Frankenstein’s
Monster. Dracula. Freddy Krueger. Leatherface. Godzilla. Henry
Kissinger. These are some of the monsters whose names get evoked every
year at Halloween, the monsters with the highest Q ratings and maybe
their own personal publicists. But there are many more monsters out
there, monsters who kill, terrorize and stalk their prey far outside of
the limelight. For the next few weeks, we’re going to be paying tribute
to these Forgotten Monsters of Filmland.
Some
of these monsters are just a successful film away from making the
mainstream. Some were more popular years ago and have fallen out of
favor. Some are just sort of utterly bizarre. Some of these monsters
will be familiar to the loyal readers of CHUD.com, while others will
make just about everybody scratch their head. All of them deserve more
love. That’s where we come in.
Jan De Bonnet.
Name: Little Otik
AKA: Ent Poops. Ol’ Chief Woodn’ Head. Stephen Root. Tree Rollins. Leaf Phoenix. Woody Harrelson. Elm Emmett Walsh. Fun Fight at the Oaky Corral. Chipper Jones. Don Knots. Gnarl Sagan. Rudyard Kindling. Michael Douglas Fir. Spruce Springsteen. Branch Rickey. William Hickory. Magnolia Ver Magnussen. Poplar John Paul II. Conifer Aniston. Pinehead. David Dukes.
Appearances: Little Otik (2000)
Monster Type: Pine. Nuts.
Its Place in the Film:
In Jan “vankmajer’s fucked up fairy tale, Little Otik comes to life admist what some might consider odd conditions, first as the little boy childless parents Karel and Bo’ena could never have and then as the living and voracious wooden monster they are priviledged to have devouring their neighbors. You see, Karel does the thing any man would do when his wife wants a child and can’t have one; he carves a rudimentary one out of a log and hands it over. “Take this hastily cobbled effigy and like it, bitch.”
I must remember that tactic for it’s never been suggested by the sages at Maxim. As is the case in the Czech fairy tale, the wood comes to life and eventually must feed on human bits [or cats or hair, as the movie shows us]. FUCKED UP. This movie is a FUCKED UP thing. Little Otik, however… is a fuckin’ PIMP. Lil’ flammable bastard is a beast of the ages.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Small. Gnarled. Bark unequal to bite. Pecker? Wood. Massive sex drive, small rootpenis does nothing to dampen its arbor.
Why It Is Forgotten: The film is obscure enough due to its overseas origin and it has subtitles and that’s a problem when there’s already fifty or sixty American films each year about surrogate blocks of wood that become living, man-eating wooden cutie-pies. As a result, though Otik [pronounced “Oh… TEAK!”] is big in his native land but who really gives a fuck about his native land, let’s be honest.
Why It Shouldn’t Be Forgotten: Little Otik wood never forget you and you should show him the same respect.
Wes Shitstein, president of the Carrie fanclub, always took things too far.
Name: The
Incredible Melting Man
AKA: Puddles. Armless Not Harmless.
Appearances: The Incredible Melting Man
(1977)
Monster Type: FX Test.
Its Place in the Film: Steve West just
wanted some green pussy or, failing that, to be some sort of Man-Wolf. So he
went into space. There’s a part of the ‘superhuman space guy’ formula that
involves being bombarded by mysterious cosmic radiation, and he got that right.
The result: back on Earth he wakes up looking like he’s cosplaying Metallica’s ‘One’
video, with sores on hands’and face’and probably the taint, too, though until
he mentions whether or not it burns when he pees, we won’t know if those are
related.
West
understandably freaks out a bit as he tears off his heavy bandages to discover
that he’s become that army man he once victimized with a magnifying glass. The
dude is just melting, as if you couldn’t get that from the film’s title.
Supposedly he’s got a hunger for human flesh but the half’actually, make that
one-tenth baked film shows only the barest hint of cannibalism. Instead,
Puddles throws people off buildings and into electrical wires (where they
explode!) before finally realizing that he’s just like every other snowman,
only red on the inside. Dissolved into a puddle, he’s mopped up by a janitor;
rumor has it that he showed up as blood in The Toxic Avenger 2, but Snopes is
inconclusive on the veracity of that tale.
Distinguishing
Characteristics: No skin. Wait, also
no nose. Ut, guess he’s got no eyes, either. What happened to that arm? Will you just jump over the guy so you don’t get any on your shoes?
Why It Is Forgotten: Audiences don’t
have the sort of appreciation for melting men they once did, and Steve West’s
propensity to metally revisit his failed Saturn mission rather than focusing on the
consumption of humans proved to be box-office poison as well.
Why It Shouldn’t Be Forgotten: Any of
Rick Baker’s work is worth keeping in the repertoire, even stuff as early as
this. Furthermore, while the movie is as undeveloped as Steve West’s chin in
the third act, the conclusion stands as one of the great bleak horror film
wrap-ups – right up there with Night of the Living Dead, Willard and Canadian
Bacon.
– Russ Fischer