AtoZ2018 - R is for ... #MovieMonsters #AtoZChallenge

R is for ...

Greetings and welcome on R day for the AtoZChallenge. Most of my monsters today aren't overly scary, but to make up for Q having so few, there are 5. Hope everyone is well and enjoys my picks.

Scariness Rating

The little skulls by their name are my scariness rating as to how monstrous and scary I think the creatures are when seen in their films.

•  1 skull (not scary at all) - 5 skulls (very scary)
•  and there is a special rating for a few - 5 red skulls (utterly terrifying)

Rowan North (Ghostbusters)

Rowan North is the epitome of whiny man-child who isn't recognised by those he feels are inferior to him, so he wants to destroy things. In his case, the world.

He is a mad scientist who has developed devices to summon ghosts, which will open a portal to the ghost dimension and bring about the apocalypse. As a human he is a monster who cares for no one but himself.

Later he becomes a real monster is still a whiny man-child, just a more powerful one. He's a great villain with no redeeming features at all.

Raven the Shadmock (The Monster Club)

A Shadmock is a monster hybrid of vampire, werewolf and ghoul of some combination. Raven is a shadmock and lives a reclusive lonely life.

Shadmocks only have one supernatural ability - they whistle.

The whistling is an emotional reaction they find difficult to control, hence Raven's hermit type existence.

Whistling might not seem like a particularly horrific monster thing to do, but a Shadmock's whistle can destroy in terrible ways.

Raven is a sad figure and to be pitied, especially when he is a very kind monster who cannot help what he is.

I'll let Vincent Price explain monster family trees :).

The Red Queen (Resident Evil)

The Red Queen is an artificial intelligence created by the Umbrella Corporation. In the original Resident Evil film she run their base called The Hive. When the Hive is contaminated by the T-virus she shuts it down and kills everyone inside.

She is monstrous to our human sensibilities because she has no feelings and does what she has been programmed to do. She kills at will to complete her task and cannot be reasoned with, only blackmailed, since her own existence is important to her.

In Resident Evil she is only part of the enemy, but she's a really great part. The Resident Evil films are basically post-apocalyptic zombie movies, which I don't usually like, but there's something about them that just grabs me.

Darryl Revok (Scanners)

Scanners are human beings altered as fetuses by the drug ephemerol, which was designed to relieve adverse symptoms of pregnancy. Those exposed to it developed psychic powers including telepathy with a side of mind control, empathy and psychokinesis.

However, many lose control of their powers, unable to deal with the voices their hear in their heads and go insane, or turn to anyway of suppressing what their hear.

Revok is a scanner who successfully controls his powers. He also has a network of scanners at his disposal and has a habit of killing any scanner who refuses to join him. When a human is scanned at full power, or another scanner is scanned by a scanner stronger than them, it can result in physiological reactions so extreme their heads literally explode. Revok is very good at using this technique to remove anyone in his way.

He see humans as tools and is perfectly happy to control them any way he sees fit. He is a monster with a human face.

I love the Scanners franchise. The first is a David Cronenberg, with lots of gore and spy level stuff going on, and they get cheesier from there, through Scanners II: The New Order and Scanner III: The Takeover, with Scanner Cop and Scanner Cop II as spin-offs.

Have the first head exploding scene from Scanners from youtube.

The Rabbit of Caerbannog (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

This rabbit has "wee pointy teeth" and it'll have your head off in a second. This is no fluffy bunny we're dealing with. Of course it has 5 red skulls, because what's scarier than a killer rabbit? ;)

This rabbit guards the cave where the location of the Holy Grail is inscribed on the wall in the hand of Jospeh of Arimathea himself.

What could possibly have created this evil beast is a mystery. Maybe it was the hand of god himself, to make sure only the worthy could reach the cave. We may never know. Only the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is a match for this monster.

Q: Which is your favourite Monty Python film? What other R monsters have I missed?

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