I host a monthly horror movie film series at a local micro-cinema in Kansas City called the Stray Cat Film Center, and one of the most infamous films we ever screened there was 1957 monster movie classic The Monolith Monsters. This is not because The Monolith Monsters is especially good (it’s pretty good) and definitely not because it is particularly shocking or graphic or boundary-pushing. It’s because the eponymous monsters in The Monolith Monsters are… just rocks.
Not monsters that look like rocks or are made of rocks. Simply inanimate rocks. How do you make a monster movie where the monsters are just rocks? Monolith Monsters came up with a fairly novel solution: The rocks in it come from outer space. They fall to earth as meteors and just… lie there, as rocks do. At least, until they get wet. When they get wet, they begin to grow, absorbing silica from their surroundings and forming crystal spires that grow as tall as skyscrapers. When the crystals get too big, they fall over and shatter into a million pieces, all of which then proceed to grow in turn, and suddenly you can see how just a rock can become quite menacing indeed.
The enthusiasm with which The Monolith Monsters has been met by literally everyone I have ever introduced it to led me to speculate on other movies with extremely unlikely monsters – which brings us here. From radioactive mud to cats with smaller, more evil cats in their mouths, I’m here to bring you some of the most unlikely monsters in monster movie history.
These days, there are lots of jokey horror comedies featuring ridiculous monsters that you aren’t supposed to take seriously. Everything from Gingerdead Man and Jack Frost to Cocaine Bear, Bad CGI Gator, and a killer pair of pants in Slaxx. I’ve mostly avoided those, though, and with an occasional exception here or there, these are all straight-faced horror movies with monsters that are at least genuinely trying to be scary, even if their subject matter is a bit absurd.
An Isotope — The Magnetic Monster (1953)
The Monolith Monsters was not the first film to make its eponymous monster an inert object. In the case of The Magnetic Monster, this object is an experimental radioactive isotope, one which absorbs energy every 11 hours, doubling in size and mass every time it does so. While the dangerous isotope is not intelligent or malignant, it does seem to be nearly indestructible, and on its current trajectory, will grow so large and dense within a matter of weeks that it will throw the Earth off its axis.
Radioactive Mud — X the Unknown (1956)
Soon to be inextricably associated with gothic horror, Britain’s Hammer Films got their start in the horror game with more science fictional outings, beginning in 1955 with The Quatermass Xperiment. They followed that up with this oddity about radioactive mud. While the mud in X the Unknown has an edge over the rocks in The Monolith Monsters or the isotope in The Magnetic Monster in that it, at least, can move—think of something similar to The Blob—it’s still a pretty weird decision to make the threat in your movie just be mud.
Invisible Dinosaur — Sound of Horror (1966)
Released in the U.S. on a double-bill with Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby… Kill, this Spanish horror film is notable for having one of the most budget friendly monsters you could imagine: an invisible one. In this case, an invisible dinosaur, which hatches from an egg discovered in a cave in the Greek countryside and proceeds to trap an archaeologist and his family in a villa and pick them off one by one. Not too hard to do when you’re not only an ancient, predatory dinosaur, but also invisible for some reason.
Big Rabbits — Night of the Lepus (1972)
Following the success of Them! (the giant ant movie) in 1954, Hollywood produced a whole host of “big bug” movies in which something (usually atomic energy) caused various critters to grow to enormous size. This trend reached perhaps its most absurd apotheosis in Night of the Lepus, which is about giant rabbits. However, despite what Monty Python and the Holy Grail might suggest, it is difficult to make rabbits seem scary, no matter how big they get, and Night of the Lepus became a frequent punchline in jokes on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Killer Yogurt — The Stuff (1985)
“Are you eating it, or is it eating you?” That was one of the taglines for The Stuff, Larry Cohen’s satirical horror flick about a new dessert craze sweeping the nation. The eponymous Stuff is supposed to be healthy and delicious, but some folks have their doubts, and it turns out that the yogurt-like substance is actually turning people into mindless zombies. It also turns out that it just bubbles up out of the ground. The Stuff was perhaps a little too oddball to be a hit when it was released, but Cohen’s biting (no pun intended) send-up of consumerism has helped carve out a niche for this killer yogurt flick as a cult classic.
A Cat with a Smaller, More Evil Cat in its Mouth — Uninvited (1987)
In the opening minutes of Greydon Clark’s low-budget creature feature, we see a cat escape from a genetics laboratory and also learn that the cat has another, smaller, more evil cat inside its mouth, apparently, which emerges to kill. Why anyone would do that in a genetics laboratory (or anywhere else) is left a mystery. Before long, the cat is on board a yacht (sure) headed for the Cayman Islands and killing everyone on board in this “idiotic romp” (Slimetime: A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies).
A Telekinetic Tire — Rubber (2010)
Quentin Dupieux’s infamous horror comedy is a movie about things that happen for “no reason.” Its bizarre internal structure includes an audience both watching and commenting on the movie and participating in it. The movie itself is about a tire named Robert that comes to life for, you guessed it, “no reason,” and discovers that it has telekinetic abilities which it can use to make various objects and animals explode. When it played at Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival, Fangoria magazine reported that Rubber “deeply split” the audience, including “huge laughs and applause as well as the only boos heard by Fango at the fest.”
