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.
“Could you pass the Erin Gray Poupon?”
Name: Inseminoid*
AKA: That’s Mr. Inseminoid To You. Dave. Cum-Being. Semen J. Hawking. Christina Ricci.
Appearances: Inseminoid (1981)
Monster Type: Fuck Trophy
Its Place in the Film: Inseminoid appears as a large, roguish* Inseminoid to rape a woman. Inseminoid is then out of the picture forever until a baby Inseminoid comes out of the woman’s vagina with malice. The big reveal at the end is that two baby Inseminoids are hiding on the rescue craft.
Hot/roguish* Inseminoid is the big kahuna in Inseminoid. I envision Inseminoid throwing Inseminoid’s weight around on set, making unfair demands of the crew, bedding starlets, and doing other extremely Inseminoid things with careless disregard to those around Inseminoid. I would expect hot* Inseminoid’s agent to have provided Norman J. Warren (fantastic director of many fun piece of shit movies) with a rider detailing the many needs Inseminoid had. It would have looked something like this:
Inseminoid‘s Demands
- Fresh Towels to dry Inseminoid’s physique.
- Fresh Towels for after sex.
- Flesh Towels.
- Green M&M’s Inseminoid&Inseminoid’s.
- No photography of Inseminoid unless by Ron Newcomer.
- All extras must pass by Inseminoid’s trailer for interview and rape (discreet).
- Special guest passes for all visitors from Planet XiXXXXiXXLGH or Moon of Climbing.
- Inseminoid refuses to work between hours of 8:00pm and 4:00am for religious reasons.
- Inseminoid has right to refuse all usage of his likeness, unless Pez Dispenser.
- No gays allowed near Inseminoid. (Special Exception: Tooth Fairy)
- Inseminoid must only be portrayed in press as hot, attractive, roguish, or hot/roguish.
- Semen tubes must be cleaned by hand and delivered to Inseminoid’s trailer for his 4:01am call to set.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Attractive*. Roguish*.
Why It Is Forgotten: Part of the reason this film isn’t so well known is because it went by the names Horror Planet and Inseminoid*. Another reason is because it’s a horrible car crash of Alien, Alien, and The Accused. Also, the poster motifs were perhaps too subtle, one having the Inseminoid standing over a naked women seemingly staring at her pussy with a claw against his lips as if wondering “Just how hard am I going to rape this dame?” and the other being a fantastic piece of artwork depicting a bound woman screaming towards us while the Inseminoid baby emerges from her spread legs towards two terrified terraformers with lasers seemingly shooting out of her vagina towards them. I have ordered this poster for my own collection.
Why It Shouldn’t Be Forgotten: Reread everything I just fucking wrote.
“Brother, can you spare a dog?”
Name: Slithis
AKA: The Skin-Eater. Samurai Slowdown. Mudflaps. Not The Best Joke In Scene 8.
Appearances: Slithis aka Spawn of the Slithis (1978)
Monster Type: Some Thing
Its Place in the Film: The Slithis is what happens when radioactive soil comes into contact with nuclear activity; call it a flare-up of nature’s own STD. Hungry for life, Slithis intitially chomps on dogs in LA’s Venice Beach before moving on to humans. A journalist with unexplained immunity from the law starts poking around, taking samples of leftover Slithis (could be mud, could be really runny shit) which allows him to uncover the mystery of the Venice Violator. Scene after scene of plodding detective work later, there’s a sort of showdown and a couple scenes of the pretty decent Slithis full-body costume that are rarer than a Fuck Face trading card. I think the monster dies or something at the end, but by that point I’d gone back to the jumble.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Looks like the result of Dennis Franz fucking a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Face like a kabuki mask. Indiscriminate eater. Provokes egregious slow-motion. Muddy.
Why It Is Forgotten: You think Blackenstein is bad? Believe The Incredible Melting Man is dogshit on celluloid? Then you’ve never seen Slithis, which opens with kids playing frisbee in slow-motion and never even contemplates kicking into gear. This flick is more padded than the resume of Stephen Glass. The most exciting sequence in the film isn’t when Slithis rips open the shirt of a female victim; it’s the reel-long comedy routine involving two winos, one of whom seems to have shat his pants. The Venice Beach Tourist Board has been trying to burn every copy of this movie since 1979. Why do you think it’s not on DVD?
Why It Shouldn’t Be Forgotten: Actually, it should be. Forget I even wrote this.
– Russ Fischer