The 100 Greatest Monsters From Movies And Television #31 - #40

40. THE FLY

The Fly is a 1958 American science-fiction horror film, directed by Kurt Neumann. The screenplay was written by James Clavell (his first), from the short story "The Fly" by George Langelaan. It was followed by two sequels, Return of the Fly and Curse of the Fly.

Canadian scientist Andre Delambre's head and arm are crushed in a hydraulic press. His wife Helene confesses to the crime. Helene is obsessed with flies, particularly a white-headed fly. Andre's brother, Francois, lies and says he caught it. Thinking he knows the truth, Helene tells how it happened. In flashback, Andre, Helene and their son Phillipe are a happy family. Andre has been working on a matter transporter device -- the disintegrator-integrator. It works, but not quite perfectly. He refines it, and eventually builds a man-sized pair of chambers. Helene, worried since Andre has not come up from the basement lab for a couple days, goes down to investigate. Andre lets her in, but has a black cloth over his head. Communicating with typed notes only, Andre tells Helene that he tried to transport himself, but a fly got caught in the chamber, which resulted in mixing their atoms. Now he has the head and arm of a fly, and the fly has his miniature head and arm.

Andre needs Helene to capture the fly so he can reverse the process. She searches, but cannot find it. His will is fading as the fly's instincts are taking over his brain; which is evidenced by the fly's arm struggling to gain control of Andre's body. Eventually, time runs out, and while Andre can still think like a human, he smashes the equipment and burns his notes. He leads Helene to the factory and sets the hydraulic press. Andre motions for Helene to push the button, wanting to be put out of his misery, but as she presses the button, she walks over to Andre to take one last look at him, he then tries to take Helene with him, due to the fly's attempts to take over his brain. She then pushes Andre away from her, and the press crushes his head, killing him. Helene then proceeds to crush his left arm.

The police, hearing this confession, deem her insane, but guilty of murder. As they are hauling her away, Andre's son Philippe tells Francois he's seen the fly trapped in a web in the back garden. Francois convinces the inspector (Herbert Marshall) to come and see for himself. In a (now classic) disturbing array of imagery, both men see the fly, trapped in the web, with both Andre's head and arm, looking somewhat aged and terrified. It screams "Help me! Help me!" as a large brown spider advances on the creature. Just as the fly is about to be devoured by the spider, the inspector smashes them both with a rock, letting the fly finally rest in peace. He and Francois backpedal on the facts such that Andre committed suicide, as it is noted that the inspector is as guilty as Helene of murder. In the end, Helene, Francois and Phillipe resume their daily lives.

39. THE CYBERMEN

The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with every emotion all but deleted from their minds. The Cybermen also have a rivalry with the Daleks.

They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest.

A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel", and have been ongoing reoccurring characters in the revived series. They also appeared in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman".

Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet, they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself.

The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held Cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space, the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time, their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns.

The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, also sometimes as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth.

The New Series Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman", the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed. In The Pandorica Opens, the cybermen again have the wrist-blaster, but also regain the modified human weapons.

38. THE INVISIBLE MAN

The Invisible Man is a 1933 science fiction film based on H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Invisible Man, published in 1897, as adapted by R. C. Sherriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, whose work was considered unsatisfactory and who was taken off the project. The film was directed by James Whale and stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. It is considered one of the great Universal Horror films of the 1930s, and spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story.

In his first American screen appearance, Rains portrayed the Invisible Man (Dr. Jack Griffin) mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages.

The film opens with a mysterious stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark spectacles, taking a room at an inn at the English village of Iping (in Sussex). Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone. However, his dark secret is slowly revealed to his suspicious landlady and the villagers: he is an invisible man. When the innkeeper (Forrester Harvey) and his semi-hysterical wife (Una O'Connor) tell him to leave after he makes a huge mess in the parlor and drives away the other patrons, he tears off the bandages, laughing maniacally, and throws the innkeeper down the stairs. He takes off the rest of his clothes, rendering himself completely invisible, and tries to strangle a police officer.

