demon | Geekscape

The 13 Best ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ Monsters-Of-The-Week!

by scottevilJuly 24, 2015

Hulu recently added the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series to its expansive library, and of course, my mind went straight to my favorite Monster of the Week episodes. For better or worse, I love Monster-of-the-Week episodes, mainly because they are self-contained stories. I particularly appreciate that they are heavy on action and light on interpersonal drama, which has a penchant for getting thick in Sunnydale normally. So, without further exposition, let’s talk about our 13 favorite monsters!

13 – Sunnydale High Swim Team (Go Fish, S2E20)
The first two seasons of Buffy used tons of monster tropes from the 1940s and 50s, often turning the concepts on their heads, and Go Fish was no exception: sea monsters and Soviet science projects! The swim coach and school nurse are inadvertently transforming the team into gill men, and of course Xander is the one member of the Scooby Gang that almost gets mutated. Not the first or last time the poor guy got used like a ragdoll by the writers. For example…

12 – Miss French (Teacher’s Pet, S1E4)
Who didn’t have a crush on that one teacher in high school? My English teacher, who will remain unnamed, was one such object of teenage affections, though I don’t think she was actually a 7-foot-tall praying mantis. As with Go Fish, this episode took liberties with a couple of 1950s horror tropes in the best possible ways. Dangers of sex, horny teens ignoring that internal voice telling them they’re going to get eaten by the substitute teacher, and a nice little gotcha ending, though it irks me that the remaining egg was never brought back in a later episode.

11 – The Gentlemen (Hush, S4E10)
I know, I know, Hush is the second-best Buffy episode ever (behind Once More… With Feeling), so why is it so low on this list?? As much as I like the episode, I don’t love the creature design of the Gentlemen. Maybe it’s Slenderman oversaturation, or too many poorly-written creepypastas about grinning monsters, but it doesn’t exactly send chills up my spine. Regardless, the episode is fantastic, disturbing in its lack of sound, and deserved every award it received.

10 – The Bezoar (Bad Eggs, S2E11)
Similar in theme to Teacher’s Pet, but with much creepier monsters, Bad Eggs follows the gang as they pretend their monster eggs are babies, get their energy sucked out of their faces while they sleep, then get full-on controlled by the gross little beasts before Buffy takes a pickaxe to the mother Bezoar’s eye. I know this episode got me to practice safe sex, so I think it did its job.

9 – Hyena people (The Pack, S1E6)
Poor Xander. Never accepted by his high school brethren, except when they’re killer ghosts, mantis ladies or possessed by wild animals. I like the idea of the Pack, but some of the acting is pretty wooden, even with an added first-season handicap (because really, most of Season 1’s acting is atrocious). I also dig that the Pack was an actual threat – I mean, they ate the school mascot AND Principal Flutie! This was also an early example of how the writers weren’t shy about knocking off main and second-tier characters. What of the 4 teenagers who committed murder and cannibalism, and ran off when the possession was lifted? Xander remembered everything he did, so I’m assuming the others did too. That fact makes this one way darker.

8 – Ronnie/Sluggoth demon (Beneath You, S7E2)
By the last couple seasons, the Monster of the Week episodes were few and far between, so it was refreshing to get one so early in Buffy’s final season. Even if Ronnie was just turned into a Graboid by a re-vengeanced Anya, and there’s a lot of dramatic interludes between the estranged Scooby Gang, the creature subplot stands out in an otherwise drama-heavy season.

7 – Ted (Ted, S2E11)
Let’s ignore the more depressing later Joyce Summers episodes and bask in the glory of her robot suitor, John Ritter. A good chunk of Buffy episodes include a level of ambiguity around her seeing evil when it’s just human nature, but it usually turns out she’s right. I guess that’s the downside (or perk, maybe?) of living on a Hellmouth – if something appears sinister, it probably is. This is another episode that harkens back to the 1950s, so of course it pleases me. And come on, it’s got John Ritter!

6 – Gachnar (Fear, Itself, S4E4)
My favorite of the Buffy Halloween episodes! Fear, Itself boasts a haunted house, somebody ELSE turning invisible (sorry Xander), a 4”-high Cenobite wannabe, and an introduction to Anya’s crippling bunny phobia. This might be the most fun-filled episode on the list, but there are still a few more nastiest left.

5 – Der Kindestod (Killed by Death, S2E19)
Remember earlier when I said creepy smiles don’t bug me? I take it back; Der Kindestod is terrifying. Look at that mug and tell me you’d be okay waking up with that staring down at you. Did I mention he sucks your life force through retractable eye-stalks? Eeeeuuuugh. I was pretty relieved when Buffy snapped his neck.

4 – Queller (Listening to Fear, S5E9)
One of 2 lamprey-type monsters featured in the show (and this list), the Queller wiggled out of a meteorite and went bonkers around town, feeding on Sunnydale’s mentally unstable hospital population. Even Buffy’s mom got a faceful of demon phlegm. Not my preferred method of shuffling off this mortal coil, but to each his or her own.

3 – Gnarl (Same Time, Same Place, S7E3)
Gnarl is disgusting. One little scratch from his gross coke-nail and you’re paralyzed, a stationary buffet of skin for him to peel off strip by strip. The creature design plus his peculiar feeding habits solidifies this one’s spot near the top of the list. While it might have been nice to have another go-round with this creep, it’s probably for the best (and my sleep cycle) he only made it 40 minutes into a 45 minute show.

2 – Wig Lady (Doublemeat Palace, S6E12)
While I’d admit that she’s less disturbing than Gnarl, the Wig Lady from Season 6’s Doublemeat Palace is my all-time favorite Monster of the Week. This is partially due to the surprise reveal and creature design, but I’m also a terrible sucker for Soylent Green tropes and, ahem, eat that sort of thing up. Doublemeat is double-sweet!

