It's Alive!: The Science of B-Movie Monsters
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
Related to It's Alive!
Related ebooks
Status:Presumed Extinct Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt’s Alive! Tales of Mad Scientists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrankenstein's Bride Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Evergreen Ape: The Story of Bigfoot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fifty-Fifty O'Brien Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trouble on Titan Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Last of the Summer Wine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Land of Nod Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mist Keeper's Apprentice: The Life & Death Cycle, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDracula: The Origins and Influence of the Legendary Vampire Count Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStasis Leaked Complete: The Unofficial Behind the Scenes Guide to Red Dwarf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFreaks; Or Spurs (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sci-Fi Baby Names: 500 Out-of-This-World Baby Names from Anakin to Zardoz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In The Realm of the Eerie & Unexplained: Volume 2: In The Realm of the Eerie & Unexplained, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShadows on the Water: The Haunted Canals and Waterways of Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMonsterland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor: Picador Classic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Word Eater Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mysterious Chronicles of the Unexplained Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWritten in Blood: A Cultural History of the British Vampire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeadtown and Other Tales of Horror Set in the Old West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe White Forest: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBram Stoker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJack the Ripper: The Hand of the Church Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThey Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMonsters of the Midwest: True Tales of Bigfoot, Werewolves, and Other Legendary Creatures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Living in Sin: Making Marriage Work between I Do and Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays, 2020 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Comedy Bible: From Stand-up to Sitcom--The Comedy Writer's Ultimate "How To" Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Is This Anything? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How I Learned to Drive (Stand-Alone TCG Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Slave Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Is No Man: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifth Mountain: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for It's Alive!
2 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
It's Alive! - Michael LaBarbera
It’s Alive! The Science of B-Movie Monsters
Michael LaBarbera
Chicago Shorts
It’s Alive! The Science of B-Movie Monsters was originally published as The Biology of B-Movie Monsters
in The University of Chicago Magazine, 2003, © 2003, 2013 by Michael LaBarbera
All rights reserved.
Chicago Shorts edition, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-226-09488-5
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226094885.001.0001
CONTENTS
The Fantastic World of Mr. Spielberg
Biology and Geometry Collide!
A World Distorted Beyond Your Imagination
The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall
Terrors of the Deep
Giant Ants Attack!
Unexpected Biology: Parallel Universes and Alien Worlds
Notes
The Fantastic World of Mr. Spielberg
In the late 1990s, the Chicago Tribune published an article entitled When seeing is disbelieving.
The article opened with the words Never, ever go to the movies with Michael LaBarbera. . . . Chances are that the University of Chicago anatomy professor will. . . . tell you, in excruciatingly minute detail, just how the action on the screen is unlikely, unrealistic, or downright impossible. LaBarbera is an unrepentant member of the plausibility police. . . .
It’s true. When Jurassic Park (1994) was first released, I went to see the film with a paleontologist friend. As the rest of the audience cringed and shrieked, we excitedly whispered comments to each other—Classic large predator behavior patterns!
Superb—they got the bipedal kinematics just right!
Folks in adjacent seats were not amused. The Tyrannosaurus and Gallimimus sequences are truly breathtaking. If you want to see our best guess as to how dinosaurs moved and behaved, see this film.
I have only two quibbles with Jurassic Park, both minor. First, the title. I suppose Spielberg was stuck with the title of Michael Crichton’s novel, but except for the Brachiosaurus (and the Dilophosaurus, which was a complete fiction) all of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park actually lived in the Cretaceous. But what’s 100 million years among friends?
::: The (Cinematic) Evolution of Tyrannosaurids
My second quibble has a bit more substance, for it concerns the posture of the Tyrannosaurus. It’s possible to trace our understanding of tyrannosaurids by their representation in the movies. For most of the 20th century, celluloid Tyrannosaurus were heavily influenced by Charles Knight’s early 20th century sculptures and paintings; these reconstructed Tyrannosaurus as standing with its body vertical, crouched on its hind limbs. This is the posture of the Allosaurus in the classic silent film The Lost World (1925) and the Tyrannosaurus in Disney’s Fantasia (1940); both are good examples of this classical
view, one probably unconsciously modeled after our own bipedal posture with a bit of superimposed lizard.
[A painting by Charles Knight in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History shows a confrontation between a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops—a popular subject in movies and illustrations of the days when dinosaurs walked the earth. The classical
view of the T. rex posture seen here—body vertical, hind limbs bent—has since been rejected by researchers, who now believe that T. rex kept its body parallel to the ground and its hind limbs straight.]
Even as late as 1969, The Valley of Gwangi has its Tyrannosaurus walking in this posture, although growing appreciation of dinosaurs as more bird-like and active (birds are living dinosaurs, close relatives of tyrannosaurids) yielded the more agile Gwangi, with a sinuous, lizard-like tail. (Ray Harryhausen, who did the special effects, reportedly once had a dream in which cowboys lassoed a T. rex; Valley of Gwangi was the embodiment of that image.)
More careful consideration of the biomechanics of large tyrannosaurs—the position of the center of