Editorials
10 Terrifying Greek Mythological Creatures
I’ve absolutely adored venturing into the past and finding interesting stories from other cultures or eras, such as my dive into traditional Japanese horror art or the works of Gustave Doré. What makes them so exciting is how much I learn and the appreciation I come away with once the piece is ready to go live. There are absolutely wonderful and fascinating stories out there to be discovered, places and times where horror has had a strong influence and shaped the very myths, legends, and folklore that was passed down from generation to generation.
While there hasn’t been a true horror movie based on Greek mythology, many films and games have dabbled in that world, utilizing several of those creatures and characters to bolster their usually epic storyline. Both the original and remake of Clash of the Titans, for example, features the Kraken, a gigantic sea beast whose origins come from ancient Norse myths. Then there is the God of War franchise, which saw Kratos face off against gods, titans, creatures, and monstrosities at pretty much every turn of a corner.
Since I love the aforementioned movie (the original) and game series, I thought I’d look further into Greek mythology and see if I could find some spooky creatures to bring to all of you. As you can easily imagine, I found a wealth of options, so head on down to see what I dug up!
The Cyclops
Written as a gigantic humanoid race, the Cyclops were known for the single large eye that was set in the middle of their forehead. They were often seen as workers of the blacksmith god Hephaestus, whose workshop was deep in the bowels of Mount Etna. This association may have come about because many blacksmiths at the time would wear an eyepatch to protect one eye from being blinded by sparks.
The Cyclops are often written as man-eaters, with Homer’s rendition of Polyphemus eating two men a day. He was ultimately outwitted by Odysseus, who blinded him by plunging a sharpened log into his eye.
Other Cyclops were once imprisoned by the ruling Titan Cronus. Upon being freed by Zeus, the three Cyclops, Arges, Steropes, and Brontes, gifted Zeus the weapons of lightning and thunder, becoming the forgers of his thunderbolts.
The Chimera
A creature that usually has the head and body of a lion, a goat head emerging from its back, and a tail that ends with a snake’s head, the Chimera is sometimes said to be able to breathe fire and seeing it meant that it was a harbinger of doom, specifically shipwrecks or volcanic eruptions. There are other forms the creature can take, so long as it is an amalgamation of multiple animals.
Nowadays, the term Chimera is used to describe anything that is piecemealed together, such as a Frankenstein-esque creature or one could even make a very convincing argument that the final monster at the end of The Thing fits the description.
Medusa/The Gorgons
Gorgons are a bit difficult to define as the name is used to describe many female creatures. However, the term most often applies to the three Gorgon sisters Stheno, Eurylae, and, perhaps the most infamous Greek mythological creature, Medusa. A winged creature with the upper body of a human, the lower body of a serpent, and hair made of hissing snakes, Medusa was purported to be so ugly and hideous that a mere gaze from her would turn any person into stone.
Her origin was that she was originally a human, one so beautiful that the god Poseidon raped her in a temple of Athena. Instead of finding displeasure with Poseidon, Athena instead chose to punish Medusa, turning her into the creature we all know today.
The Hydra
A multi-headed serpentine beast, the Lernaean Hydra was claimed to be the gatekeeper at one of the entrances to Hades, the Underworld. Slicing off one of its heads only led to another two sprouting in the original’s place. It also had poisonous breath and extremely toxic blood. To defeat it, Heracles (aka Hercules) would slice off a head and then use a torch to cauterize the stump before more heads could appear.
Cerberus
Cerberus is a three-headed dog with the tail of a serpent – and supposedly snakes poking out from various parts of its body – that guards the gates of the Underworld and ensures no soul escapes. It was the brother of the Lernaean Hydra, the Chimera, and Orthrus, a two-headed dog that guarded the cattle of Geryon.
Described by a wide variety of poets and authors, the one constant through all the various descriptions of Cerberus is that it was a fearsome and fierce creature, one that struck fear into the hearts of all who dared approach it.
The Minotaur
A large and imposing beast, the Minotaur had the head of a bull and the body of a man. It was the guardian of a labyrinthian maze built by Daedalus and his son Icarus. The only way this creature could survive was by eating the flesh of humans, which came ultimately in the form of seven maidens and seven youths, tributes from Athens.
The Minotaur was eventually slain by Theseus, the son of the Athenian King Aegeus.
Typhon
Hailed as one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology, Typhon was supposedly a gigantic beast whose head touched the stars when standing upright. He was humanoid from the waist up, his shoulders bearing the heads of 100 snakes with wings upon his back, while his legs were two coiled serpents. It ultimately took Zeus to defeat this monster and send it to Tartarus, which is essentially the basement of Hades.
Arachne
This is the one that gets under my skin the most. Arachne was a normal person who challenged Athena to a weaving contest. Upon winning, Arachne was cursed by Athena for her insolence and pride, turning her into a half woman/half spider. Arachne didn’t really do anything evil or complicated after that. She just looks terrifying in her new form, as sad as that it so say.
Sirens
Seductive women whose song lures sailors and their boats to their doom, Sirens appear in different forms. Many times they are seen as birdlike creatures with the heads of beautiful women. Other times, they are gorgeous women with the legs of birds, sometimes with wings and sometimes without. They also often were holding harps, although this changed frequently. No matter what they looked like or what instruments they played (or didn’t play), the Sirens were deadly, causing countless sailors to steer their ships into razor-sharp rocks.
Harpies
Avian monsters with the heads and torsos of women – sometimes beautiful and sometimes hideous – but the wings, legs, and talons of vicious birds, Harpies were agents of torture and violence. They would abduct humans and inflict pain as they took them to the bowels of Tartarus and were also associated with sharp gusts of wind.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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