1 – Glarghk Guhl Kashma’nik demon (Normal Again, S6E17)
And for the #1 slot, the criminally-overlooked demon from the mind-bending Normal Again. I can see why, though: its creature design is similar to the Polgara demon from Season 4 (which also sported an extendable bone-like stinger in its arm), and the episode itself turns the entire show inside out, depending on your interpretation. The crux of the story is whether Buffy’s entire life as Slayer, fighting demons and saving the world, is a delusion she has chosen over life as a patient in a mental hospital. It’s never implicitly stated which version is “real,” but the moment she says farewell to her mother and chooses the Slayer-verse is a major tearjerker. The monster doesn’t need to be incredibly memorable, because the point of the episode is which life is real, and whether Buffy chose the right one.

So, do you agree with this list? Who were your favorite Buffy monsters? Sound out below!

Guilty Pleasures: Amityville Horror II: The Possession

by SaintmortAugust 20, 2012

The Amityville movies are in general pretty terrible. This would be because they’re based on a hoax (theoretically) and adapted from a book that wasn’t very good. I recently took the time to sit down and read the Amityville Horror and it’s a terrible read, yet a very interesting read at the same time.

After reading the book I wrote a short essay on my opinion of the book as a whole in my blog Pure Mattitude. You can read the whole thing if you want but I’ll give you a quick exert from my essay.

I’m not going to lie, after reading it I’m convinced that the events of the book really happened. I say that in the sense that no one could fabricate something this fucking boring and try to sell it as exciting unless it really happened.

The books “paranormal activity” involve “Windows breaking during a storm”, “car trouble” and “going to the same bar as the person who murdered his family a few years earlier”.

This awful and dull book lead to a feature film and 8 sequels. They are all pretty bad to the point of painfulness. Sadly due to the fact that pretty much all the movies are terrible people don’t really recognize the only one that’s moderately interesting; Amityville Horror II: The Possession.

You see while the first Amityville Horror is based on a very potential hoax and all the other sequels are simply made-up stories Amityville Horror II is the only thing based on a proven event, the DeFeo murders.

Now for the sake of creative liberties the names were changed to the Montelli family but the film is based on Murder in Amityville by Hans Holzer. The book (later renamed Amityville: Fact or Fiction?) tries to propose that Ronald Defeo Jr was possessed when he murdered his family.

The movie enters some dark and demented elements like a violent and abusive father as well as an incest filled relationship between brother and sister. But we’ll get to that in a second. First let’s go through the plot a bit.

When the Montelli (aka the Defeo’s) family moves into the Amityville house thinks get weird right away. Windows start opening and closing, paintbrushes come to life and paint hateful messages on the wall and eldest son Sonny starts hearing messages in his walkman.

Dolores asks the local priest to bless the house but his driven away by the abusive and violent husband Anthony (played extremely over the top by Burt Young). While the family goes to church so Anthony can apologize their eldest son Sonny (Son… Sonny… ugh) becomes possessed. HIs first act as a now demon possessed teenager is to bang the shit out of his sister (who is played by Diane Franklin aka Monique the French exchange student from Better Off Dead so really… who can blame him?).

As Sonny falls deeper into the possession his face begins to take on a more demonic appearance (because hey, it worked in The Exorcist). Eventually he’s driven to murdering his entire family on his birthday.

The young priest from earlier takes interest in Sonny an believing that he is possessed decides to exorcism him. While he may not be cleared of his murder charges, Sonny will be able to be himself again. The film ends implying that the priest is now possessed, if he is we won’t ever find out because the next sequel was a 3-D film about a demon living in the basement.

These final 30 minutes is what I find most interesting in this film. The demonic make-up is top notch during the final exorcism sequence. Sonny is caked in slime, contacts and rotting features. While the exorcism isn’t on the same level as other famous exorcism sequences (aka The Exorcist), it’s still quite good. While much of the sequence where Sonny’ becomes possessed is pretty absurd, the special effects and makeup remain quite impressive.

All in all the movie’s not terrible. There are some slow points and some of the performances leave something to be desired. Burt Young’s performance of the violent, abusive and cruel father for instance constantly walks the line between frightening and hilarious. The first scene in which he bites the youngest child and then beats Dolores when she tries to protect them is genuinely disturbing. On the flip side (just 10 minutes later) when he’s beating a child and screaming at the priest the sequence is so outrageously cruel that you find yourself chuckling a little.

On the opposite end of the spectrum Jack Magner’s performance of Sonny Montelli is quite energetic and well done (particularly given how ridiculous the possession sequence was shot). Sadly his only other performance was as “young serviceman” in Firestarter. I don’t even know if he is still alive as his IMDb page has little to no information on him.

In one of the more ridiculous moments of cinema history stemmed from the resolution of a lawsuit. George Lutz (the real life ‘victim’ of the first Amityville Horror) intended to have the sequel be based on the book Amityville Horror Part II. The book by John G Jones has the tagline “The terrifying true story continues” but then has a disclaimer stating “This book is a work of fiction, the author created this story”. When producer Dino De Laurentiis went with in a different direction Lutz attempted (unsuccessfully) to sue. However Lutz did win the right to put posters in theaters informing everyone this film has “no affliction with George and Kathy Lutz” (because you see an Amityville horror film for them and not a possessed and demonic house).

While the movie had mixed and negative reviews some critics (shockingly enough Roger Ebert) did see this as an improvement on the original (because it is). However the movie debuted at #1 it’s opening weekend and opened the door for Amityville everything (including possessed clocks and dollhouses). The Amityville Horror series is undeniably the worst horror franchise out there, but you still shouldn’t write off this particular sequel.