Horrified

Scott Hardie | September 22, 2021
I recently played the popular board game Horrified, based on Universal's classic movie monsters: Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. (The game is clever and fun, albeit a little much with constant adding of pieces, so I recommend it if you're looking for a fun new game for Halloween season.)

This got me wondering more about monsters:

1) There's an expansion coming out soon called American Monsters and, well, it seems like it's missing a connection: The monster lineup is Bigfoot, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, the Chupacabra, the Banshee of the Badlands, and the Ozark Howler. Those are all real-world monsters, or at least monsters believed by some people to exist for real, as opposed to literary or cinematic creations like the first game. I'm going to guess that copyright is behind this. But it got me thinking, if copyright was not a problem, what classic American monsters from literature and cinema would be appropriate to add to a classic-monster lineup like Horrified has? The Headless Horseman is the first that occurs to me, for instance.

2) Are there any other classic movie monsters from the 1920s-1950s that are on the same level as Horrified's seven monsters that would belong in a sequel? Kelly suggested Nosferatu. Dr. Caligari occurs to me as a possibility. Who else?

3) The set of "classic" monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein and Mummy and Wolfman keeps re-occurring in culture, from "The Monster Mash" to breakfast cereals like Count Chocula, and that's without even considering how often Universal keeps pushing them with endless remakes. And yet, there is rarely a ghost among them, unless you count Boo Berry. Who is the most famous classic ghost monster from cinema? Kelly suggested Casper, but he seems too friendly to qualify as a monster, right? The Haunting is maybe the most iconic classic ghost movie, but its ghosts are not particular standouts.

Samir Mehta | September 22, 2021
[hidden by request]

Steve West | September 22, 2021
Just some quick suggestions (not entirely well thought out).
The Wicked Witch of the West
The Blob
Harryhausen's skeleton army
Harryhausen's Medusa
Twilight Zone's Talky Tina
Kong

Scott Hardie | September 26, 2021
Great suggestions! I would especially support the inclusion of the original 1950s Fly, which wasn't deeply disturbing like the 1980s version and is more in the vein of a "classic" monster. And the Wicked Witch is quintessentially American, right down to her recent reinvention.

Stephen King is still so popular and relevant (getting a boost in relevancy by some hit film & TV adaptations in recent years) that I doubt he'll widely be considered classic until after he's dead. Here's some trivia: Do you know which of his creations he believes will outlast all of the others? He thinks It is the one likeliest to be remembered by future generations after all of his other works are forgotten, because Pennywise strikes a nerve and the exploration of fear as a concept runs deeper in that book. But I wonder if Pennywise isn't going to seem dated in time as the memetic "scary clown" concept falls out of popular favor.

So if we can't get iconic Western ghosts from cinema, perhaps we can get them from folklore and common scary stories? Bloody Mary. The Vanishing Hitchhiker. La Llorona. There are lots of possibilities.