The invisible stranger is revealed as Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains), a scientist who has discovered the secret of invisibility while conducting a series of tests with a strange new drug called "monocane". He returns to the laboratory of his mentor, Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers), where he reveals his secret to his fiancee Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart), Dr. Cranley's daughter, and to his one-time partner Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan). Monocane has rendered Griffin's entire body undetectable to the human eye; alas, it also has the side-effect of driving Griffin insane. Cranley has investigated and discovered a single note about monocane (Griffin has burnt all his other papers to cover his tracks) in a now empty cupboard in Griffin's empty laboratory, and realizes that Griffin has recently used it. On the evening of his escape from the inn, Griffin turns up in Kemp's living room and imprisons him in his own house. He forces Kemp to be his partner again, and together they go back to the inn where Griffin stayed and retrieve his notebooks on the invisibility process. While there, he picks up a wooden stool and cracks the police officer over the head, killing him.

Kemp calls Cranley, asking for help, and then secretly calls the police. Flora comes to him and they talk for only a minute, until the police show up. Their conversation reveals that the two are completely devoted to each other, and she is as infatuated with him as he her. In Flora's presence, Griffin becomes more placid, and calls her "darling". He rants about power, but when he realises Kemp betrayed him to the police through the window, his first reaction is getting Flora to flee, and out of danger. She begs to let her stay, but he insists she has nothing to do but leave. After promising Kemp that at 10:00 PM the next night he will murder him, Griffin escapes again and goes on a spree of terror, running down the streets killing, robbing, and reciting nursery rhymes in a malicious voice. The police offer a monetary award for anyone who can think of a way to catch the Invisible Man.

They disguise Kemp as a police officer and lead him away from his house to protect him, but Griffin has been following them all along. He forces Kemp into the front seat of his car with his hands tied and releases the emergency brake. The car rolls down a steep hill, over a cliff, and explodes.

Finally, after derailing a train and throwing off a cliff two men who are searching for him with the police as volunteers, Griffin rests in a barn. The owner of the barn hears the sleeping Griffin stirring and sees the hay in which Griffin is sleeping inexplicably moving. The farmer goes to the police and tells them that "there's breathing" his barn. The police surround and set fire to the barn. When Griffin comes out, the police sight his footprints in the snow and open fire, mortally wounding him. Griffin is taken to hospital where, on his deathbed, he admits to Flora that he has tampered with a type of science that was meant to be left alone. The effects of the monocane wear off the moment he dies, and he becomes visible once again.

37. WEREWOLVES

The twentieth century saw an explosion of werewolf short stories and novels published in both England and America. The famed English supernatural story writer Algernon Blackwood wrote a number of werewolf short stories. These often had an occult aspect to them. American pulp magazines of the 1920 to 1950s, such as Weird Tales, include many werewolf tales, written by such authors as H. Warner Munn, Seabury Quinn, and Manly Wade Wellman. The most renowned werewolf novel of the twentieth century was The Werewolf of Paris (1933) by American author Guy Endore. This has been accorded classic status and is considered by some to be the Dracula of werewolf literature.[3] It was adapted as The Curse of the Werewolf in 1961 for Hammer Film Productions.

The first feature film to use an anthropomorphic werewolf was Werewolf of London in 1935 (not to be confused with the 1981 film of a similar title) establishing the canon that the werewolf always kills what he loves most. The main werewolf of this film was a dapper London scientist who retained some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation.

However, he lacked warmth, and it was left to the tragic character Larry Talbot played by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941's The Wolf Man to capture the public imagination. This catapulted the werewolf into public consciousness. The theme of lycanthropy as a disease or curse reached its standard treatment in the film.

This movie draws on elements of traditional folklore and fiction, such as the vulnerability of the werewolf to a silver bullet (as seen for instance in the legend of Beast of Gévaudan), though at the climax of the film the Wolf Man is actually dispatched with a silver-headed cane.

