HERE COMES THE BRAIN AGAIN

With the film version of A Wrinkle in Time opening tomorrow, I'm reminded of IT, the terrifying alien brain that rules Camazotz, the world of conformity, in the beloved 1962 novel by Madeleine L'Engle.

So...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge the huge extraterrestrial brain in Jack Arnold's 1958 movie The Space Children...

...who also exerted telepathic influence on kids. The title kinder (the unnerving little girl from the beginning of Them! among them), who find the big cerebrum hiding in a seaside cave on the California coast, are the offspring of Cold War rocket scientists, and the brain tries to get them to sabotage their parents' anti-Commie efforts. I've long wondered if this underrated, atmospheric, dreamlike little movie, with its chilly, formal visual elegance, might have been an inspiration for L'Engle's IT.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE SUCH A FREAK? [EIGHT-LEGGED, THAT IS]

Congratulations to the great Bob Dylan on this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Earlier this very week I had been singing along with “Like a Rolling Stone” in my truck and thinking what a really great poem it is. Nice to know I was right.

Anyway, in honor of one of Dylan’s less-celebrated works, his 1971 stream-of-consciousness tome Tarantula…

Monster-of-the-Week: ...here’s one of our favorites, the title character of Jack Arnold’s 1957 Tarantula… 

FEAR OF THE CAT

“Monster” is often a relative term—a perfectly ordinary creature can become a monster depending on your perspective. The inches-high heroine of The Secret World of Arietty, the animated Japanese film opening in the U.S. tomorrow, is confronted by a normal-sized cat who, to her, is a terrifying gargantuan (though her ultimate relationship to the animal is more complex).

Similarly…

Monster-of-the-Week: …the titular protagonist of Jack Arnold’s superb 1957 sci-fi classic The Incredible Shrinking Man sees his pet turn from an ordinary housecat into, well, this week’s honoree…

You can watch our hero’s encounter with the titanic tabby, here.