"Callbacks" to older monster movies in more recent films

Cafe Society
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We watched The Substance over the weekend, and I couldn’t help but notice similarities to David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly in the final sequences. Both are “Body Horror” films, of course, but it’s deeper than that If you’ve seen both movies it’s obvious, but I’ll spoiler this:

Final very grotesque transformation requires full very lumpy body suit

Transformee loses fingernail

Transformee loses front teeth

Lots of goop

I noticed something similar in Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, but not until the very end, when I heard the Ennio-Morricone-composed music originally written for John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing. That’s when I realized that

Both films have Kurt Russell in a prominent role

Both involve a group of people trapped in a warm place during a cold winter

Both involve distrust and paranoia, as it’s not clear who’s keeping a secret, and who is intent on killing the others

Both films end with only two left alive cat the end, and not likely to survive.

There must be other cases where films pay homage to earlier films in such a subtle fashion, but most cases I can think of were too brief and obvious (The shout-outs to the 1933 King Kong in Rocky Horror Picture Show, The references to the stop-motion of Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts in the deleted “Don’t Feed the Plants” number at the end of the musical Little Shop of Horrors; The use of Kevin McCarthy from the 1958 Invasion of the Body Snatchers in both the 1979 remake and in Looney Tunes: Back in Action)

Any other cases out there?

By the way, being a big fan of Bernard Herrmann’s film scores, I caught the so-brief-they’re-almost-subliminal “quotations” from his score for Vertigo in The Substance. I’ve been in correspondence with another Hermann fans recently, and listened to a lot of his music, which probably kept him in my mind.

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I should add that these aren’t simply similarities that occur to the avid (or obsessed) film-watcher. The filmmakers have acknowledged their paying homage to the earlier films in these cases. In fact, there are a lot of call-backs to other Cronenberg films in The Substance (arguably The Elephant Man, Videodrome, eXistenZ, and possibly others).

The magazine Cinefantastique dubbed Cronenberg “The Master of Venereal Horror”, which is, I suppose, a subset of Body Horror.

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I don’t know if it was confirmed as intended by the makers of Godzilla Minus One but there’s a pretty nifty homage to Jaws in that film.

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ETA: The soundtrack to that vid was added by a YouTuber.

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The Elephant Man was directed by David Lynch, not David Cronenberg, right?

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Aak! You’re right!

Sorry about that. Got my Weird Cinema directors named David mixed up.

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No worries. I probably wouldn’t have even remembered that if not for all the recent articles about Lynch after he passed away just a couple of weeks ago.

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Starting at 1:28 of this Jurassic Park: The Lost World scene, there is a callback for a few seconds to Godzilla movies of old…

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Jordan Peele’s Nope has more than a few shout-outs to Jaws, from the steely-eyed Quint-esque figure who ends up devoured to the monster’s defeat via an explosive device in its mouth.

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Toho loves to do this. Other Godzilla movies have included Steven Spielberg’s father as young naval officer and included a Terminator type character among other callbacks.

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I don’t know if Colossal qualifies, but the director did say it was the “cheapest Godzilla movie ever made”.

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I hadn’t heard of his one. I’ll have to see it.

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I see callbacks to the “It’s alive!” scene in Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein, of course, referenced it. (Complete with the original’s lab gear.)

The most recent US reference I’ve seen was on The Big Bang Theory, but that’s a TV show. I know I’ve seen it since on a British thing but I can’t remember where.

I use it myself when I bring a dead electronic thing back to life.

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This scene from Austin Powers in Goldmember features a monster that looks like Godzilla…but due to international copyright laws, it’s not.