Mythical Critters in the Movies

Because I just saw that "Mystics in Bali" has a friggin' penanggalan as the antagonist. I tried to Search "penanggalan" on these forums (from when Wraith and I were chatting about the critter somewhere before), but it seems to have gotten baleeted.

Cracked.com placed Mystics in Bali in the #1 slot for their "5 Most Baffling Horror Movies from Around the World" list. Even with two pics of the penanggalan in action (including the reputed habit of preying on pregnant women), only one person in the Comments identified the critter successfully, making Wraith and me smarter than 90% of the people on Cracked. Including the writers.


Uma Thurman makes a sexy gorgon (Medusa herself, even) in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. While I may not agree with "Clash of the Titans" and its remake swapping Medusa's legs for a big snake body, I do appreciate the movies' efforts to give her an ugly face (though less so with the remake) like a true-to-mythology gorgon should have.


Speaking of Clash of the Titans, WTF was that "Kraken" of theirs? Because the Kraken I read about in my youth is a humungous, ship-crushing Scandinavian octopus or squid...rather like the one in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, come to that.




Dragons? Heh...yeah. Let's just skip the dragons and all the movies featuring dragons...unless we have a few hours to kill, that is.

Ditto for vampires.

Ditto for werewolves.

Ditto for ghosts. Patrick Swayze did the ghosts proud, though.

And we already know about sasquatches in the movies, but what about their Eastern cousin, the yeti? I'm still looking for an Abominable-Snowman-centric movie.

Also on the "To Find" list:
• A griffin
• A chimera
• A harpy
• A hydra
• A sphinx
• A giant
• Variants on the giant, including:
•• A cyclops
•• A troll (No, not that troll)
•• A fir bolg (Celtic giant/monster thing)
• A jiangshi (may or may not include Hsien-Ko from the Darkstalkers anime, I guess)
• A bakemono (Japanese monster)
• An oni (Japanese troll/demon thing, like the antagonist in this music video, or Kongou from Red Earth/Warzard:)

• A will-o'-the-wisp (the lure-you-to-your-death-in-the-swamp kind)
• A unicorn
• A pegasus (already in Clash of the Titans, yes; now go find another one)
• A chupacabra
• A Jersey Devil
• The Loch Ness Monster
• More penanggalan
• More gorgon
• More kraken
• Whatever else you can think of.


Go hunt those mythical critters down and bring 'em here. Post away!

Unicorn.... Legend with Tom Cruise
Griffin.... Chronicals of Narnia
Hydra.... Percy Jackson
Minotaur... also Percy Jackson

Griffon: Spiderwick chronicles
Harpy: Hercules!!! (lol)
Giant: bridge to Terrabithia (sp?)
Loch ness monster: The Waterhorse
Minotaur: Minotaur
Lord of the Rings... nuff said.
Angels and Demons: Just like the dragons, I won't touch it. Just thought I might poke it with a stick instead


LOL, now you've got my brain working. I officially hate you.

Oh, yeah! I remember that unicorn in Legend now. Tim Curry captured the unicorn and that one princess chick, and the princess chick demanded that he let her kill the unicorn, so he said "Okay" and laughed malevolently. Then she took that blade and acted like she was going to chop the unicorn's head off, but instead she changed up her swing, split the chain and set the unicorn free. Then Tim Curry bellowed with rage and punched her, because big-horned demons don't like being played like that.

I'm not familiar with The Waterhorse, so you might have to talk about that movie and how much you liked it, Wraith.

Oh! Also, there was a giant in Time Bandits. Remember when the kid and all those midgets are in that ship with the old cannibal hag's nasty-as-hell kitchen, and a giant stands up out of the water and the ship gets "beached" on his head, so the midgets and the kid all have to pull some planks out of the hull and stab the giant in the scalp with a syringe full of some sleeping potion so that the giant will sit down, take a nap and let them escape?

I need to start jotting all of these down. Edit button, ahoy!

Eh, screw the Edit button. New post!

Penanggalans:
• Mystics of Bali

Krakens (the "real" octopus kind, not whatever it was that Clash of the Titans came up with):
• Pirates of the Caribbean 2
• Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Gorgons:
• Clash of the Titans
• Clash of the Titans (remake)
• Percy Jackson

Pegasi:
• Clash of the Titans
• Clash of the Titans (remake)
• Disney's Hercules

Sasquatches:
• Harry and the Hendersons

Unicorns:
• Legend
• The Last Unicorn

Griffins:
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
• Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Hydras:
• Percy Jackson
• Disney's Hercules (of course)

Minotaurs:
• Minotaur (the 2006 one with Rutger Hauer in some minor role)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur

Harpies:
• Hercules (the 2005 movie, right? And these harpies have frickin' ranged attacks, too.)
• Jason and the Argonauts

Giants:
• Bridge to Terabithia
• Time Bandits
• Big Fish

Cyclopes:
• Jason and the Argonauts

Loch Ness Monsters:
• The Water Horse

Trolls (Remember: the Scandinavians say that trolls are huge):
• Lord of the Rings 1
• Lord of the Rings 2 (I think)
• Lord of the Rings 3

Ogres:
• All of the Shrek movies
• Ogre (the one with Jon Schneider that I had the dubious pleasure of watching on SyFy once)

Satyrs:
• Disney's Hercules
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Pan's Labyrinth

Centaurs:
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Pixies:
• Pretty much every Peter Pan movie ever made

Goblins:
• Labyrinth
• Troll 2


You can proceed to start hating me all you want now, Wraith.

Eh, I'll just have to come up with more and make you hate the Edit Button instead

*scratching head* raincheck for now, but I'll think of something

Meh, I didn't feel like starting a new topic for one critter.

Anyway, I'm still clearing out my old Gaia Online account, selling all of my stuff, giving whatever Gold I make to my longtime friend Cat (if she's still around) and dumping Gaia Online for good.  I haven't been there in four years, it's not what it used to be, they got rid of the zOMG! game which was the only thing keeping me around, blah blah blah.  I have a bunch of old Gaia goodies, and I've been equipping them at random.  Well, I equipped my Nightmare, and one of its full-avatar incarnations is a penanggalan fittingly named Penanggalan:

Awww, isn't she cuuuuute?  Yeah...not really.  

Also, there's Eyes: The Horror Game.  Guess what the antagonist of that game is!


But the Eyes wiki identifies the "ghost" as a krasue or phi krasue, which begs the question: What exactly are the differences between a Thai krasue, a Malaysian penanggalan, a Filipino manananggal, a Cambodian ahp, a Laotian kasu and an Indonesian selaq metem, if any?  And why is that part of the world so fixated on undead women whose heads come off (with some innards still attached) and fly around biting pregnant women all night, anyway?