The process of transmogrification is portrayed in such films and works of literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction, regardless of the moral character of the person when human.

Lon Chaney Jr himself became somewhat typecast as the Wolfman and reprised his role in several sequels for Universal Studios. In these films the werewolf lore of the first film was clarified. In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) it is firmly established that the Wolf Man is revived at every full moon. In House of Frankenstein (1944) silver bullets are used for the first time to dispatch him. Further sequels were the House of Dracula (1945) and the parodic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

The success of Universal's The Wolf Man prompted rival Hollywood film companies Columbia Studios and Fox Studios to bring out their own, now somewhat obscure, werewolf movies. The first of these was The Undying Monster produced by Fox in 1942, adapted from a werewolf novel of the same name by Jessie Douglas Kerruish, published in 1936.

In 1981, two prominent werewolf films, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, both drew on themes from the Universal series.

More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken a more sympathetic turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature. A prime example of this outlook can be seen in the role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992) from White Wolf Publishing in which players roleplay werewolf characters who work on behalf of Gaia against the destructive supernatural spirit called the Wyrm, who represents the forces of destructive industrialization and pollution. White Wolf's reimagined Werewolf: The Forsaken (2005) depicts werewolves as a sort of border guard between the Material World and the Spirit World. Author Whitley Strieber previously explored these themes in his novels The Wolfen (1978), in which werewolves are shown to act as predators of humanity, acting as a "natural" control on their population now that it has been removed from the traditional limits of nature, and The Wild (1991), in which the werewolf is portrayed as a medium through which to bring human intelligence and spirit back into nature. The heroic werewolf has also returned via the paranormal romance genre, where wolf-like characteristics such as loyalty are shown as positive traits in a prospective mate.

A very popular modern subgenre consists of stories that treat werewolves as separate race or species (either science fictional or magical) or as persons using magic in order to deliberately transform into wolves at will. Such current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involves lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf. The form a werewolf takes is not always an ordinary wolf, but is often anthropomorphic or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Sometimes the beast form of the werewolf will have some physical characteristics borrowed from an animal species other than the wolf, as can be seen in the boar-like werewolf of Wild Country (2006). Many modern werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or blade). This negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns.

Despite the recent upsurge in the motif of heroic werewolves, unsympathetic portrayals of werewolves as monsters also continue to be common in popular culture. This is especially true in movies, which are only slowly incorporating trends in written fiction. There are very few werewolf movies outside the horror genre.

36. THE YMIR

20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American science fiction film written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures and directed by Nathan H. Juran. As with several other Schneer-Columbia collaborations, it was developed to showcase the stop-motion animation talents of Ray Harryhausen.

The government of the United States, along with The Pentagon organizes the first interplanetary expedition to the planet Venus. The spacecraft XY-21 with a crew of seventeen successfully reaches the planet 20 million miles away and vast mineral resources and precious raw materials are discovered on the planet, but atmospheric conditions are extremely harsh and cannot support life from Earth, and several members of the expedition die because of the conditions. None of this is actually seen, but is all explained in dialogue later on in the film.

On the return journey, thirteen months after leaving, the rocket is crippled by a meteor and crashes into the Mediterranean Sea off the southern coast of Sicily. The film begins as the two surviving crewmen are rescued by local fishermen before the vessel sinks beneath the waves and are taken to the local hotel. Camped nearby are an Italian zoologist, Dr. Leonardo and his American granddaughter Marisa, who is, fortunately, a medical student. Marissa tends to the crew herself, with mixed results: horribly burnt chief scientist of the expedition Dr. Sharman dies, whilst Col. Robert Calder survives. Calder determines to locate a specimen they brought with them to study how the creature survives and therefore prepare another expedition to tap into the planet's resources. In his dying breaths Dr. Sharman had different thoughts: he considered the creature a dangerous threat and beseeched Calder to find it and destroy it to prevent the creature causing destruction and carnage on Earth. Meanwhile the specimen, an egg, shrouded in jelly within a metal cylinder, washes ashore and is found by a local boy, who then sells it to Dr. Leonardo.

