Your favourite giant monster movie.

If there's one thing worse than a monster, it's a big monster. And if there's one thing worse than a big monster, it's a giant monster.

Fortunately, where I live, they don't have giant monsters. Someone must have wiped them all out.

However, in the land of cinema, not only do huge menaces still exist, they positively thrive. And so, in light of a recent comments section demand by Killdumpster, I'm here to ask what is your favourite movie about giant monsters.

This isn't as easy a subject for me to discuss as I would have imagined, as thinking about it has made me realise there aren't that many giant monster movies that grab me. I do have a liking for all the old Japanese Godzilla films but my appreciation for them is purely ironic. Apart from the very first one, I wouldn't, for even one second, claim they're actually good films.

I do have an appreciation for the original King Kong but wouldn't claim to love it, I also have a soft spot for the 1976 remake but have never yet managed to make it all the way through the Peter Jackson version, finding it far too long for my liking.

I have a cheery emotional attachment to the original Mighty Joe Young but I suppose that really doesn't count as a monster movie, anymore than Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World does.

As mentioned a few days ago, the United Kingdom gave the world Gorgo but, other than that, I'm struggling to think of any British giant monster movies - apart from Konga, in which Michael Gough's mad scientist turns a chimpanzee into a huge gorilla and then gets it to kill people. Oddly, both Konga and Gorgo were given comic book adaptations by Steve Ditko, for Charlton.

When it comes to Hollywood, there are such wonders as The Valley of Gwangi, with its cowboys vs dinosaur hijinks. This is, of course, a classic, thanks to its Ray Harryhausen effects - as are The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea. It should also be noted that Harryhausen gave us 20 Million Miles to Earth, featuring a rapidly growing space monster on the loose in Post-War Italy.

And recent years have seen no shortage of American giant monster movies, with the most memorable to me being Cloverfield and Pacific Rim.

Cloverfield entertained me enough on first viewing but an attempt at a second watch left me bored and annoyed by its found-footage format.

I've never been able to work out whether I like Pacific Rim or not. However, I do know that I like the monsters in it.

South Korea famously gave us The Host which I still, to this day, have never got round to seeing. I can, therefore, pass no judgement on it but it looks promising.

So, at the end of all this, what conclusions have I come to about what my favourite giant monster movie is?

In retrospect, I think I'm going to have to go for 20 Million Miles to Earth because I like the idea of an endlessly growing monster, I like the Italian setting, I like the charm of Harryhausen's effects and I like that we get a tragic (for the monster) climax at the Colosseum. The ending may owe an awful lot to that of King Kong but it does it with style.

But those are just my random thoughts on the matter. If you have any monster movies you admire, love or revere, you're free to say so in the comments section below.

If you don't, you're also free to say so in the comments section below. This site has never been one to discourage outspoken apathy, which, along with unstoppable monsters, surely has to be the greatest and most underrated force in human history.

Get ready to hide behind your settee because, at last, we tackle the best horror films of all time.

At last, this blog's author shows his true face to the world.

This site's recent talk of what are the greatest science fiction films of all time - and whether the form always benefits from a dose of added horror - inevitably turns the conversation to horror itself and, through that, to just what are the finest films of that genre.

And that's all for the good because I must confess that, even more than sci-fi, I do love a good horror film.

When it comes to the golden oldies, my favourites list will always include Quatermass and the Pit, Night of the Demon and The Innocents, while, from more modern times, I have a serious liking for Let the Right One In and Ginger Snaps.

Leaving Quatermass and the Pit aside, my favourite Hammer productions would have to be The Devil Rides Out, The Plague of the Zombies and Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde. The latter of  those films clearly should be a right load of old cobblers, a film built around a joke of a title, and yet it does what it does with a style that makes it impossible not to love it.

Talk of Hammer inevitably brings me to a curious subgenre, which is movies that aren't by Hammer but are clearly pretending to be. My favourites from that frequently strange movement have to be Horror Express, a somewhat unhinged look at what happens when Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas and a space alien all find themselves on the same train together, and The Creeping Flesh, in which Peter Cushing experiments with a mysterious skeleton he's uncovered, and then lives to regret it.

Although I love Hammer films, I must confess I'm not so fussed about their predecessors, the old Universal horror movies. They're good fun but I generally don't find them very compelling. My favourite of them would probably have to be Bride of Frankenstein, if only for Elsa Lanchester's hair.

When it comes to science fiction tales with a horror angle, who can beat the first two Alien offerings and the first two versions of The Thing From Another World? Not to mention the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? With its monster from the id, Forbidden Planet also makes effective use of its horror dimension.

I must confess I'm not a huge fan of slasher movies, as they all blur into one for me, which is probably why the cliché-mocking Scream is easily my favourite of that genre.

Other than the aforementioned The Plague of the Zombies, zombie movies also mostly leave me cold. I generally find the zombies in them to be poor conversationalists.

Anyway, I'm sure I've missed out a million and one great films and, if I have, you're free to say so in the comments section below. Then again, if I haven't, you are, of course, free to agree with me. Then again, you're also free to disagree with me. That's how liberated the internet is these days.

Atlas/Seaboard's Movie Monsters!

In the immortal words of the pop combo the world knows only as The Automatic, "What's that there coming over the hill? Is it a monster?"

No. It's four monsters.

Or at least it's four monster mags.

It's true. In the mid 1970s, Atlas/Seaboard didn't just create comics that were Marvel and DC knock-offs. They also created magazines that were Famous Monsters of Filmland knock-offs.

Of course, at the time, having never heard of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I had no way of knowing this and was therefore free to judge the mags entirely on their own merits.

Exactly what those merits were, I must confess to not being sure. The truth is I haven't read any of those issues for decades and so cannot say how they come across to the adult eye. But, as a child, I found them most wonderful concoctions indeed, packed with info about the sort of films and TV shows I loved.

Through them, I learned of the origin of the 1960s Batman show, that The Thing was directed by Howard Hawks, and that Lon Chaney Jr wasn't really called Lon Chaney Jr. I learned of the things the original Lon Chaney went through to prepare for his roles. I'm fairly sure I learned of the existence of Invaders From Mars and that Bela Lugosi insisted on being buried in his Dracula costume. I learned that Walt Disney did the visual effects for Forbidden Planet and that Jane Fonda looked rather fetching in Barbarella.

Of course, this was back in the days when I thought Barbarella was a good film, much as I thought Atlas Comics were good. Sadly, my faith in both Barbarella and Atlas Comics is long since gone but I still hold out faith that their Movie Monsters was as readable and informative as I remember it being, even though the mag's cancellation after just four issues warns me this may not have been the case.