Time Out's 50 greatest monster movies: part six

We're into the top five, where creatures from outer space can't decide if they want to eat us, become us or have babies with us. Plus, there's something nasty lurking in the ocean, but something even nastier in the kitchen...

5. The Thing (1982)
Directed by John Carpenter
Baby, its cold outside
John Carpenter’s remake of Howard Hawks's tense ’50s sci-fi thriller ‘The Thing From Another World’ is enough to make you forget Keanu Reeves in ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ or Nic Cage in ‘The Wicker Man’, proving that ploughing old furrows can throw up treasure as well as dried-out old cowpats. Kurt Russell as the impossibly maverick Antarctic helicopter-cowboy MacReady is one of the most ludicrously entertaining horror-movie creations, at once wholly implausible and entirely engaging. Fighting infestation by a shape-shifting alien parasite from the cold comfort of their Arctic research station, MacReady’s already cabin-feverish scientist chums are whittled away in a series of increasingly sickening/wondrous set pieces until some horrifying choices become necessary. The kennel scene is the one everybody remembers, but the intelligent, open(ish) ending is one of the greats of any creature feature. PF
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Read the original Time Out review of 'The Thing'


4. Alien (1979)
Directed by Ridley Scott

The phallus with malice
It says something for Hollywood’s faith in the survival of the human race that they allowed us a 4-0 run of victories against perhaps the most malicious bunch of graphite-domed killing machines ever to have graced the outer reaches of the galaxy. Modelled on the design concepts of (possibly troubled) Swiss painter and sculptor HR Giger, the fact that the Alien itself was assembled from a vast arsenal of pulleys, levers and even the cooling tubes from a Rolls Royce doesn’t make it feel any less repellent and real.

Seeing the film again, it’s remarkable that ‘Top Gear’-man's idea of the ultimate Hollywood director, Ridley Scott, was able to craft such an impeccably modulated and eloquent space opera in which structured exposition and intricately drawn characters help to embed the nightmare of the situation far deeper than any crummy gore effects or slap-dash set pieces ever could. Yet, beyond that majestically sculpted creature which takes down its human prey slowly but oh-so-surely, we must not forget to offer a hearty salute to the late, great Dan O’Bannon, a giant among modern sci-fi screen writers and a rare mortal who was able to post out his imagination into the furthest reaches of the galaxy and have it return with credible, jubilant and freakin’ scary tales of a future fantastic. DJ
Watch a fascinating, DIY ‘virtual workprint’ the film

Read the original Time Out review of 'Alien'


3. Cat People (1942)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Girls just wanna have fur
An object lesson in how horror movies have always tackled subject matter which straight drama was afraid to touch, albeit in strictly allegorical terms, ‘Cat People’ is not, as it has largely been regarded, simply a bloke’s-eye view of the suspect female ‘other’. That element is present, to be sure, but this is a much more sympathetic and heartfelt picture than such a description suggests. True, it’s the story of a woman who turns into a ferocious beast when she becomes sexually aroused. But again, this description only tells one side of the story, and ‘Cat People’ is a film dedicated to exploring every angle on its subject: the male and the female, the victim and the murderer, the monster and the human being.

Taken, for example, as a metaphor for childhood abuse and its destructive psychological legacy, the film becomes a study of a corrupted woman’s terror of her own emotional potential, and her seething sexual and violent impulses: in a way, the gender-reversed mirror of Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’, but with a far less romantic, more oppressive and doom-laden atmosphere. Taken more simply, as the tale of a woman so constricted by social propriety that she becomes a monster, it’s no less rigorous and challenging. Either way, ‘Cat People’ is, as Jacques Tourneur no doubt intended it, the ultimate Freudian stew, offering a different meaning to every viewer, but delighting all equally. TH
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Read the original Time Out review of 'Cat People'


2. Jaws (1975)
Directed by Steven Spielberg

You’re gonna need a bigger quote
Spielberg’s enduring shark-tale tour de force addresses many of the key factors that make monsters, well, monsters. First there’s the fear of the unknown: a dreadful and primordial force that lurks in the deep reaches of our imaginings, an unnamable horror from the abyss from which we sprang but can never truly hope to escape. Then there’s the fear we experience when we encounter a force that is beyond our ability to control. And ultimately of course there’s intense and profound shit-yer-pants terror that comes with being faced with an unstoppable fury that can’t be reasoned with, bargained or bought.

All of which would count for nought if not placed into the hands of such a master technician and gifted storyteller as Spielberg, and despite its arduous shoot (Spielberg broke down with nervous exhaustion mere hours after the film wrapped) the Magic Beard managed to fashion an effortless and streamlined example of pure cinema, and created one of its most durable and elemental horrors. ALD
Watch it in 60 seconds…

Read the original Time Out review of 'Jaws'

See what made the number one spot...

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