Overnight the egg hatches a Venusian reptilian creature, referred to as the Ymir. The Ymir begins to grow at a prodigious rate due to the abundance of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. Dr. Leonardo thoughtfully places the Ymir in a cage. Soon, however, the Ymir becomes large and strong enough to free itself. Apparently, the Ymir eats sulfur and passes by horses, poultry and sheep before finding some bags of agricultural chemicals in a barn, one of which is sulfur and begins to eat. The Ymir only attacks when provoked and after being attacked by a dog and a farmer it escapes the barn. This time the Ymir runs to the erupting volcanic crater at Mount Etna.

It is found by the Italian army and American army only to be chased into a trap. However by this point the Ymir has grown over 20 ft high. The army ensnare the Ymir in an electric net and it is and transported to a zoo in Rome. Believing the situation is over, and themselves safe at last, Calder and Marissa begin to develop a romantic relationship.

After studying the Ymir for some time, something goes wrong in the zoo's laboratory when an accident disrupts the flow of electricity. The Ymir escapes and is attacking an elephant. The Ymir, victorious after the battle, then goes on a rampage, smashing through buildings. Calder chases the Ymir down to the Tiber River in Rome, which promptly resurfaces and begins to attack the human threat and smashes through the bridge. Firearms are little use against the Ymir.

The Ymir, after being shot at by powerful explosive rockets, ends up on top of the Colosseum. After tearing into the brickwork and throwing pieces down at people and soldiers, it is eventually shot down by an intense barrage of rockets and falls some fifty meters, whereby it is crushed by falling masonry. The film ends with scientist Dr. Judson Uhl, played by John Zaremba, looking over the dead body of the Ymir and saying "Why is it always, always so costly for man to move from the present to the future?"

35. ROMULANS

The Romulans are a fictional race of alien humanoids within Star Trek. First appearing in the original Star Trek series in the 1966 episode "Balance of Terror", they have since made appearances in all the main later Star Trek series: The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. In addition, they have appeared in various spin-off media, and prominently in the two films Star Trek Nemesis (2002) and Star Trek (2009).

Throughout the series they are generally depicted as antagonists, who are always at war or in an uneasy truce with the United Federation of Planets, the show's galactic organization of which Earth is a member.

The Romulans also act as a counterpoint to the logical Vulcan race who share a common ancestry. As such, the Romulans are characterized as passionate, cunning, and opportunistic — in every way the opposite of the logical Vulcans. The Romulans are also the dominant race of the Romulan Star Empire, the largest empire in the Beta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy (although its positioning in the Beta Quadrant is never mentioned in any film or television episode and indeed several episodes of Deep Space Nine imply it is in the Alpha Quadrant).

The Romulans were created by Paul Schneider, who said "it was a matter of developing a good Romanesque set of admirable antagonists ... an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel". There are some differences in their history and the way they are portrayed on television, in the motion pictures and in several books by Diane Duane, called the Rihannsu series, after the term they use to refer to themselves in their Romulan native language.

The Romulans began as a revolutionary group of Vulcans who were referenced as "those who march beneath the Raptor's wings" and refused to accept the Vulcan philosopher Surak's teachings of complete suppression of emotions. Around 400 AC, the dissident group split off from Vulcan society and began the long journey to the planets Romulus and Remus.

The Romulans are of the Vulcan species. One of three theories regarding how the Romulans arrived at the stellar system that includes the planets Romulus and Remus involves Sargon's people, referred to in conjecture as the "Arretians", as mentioned in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Return to Tomorrow". Sargon claimed that his people had seeded their species throughout the galaxy, and Spock said that could explain some enigmas of Vulcan pre-history. Hanoch, one of Sargon's people and a rival, further claimed that Spock's hybrid Human-Vulcan body was a "good fit" for his alien physiology. If these claims are true, then the Arretians may have been the antecedents for the Romulans — and indeed, they may have also been the species known as the Preservers. The inhabitants of Mintaka III ("Who Watches The Watchers?") seem to support this theory.

34. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 silent horror film adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title directed by Rupert Julian. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the masked and facially deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House,[1] causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force the management to make the woman he loves a star. It is most famous for Lon Chaney's intentionally horrific, self-applied make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film's premiere.

The film also features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis and Snitz Edwards. The only surviving cast member is Carla Laemmle (born 1909), niece of producer Carl Laemmle, who played a small role as "prima ballerina" in the film when she was about 15.

The film opens with the debut of the new season at the Paris Opera House, with a production of Gounod's Faust. Comte Philip de Chagny (John St. Polis) and his brother, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry) are in attendance. Raoul attends only in the hope of hearing his sweetheart Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) sing. Christine, under the tuition of an unknown and mysterious coach, has made a sudden rise from the chorus to understudy of the prima donna. Raoul wishes for Christine to resign and marry him, but she refuses to let their relationship get in the way of her career.

At the height of the most prosperous season in the Opera's history, the management suddenly resign. As they leave, they tell the new managers of the Opera Ghost, a phantom who asks for opera box #5, among other things. The new managers laugh it off as a joke, but the old management leaves troubled.

The managers go to Box 5 to see exactly who has taken it. The keeper of the box does not know who it is, as she has never seen his face. The two managers enter the box and are startled to see a shadowy figure seated. They run out of the box and compose themselves, but when they enter the box again, the person is gone.

After the performance, the ballet girls are disturbed by the sight of a mysterious man (Arthur Edmund Carewe), who dwells in the cellars. Arguing whether or not he is the Phantom, they decide to ask Joseph Buquet, a stagehand who has actually seen the ghost's face. Buquet describes a ghastly sight of a living skeleton to the girls, who are then startled by a shadow cast on the wall. The antics of stagehand Florine Papillon (Snitz Edwards) do not amuse Joseph's brother, Simon (Gibson Gowland), who chases him off.

Meanwhile, Mme. Carlotta (Virginia Pearson), the prima donna of the Paris Grand Opera, barges into the managers office enraged. She has received a letter from "The Phantom," demanding that Christine sing the role of Marguerite the following night, threatening dire consequences if his demands are not met.

In her next performance, Christine reaches her triumph during the finale and receives a standing ovation from the audience. When Raoul visits her in her dressing room, she pretends not to recognize him, because unbeknownst to the rest there, the Spirit is also there. Raoul spends the evening outside her door, and after the others have left, just as he is about to enter, he hears a man's voice within the room. He overhears the voice make his intentions to Christine: "Soon, Christine, this spirit will take form and will demand your love!" When Christine leaves her room alone, Raoul breaks in to find it empty.

Carlotta receives another discordant note from the Phantom. Once again, it demands that she take ill and let Christine have her part. The managers also get a note, reiterating that if Christine does not sing, they will present "Faust" in a house with a curse on it.

The following evening, despite the Phantom's warnings, a defiant Carlotta appears as Marguerite. At first, the performance goes well, but soon the Phantom's curse takes its effect, causing the great, crystal chandelier to fall down onto the audience. Christine runs to her dressing room and is entranced by a mysterious voice through a secret door behind the mirror , descending, in a dream-like sequence, semi-conscious on horseback by a winding staircase into the lower depths of the Opera. She is then taken by gondola over a subterranean lake by the masked Phantom into his lair. When the Phantom admits to who he is and his love for her, Christine faints and is carried into a suite fabricated for her comfort.

The next day, when she awakens, she finds a note from Erik, The Phantom. He tells her that she is free to go as she pleases, but that she must never look behind his mask. In the next room, the Phantom is playing his composition, "Don Juan Triumphant." It is the strangest and most weird music she has ever heard. Christine's curiosity gets the better of her and she sneaks up behind the Phantom. Christine tears off the Phantom's mask, revealing his hideously deformed face. Enraged, the Phantom makes his plans to hold her prisoner known. In an attempt to plead to him, he excuses her to visit her world one last time, with the condition that she never sees her lover again.

