact that it comes up from the ocean, it’s not CTHULHU. This last theory is surprisingly popular amongst the geekery despite how obviously wrong it is. Cthulhu isn’t about knocking over buildings in New York. It’s about rising out of the tide in Massachusetts and driving anyone with monkey DNA batshit crazy just from the sight of it. Backing Cthulhu in this movie is like voting for Nader: you and your crazy friends know it could be the best choice ever, but the other 99% of the universe doesn’t know what the fuck you’re babbling about.

The filmmakers have also publicly stated that the creature is not a mutated whale, a la an exceptionally convincing piece of fan art by fantasy artist Doug Williams that has been grist for the rumor mills all over the Interweb. A whale monster would be a nice little homage to Godzilla whose Japanese name, Gojira, is a derivation of the Japanese word for whale, kujira. Keep that little nugget tucked away for bar trivia night.



I think we need to consider that the filmmakers’ refute of the whale theory may in fact be a big, fat lie. Williams’ wonder whale was definitely designed with a human wearing a rubber suit in mind: just look at the arms and legs beneath all those the flippers. Then read the two “Smilers!” press releases on the Tagruato website for a glimpse into the effects of animals on Slusho. Some whales do dive down deep to feed. Does Seabed’s Nectar cause mutations? Whatever the creature is, it’s coming up from the depths. This future DVD extra bears that out nicely:



So here’s where I’m putting my money.

CLOVERFIELD is going to be a cautionary tale. Nine out of 10 giant monster movies share the same basic caveat: when you dick with the natural order, prepare to be counterdicked a hundredfold. The original GOJIRA/GODZILLA came in the aftermath of America scaring the crap out of the world with the A-bomb. Godzilla was and has always been a metaphor for the dangers of unchecked nuclear power. In the 70’s, when we as a society first started actively caring about what we dumped, tossed, burned and flushed, Godzilla put on a white hat when an even greater threat emerged in GOJIRA TAI HEDORAH aka GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER.

Fast forward thirty years and we’re living in a world where global warming and overconsumption of natural resources threatens to burn out the planet while we’re still standing on it. That’s freakin’ terrifying! Now suppose that somewhere out there on the 2/3 of the planet that we’ve never explored, something bigger than us starts wondering what douchebag has been turning up the thermostat and drinking all his Slusho without chipping in. Pissed? Oh, you bet.



While I am confident that Abrams N’ Palz™ are more than clever enough to come up with their own giant monster story, I’m betting that CLOVERFIELD finds its inspiration not from Godzilla, not from Japanese robots and certainly not from squidheaded cosmic overlords, but rather from GORGO, THE STUFF and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.

GORGO is a UK giant monster movie where the titular beast shows up, wrecks a little bit of London and then is captured and put on display. It turns out that Gorgo is actually just a baby and the real fireworks start when mommy shows up, wrecks the rest of London and rescues her wubbykins. Abrams has already told us that his monster is just “a baby.” Will our trigger-happy military actually manage to make it cry loud enough for mommy to hear? That would suck for us.

THE STUFF is a rarely remembered 1985 Larry Cohen film about killer yogurt. An old miner finds a bunch of bubbling white goo coming out of the ground and before you can say “addictive microorganisms that control your brain before they melt your bones,” an ice cream company slaps a label on it and sells it all over the world. Does that ring a bell?
(Besides Slurm, I mean.) It’s a safe bet that Slusho is at least part of the reason that the CLOVERFIELD leviathan is so ornery. Have we been wantonly pillaging its food source, like we do the rest of the planet? Or is Slusho even creepier, as in one of the creature’s own precious bodily fluids? I would never stop laughing if it turned out that the world’s most popular soft drink was Godzilla semen. Neh-ver.

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS is, to this day, arguably the greatest American giant monster movie, even more so when you consider that it came out three years before the domestic release of the original GODZILLA. In this little gem, a surviving dinosaur gets thawed out by an A-bomb test in the Arctic (ahem! global warming! ahem!) and starts trashing (drumroll please) New York City. The military quickly learn that they can shoot the Beast but in doing so, a virulent contagion spreads from the monster’s splattered blood. So in that movie the virus turned out to be the real problem and in this one, the parasites do. Or the Slusho does. In either case, a giant monster rampaging through your city is an excellent distraction from the more immediate threat. Like how a war is supposedly more important than dying polar bears.

Too political? I’m sorry.

But for all my speculation - which isn’t even enough of the tip of the iceberg to make a decent Spoogezilla smoothie with – CLOVERFIELD is already being shipped to theatres and the odds of any of my or anyone’s rambling being relevant in 48 hours is 50/50 at best. I’ve already got my ticket and my swelling aneurysm for the Thursday midnight thundergeek pre-showing: that’s all that matters right now.