The Rules of Monster Movies

In the October 2004 issue of Wired, there was an article about these guys who work for the SciFi channel whose job is to screen monster movies to decide which ones get aired. Long story short, they decided they could do a better job than the submissions they got, and that’s how we got all those “SciFi Channel Originals” like Mansquito, Hammerhead, and Snakehead Terror. The story was largely unremarkable, except for one detail that has firmly lodged itself in my head and started influencing the way I approach a lot of things. These guys came up with a set of rules for making monster movies.

Over the years, the Sci Fi guys have developed some firm ideas about how a monster movie should be made. The first rule: Show the monster. The failure of independently produced features to give ample air time to monsters was what drove the Sci Fi Channel to make its own movies in the first place, and the need for frequent shots of the creature remains an article of faith. Of course, some of their movies involve not monsters, but aliens. In that case, rule one becomes: Show the alien. The second rule: Put the monster in the title. “Boa vs. Python does better than Terminal Invasion,” says Regina. This is because Boa vs. Python makes an unmistakable commitment to giant snakes, while Terminal Invasion doesn’t indicate that people will be murdered by aliens while snowed in at an airport. The best titles are as explicit as legal documents.

Invariably, a Saturday night creature feature runs for 88 minutes. The creature must appear by minute 15. Hollywood dogma calls for a plot structure of three acts, but three-act dramas are too slow for Cannella, Vitale, and Regina. Cannella tells his writers and directors that he wants a death every eight minutes - including monsters eating people and pooping them out. Their movies come in seven acts. That gives you six cliffhangers, plus a climax, if you do things right.
– We’ve Created a Monster!, Wired 12.10

Now, that’s a funny list, but what’s really seized me about it is that these guys have taken their craft, and reduced it down to the core of what makes it enjoyable. They’ve identified what bothers them about the genre, and they go out of their way to avoid it. They’ve figured out what they love about it, and do anything they can to enhance it. By crafting these guidelines, they’ve improved their work as a whole.

How could your craft benefit from a list like this? What do you love and hate about your field? If you made a list of rules, what would it look like?