Released from the underground dungeon, Christine makes a rendezvous at the annual masked-ball, which is graced with the Phantom in the guise of the 'Red-Death' from the Edgar Allan Poe tale of the same name. While on the roof, Christine tells Raoul everything. However, an unseen jealous Phantom perching on the statue of Apollo overears them.

Raoul and Inspector Ledoux (the mystery man from the cellars) are then lured into the Phantom's underground death-trap when Christine is kidnapped while onstage.

Philippe is drowned by Erik when he goes looking for Raoul in the cellars of the Opera. The Phantom gives Christine a choice of two levers: one shaped like a scorpion and the other like a grasshopper. One will save her lover Raoul and the other will blow up the Opera! Christine picks the Scorpion but it is a trick by the Phantom: it will "save" Raoul and Ledoux from being blown up-by drowning them! Christine begs the Phantom to save Raoul by promising him anything. At the last second the Phantom opens a trapdoor in his floor through which Raoul and Ledoux are saved. The Phantom attempts to flee with Christine in a stolen carriage. However, in the final sequence, while Raoul saves Christine, Erik/Phantom is pursued and killed by a mob on the streets of Paris who after beating him, throw him into the Seine River to finally drown.

33. FREDDY KRUEGER

Freddy Krueger is a fictional character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams, which ultimately results in their death in the real world. However, whenever he is put into the real world, he has normal human strength and vulnerability. He was created by Wes Craven, and has been consistently portrayed by Robert Englund since his first appearance. In the 2010 remake, however, Krueger is portrayed by Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley.

Krueger is undead, and can attack his victims from within their own dreams. He is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, red and dark green striped sweater, brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed brown leather glove.

Freddy Krueger is the primary antagonist in all the Nightmare on Elm Street films, and was officially killed off in part six, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The character was brought back in Wes Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series since the third film. The silver screen is not the only place Freddy Krueger has appeared; there are literary sources that have expanded the universe of Freddy, as well as adapted the films and adjusted various aspects of Krueger's backstory. The character has also hosted his own television show, Freddy's Nightmares, which was an anthology series similar to The Twilight Zone. Freddy also made several guest appearances on the syndicated puppet show DC Follies in 1988. In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th film series in the theatrical release Freddy vs. Jason, a film which officially resurrected both characters from their respective deaths and subsequently being sent to Hell in their respective 'last films'. The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Freddy is actually dead, for despite being decapitated, he winks at the viewers. (A sequel featuring Ash from The Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never materialized on-screen. It was later turned into comic book form in Dynamite Entertainment's Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash.)

32.THE RHEDOSAURUS

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a Rhedosaurus, that begins to wreak havoc in New York City. It was one of the first monster movies that helped inspire the following generation of creature features, coining it with the atomic age.

Far north of the Arctic Circle, a nuclear bomb test, dubbed Operation Experiment, is conducted. The explosion awakens a dinosaur known as the Rhedosaurus, thawing it out of the ice where it had been hibernating for 100 million years.

The Beast starts making its way down the east coast of North America, sinking a fishing ketch off the Grand Banks, destroying another near Marquette, Canada, wrecking a lighthouse in Maine, and crushing buildings in Massachusetts. The Beast eventually comes ashore in Manhattan, and after tearing through power-lines attacks the city. The Beast's rampage causes the death of 180 people, injures 1,500 and does $300 million worth of damage.

Arriving on the scene, the military troops of Col. Jack Evans, blast a bazooka hole in the Beast's throat and drive it back into the sea. Unfortunately, it bleeds all over the streets, unleashing a prehistoric germ, which begins to contaminate the populace, causing even more fatalities. The germ precludes blowing the Beast up or burning it, lest the contagion spread. Thus it is decided to shoot a radioactive isotope into the Beast's neck wound with hopes of burning the Rhedosaurus up from the inside, killing it.

