The purpose of this post is to relate a narrative of the monster and dinosaur movies of the past century and how they shaped our lives, or perhaps, our lives shaped them.

This is by no means a complete study. Such a work would require many pages and volumes.

Monsters were ever-present in the folklore of many nations before the advent of the motion picture. Imagine, for  moment, you were a peasant in a small home in Bavaria. It is dark, remember you have no electricity, and you hear the distant wiling of wolves. It’s easy to understand how the legend of the werewolf was born.

When motion pictures began, monsters were there, immediately. The year 1896 saw Une nuit terrible which featured a giant spider. Monsters persisted through the silent years, and such as Nosfersatu, The Golem, and The Lost World appeared.

Universal Studios excelled in the monster and horror genre, producing many classics, such as The Man Who Laughs, in 1928, credited as being the inspiration for The Joker.

1931 was a golden year, in which Universal unveiled Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which still spawn sequels today.

1932 revealed Murders In The Rue Morgue. This was followed through the years with sequels and many killer apes and gorillas. RKO’s 1933 King Kong became a franchise.

Also, 1933 revealed The Invisible Man, spawning sequels and TV shows.

In 1941, perhaps the greatest creation, The Wolf Man, appeared.  Lon Chaney’s never-over-the top performance as Larry Talbot, showed a decent man, pure of heart, can be transformed into a monster through circumstances beyond his control.

A funny thing happened as 1941 lingered. A thing called War.

America came on top!

How would that change the face of Universal Horror?

1948 saw the premiere of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in which the dizzy duo confronted the Universal creations. Americans were now in a happy state. If two bumblers can prevail over the monsters, anyone can have a chance for success.

However, that was a two-sided coin. That war also spawned the horrible atomic bomb. Soon, that terrible creation of man would spawn a new generation of monsters.

But first, in 1954, Universal produced its last classic monster, The Creature From The Black Lagoon. This also spawned worthy sequels. The Atom Bomb did not play a part in this movie, but the theme of science advancing without control, thus destroying a way of life, was noted here.

1954 also saw the debut of the first creatures born from lingering radiation of the tom Bomb, the spectacular Them, from Warner Bros., which became a template for many of the atom-born beasts to come. As a sidenote, if you haven’t seen the movie , please do. Each performance is noteworthy, especially James Whitmore and James Arness. Fess Parker in a bitty role gives the performance that earned him his career.

Another Giant Creature was “Universal’s 1955 Tarantula. Perhaps a descendant of 1896’s  Une nuit terrible.

1957, a great year for monster movies,  saw Universal-International’s The Deadly Mantis.

Also, 1957, The Black Scorpion, even daring to use the same creature sounds as its predecessor, Them.

Another 1957 movie, the Beginning of The End,  produced by American Broadcasting/Paramount Theaters (ABPT) .  This featured radiation-born giant locusts and starred James Arness’s brother, Peter Graves. It was a prophetic title, as the production company ceased operations abruptly following its release.

Radiation-born giant mollusks was the subject of 1957's Gramercy Pictures' The Monster That Challenged The World, one of the best in its genre.

Columbia, in 1957, launched The Giant Claw. This was a first of a space- born giant creature. Japan’s Toho continued this type with King Ghidora.

Sandwiched in between these creature features was the dinosaur movie, in which people of the present confront such creatures, the only ones that are defeated are those that were wicked, and most of these showed the audience when one's  intentions are good, even ordinary people can escape from nearly-impossible peril by sheer will, determination, and altruism.

Jumping back to the silent era, in 1925, First national Pictures brought Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’s The Lost World to the screen. Stop motion animation was used. To viewers who had never seen such depictions on the screen, it must have seemed like an encounter with actual dinosaurs.

1933 was the year  RKO Radio Pictures unveiled the world-renown King Kong. The stop-motion effects by Willis O' Brien depicted dinosaurs and cretures in the most effective way for yeras of movies to come. The movie inspired two friends, Ray Bradbury, and Ray Harryhausen to devote their lives to fantasy writing and stop-motion photogrphy.

