Movie Monsters

Mothman Deaths: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good For several months, there have been no new Mothman news, as it relates to the Mothman Death List. That’s great. Not since 26 January 2007, when a member of the cast of the Mark Pellington-Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, died five years after the national release of the film, has there been a well-documented, well-publicized passing of anyone on the cast. (For more details on that 2007 death, click on “Cyrus Bills”.) The void in deaths has been welcome. Or is the absence of information perhaps only a lack of knowledge of such deaths, as the movie [...]

Wiki Weirdness & WV’s Winged Wonder

Okay, the news organizations’ election primary attention shifts to West Virginia today, Tuesday, May 13th, so let’s talk Mothman. Actually, I’m going to use this opportunity to note the sinister editing that regularly takes place at the Wikipedia entry for “Mothman.” I’ve been watching the site because some incredible “political” inputs have occurred with the “Mothman” entry, apparently by skeptics and debunkers inserting words like “claims” and deleting large sections of information. I did not write any of the section, but have dipped in to correct citations, edit slanted words out, and to try to remove mistakes. But what I [...]

Yetis, Mummy 3, and Chinese

李連杰 (Jet Li) plays Qin Emperor. Photo by Jasin Boland. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (a/k/a Mummy 3) is an upcoming American motion picture directed by Rob Cohen that follows in the wake of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. M3 is slated for release on August 1, 2008. As I have noted here before, one scene will be of a battle with the “Army of the Yeti.” An extremely brief hint of the Yeti can be seen here. Additionally, a variety of other teaser featurettes are beginning to be placed online, some in Chinese:

The Blob Screenwriter Has Died

Kay Linaker, who wrote the screenplay for The Blob, passed away on April 2008. She was 94 and would have turned 95 in July. For more complete information on her careers as both a writer and an actress, see her entry at IMDb, here.

What Do You Think of John Keel?

John A. Keel was a significant author of works in Forteana, cryptozoology, and ufology in the 1960s and 1970s. His Strange Creatures from Time and Space and The Mothman Prophecies, as well as his numerous articles in magazines, influenced other writers, researchers, and the general public. After the Mothman book-inspired movie appeared in 2002, interest in Keel resurfaced, briefly. His declining health, few public lectures, and then heart attack, created less attention to Keel than might have been expected. I was wondering how Cryptomundians consider his impact, legacy, and import today? What place do you think Keel with have in [...]

Manatees In Merbeings Documentary

Did a posting of an old “Mermaid” account at Cryptomundo in 2007, stimulate the involvement of a certain location in an upcoming documentary film? According to the Ashley Park Press, this notice was referenced: “In 1869, two Toms River fishermen reportedly caught a monster resembling a mermaid. A copy of the report is available [here]” Reporter Matthew McGrath says in his article, “Mermaids or manatees? ~ Filmmaker: Sea goddesses may have been sea cows,” that Toms River, New Jersey was visited by a documentary filmmaker: Ancient legends, Renaissance fairy tales and modern comic books all tell stories of mermaids, the [...]

Happy Birthday, Lon Chaney!

April Fool’s Day is Lon Chaney’s birthday. Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American film actor, nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” whose macabre characterizations are classics of the silent screen. Both of Chaney’s parents were deaf, and as a child of deaf adults, Chaney became skilled in pantomime, which can be seen in his skilled acting for his many difficult roles. He is especially remembered as the Phantom of the Opera (above) and the Hunchback of Notre Dame (directly below). Chaney had many bizarre, almost Fortean roles, including the clown Flik in Laugh, Clown, [...]