Kraken: Austin Shone
At the heart of the sea swims a monster so vicious, so gruesome, so enormous, no one has ever seen the whole thing. It’s a fearsome creature whose tentacles will suck the skin right off your face.
What’s scarier than being alone on a boat at sea? Getting sucked into its depths, ship and all, by a 1400-foot-long Kraken. The sheer name alone – The Kraken – brings out goosebumps. If you survived to tell the tale, well let’s face it, you were probably a coward who sailed off on a lifeboat, only to watch the rest of your crew perish. How does that feel?
Obedient to Davy Jones, the Kraken appeared throughout the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, and it can be argued that it originated in the Jules Verne novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
When you heard the thump of the giant hammer pulsate through to the bottom of the sea, summoning the Kraken, you just knew that ship was about to go down. No one, not even Jack Sparrow was going to be able to stop it.
How do you kill a Kraken? You can’t. Why is it the best monster ever? Because bigger is better and it’s the biggest monster on the face of God’s blue Earth. Is it intimidating? You be the judge and stare down its endless vortex of razor-sharp teeth.
If you try chopping off an arm, there’s at least seven more where that came from. The Kraken is the debt-settling hit man of the ocean. An unstoppable monster. The Loch Ness Monster wouldn’t stand a chance against the suction cup strength of the Kraken.
Is the Kraken real? It’s hard to tell. But just think about it the next time you’re on a Royal Caribbean Cruise. Any moment that thing could sink your ship, rip your face off and throw you 10 football fields to your eventual drowning in the ocean. No one would even hear you scream.
The Blob: Anthony Landahl
This Halloween, I want to focus on a more out there character: the Blob. The lead antagonist in the original 1958 film and 1988 remake of the same name, the Blob is a fluid villain that lacks the cliche features that often scares audiences easily.
Instead of a large size or identifiable weapons of death, the Blob is a silent killer. It absorbs its victims and grows the more it kills. Its ordinary appearance is deceptive and has led to the deaths of many unsuspecting victims.
The origin of this creature is still a mystery. One movie says it’s a product of the Cold War, while another states it’s an alien creature. Though it seems far-fetched, the Blob is a conceivably real monster.
In the days of genetic engineering and 3D printing, what are the chances that there could be a liquid military experiment gone wrong that kills hundreds of people by consuming them?
Better than the chances of a Kraken existing, that’s for sure.
Another fantastic aspect of the Blob is that it is invincible. Its major weakness is being exposed to the cold, but it still has the strength to live while being frozen. To solve this solution, the 1958 film ended by sending the Blob to the Arctic, which one character says will work “as long as the Arctic stays cold.”
The naivety of 1950s America rang true, and nearly 60 years later we have nowhere near the number of ice caps as we did back then. The Blob gets the last laugh. Or gargle. Or whatever that freak of nature does to show its amusement.
