So, for my inaugural column here at YMB (very nice to be here!) I'm going to bring a Halloween-y theme: movie monsters! Theres no actual ghouls covered in this, but we will address who are the top ten Best movie monsters that have blessed the silver screen? Well, I have ten categories here and lets get started!

VAMPIRE!
Is there anything better than a classic vampire movie? Go back in the day to the black and white classics like Nosferatu or the original Dracula, both movies that still hold up today. Delve a little farther back to the classic Hammer films of the 60's and 70's. Go a little bigger budget with Interview With the Vampire, or Bram Stoker's Dra- well, maybe you can skip that one. Or go full on new-Hollywood with cult classics like Near Dark or Bordello of Blood! It's a classic movie monster, and one that has survived for good reason: Vampires are kickass. Just look at John Carpenter's Vampires, or the too short Queen of the Damned!

What if Abercrombie and Fitch were besieged with werewolves! Ell oh ell!

WEREWOLF!
Werewolves haven't fared so well of late. They're one of the more iconic horror creatures out there, based on what came before with Lon Chaney Jr back in the day. We saw some big success again maybe twenty-five years back with An American Werewolf in London, not as much success with the misbegotten sequel in Paris. And aside from that...well, it's been scarce success for the ole lycanthropes. Seventeen Howling sequels don't do a lot for a genre, and our hazy memory seems to recall some werewolf feature with Cristina Ricci from last fall: clearly that one was from a smash hit. But if more folks took a page from the cult classic (yes, we do consider it a classic) Dog Soldiers, it's a safe bet that the movie werewolf could make a decent comeback!

ZOMBIES!!
We almost feel like this one is a given. Do we really need to explain why zombies rank so very high in terms of horror movie monsters? As a genre they've enjoyed their own recent renaissance (The Dawn of the Dead remake, Land of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Australian zombie flick Undead...dead!) which is to say little of their former glories: the Fulci zombie films, the Return of the Living Dead series, Oscar winner Peter Jackson's Dead Alive...and of course, Romero's original zombie trilogy: Night, Dawn, and Day. There's plenty more zombie movies out there (of dubious merit), novels, a massive zombie comics boom (at the moment), and we're just waiting for the HBO Original to replace our dearly departed Deadwood. Hey, maybe they could just recycle the name! Ell oh ell!

J-HORROR!
I don't have a specific monster to go along with the genre, but you have to admit: They make some pretty f-ing scary movies! To date I've seen Dark Water, Ju-On/The Grudge, Pulse, and the Ring...all three of their sequels! One of the many scary things about it is the thick, creepy atmosphere that perverts the entire film. I think the atmosphere gets even scarier as I can never understand what they're talking about! But as good as these, are, you know whats better? The remakes. Now, I love a decent remake as much as the next guy; but these movies get remade better than most movies that actually get made! And I'll tell you this for free (next time costs a buck, ha ha!) I never used to be scared of Asian women before, but after watching the Grudge and the Ring etc., I am now terrified of Asian women with long black hair. Utterly terrified. I ran into a couple of Asian students in Blockbuster the other day, and I almost Shat myself! Thankfully they were just guys though. Phew!

SCIENCE!
What hath man wrought! When man plays God, can any good come of it? Well, if by "good" you mean stumbling animated corpses and horrific plagues and monsterous mutations... then sure. Man is the instrument of his own downfall. His tool is science. And maybe a robot or two he built. Like in Chopping Mall! Ever see that one? It was pretty obscure (I saw it on the long-departed classic TV show USA Up All Night) but it was like this: a bunch of horny teens get trapped in the mall. Shades of Dawn of the Dead...but it gets better! The security robots malfunction and go on a crazy rampage throughout the mall! No chopping actually happens, but "Lasering Mall" sounds pretty dumb.

I think that I was the inspiration for the movie 'Alligator' when I flushed a live guppy down the toilet. It didn't grow to an enormous size and attack Tampa or anything, but I bet it would have if it could have.

GIANT ANIMAL!
Everyone fears Crocodiles. And snakes. And spiders. And ants. Okay, some more than others (horrible little leggy things) but we can all agree that some animals are just plain freaky. But what if they were HUGE? A tarantula as big as Madison Square Garden, comin' at right at you! An alligator (or crocodile) the size of a city bus. A gigantic snake the size of a fire hose. A big fire hose. Who's not going to get a little tweaked by that? Hollywood's made it happen back as far as during the 50's (Tarantula, Them!) and up until now with 'notorious' films such as Lake Placid or Anaconda. Combined with a comical edge, lots of folks have been plenty frightened by such modern day kitsch classics! Me, I always had a lot of love for Food of the Gods 2 and its giant rats. Giant rats! F-ing scary!

