NUN BUT THE BRAVE

With the horror picture The Nun opening this weekend...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod this week to the fanged demonic sister from that film. Check out the "Unholy Card" I was given at the screening...

It's one of the odder pieces of movie schwag I've ever had. It has the Hail Mary in Latin on the back, along with a vaguely ghost-shaped figure and the cryptic (to me, at least) phrase "SNAP FOR FORGIVENESS." I snapped my fingers; does that count?

BACK TO THE GRINDSTAFF

Last week we paid tribute to the late Douglas Grindstaff, the brilliantly imaginative sound effects man whose contribution to the atmosphere of the original Star Trek would be hard to overstate. But I think Grindstaff deserves at least one more monster, so...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge the "neural parasite" that attacks poor Spock in the second-season episode "Operation--Annihilate!"

In one interview I found, Grindstaff claimed that he produced the creature's icky sounds by using samples of kissing.

While we're on the subject of Star Trek, check out...Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek!

NOSE TO THE GRINDSTAFF

RIP to Douglas H. Grindstaff, who I just learned passed on late last month, at the age of 87. Grindstaff was the Emmy-winning sound effects designer and editor for the original Star Trek, the man who created the unmistakable squeal of the phaser, the whirr of the transporter, the swish of the automatic doors, the snarling of the Gorn and the trilling purr of the tribbles, among countless other sounds you'd recognize at once if you heard them.

So, in honor of this insufficiently-sung hero of pop culture...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is the giant cat...

...from the second season episode "Catspaw"(written by Robert Bloch), into which the witchy alien Sylvia (Antoinette Bower) transforms herself in the show's climactic minutes, and for which Grindstaff and crew provided the unnerving, deeper-then-natural meows and growls and hisses.

STAR VEHICLE

RIP to the mighty and magnificent Aretha Franklin, passed on at 76. Words fail.

Since it plays late this Sunday night on Comet TV...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is any of the big cyclopean starfish from the 1956 Japanese epic Warning from Space...

(They aren't really that big in the movie.)

TEEN THERE, DONE THAT

With Teen Titans Go! (To the Movies) still in theaters...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...how about "The Beast-God of Xochatan,"

...who shows up as half-man-half-snake, half-man-half-jaguar and half-man-half-raptor on the cover of the first issue of the team's comic, from 1966.

FEELING A LITTLE WOOZLE

With Disney's Christopher Robin opening this weekend...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is the ever-elusive Woozle...

 
...from the 1968 short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

REALLY DEE'D OFF

With Tsui Hark's rousing fantasy epic Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings opening here in the Valley tomorrow...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let the honor go to...

...this cranky gold-skinned multi-eyed giant or demon or ogre or whatever it is from that film.

TUBE BE OR NOT TUBE BE

Opening here this weekend is Eighth Grade, writer-director Bo Burnham's chronicle of a few days in the life of an eighth grader. I had the opportunity to sit down with Burnham recently; check out my interview online at Phoenix New Times.

Just because it plays Saturday on Comet TV...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is the title character of The Twonky...

 
...the control-freak ambulatory TV set that bedevils Hans Conried in Arch Oboler's peculiar 1953 satire...

WHOLE LOT OF KRAKEN GOING ON

With Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation opening this weekend...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...here's the lounge-singing Kraken...

...voiced by Joe Jonas in that film.

RED, WHITE, BLUE AND GREEN...

Hope everybody had a great 4th of July yesterday! It's a day late, but a friend sent me...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week's honoree...

Uncle Frankie wants you!

THE TURN THAT WORMS

We should be far enough out of "spoiler" territory to give...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week's award to Lady Proxima...

...the giant wormy crime boss from Solo, beautifully voiced by Linda Hunt.

RAP(TOR) STAR

With Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom opening this weekend...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week's honoree is the "Indoraptor," yet another genetically-engineered hybrid dinosaur, combining the nastiest aspects of the tyrannosaurus rex and the velociraptor. The creature is depicted here...

...on collectable cans of my favorite pop, Dr. Pepper, which probably isn't much better for my health than an encounter with an indoraptor would be.

