They say time heals all wounds, which is a blessing and a curse.
Some wounds are mental, and most people would rather forget.
However, the scarring, disturbing, upsetting things that most folks do their best to repress
are often ideas and actions and monsters that horror fans want forever stored in their memory
tanks. Some horror movie monsters become instant
icons: impossible to forget thanks to their popularity, the marketing efforts of the filmmakers,
or maybe just because they’re unexplainably special.
These are the exceptions, though, not the rules.
Like I said last time, there are just too many horror movies out there, and remembering
all of the terrific and terrifying creatures is a tall order for anyone but a savant.
And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not exactly a flashcard-carrying trivia expert.
I pray at the church of Wiki, I praise the gods of film blogs.
Through these daily acts of horror movie faith, I bring you another list of beasts you might
have let slip through the fine mesh sieve that is your brain.
Hello horror heads, and welcome back to the scariest channel on YouTube: Top5ScaryVideos.
I’m your horror host, Keegan Hughes, and today we’re counting down another Top 5
Scariest Forgotten Movie Monsters: PART 2! Before we cannonball into the deep end of
monster movie lore, make sure to give this video a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more
hidden hideousness. Fantastic, let’s get started.
NUMBER FIVE: PUMPKINHEAD - PUMPKINHEAD For a horror icon with more than three movies
and a comic book series, it seems that not many regular movie-going folk know who this
is. Michael Meyers? Oh yeah, he’s the Halloween
guy. Freddie? Jason? Uhhh claws and mask! I forget
what movies though. Pumpkinhead? Like uhhh, wasn’t he in Halloween
Town 2: Kalabar’s Revenge? Maybe it’s a lack of recent attention, maybe
it’s just that a monster with the word Pumpkin in its name isn’t scary enough for the eye
test. Either way, with the resurgence of spooky
season among non-horror fans, you would think that Pumpkinhead would be the perfect Halloween
movie. But hey, being relegated to the niche cult-classic
bin isn’t always a bad thing. This demon of Vengeance takes on many forms,
all of which are referred to as Pumpkinhead. There are a few rules, like needing to be
unearthed by a witch, and requiring the blood of someone hell-bent on revenge to get going.
In the first Pumpkinhead flick, we meet two versions of Ed Harley familiar with the demon:
the child Ed, who watches someone get killed by the demon after his folks lock the poor
victim out, and the adult Ed, who seeks out the bloodthirsty beast to take revenge on
the teens who killed his son. As the demon embodies their conjurer’s hatred,
it tends to be a brutal, unsentimental mass-murderer. In fact, this bloodthirsty attitude seems
to have the bulbous beast enjoy the act of killing, even seeming upset when he is unable
to attack random bystanders. Plus, Pumpkinhead won’t stop until revenge
is 100% taken, or if the summoner willingly decides to die.
I’m not sure what would happen if it succeeded in bringing swift, painful vengeance to all
involved, it seems that every time the summoner takes the fall.
And then the summoner becomes the next Pumpkinhead. Or maybe Pumpkinhead has a son, like in Pumpkinhead
2: where an orphan is brought back to life by a blind witch.
I dunno, the rules are actually kind of hazy surrounding how Pumpkinhead undergoes genesis.
Maybe that’s why less people know exactly what’s going on: the confusion factor.
Although that hasn’t stopped folks from sticking by Jason as he gains and loses family
members. Huh, maybe that’s not it after all.
NUMBER FOUR: GRABOIDS - TREMORS I’m gonna take some flak for this one, I
can feel it already. Yes I know there were two straight-to-home-video
Tremors movies in the last five years. Yes I know the Graboids are insanely iconic,
with entire etymological classifications dedicated to their hypothetical existence.
Neither of these things change the fact that the mainstream popularity of Tremors has fallen
off in the past couple decades. Okay, now that I’ve finished preemptively
covering my ass, let’s talk sand worms. First appearing in Tremors in 1990, these
Dune-inspired subterranean slitherers are wicked cool.
But if you ever asked somebody if they knew what a Graboid was, there’s a 50-50 chance
they’ll think you’re talking about Yo Noid. The red man-rabbit thing. Eugh.
The undulating undergrounders can be up to 30 feet long, and six feet across.
Being that large makes it quite easy for them to cause a whole lot of mayhem.
Blasting through brick walls, toppling trailers, dragging full-sized cars along without breaking
a sweat, these are some worms you do not want to come face-to-face with.
Living underground, they have adapted to a dark and dirty lifestyle.
No eyes, don’t need ‘em. Thick skin, impervious to all but the most
powerful weapons. Big old beak, pushing dirt away from their
weird face-hugger mouth. Plus, they’ve got tentacles.
These actually acted as a red herring of sorts early on, where folks on the surface thought
the prehensile probes were the monsters themselves. Equipped with toothy mouths, it’s no surprise
people started calling them graboids. After they grabbed people. A very creative
term. And of course, what would a monster be without
some transformations? Plenty of phases in this worm’s life cycle.
Pre-graboid, we have dirt dragons, which are basically just little grub versions of the
real deal. More dangerous are the post-progressions:
Shriekers and Ass-Blasters. Eventually, a Graboid will develop legs and
become bipedal: bad news for all the prey out there.
Thankfully, the two-legged freaks are still deaf, leaving them to rely on thermal signals
for hunting. Then, after shrieking for a little bit, they
start Ass Blasting. And they’re not just called this because it’s funny.
They also emit chemicals from their posterior that combust, sending them high up into the
air to glide around on newly developed wings. These things just get more and more dangerous,
huh? NUMBER THREE: TRIFFIDS - DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS
If I had to guess why these killer plants aren’t as popular today as they once were,
it would probably have to do with the watered-down ending we got in the movie.
