# So, which big screen monster do YOU find the most iconic, design-wise? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 12, 2010, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501 "2010-09-12T13:26:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/21 "2010-09-13T11:55:13Z")
I have to agree with the many who said **Frankenstein** (_Frankenstein’s Monster_, to you purists. But the creature was listed as “Frankenstein” in theater bills long before the movie came out). Before Jack Pierce put all that Fuller’s Earth, collodion, and other makeup on Boris Karloff, there was no single agreed-upon image of what the Creature looked like. Usually he was drawn as an oversized guy with hair that was too long or too plentiful. At least in some cases he was oddly and vividly colored (it’s hard to tell from black and white illustrations what color he was supposed to be). but that Pierce makeup really was iconic, giving concrete and instantly-recognizable form to the Creature, so that today you’ve got plenty of non-royalty-paying depictions that are undoubtedly supposed to represent him. That flat-topped head, the bolts in the neck, the head scars. The coloring that was actually blue on-set, was supposed to be ghastly paleness, but which eventually standardized as green. This was nothing like Shelley’s description of the Monster, and faithful renditions deliberately shy away from it, but it still appears in movies, live shows, cartoons, and more. You can’t get much more iconic than that. By contrast, there have been lots of “Creature from the Black Lagoon”-types, with many and wild variations. King Kong is often represented as 'just a gorilla", and no effort is generally made to make that gorilla look like Willis O’Brien’s masterpiece (The remakes and the Japanese versions never even tried). Runners up: **Dracula** – The appearance and costume of the “classic” Count Dracula, as Skal has pointed out, derive from the Hamilton Deane/John Balderson stage play. If Dracula is going to be part of a parlor drama, he has to look as if he’d fit in a parlor. And the voluminous cape with the high collar were needed for the stage “disappearance” of the real actor when he turns into a bat. Much of this was retained for the Universal film version, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was after all, a filmed version of the play. And it added the needed atmosphere. The costume was retained through the Universal films and even into the Hamer and other 1960s versions, so it was inevitable that Sesame Street’s _The Count_ ended up as a tux-earing cape-wearing easter european-accented being. Again, if you want to be instantly recognized as a vampire, you wear a cape and effect the accent, not wear sullen goth looks and sparkle makeup. (Nosferatu-like appearance has been gaining in recent decades, especially since Herzog’s remake and the first TV version of _Salem’s Lot_ revived the image, and _Shadow of the Vampire_ played on it. But the Rat-faced vampire is still no competition for the classic evening-suited and caped Dracula.) **Werewolf/Wolfman** – Universal _did_ give us the classic Werewolf/wolfman, though. Before Henry Hull in _The Werewolf of London_, the werewolf had been a human who turned into a wolf. Hollywood gave us the man/wolf hybrid creature that haunted the movies, with its upright human stance, but hairy face (and often pointed ears)I’m convinced they did this because a.) You can’t count on wolves to act and do what you want, and look menacing and evil; b.) The makeup gave the actor a chance to emote, for which you need a most-recognizable human face; c.) any sort of puppet or animated model would be seriously unconvincing, and expensive. So Hollywood created this monster almost out of whole cloth. again, it was widely copied without paying royalties, so you have similar human wolves in other company’s movies, and in comics, images, and now videogames and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/22 "2010-09-13T12:53:26Z")
Re Frankenstein’s monster: I’m afraid reading Mary Shelley’s book ruined the movie monster for me. What made the book monster scary wasn’t just that it was hideous looking, but that it was also stronger, smarter, and more resilient than regular people. Also, thanks to being abandoned in its early life, it had no empathy for human beings at all. It regarded its creators as inferior, and itself as a new and superior species. So the book has the “fear of technology superseding humanity” theme going for it. That’s a whole lot more modern and sophisticated than the whole “mentally disturbed man’s brain in a jar” thing the movie went with. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/23 "2010-09-13T13:27:31Z")
I’m trying to think of instances in which I _haven’t_ seen the Xenomorph described as “bio-mechanical.” The intersection between the organic and the mechanical is a huge theme in Giger’s work, along with virtually everything resembling a sexual organ. I think it’s pretty apparent in the design. Its exo-skeleton loos like black metal, there are details on its side and arms that are basically “vents,” its inner mouth pops out like it’s spring-loaded, and it has acid blood. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/24 "2010-09-13T14:43:40Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Was it_, though? One theory is that the Jockeys bred the xenomorphs as a war weapon. We’ll find out soon enough. There’s an Alien prequel in the works starring the Astrojockey… ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/25 "2010-09-13T16:21:17Z")
Regular- Universals Frankenstein. Biggie - Godzilla. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/26 "2010-09-13T18:57:04Z")
> [@MTCicero](#): > > > [@Hades](#): > > > > I don’t think the xenomorph looks all that biomechanical. It just looks like a gargantuan glossy black bipedal scorpion. > > That’s always been my take as well. > > (Also: When did the first link in my OP stop being a picture of the Alien, and start being tech reviews?) It looks like the Alien to me. I have no problem viewing it. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/27 "2010-09-13T19:00:53Z")
All the classic monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula and the Werewolf are just silly-looking, perhaps an effect of familiarity. But the Alien, 20 years on … still freaking scary looking. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/28 "2010-09-13T19:25:22Z")
> [@Push\_You\_Down](#): > > Regular- Universals Frankenstein. > Biggie - Godzilla. I wanted to get that in as a distinction. The human size monsters should be a different category. I would place Alien in the biggie category, and Godzilla would have to scrape her off the bottom of his foot. For the little guys, Creature from the Black Lagoon was the best. Kathy Bates in About Schmidt is a close second (even Godzilla wanted to stab his eyes out). ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/29 "2010-09-13T21:21:59Z")
> [@MTCicero](#): > > This thread is inspired by watching **Alien** last night with my wife, and a friend who’d never seen the movie before (he’s a young-un). He very much enjoyed the film, giving it a 7.5 out of 10, but one of his criticisms was how “machine-like” H.R. Giger’s monster looked. He didn’t like that at all. When I responded that, well, it was a man in a suit, he said that he had no problem with that at all, it just put him off how mechanical the monster looked (whatever that means). Meh. Probably just something looming in his Freudian subconscious. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501/30 "2010-09-13T21:57:02Z")
[Jack Pierce on Boris](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Frankenstein%27s_monster_%28Boris_Karloff%29.jpg), baby. Nothing else comes close. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-which-big-screen-monster-do-you-find-the-most-iconic-design-wise/553501.md?page=1)