When the Beast comes ashore and attacks the Coney Island amusement park, military sharpshooter Corporal Stone takes the potent radioactive isotope launcher, and climbs onboard a rollercoaster. Riding the coaster to the top of the tracks so he can get to eye-level with the Rhedosaurus, he fires the isotope into the Beast's wound. The Beast lets out a horrible scream and crashes to the ground dead, with the surrounding park ablaze.

31. THE JOKER

The Joker is portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 film Batman. In the film, the character is a psychopathic gangster named Jack Napier, the right-hand man of crime boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance). Napier is disfigured during a confrontation with Batman (Michael Keaton) in a chemical factory, during which he is shot in the face by a ricochet from his own pistol and falls into a vat of chemicals. Although there are many versions of Joker's origins, the filmmakers decided to use one loosely resembling the origin explained in the 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke. The chemicals bleach his skin and turn his hair green and lips red; his trademark grin is the result of a botched attempt at plastic surgery.

Driven insane by his reflection, he kills Grissom and takes over his gang, launching a crime wave designed to "outdo" Batman, who he feels is getting too much press. He describes himself as a "homicidal artist" who makes avant-garde "art" by killing people with Smilex gas, which leaves its victims with a grotesque grin. When Bruce Wayne confronts the Joker, he later recognizes him as the mugger who murdered his parents. The Joker kidnaps reporter Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) and attempts to massacre Gotham City, but Batman foils his plan. During the ensuing battle, Batman and the Joker realize that they "made each other". As the Joker is about to escape in a helicopter, Batman ties a grappling hook onto the Joker's leg and attaches it to a stone gargoyle; the Joker falls to his death when the gargoyle breaks loose of its moorings.

In the flashback scene showing Napier's murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, in an alley. The young Napier is played by Hugo E. Blick.

Nicholson's performance was well-received; Newsweek's review of the film stated that the best scenes in the movie are due to the surreal black comedy portrayed in this character. In 2003, American Film Institute named Nicholson's performance #45 out of 50 greatest film villains. Tim Burton says he wanted to kill the Joker at the end of the film, because he thought having the villain come back would be too unrealistic.

In the 2008 film The Dark Knight, the Joker is portrayed by Heath Ledger, who told Sarah Lyall of The New York Times that he viewed that film's version of the character as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy." In this film, he is a bank robber targeting Mafia-owned banks, whom Gotham's crime families reluctantly hire to kill Batman (Christian Bale) after he brazenly offers them his services. It is gradually revealed that he desires to upset social order and defines himself by his battle with Batman.

Costume designer Lindy Hemming described the Joker's look as being based around his personality, in that "he doesn't care about himself at all." She avoided his design being vagrant, but nonetheless it is "scruffier, grungier and therefore when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy." Unlike most incarnations, where his appearance is a result of chemical bleaching, this Joker sports a Glasgow smile, and accentuates it through unevenly applied make-up and dyed green hair. Another divergence from other Joker incarnations is his use of black makeup around his eyes. During the course of the film, he tells conflicting stories about how he acquired the scars, which involve child abuse and self-mutilation.

Unlike the previous film and comic-book depictions of the Joker, this one eschews gag-based weapons common to the character, in favor of knives, firearms, and an array of explosive devices. In the film, the Joker is responsible for the death of Batman's childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and District Attorney Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart). During the film's climax, the Joker threatens to blow up the city to manipulate people into escaping on two boats that he has rigged to explode, one filled with civilians and the other with prisoners; he threatens to blow them both up at midnight unless one of them destroys the other first. When neither boat destroys the other, Batman tells him that his plan has failed, and throws him off the edge of a building. Batman saves his life, however, by catching him with a grappling hook. As Batman leaves him for the authorities to arrest, the Joker says that he has still won the "battle for Gotham's soul"; when the public learns what Harvey Dent has done, he says, they will lose hope for good.

Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was widely praised by critics. On February 22, 2009, Ledger posthumously won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. He was the fourth actor to be nominated for the portrayal of a comic book character, and the first to win.

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