Halloween Highlights Part 1 - TV monsters.
- Harry Weaver
- Oct 24, 2021
- 5 min read
Light spoilers for the shows and episodes I'm referencing.
Admittedly, I'm not an expert in the genre of horror. Name almost any big horror, slasher or monster flick, and I've probably not seen it. However, in the spirit of Halloween, I'd like to do something a bit different from my typical reviews, and that's to highlight a few of my most vivid and terrified memories from tv, film, games and books, and leave myself open to suggestions of what to watch or read next in the genre.
This time, I will focus on moments from television shows that tortured my childhood and remain ingrained in my mind even now.
I think what first comes to mind is my favourite childhood show Doctor Who, which has provided me plenty of moments that, while don't scare me now, stay with me as having made me hide in the other room or avoid episodes altogether. Narrowing it down to three stories in particular, it would have to be The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Blink, and Silence in the Library/Forests of the Dead, all written by Steven Moffat in what I consider to be the best period for the modern revival of the show.
The Empty Child in series 1 is set in World War Two during the Blitz in London, and is about a mysterious and supernatural child in a gas mask, searching endlessly for his "mummy". It turns out, he was killed by a bomb during the blitz, and a ship of alien medical nanites tried to fix him, fusing the mask to his face and giving him unparalleled strength and abilities before attempting to "fix" everyone else it encountered, causing those infected by it to become like him with the same mask and injuries.
This is gruesomely demonstrated when the Doctor encounters the last normal doctor in a hospital, who, while gagging, asks him "are you my mummy?" before his face sprouts horribly sprouts the mask, his eyes growing and mouth widening to form the mask - the effects may not be particularly good by today's standards, but it's not something you can forget, especially as a child watching the show.
Doctor Who has gone for a zombie trope just about every series since its 2005 revival, but this one remains its finest, capturing the pure horror of childish innocence and wartime imagery relentlessly corrupting everything it encounters.
Blink, from series 3, is more generally creepy, with the monsters being silent statues called "Weeping Angels" who are frozen in place when seen by others, but move at incredible speed while unseen, changing position and coming closer at even a blink. This makes them instantly iconic and terrifying as a concept for a monster, but the existential tragedy of what they do grows on you more as an adult. When touched by one, you are transported back in time and must live out your life in the past, robbed of the opportunities you had in the present.
Bearing in mind this isn't a horror film with a large budget and two hours of runtime to explore this concept - this was a forty five minute episode of a BBC show, where the two leads we know and like are almost entirely absent, having fallen for the angels' trap as well. This is the sort of episode that, whether or not you are a fan of 2005-2010 Doctor Who, science fiction or horror, I strongly urge you to watch, representing the peak of the show and the terror that it can bring.
Finally, the series 4 monsters in "Silence in the Library" haunted me for a good long while. At some point growing up, I developed a strong fear of dead bodies, mummies and skeletons, and this story really exploited that. The "monster of the week" are called the "Vashta Nerada", or "the shadows that melt the flesh". Swarms of microscopic piranhas that live in darkness and shadows - a perfect way to incorporate the fear of the dark with a monster for the Doctor to face.
No computer work is needed to convey these creatures, just clever editing, practical effects and the imagination and captivation of the audience as if the characters' shadows touch any others, the creatures may pass over and target them to be eaten, reducing them to a skeleton by simply leaving the light.
This happens to characters in astronaut suits, and as they are eaten, their skeletal heads lean against the visors as the swarm controls the movements of the suit to follow the survivors. That, and the fading echoes of the peoples' digital consciousnesses repeating the same phrases over and over ("Hey! Who turned out the lights?" being a noticeable example) manage to blend several different horrifying concepts into one tense story that remains just as scary today as when it first aired.
However, Doctor Who hasn't been the only show to freak me out. Far more recently, I've been watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and not usually straying into pure horror, instead having a comedic, campy and fun tone that occasionally goes into drama, the episode called "Hush" from season 4 changes that. A group of demons called "The Gentlemen" take away the voices of all the people in Sunnydale, leaving an uncharacteristically eerie atmosphere devoid of the usual quips and remarks.
The Gentlemen don't speak themselves, they float along with jarring grins and exuberant hand gestures, finding seven hearts to take from those who can't even cry for help. Not only does this make it the scariest, but also the best episode of the show thus far, putting the characters in a whole new level of danger and fear, while also being pivotal to the ongoing story of the series.
The Titans from Attack On Titan are not pleasant to watch by any stretch of the imagination. While fundamentally mindless, their listless, blank faces pasted onto distorted, naked bodies makes them horrible. They don't eat humans because they want to, or need to in order to survive. They just do, and that lack of relatability and humanity makes them horrible. They are like overgrown toddlers with no moral agency, a parody of the human form, and while giants aren't the most immediately horrifying monsters, these ones are a notable exception.
Lastly, the most unequivocally morbid and grotesque of them all, "Spooky Spoon" from The Numberjacks is something you would wish I never mentioned. Be it the introductory song, the weird way it floats in the air or the Cbeebies 2000s computer imaging, but that flying purple spoon that mixes things up will haunt me, as it has haunted so many others, for the rest of their lives.
So what do you think of these memorable monsters and episodes from tv? Are there any that have kept you awake at night? Please let me know in the comments. In the run up to Halloween, I'll go over film, books and games as well, so stay tuned, and if you have any suggestions for me, I'm all ears.
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