There was a very mediocre feature, King Dinosaur,  Lippert Pictures 1955 opus, the first directed by the famous Bert I. Gordon, who also wrote and produced. Yeah, giant iguanas and such. The pictured took seven days to make, which hs one pondering what did they do in six of the days?

Bert became a legend for his initials-BIG, and he mde scores of big cretures, even  giant chicken for Dobie Gillis.

Universal-International unleashed The Land Unknown in that magical year, 1957. Still the giant iguana and cheesy suit category, but somehow effective and engrossing.

Then, 20th Century Fox, in 1960, issued their adaptation of The Lost World. Critics and viewers wished the movie had been lost. Very few monsters and of the iguana variety, with a forgettable plotline and which ended before the glorious finale of the silent version.

We all know the success of the recent Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies.

The sixties were filled with many monsters, and many of them were from countries other than the U.S. Gorgo, Gamera, Reptilicus are but a few.

Now we reverse time to the era of the atomic bomb again.

It was in this era a monster best known of all appeared. Godzilla. Or, shall we say, Gojira.

We all know how unspeakably horrid was the decision to use the atomic bomb. No one knows that more than the Japanese people, who were its targets.

When Japan was being rebuilt, theJapanese people could not make a documentary about the effects of that bomb, so they created Gojira, a metaphor for its effect. This was no kid’s movie. It showed the fear the Japanese had of the bomb. It was bought by a small production company, redone (perfectly) with American scenes, and became more of a standard monster movie.

The movies grossed so well that sequel after sequel were produced.

By the sixties, with affluence, the origin of the atom bomb was forgotten for awhile and the movies became more and more juvenile.

Godzilla’s origins became a bit clearer in the late eighties, nineties and present times. Just the past year, Godzilla Minus One earned an Oscar and returned Godzilla to its roots. Is it a coincidence that Oppenheimer was also a hit that year?

It seems to me, before the motion picture grew up, people were mesmerized by anything they saw on the screen.

As motion pictures became advanced with sounds, the monsters were the results of men that defied God, went a step too far, or were beings not meant to be on this earth.

The heroes, for the most part, feared God, sometimes even quoting the Bible, and were willing to destroy the horror even if it meant their doom.

Lovers were constant, faithful, not being seen doing anything untoward in public.

Most movies expressed a necessary moral.

Things changed in the forties. We became more self-confident, being victors against evil.

Then the shock of the atomic bomb (and afterward, the Communist threat) saw new types of monsters and showed us, if men were decent, had spiritual belief, worked for the good of man, any type of menace could be defeated.

It did not matter throughout the fifties that we did not have CGI or special, special effects. Our imaginations were stirred. Of course, those were the days of Howdy Doody,  Captain Midnight, Sky King  and others, ten cent comics that presented fantastic adventures, well-written, with decent heroes and which encouraged many to become writers.

After years of prosperity and merriment, people relaxed their motives and morals. Their heroes became objects of laughter if they were too decent, such as Batman. Family values became distorted, such as in The Addams Family and The Munsters, which were, in a sense, just distorted caricatures of The Cleaver Family.

Monsters became lighter entertainment, mainly for the kids.

The seventies and eighties showed us “heroes” did not need to have a strong moral code or quote scripture.

Even “Truth, Justice, and The American Way” Superman, bedded Lois when he had a chance.

Monsters were mainly crazy things to show on the screen and which a “flawed hero” would soon vanquish.

The dinosaur movie has become such a showcase of CGI that I find myself yearning again for giant iguanas.

The heroes are a bunch of silly people thrown together who somehow find their strengths so some escape alive.

People have forgotten morals. Many have no God.

To misquote The Dark Knight, the people now have the heroes and monsters they want, not the ones they deserve.