It’s a joke, see the title of Bee Movie, opening this weekend, because, insect movies have historically been the B-movies, the cheapie monster movies, the second-billed flicks there just to fill up the schedule. You know, back in the day when going to the movies meant taking in an afternoon-long program of cartoons and newsreels and two or three films.
Today, when every movie thinks it’s the A-movie, some of these old bug-monster movies are still worth catching up with on DVD. The giant rampaging ants of 1954’s Them [buy at Amazon] are still pretty scary, even if the FX that created them are less than convincing. The Japanese flying-insect horror of 1961’s Mothra is as funny as it is scary, but that’s fine. The Fly, from 1958 [buy at Amazon], never fails to creep me out with that famous final line: “Help me!”
The 1986 remake of The Fly [buy at Amazon], starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who experiments on himself to terrible results, is still, in our era of ever-escalating horror explicitness, one of the most disgusting and most disturbing movies ever made. Fifties-style B-movies came back around again, with spiders on the rampage in both, with Arachnophobia (1990) [buy at Amazon] and Eight Legged Freaks (2002) [buy at Amazon], both of which deployed lots of yucks with the icks.
Comedy combined with horror has been the hallmark of most of the recent flicks featuring insects: Joe’s Apartment (1996) [buy at Amazon] pits a hapless Jerry O’Connell against thousands of singing and dancing cockroaches in his rundown tenement apartment; Men in Black (1997) [buy at Amazon] features, among its many alien critters, an evil ET bug that looks a lot like Vincent D’Onofrio. The comedy was of the less obvious satiric kind that same year in Starship Troopers [buy at Amazon], in which human troops battle giant insects on a distant planet. The best alien bug hunt remains, of course, 1986’s Aliens [buy at Amazon], one of the greatest science fiction action movies ever.
Insects that get under your skin — or even deeper inside — make for itchy viewing with 1997’s Mimic [buy at Amazon], Guillermo del Toro’s horror about intelligent, humanoid creepy-crawlies about to out-evolve humanity; and in this year’s Bug [buy at Amazon], the insects may not even exist, except as a delusion in the mind of Ashley Judd.
Lately, though, as with Bee Movie, bugs are benign beings. In 1998’s A Bug’s Life [buy at Amazon], they’re colorful creatures with funny accents who live mostly peaceful lives; ditto in last year’s The Ant Bully [buy at Amazon], which goes so far as to posit a gentle, earth-loving religion for the bugs. Last year’s Charlotte’s Web [buy at Amazon] is the ultimate rejoinder to the scary-spider movies of past decades: Charlotte, voiced by Julia Roberts in what might be her best performance ever, is a wise and placid leader, a voice of reason and feeling in a larger, wider world that’s far scarier than any mere bug could ever be.
(Technorati tags: bug movies)
Great round-up of bug movies, Maryann.
There are two more that deserve mention.
George A. Romero’s “Creepshow” featured an
episode called “They’re Crawling Up On You!”.
E.G. Marshall camps it up as a greedy corporate
millionaire who’s sterile apartment is supposedly
germ-proof. Hundreds of cockroaches embrace
Marshall in this cringe-inducing black comedy.
In 1998, the same year Disney’s “A Bug’s Life”, hit,
Dreamworks released “Antz” staring Woody Allen
and Sharon Stone. “Antz”, hands-down, shames
“A Bug’s Life” and “Bee Movie” in terms of
comedy and compelling drama.
Man oh man, I loves me some “THEM!” That and “The Thing From Another World” are mostly what started my hangup with defending old 50s SF flicks, which oh-so-sophisticated modern types like to deride sight unseen as being dopey and cheesy. And yeah, sometimes you have to make allowances for fake-looking monsters, but those are both brilliantly written and directed monster movies. You could make shot-for-shot remakes in the present day, just with better special effects, and everyone would love them.
I’m not sure I’d describe Arachnophobia as a 50s style bug movie. It’s more like a 70s nature-run-amok movie.
“A Bug’s Life” is more kid-oriented than “Antz”, but it’s a better movie. I will never relent on this point.
I forgot the *Creepshow* entry: yeah, I still have nightmares about that one.
I didn’t forget *Antz* — I just don’t like it. :->
The Fly remake ranks the best bug movie ever. Cronenberg knows how to use bugs.In King Kong there was that scene.Where they were trapped in that bug pit.
They ares a few bug scenes in Honey I shrunk the kids. Then of course theres the Ultra B badness of Squirm (worms) and slugs. And last but not least Phenomena aka its u.s title Creepers . Featuring a young Jennifer Connelly
I’ve never heard of *Phase IV* — I’ll have to try to find it.
Do you guys remember an a movie that about this half human half human and half pray mantis family ?
It is now. I believe it came out about a year after the original start of this thread.
Apparently no one didn’t.
I do believe that at least one episode of Buffy and The X-Files had a similar concept.
So apparently someone in Hollywood remembers–unless they’re remembering a movie that doesn’t exist…