HEAD TRIP

This year marks the 50th anniversary of 1968's Head, the sole, commercially ill-conceived feature film effort from The Monkees, directed by Bob Rafelson from a script he co-wrote with Jack Nicholson. It's one of my pal Dave's favorite movies. FilmBar is showing the bizarre blend of movie parody sketches, psychedelic surrealism, heartfelt but awkward protest and good music this Saturday at 10 p.m., so...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week's honoree is the Giant Victor Mature from that film...

BEING AND MUNCHKIN-NESS

RIP to Jerry Maren, one of the last surviving Munchkins, and a member of the Lollipop Guild, no less, from MGM's 1939 The Wizard of Oz, passed on at 98.

In his honor...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod to one of his later and less-celebrated roles...

...the hazardous-waste-spawned mutant title character in the 1983 horror flick The Being.

When you think about it, that's arguably the most generically-named title character in movies.

MA VIE EN ROSEANNE

Time to pile on. This week...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...we'll give the nod to Kraang Prime...

...from the 2012 season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, just because the hideous tentacled alien overlord was voiced by Roseanne.

If I was the sort willing to make comments about people's appearances, I might point out that Roseanne's voice has rarely issued from a lovelier face.

But I'm not that sort, of course.

WOODSTOCK FOOTAGE

Check out my review, on Phoenix Magazine online, of Hippie Family Values...

 
...Beverly Seckinger's documentary which screens this Sunday, May 27, at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

So, just because hippies...

Monster-of-the-Week:  ...our honoree is Bert, the shaggy, dune-buggy-driving title character of The Werewolf of Woodstock...

...a curmudgeonly local farmer, furious about the mess left behind at Woodstock after the festival. He's ranting in a lightning storm, like Lear, about the "miserable freaks," until he gets lightning-struck, which turns him, as lightning strikes so often do, into a werewolf.

If you get a chance to see this rather hilarious 1975 shot-on-video TV movie, made by Dick Clark's production company and filled with vets like Michael Parks, Harold J. Stone, Ann Doran, Richard Webb, Meredith MacRae and Belinda Belaski as the goodhearted hippie-chick hostage, I highly recommend. Bert was played, in his human form at least, by Tige Andrews of The Mod Squad. The guy had to put up with hippies throughout his career.

LOCH YEAH

Early this week, a friend of mine returned from an enviable trip to Scotland, the country of my ancestors. While he was there...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...he snapped this pic of this week's honoree...

...this admirable, plesiosaur-style rendering of the redoubtable Nessie herself.

MOMSTROUS

Happy Mother's Day this Sunday to all Moms!

The monster world is full of devoted mothers, from Gorgo's Mom to the shark mom in Jaws 3-D. But this year...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod to the mother of Gappa...

...from the 1967 Japanese kaiju flick known in the U.S. as Gappa the Triphibian Monster or sometimes as Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, who (along with the dad) comes looking for her offspring when he's abducted from his island home by reckless humans and taken back to Japan.

Mess with a mother's kid, and you could be up against "terrible destructive powers" that are "even mightier than King Kong."

LUNACY

While giving a speech at West Point this week, Our President once again floated the idea of adding a "Space Force" as a branch of the U.S. military (on the grounds that "We're getting very big in space...").

Here...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...is another potential enemy for the Space Force...

...a Selenite, a lunar dweller as rendered by the great, pioneering French filmmaker Georges Melies (honored today with a virtual reality Google Doodle) in this conceptual art for his 1902 masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune). Not that they were the most formidable enemies; you may recall that the Selenites in that film would explode in a puff of smoke when whacked over the head with an umbrella.

Even so, it wouldn't be surprising if Our President also promised to build us a space wall, and make the Moon pay for it...

WHAT A GUY

In honor of Macron's visit, this has been Your Humble Narrator's reading material for the last couple of days...

It's a reprint of a 1936 collection of terrific Guy de Maupassant stories. They are indeed French, and they are indeed about love and passion, and most of them are on the racy side. But they aren't pornographic, no doubt to the disappointment of readers who bought it back in the '30s.

Maybe the best thing about the tome is that at the back, there are several blank pages marked for "NOTES."

Anyway, this week...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge the Horla, the invisible title character of Maupassant's famed 1887 yarn, not included in the pamphlet above, but impressively depicted here: