I can’t recall…is it Rodan, or Mothra…but one of them never actually attacks anything; he just flies by, and things fall over in his wake.
A very non-violent (and dumb) monster. But nowhere near as dumb as The Giant Claw.
Actually, that would be Shub-Niggurath. Nyarlathotep was “the Crawling Chaos”.
Them! - giant ants in the Southwest deserts and Los Angeles storm drains. I got to see this on the big screen at UCLA, and was surprised at just how tense the first half-hour or so is (before we actually see the ants). Damn spooky thriller.
Tarantula - Clint Eastwood vs. a giant spider! I always wanted to see a spin-off movie where the lab’s giant guinea pig also escaped, although it might have ended up like…
Night of the Lepus. Leonard Bones" McCoy vs. giant slow-motion rabbits. Easily the worst giant creature flick I’ve seen (but I’ve never seen The Giant Claw. Could something be stupider than killer bunnies?
The Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man of course.
EPYX also made the follow-up Movie Monster Game.
I have a special place in my heart for Rodan but I think it’s because, when I was a kid, I had the plastic Rodan toy with the 3’ wingspan. That thing was seriously cool. He used to fight my Clash of the Titans kraken.
So score one for Rodan!
I had both of those, too! And the 2-foot Godzilla, as well.
I nominate . . . oh, heck, what was the name of that monster in Flesh Gordon? “I just loooove murder!”
That version was stated to be hermaphroditic.
The most neglected? Arguably the earliest ones, the ones that originated the concept.
The very first Giany Monster attacking a City I’ve been able to locate is Thev Giant Horse, from Gelett Burgess’ poem of the same name. Burgess drew the picture, too, which I can’t find on-line, but it shows a building-sized horse destroying a city while people run away as in a Godzilla flick.
Winsor McKay drew several city-sized monsters, and in one of his “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” strips, a pet of ambiguous species grows big enough to attack a city. McKay was also a pioneer animator, and his cartioon The Giant Pet shows the same thing (although the pet looks different in it), and culminates in the giant dog/cat/calf thing roaming the streets, as big as a building, eatinmg random things (whether edible or not), and being attacked by biplanes (!!! – 15 years before King Kong!) and finally being blown up in a good aopocalyptic ending, taking a lot of the city with him.
The there’s the brontosaurus in The Lost World. Instead of the little pterodactyl that Challenger brought back in the book, for the motion picture they went for bigger impact and brought back a brontosaurus to London. Of course, it breaks free, and we get the usual effects – people fleeing in droves, cars and buildings crushed. the dinosaur investigates windows, breaks up a card game, investigates a street lamp, puts its foot into the subway. A lot of these scenes were lost when the film was butchered for distribution after its initial 1925 release, but they have recently been restored in the one DVD version that has gathered all extrant parts from around the world. Worth seeing. Animator Willis O’Brien and his crew worked the same magic eight years later for King Kong, who wax meaner (bronto never killed anyone, as far as I can see)
Kong was the big guy in this field, having a bigger impact than his predecessors. He had his imitators, too. But the iconic Giant Movie Monster was, in my mind, Ray Harryhausen’s Rhedosaurus (he made it up, name and all. I never considered that it might be “Ray’s Saurus”) in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the first and best of the 1950’s Giant Movie Monsters, and the one that established the cliches for the rest (only they weren’t yet cliches, because this was the first tuime they were used) – The Giant Monster Created/Awakened by Atomic Energy, The Handsome Young Scientist (who nobody believes, at first, about the monster), the Beautiful young Lab Assistant/Love Interest, the Monster Attacking the City, the Military Unable to Destroy it, and – finally – the One Weapon that can Destroy the Beast (also created by Modern Science. But they Only Get One Shot). Great stuff. Harryhausen invented new technology for it (as, in fact, had been done for all the others I cite above), in his case because he couldn’t afford the elaborate glass paintings and forced-perspective sets used in King Kong. They also added an interesting reason for the monster to come to a crowded city (something a real creature, no matter how big, would likely avoid) – it was going there to spawn, like an eel returnming to the Sargasso or a Pacific Salmon returning to its stream. The American remake of Godzilla was much more a remake of TBF20KF than of the Japanese original (which itself came at least a year after TBF20KF).
As I have mentioned on other occasions when Ray Harryhausen and monsters on a rampage come up, my favorite remains the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth:
[ul]He’s cute.[/ul]
[ul]He has wonderful, fluid motion for a stop-motion figure.[/ul]
[ul]He’s easy to sympathize with (who wouldn’t go on a rampage after they got stabbed with a pitchfork?)[/ul]
[ul]He’s unconventional. Unlike so many monsters before and since, he eschews the favored monster rampage sites of Tokyo and New York, preferring to stomp through the streets of Rome and make his final stand atop the Coliseum.
[/ul]
My favorite has become the 1995-1999 version of Gamera. Beautifully done movies.
He’s bigger! He’s better! He’s turtlier!
[QUOTE=ChockFullOfHeadyGoodnessNight of the Lepus. Leonard Bones" McCoy vs. giant slow-motion rabbits. Easily the worst giant creature flick I’ve seen (but I’ve never seen The Giant Claw. Could something be stupider than killer bunnies?[/QUOTE]
<ObAnya>
Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes
They got them hoppy legs and twichy little noses-
And what’s with all the carrots?
Why do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies
</ObAnya>
Brian
(or maybe midgets)