Get it? Watered down? If you get it, please explain it to the rest
of the really confused folks down in the comments. There are some major differences between the
book and the movie, and of course we’re talking movie monsters today.
Of course, I’m focusing on the 1962 version of the flick, because each subsequent remake
got a little less enjoyable. They’re still wicked scary on screen, but
just don’t have the lasting appeal that the vine-whipping monstrosities had in writing.
As movie-monsters, the Triffids are killer plants from outer space.
They appear to be intelligent predators, walking around on their roots, seeking out human prey.
Using poison stingers at the end of whip like vines, they kill and digest people left, right,
and center. It really doesn’t help humanity’s chances
that the meteor carrying these pernicious plants also blinded everyone who saw it fall.
The Triffids spread way faster than anyone could have anticipated, pushing humanity to
the brink. It’s an odd doomsday scenario, but not the
most far-fetched we’ve seen. Plus, being hunted by plants is a terrifying
prospect! Animals are one thing, as they’re sapient, but plants? All they know how to
do is lay roots and photosynthesize! How are they KILLING US?
Embarrassing display, 1962 Britain. Honestly, back in the day this had some SWAY
in the pop culture conversation. Even Rocky Horror had to sneak in a line about
Janette Scott fighting a Triffid. But it just seems that modern times have lessened
the iconography of a hugely impactful science fiction freak.
NUMBER TWO: CRAWLERS - THE DESCENT I didn’t even realize these had a name until
I looked it up. I had always called them The Cave Things or The Monsters.
Crawlers fits, though. The Descent is one of the best horror movies
of the 2000’s, and doesn’t really rely on these creatures for a good deal of it’s
scares. The cave-based exploits are freaky enough
by themselves, especially considering the total breach of trust that got our group underground.
The secrets, the panic, the bad decisions, these are all what make the Descent so freaky.
Fighting for survival in a cramped, unmapped cave system sounds like a nightmare even before
we catch a glimpse of the crawlers. But oh boy, when we see the crawlers, things
turn up to 11. These terrifying, pale cave-people have adapted
so well to their environment. There’s a whole colony of these blind, slimy,
grubby ghouls, and they’re a lot more human than you’d like them to be.
Plus, there are plenty of theories floating around concerning the origin of the cave-dwellers.
One of my favourites has to be that they’re not even real.
They’re hallucinations that Sarah’s having, visions born from her recent trauma.
As she gets stuck between a literal rock and a hard place, her mind breaks, sending her
into a psychotic spiral, seeing beasts, and accidentally killing her friends.
While this has not been confirmed or denied, it’s interesting to think about.
The crawlers do make a return, even uglier and toothier than before, in The Descent 2,
but they don’t add much to the fascinating lore of the first. It feels more like a long
deleted scene than anything. Maybe because the crawlers were so featureless,
so Smeagol-esque, people had a hard time getting them stuck in their minds.
However, this is a call to action: if you haven’t seen the Descent in a while, now
is the time to revisit it. NUMBER ONE: SAM - XTRO
Is the alien creature in this one called XTRO? I have no idea. I feel like it never actually
gets a name, beyond the actual name of the abductee: Sam. Let me know if I’m going
crazy. This low-budget, British sci-fi horror is
an insane cross between E.T. and Alien, with a healthy dose of toy-horror fired in later
on. We open on a man named Sam playing with his
son, only to be abducted by aliens in a flash of light.
Three years later, he returns. But, uhhh, the way he returns is equal parts
horrifying and mind-boggling. So the aliens drop off a horrible, slimy humanoid
thing that runs around on all-fours. It eats a couple people, and then breaks into
a cottage to impregnate a young woman. The seed germinates quite quickly, leading
to an extended swollen-belly birthing sequence that produces none other than fully-grown
adult man Sam himself. Hmmmmm.
This Alien-Sam then kidnaps his son, moves in with his wife and her boyfriend, and starts
imparting psychic powers on the young lad. The boy then starts using his powers to make
murderous, life-sized versions of his toys, and things only get stranger from here.
While the movie itself is well into so-bad-it's-good territory, the alien homecoming sequence is
actually pretty terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that one of the shots
from it has been used out of context in creepypastas and cryptid stories for years.
The grey, elongated humanoid prowling at the side of a dark country road as a car passes
by is a haunting image, enough to fuel the collective nightmares on the internet for
years. The clip became so popular, that people would
be terrified of it and have no idea who or what XTRO is!
So I don’t know if I would say XTRO is forgotten, or just misremembered.
OUTRO What do you think?
How many of these spectral species do you remember?
Have I introduced you to something new today? Make sure you let me know down in the comments!
Speaking of comments, let’s take a look at some of your more magnetic ones from Top
5 Scariest Monsters from Norse Mythology: Robert the Dude says “The scariest fact
about the Draugr is that they can use their shouts to disarm you from your legendary daedric
weapon which will then get lost somewhere in the dungeon forcing you to create a new
one.” Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were
trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us,
and that thief over there. James Vance asks “Is there a country that
doesn’t have a good zombie tale?” I was gonna say Canada, but then I remembered
Zombeavers… The Greendale witch says “Currently writing
a novel about Ragnarok. Wish me luck!” Good luck! Can’t wait to RagnaREAD it.
Lemon_head 420 says “Imagine being that ferryman and waking up in heaven”
Honestly, kind of a sick way to go. Better than waking up dead, that’s for sure.
Darken NoShinka says “BIG CUDDLY SNAKE” I have no idea where you’re getting cuddly
from, but I also would like to wish you luck on your quest to cuddle it. See you in the
afterlife. And that’s all the time we have for today!
Before I step on a rusty nail and refuse the tetanus shot, make sure to give this video
a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more oft-forgotten freaks. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see
you next time.