SWARMS OF ANIMALS!
You might think that the horrormovies of the past with warms of animals are pretty cheesy, and yes: some of them are. MST3K worked over a couple good ones (unfairly) like Squirm (bloodthirsty worms) and the Killer Swarm (bloodthirsty bees) and I'm sure loads of people got some good laughs out of that. Meanies. Well listen up you f-ing hatemongers! I have seven words for you: Oscar winner James Cameron directed Pirahna II. Okay the roman numerals are not a word. And two of those were names. But names are words! But you know what gets me fired up (with terror!) even more than a horde of slavering, mindless, implacable zombies? A horde or slavering, mindless, implacable tarantulas! Like in the classic Shatner film Kingdom of the Spiders! Ewwwww!

CLOWNS!
I can barely get into this. Clowns are just so freaky. Their faces are painted like they're laughing, but they are not. They are soulless, emotionless, heartess killing machines, I am certain of it. If I ever meet the right girl (I'm single, ladies!) we are so totally never giving our kids any clown stuff. Nope, just going straight to the Pokemon and stuffed aardvarks. Arthur taught me how to read, he can do the same for my future little ones. I saw Killer Klowns from Outer Space once. It scared the hell out of me. I know they tried to play it for laughs with the over the top FX, and the goofy murders and the music and all...but I wasn't laughing. Even scarier than that: Shakes the Clown. That movie scared the life out of me, and if should have scared you too! Take that movie to heart like it's some sort of documentary on how truly degenerate and soulless those f-ing clowns really are! And I once saw a picture of that Pennywise clown from that Stephen King TV movie It? Someone photoshopped it so it said that he was going to touch my penis. I was scared to touch my own penis for a week. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Brandon asked that we not use this image. We thought it would be funnier.

SLASHERS!
It's folks like Michael Myers who make the movie slasher such an iconic force when it comes to horror movies. For a lot of folks, Horror=Halloween after all. And that was his franchise, man! The hallmark of a successful movie slasher is simple; and in two parts: an unstoppable resolve to kill horny teens, in clever fashions. And many, many sequels. There's Michael Myers (7), Freddy Krueger (7), and the king of kings: Jason Voorhees with a whopping 11 sequels under his bloody belt. These guys are the best because they kill only people who deserve to die, not normal good people like you and me. Just you know. The popular people. ...who ruin their lives with drinking and drugs and the sex and parties and stuff. Jerks. We could use a couple more of those types in MY apartment complex, let me tell you that for free! They get so loud out there on Fridays! Don't they know BSG is on?! Slashers are the best, and arguably the most recognizeable of all movie monsters. Some of them still get to me, you'd never believe how high I jumped when I learned that the Stepfather was on that island on Lost! Don't trust him, Mr. Echo! He'll try to adopt, nurture and murder you! MURDER YOU!

Hopefully he'll not try and marry Kate or adopt Jack!

Ell oh ell. (I will not type those letters alone, as I'm not a dumbass.) And the number one movie monster? Number one of all time? El Numero Uno? It's real simple:

C.H.U.D.s!

Yeah, C.H.U.D.s! Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers! Is there anything MORE scary than that? Think about all the toxic waste that we have underneath our major cities today. There's a ton. And how many homeless people do we have in our cities, just waiting to wander underground and get mutated? I just read about a homeless guy who started a fire under a school because he was trying to cook soem hot dogs by wrapping them in newspaper and burning them. Do you want a guy like THAT becoming mutated and growing an elongated neck and rows of razor sharp teeth? I think not.

You may laugh, but will you walk over an open manhole? I think not.

Just kidding! I know they're not real. But man, I can't think of anything scarier than a horde of P.O.'d, mutating f-ing homeless guys coming up from the sewers to eat me. Daniel Stern thought he was dealing with a monster when he was in Home Alone, but man! He never expected to have to face down no C.H.U.D.s!

So there we have it! The Top Ten Best movie monsters ever! I hope you enjoyed reading my little article here and- oh what's that? That was ELEVEN entries? Well heck, I guess I just went and gave you a bonus! Let's just call that a Baker's Dozen for you the reader, huh? I'll see you next time, when I take on Netflix in an artcle I might call "Brandon Nightman Takes on Netflix!" See you then!

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