A long time ago, back in the ancient days of video rental, I saw a movie that never made it into any theater I know of (not an unusual thing in those days), called The Runestone (1991). It starred Alexander Godonov (Die Hard, Witness), William Hickey (Puppet Master, Tales From the Darkside: The Movie) and Peter Riegert (Oscar, The Mask) and a bunch of television actors.
The story idea sounded good. An ancient runestone is unearthed in Pennsylvania and a group of scientists come to view the artifact. The stone was brought to America by the Vikings who wanted to hide it away because the stone can grant people’s deepest, darkest wishes. Here is Lovecraftian potential. In the case of Martin, the first researcher to fall under the stone’s power, this is power. He becomes a staggering, shambling wolf-thing, the demon Fenris from Scandinavian mythology.
One thing in particular struck me about this film and horror films in general: most monsters just aren’t scary! And then I realized why. The exact reason is best explained by the Alien saga. Granted not all the sequels to Alien are masterpieces, but they do adhere to a visual rule that has made all these films frightening. The alien can move quickly. This fact alone might not sound all that important, but it is. In the Alien films we are reminded that the human animal is physically weak compared to other animals. Only our manipulation of the environment, our creation of tools and weapons, has given us an advantage on other predators. The swiftness and intelligence of the alien has removed this advantage.
To go back to The Runestone, the monster Fenris is a slow-moving make-up job that the characters in several parts of the film easily run away from. The cops fill the wolf-thing full of lead but to no avail. The demon is indestructible except to Godonov’s Tyr-character and his mystic ax. The thing just keeps coming. What can be an exciting and scary ploy when dealt with by a talented director like George Romero (with his staggering but inescapable zombies –or better yet the speedy ones of 28 Days Later and World War Z) is, in the case of The Runestone, torpid and boring.
In fiction, the writer can use atmosphere to create a sense of fright but in film the medium is visual first. The shambling movie monster has a long history in Hollywood, starting with James Whale’s Frankenstein. Karloff was able to make the awkward monster very inhuman, but he was the original. He didn’t have a multitude of low-budget monster films and TV shows to compete with. In 1931, it was innovative. Today, stumbling creatures rate with rubber bats on a string.
If directors and costume designers want to make movie monsters truly frightening, they should suggest natural things that we fear — the spider, the reptile, the insect. They should create the essence of being hunted, not hunter. The Alien works on all these levels. It is reptilian, as it is insectoid. It’s strange anatomy and reproductive cycle are reminiscent of the spider and the bee. And best of all, that sucker can move!
