Your Favorite Horror Monster: The Poll

[Grazioso]

What's your favorite fictional horror monster and why? I listed some broad archetypes that hopefully encompass the most common ones you see in literature, TV, and film.

N.B. This thread is not for discussion about whether any of these things really exist, but rather to look at their use in fiction. I've omitted mythical monsters/creatures like dragons and centaurs and so forth to focus on ones used as stock horror creatures in our time.

[springrite]

To be perfectly honest, I find most of them boring as hell.

[The new erato]

Most of them seem to have left the forum.

[mc ukrneal]

Most of them seem to have left the forum.

Ka-ching!

[Grazioso]

Most of them seem to have left the forum.

The sensible GMG villagers chased them away

[ibanezmonster]

You forgot to add Ubloobideega.


He may not appear fearsome, but he is the only one researching how to destroy the universe. None of the ones in the poll are capable of achieving that.

[canninator]

What's your favorite fictional horror monster and why? I listed some broad archetypes that hopefully encompass the most common ones you see in literature, TV, and film.

Yog-Sothoth

Why?

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

[Josquin des Prez]

Anything by Lovecraft. Why? Because of the infinite, cosmic horror they convey. Its one thing to be chased after by some nefarious creature. Its another to realize that human life is but a small island of blissful ignorance to the eternal horrors of the universe, utterly defenseless and prone to be swallowed by said horrors at any given moment. Lovecraft is one of the greatest prophets of atheism.

[Grazioso]

My pick is the zombie since it can carry such diverse symbolic/thematic weight and tap into multiple contemporary fears, such as:

* Fear of/religious taboos against contact with death and physical decay: here you can't get rid of the dead or segregate them in cemeteries since they rise and roam the streets
* Fear of plague/contagion: these days, zombies are often depicted as humans infected with a terrible pandemic disease of some sort. This hits home in the age of AIDS, bio-terror, SARS, Mad Cow Disease & Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (symptoms of which are very much akin to those of fictional zombies), etc.
* Fear of mental degeneration in loved ones, a parallel of dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.
* Fear of total social breakdown: a defining element of the zombie trope is that just a few normal people get left behind to cope when law, order, and basic social services all go under. Ties into massive natural disasters like Katrina, terrorism, global economic crisis, etc.
* Fear of the usual predator/prey relation getting reversed and humans being killed and consumed
* Taboo against cannibalism
* Perversion of the Christian resurrection of the dead

and so on..

[Grazioso]

Anything by Lovecraft. Why? Because of the infinite, cosmic horror they convey. Its one thing to be chased after by some nefarious creature. Its another to realize that human life is but a small island of blissful ignorance to the eternal horrors of the universe, utterly defenseless and prone to be swallowed by said horrors at any given moment.

To some degree, Lovecraft's most famous creatures/deities are sui generis and fall outside of the more common horror monster archetypes for the reason you mention: they act as symbols of his philosophy of "cosmic indifferentism." Of the poll options, I'd say alien creature is probably closest thematically: you think you know what's out there and that you have it all under control, but then you stumble on this



Crucially, these sorts of monsters are not supernatural, but actually an undiscovered part of the rational, empirical scientific order, which is what makes them even scarier.

[Coco]

The xenomorph, totally.

[The new erato]

The scariest thing in this poll is that some of you seems to be interested in such stuff.

[Grazioso]

The scariest thing in this poll is that some of you seems to be interested in such stuff.

If you don't have anything nice to say...

[canninator]

Anything by Lovecraft. Why? Because of the infinite, cosmic horror they convey. Its one thing to be chased after by some nefarious creature. Its another to realize that human life is but a small island of blissful ignorance to the eternal horrors of the universe, utterly defenseless and prone to be swallowed by said horrors at any given moment. Lovecraft is one of the greatest prophets of atheism.

Have you heard the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptations (from the HPLHS)? They have done The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and The Mountains of Madness (the weakest of these as the Arctic reports are a little too distorted for comfortable listening) as radio adaptations in the style of the 1930's. Superbly done and fun to listen to.

[Todd]

My pick is the zombie since

You forgot the most pertinent fear: Fear of having one's brain eaten by the ravenous undead.

[chasmaniac]

The only take on monsters I've ever managed: http://chasman-otherwise.blogspot.com/2008/05/monster-mash.html

[Grazioso]

You forgot the most pertinent fear: Fear of having one's brain eaten by the ravenous undead.

The subject is more interesting to me when you look below the immediate surface and consider the mythological and psychological dimensions

Have you heard the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptations (from the HPLHS)? They have done The Shadow Out of Time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and The Mountains of Madness (the weakest of these as the Arctic reports are a little too distorted for comfortable listening) as radio adaptations in the style of the 1930's. Superbly done and fun to listen to.

Anyone seen



done as a period silent film? Looked moderately interesting from the trailer on YouTube.

[bwv 1080]

Zombies

would have given some consideration to vampires aka Nosferatu or Salem's Lot - i.e. before they became oversexed superheros


Stanley Kubrick once said that The Shining was the most optimistic film he had made, as at least it offered something other after death

[Grazioso]

would have given some consideration to vampires aka Nosferatu or Salem's Lot - i.e. before they became oversexed superheros

I confess vampires have never really much interested me, be it Stoker's Dracula or, worse, all the maudlin vampire-as-sexy-angst-ridden-bad-boy variations you see today, which are ultimately sex/romance fantasies geared at female audiences, it seems.

[Cato]

Dudes!

There is only one monster: