Top 13 Tiny Terror Horror Films

There's just something about diminutive monsters that go for the feet first. From the undead Gage in "Pet Sematary" to the tiny creatures from "The Gate," they all strike a chord of terror in us that is so primal that it makes us pull up our feet and sit on them while we watch the movie.

Here's my list of the top 13 scariest tiny terrors in horror films.

13. Ghoulies 

"Ghoulies" is a campy horror film in which demonic tiny terrors are summoned during a magic ritual. I'll warn you, the acting is pretty bad, but the monsters make it worth it.


12. Critters

"Critters" is about a monstrous alien species that lands on Earth and proceeds to terrorize a family living in rural American. This was one of those horror movies that I saw when I was a little kid that scared the bejeezus out of me. There's just something about unstoppable eating machines that are nothing but teeth and stomachs that is just creepy. I guess that's why people don't like sharks.

11. Subspecies

"Subspecies" is a cult classic by Full Moon Entertainment. It's about an evil vampire who sends out his little minions, or ghouls, to kidnap people for him to eat, or seduce and then turn into other vampires. Either way,  vampire Radu Vladislas won't stop until he gets his girl. The little creatures in this movie don't speak, but their presence is so important that they became the iconic monsters of the series.

10. The Gate

"The Gate" uses the premise that playing a record backwards will allow you to hear the band speaking Satan rituals. In this case, it opens a gateway to hell, and little demons soon crawl out of it and invade a kid's home.

This is one of those classic 80s horror films that actually had child actors playing the part of kids. I know, it's crazy, isn't it?


9. Gremlins 

Three simple rules, and yet, Billy Pelzer can't manage to follow a single one of them. "Gremlins" is quite possibly the best movie that Joe Dante has ever directed. It is a horror comedy that manages to be equally scary and funny at the same time, and it has a Mogwai in it, so you know that it has to be good.

8. The Hand (1981)

"The Hand" is both a tiny terror film and a psychological horror film all wrapped up into one neat package. Is Jon Landsdale losing his mind, or has his severed hand become a reanimated, unstoppable killing machine?

"The Hand" was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Michael Caine. It is based on "The Lizard's Tail" by Marc Brandell and is about a comic book artist who loses his hand in a terrible car accident. The hand takes on a life of its own, and soon begins to terrorize the people that are making Jon's life a living hell.

7. Cat's Eye (1985)

"Cat's Eye" is an anthology based on the stories of Stephen King. In this horror movie, the tiny terror is an evil troll.

The last story of the anthology, "General" is named after the main character, which happens to be a cat. The evil troll wants to suck out the soul of General's owner, a little girl played by Drew Berrymore.

6. Aliens

"Aliens" is one of my favorite Sci-Fi horror films. While it does have a large adult sized alien at the end, there's a good number of scenes in it that star the FACE HUGGER skittering around and wreaking havok. Because it's so creepy to me, I have included it in this list.

The tiny terror of  "Aliens" is the face hugger.

5. Puppet Master

"Puppet Master" features killer puppets that have been animated by dark magic. They are attempting to get revenge for the death of their creator, Toulon.  When a group of psychics meets up in a hotel where the puppets were hidden, all hell breaks loose as the puppets start to kill them off, one by one.


4. Pet Sematary

Quite possibly the most depressing and terrifying movie I have ever seen, "Pet Sematary" has one of the most memorable tiny terrors in film history. The Creeds move into a new home, and soon learn that an ancient Indian burial ground lies behind their property. When tragedy strikes the family, they soon learn of the burial ground's evil powers. Remember, sometimes, dead is better.


"Pet Sematary" has two tiny terrors in it, the resurrected cat Church, and the evil undead Gage.

3. Child's Play

"Child's Play" is about a killer who uses a voodoo spell to send his soul into the body of a toy. When Charles Lee Ray finds a gullible kid to help him, he goes on a killing spree and attempts to transfer his soul to a living, breathing body.

Chucky is the epitome of creepy dolls. This movie came out when electronic talking toys like Teddy Ruxpin were popular. Chucky became the icon of nightmarish children's toys, and remains as one of the scariest tiny terrors in horror films to date.


2. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" was one of the most underrated horror films of 2010. It features tiny evil fairies that are trying to kidnap a young girl and turn her into one of them.

Sally is sent by her mother to go live with her father when he purchases a large mansion that he intends to fix up and sell in order to make money. She soon finds that she is not alone in the house, and that the little people that live in the walls of the home aren't as friendly as they appear to be.

These faeries are the stuff of nightmares.

1. Trilogy of Terror

"Trilogy of Terror" has one of the scariest tiny terrors ever to appear on film, the Zuni Fetish Warrior doll. The third story of the anthology "Amelia" features Karen Black as a woman who receives a strange gift in the mail and unknowingly unleashes a monster in her apartment.

Four Things that Capcom and EA can learn from the Success of 'Slender: 8 Pages'

Dear Capcom and EA, guess what?

You can make a scary survival horror game that is popular and scary by scaling back the encounters, removing the ammo and guns, and focusing on the environment and puzzles-- something Capcom used to do very well and should return to in the Resident Evil Series, and something that EA's "Deadspace" did quite well up until the third installment of the series.

OK Capcom, EA, pay attention. I'm going to share a secret with you, it's the winning formula for a horror video game:


Tension + Variability + Vulnerability + Being Alone = Fear

Did you get that? Good. Now here's four reasons why it works.

4. High Tension

Creating and sustaining tension in a horror video game is a somewhat of an art form. Ultimately it is the perceived threat that makes someone experience high tension, which in turn induces fear in the player. 

I first really grasped this concept when I was running a game/adventure of "Dark Matter," which is a d20 Modern RPG Campaign Setting. The adventure is titled, "Exit 23."

In "Exit 23," the player characters are trapped in a truck stop gas station when an unnatural blizzard sets in during the middle of summer. The white out from the blizzard prevented the characters from safely traveling outside. Unfortunately for them, it trapped them in the gas station where there was a hideous monstrosity called a winter demon that was killing people off one by one over the course of the night.

At one point, the player characters had to go and secure the store front, which was entirely made out of plate glass.The wind was howling outside, the creature was on the prowl, and they were scared beep-less as they went into the room.  I sat there patiently as the players carefully guided their characters around the store, avoiding being directly in front of the window until the very last moment because they believed that the winter demon was going to ambush them when they walked by it.

When something fell in the room, the players had their characters run to safety, upon which time the players let go of the breaths they were holding.

They were scared, and yet all they were doing was investigating a room. There was no attack, no monster, no scene of carnage, and yet it was a moment of high tension for the players.

The winter demon never was going to attack them in that room, but they BELIEVED that it was going to be there and that it was going to rip them to shreds with it's razor sharp claws. It was the potential threat of the encounter that created tension and fear in the players.

It's this type of fear inducing high tension that the video game 'Slender' really managed to create with it's heartbeat like minimalist score that played while you hunt for the eight pages that hint at what is stalking you in the woods. That, combined with the fact that your eyes play tricks on you and after a while, the trees in the background look like Slenderman, and you start jumping at every little shadow that plays in the beam of your dying flashlight.

3. Variability

Tension is also created when there is the possibility of running into Slender man, which is a random encounter  that is constantly changing during game play. You never run into Slenderman in the same place more than once. This variability makes people nervous and jumpy.

Being able to create random events where Slender man may or may not appear is how the game keeps players on their toes, and raises their heart rates. It makes them on edge, it makes them FEEL FEAR and jump at anything that resembles the entity, such as trees or shadows. By establishing a heightened state of fear in the player, every little thing becomes a sign that the monster is stalking you, and every little sound could be Slender man, standing right behind you.

By creating random times and places where Slender man appears in the game, and having him occasionally teleport to be directly behind a player so that when they turn around he's right there and it's game over, the game created a deep unsettling sense of paranoia in the player that left a lot of people jumping at shadows while playing it. This sense of fear and tension caused by variability goes hand-in-hand with a feeling of isolation and vulnerability.


2. Vulnerability

It's not the amount of monsters you throw at a player. It's not the size of the monster that is scary. It's not making them bullet sinks that barely even react when they are shot that makes them scary. It's not awesome looking graphics that makes a video game scary. It's the perceived THREAT of a single entity that creates the most fear in players. 

How does one establish that something is a threat? By making people feel vulnerable.

This is done by taking away the awesome guns and the unlimited ammo and the ability to being able to play an Übermensch super soldier character. Take away the awesome armor. Take away the ability to shrug off the weight of one thousand corpses. Take all of it away and give them nothing but a flashlight or a Zippo lighter and a dinky pocket knife.

Give players nothing but simple things that they could find in their own homes. Hell, just give them a rock and some duct tape.

The point is, the less prepared and armed a character is for the encounter with the monster, the more vulnerable the player feels, and it's this sense of vulnerability that made survival horror games so scary in the first place.

Make people play as someone who is as weak and vulnerable as they are, make them play a character that represents the common man, such as Harry Mason in "Silent Hill", or make them play as themselves, as "Slender" does.

Then, and only then, will you be able to scare the bejeezus out of someone with your video game. 

1. Being Alone is the Scariest Part

Encountering a single monster is scarier than having hordes of them thrown at you. But, it's the absence of people that is even scarier. Fear of isolation, of being alone, is a common one, so exploit it to the best of your ability.

One of the best ways to make the player feel alone and isolated is to allow them to explore an abandoned landscape.

Exploration is a Key part of Survival Horror. All of the best horror games, the scariest ones, allow a player to explore a setting to try to uncover clues about what is happening. The first three games of the "Silent Hill" series did this exceptionally well by allowing you to wander through the fog veiled town to search for items and information, while being chased by one to two monsters at a time, with the random trio of monsters occurring only occasionally. There were a few people to run into in these games, but they were few and far between, and they were trapped in the evil town as well.

"Slender" establishes the fact that you are alone in the woods with the sounds of your own feet crunching through the leaves on the forest floor, accompanied by the sounds of crickets, and the beating heart in the score, which your mind interprets as the sound of your own heart beating, which in turn raises your heart rate, and increases the fear that you feel.

There isn't a soul to be found. You are alone, in the dark woods, with an enigmatic monster man lurking in the shadows, following you as you pick up the clues in the form of eight pages. Of course, collecting all of the clues in "Slender" is how you win the game. It's a simple video game goal, and yet, it's the most terrifying to complete.

If Capcom and EA can follow the winning formula of a scary horror video game, then and only then will they make a new game that manages to scare people, which will in turn allow them to sell more games, and quite possibly create a successful new entry to their respective game franchises. If not, well, we'll have more disasters like "Resident Evil 6" and "Dead Space 3" on our hands. And that would make me, and a heck of a lot of other horror gamers very, very sad indeed.



For more information about what makes horror video games so scary, check out "Scary Game Findings: A Study Of Horror Games And Their Players" by Gamasutra's Joel Windels. It's really fascinating stuff.  

Top 3 Children's Horror Book Series that I Loved as a Kid

Long before I loved horror movies, I loved reading horror novels.

I thought that I would start with a list of the top three horror book series that scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid, and I loved it.


3. Point Horror

Point Horror is the Young Adult horror book series that launched R.L. Stine's career. His book, "Blind Date" was the book that also helped make the series popular. Other notable authors that contributed to this horror book series include Christopher Pike with "Collect Call,"  A. Bates who wrote "Party Line," and "Richie Tankersley Cusick, who wrote the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" book series and "Trick or Treat."

My two favorite books from the Point Horror series includes "Call Waiting" by R.L. Stine and "April Fools" by Richie Tankersly Cusick.

2. Bunnicula

"Bunnicula" is a children's book series by James and Deborah Howe. The stories are told from the perspectives of the Monroe family's pets, Harold the dog and Chester, the cat. If you can't guess, Harold is the more rational one and Chester is a paranoid scaredy cat. When their owners welcome a new strangely colored bunny with white fur and black patch on it that looks like a cape, strange things start to happen to the vegetables in the home. Turns out that Bunnicula is a vampire bunny who sucks the juice out of veggies.

What I really loved about this series is that there was a spooky mystery to be solved by Harold and Chester, with the usual hijinks ensuing that you would assume a cat and a dog to get involved with when attempting to prove that a pet rabbit is a vampire.

This is one of my most cherished children's book series and just writing about it is a huge nostalgia bomb for me. I read the first three books of the series, "Bunnicula," "Howliday Inn,"  and "The Celery Stalks at Midnight," so many times that the book coves became severely bent and worn. This is a condition that I call well loved, my S.O. Shane Strange calls it book murder. He's probably right.

1. Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark

When I was in fourth grade, I was introduced to "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" by Alvin Schwartz. The book was the first in a series of anthologies. The anthologies consisted of urban legends and ghost stories from traditional folk lore that were collected by Alvin Schwartz and then retold for his books. There were three books in total in the series, which were then collected into one volume a little later on.

The stories that I liked the most from the first volume are "The Viper," "The Big Toe," "The Bride," and "The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers," with the latter two being the scariest stories in the book.

Most of the stories themselves were a little goofy and mostly of the "spooky" variety. It was the illustrations by Stephen Gammell that were the real scary parts of the books.

This one in particular I found to be as creepy as hell when I was a little kid.

Unfortunately, a few years ago they decided to change the art in the books when they were up for a reprint by Harper Collins, so if you have any copies of the originals, hold onto them, as they're worth a lot more to collectors nowadays than they used to be.

I wonder if the people who decided to change the art because it was "too scary" were also the same people who decided to put the parental warning on the DVDs of the original episodes of "Sesame Street?"

'Mama' Review

"Mama" is the tale of two girls who lived in a nice house in suburbia. When the stock markets crashed, their father killed their mother and took them on a ride into the woods. They came upon an abandoned cabin, and there their father was going to kill them and then himself. But the cabin wasn't really abandoned. A ghost was there, searching for her lost infant. She saw the girl's father about to kill them, she killed him before he could harm them. She then became the girl's mother and kept them alive by feeding them cherries.


Five years later, the girl's uncle Lucas Desange, has spent his life savings looking for them. On what appears to be the last day that the hunters will go out to search of the girls, they find them. The girls are feral and have lived like animals.

When the girls are taken to live with their uncle and his girlfriend Annabel (who clearly isn't ready to have kids) Mama follows them to their new home, and shortly thereafter, the jealous ghost begins to terrorize the family in an attempt to get her girls back.

This ghost movie lends a few new things to the genre, which is a good thing, such as the fairy tale story line and the ghost character design. How Mama moves, interacts and attacks people is unique and quite intense to watch on-screen. There were a few times when I was genuinely scared, but I was quickly jolted out of the suspenseful atmosphere by the ungodly loud score that someone felt was necessary to include in the film.

The ghost, Mama herself, was a great monster. I loved the utterly alien character design and the way her body appeared to be that of a broken corpse. The actor that played her, Javier Botet, was great. (Javier played the demon girl at the end of [REC] and has played several parts that required a very tall and lanky person to portray the monsters.)

I also loved the fact that Mama was played by a real person, that most of the special effects were done with wires and latex, and that the only thing that was CG in the movie was the ghost's hair, which waved around above her head as though she was submerged under water in a lake.

Unfortunately, the good things about the movie are far outweighed by the bad. "Mama" suffers from lazy story telling, and drowns under a cumbersome soundtrack/score with music that ruins any tense moments of suspense that the director builds up by being obnoxiously loud.

For instance, when Annabel is playing her bass guitar in the kitchen and is distracted by the flickering lights and the strange voices on her amp speaker, instead of getting incredibly quiet to leave the audience disturbed by the plinking sound of the lights flickering and the whispering voices, a very loud violin trill starts, leaving the audience jumping at the sound, instead of being scared by the fact that Lilly has leapt up on the counter behind Annabel and is staring at her like a predatory animal that is ready to pounce on its prey.

Over and over again, the audience is assaulted by jump scares created by horribly loud sounds from the movie's score. It was like being in one of those haunted house carnival rides; you don't jump because the skeleton pops out at you, you jump and scream because that damned air horn just went off in your ear. It's loud and startling. Kind of like those lame screamer videos on Youtube. Like this one.

That's what watching "Mama" is like.

I found that to be very disappointing  because even though the movie is flawed and riddled with plot holes and filled with unnecessary characters and scenes that could have very easily been cut from the movie, overall it was a decent film.

In addition to the terrible score, the pacing of the film seemed a bit off, and there were scenes, such as those with the child psychiatrist Dr. Dreyfuss that were cheesy, such as when he goes to speak with the record keeper/archivist of the county and she point-blank tells him that ghosts are made when something bad happens, and a wrong needs to be righted.

Really? I had no idea that some ghosts were vengeful mo-fos hell-bent on destroying anything that reminded them of the injustice surrounding their deaths. Honestly, that sort of audience hand-holding isn't necessary as it is common folklore, and knowledge that is implied as the events unfold in the movie.

It's this type of ham-handedness that breaks my suspension of disbelief, and unfortunately, "Mama" suffers from this type of a lack of subtlety on all counts. The audience isn't allowed to put all the pieces together, there is no mystery to solve, and the characters don't have to surpass any sort of challenge to get their answers.

For instance, there's a dark creepy black spot on the wall encircled by a wreath of flowers that the girl's drew. This black spot is how Mama gets into the house. When she isn't out and about doing her haunting thing, she passes through it and stays in the wall. It's a ghost portal. Dr. Dreyfuss figures this out right after he sees it, we know because his voice-over tells us.

A ghost portal you say? Interesting...

Huh. Really? That's a portal? I had no idea that's what that was used for. It's just that the ghost's freaking hands come right out of the dang thing while we're watching and she pulls herself out of the wall and attacks people.

I'm not sure why some directors decide that the audience is too stupid to put two and two together and get four, but it's really annoying for me to have to sit through such insufferable dialog that hits you over the head with information, instead of slowly revealing what is going on and letting your imagination do some of the work for you.

Aside from the jump scares and the not-so-subtle exposition sequences,  there are also several dangling plot threads that occur that are just strange. For instance, the foreshadowing that occurs during the opening credits in the children's drawings. I thought for sure that the poor Dachshund was going to become feral children chow, after seeing the drawings of them killing and eating raccoons, but it wasn't.

In fact, the dog was one of the weirdest things about this movie. For the most part, it's common in ghost movies for dogs to freak out and start barking angrily at the presence or attempt to attack the ghost, or at the very least, get jumpy and bite their owners when in the presence of the supernatural. However, in "Mama" the dog ran happily towards the ghost, it's little wiener dog tail wagging as it was greeted by the dead woman. Right around the third act (where the movie really starts to fall apart) the dog disappears.  Nothing happens to it, we don't see it dead, or devoured or anything. It's just gone.

It's around that time as well that the movie cannot decide if it's late fall or early spring, if it's hot or cold out, nor what time of day it is. It's either day, or it's night in a scene. There is no transition between the two. Sunset? Who needs a sunset? Not me.

During this time, we also see a random ghost of the girls' dad (yes the one that tried to kill them) appear and tell their uncle where to find them after Mama takes them back.

Uncle Lucas goes to the woods, then like the poor wiener dog, he disappears, only to pop out in front of the car when Annabel is driving to the cabin to find the girls. Their uncle, who was a key player in the beginning of the story, suddenly becomes a two-bit character with a glass jaw.

Apparently he's just there to be knocked out while Annabel, with her new-found maternal instinct musters the strength to fight off the ghost's "sleep spell" three times in an effort to grab the girls and take them back from the ghost before she kills them.

While it wasn't the best ghost movie I've ever seen, it certainly wasn't the worst either, it's kind of in the middle. "Mama" is interesting to watch, even with it's flaws, and the actors did a fantastic job on the film as a whole. The only thing that tips it more towards the bad movie category in my mind is the fact that the score killed any sort of suspense that the director and actors managed to conjure on the screen.

I'd watch it again, but at home, where I can control the volume and put the bass to a tolerable level so that I'm not jumping out of my skin whenever a big jump scare starts to build up. Violin trills, I'm talking about you.

Beneath the Skin: How they Did the Transformation Scene in 'An American Werewolf in London'

"An American Werewolf in London" has one of the most realistic appearing werewolf transformation sequences that I have ever seen. The movie was made in a time when CG effects were very expensive, and practical effects were king. While some companies now solely rely on CG as a crutch for their movie monsters, I find that those that still do it old school tend to have monsters that are far more real looking and convincing than their digital counterparts.

It's easy to see that the CG transformation lacks the weight and terror that the practical effects bring to the table. There's several reasons for that, from pacing issues to lack a of convincing sound effects. Most of which were handled quite well by "An American Werewolf in London."

The special effects for An American Werewolf were created by Rick Baker. The sequence shown above was so good, that he received an Oscar for it.

The animatronics used to create the two minute long agonizing werewolf transformation scene were quite elaborate. There were several animatronic heads made for the facial changes of the shot. While the skin and fur are now long gone, it's easy to see how they made the forehead and cheek bones protrude, and more importantly, how they made the lycanthrope jaw extension look so good.

The sections of the cheeks and forehead move by pushing air through syringes.

The animatronics consists of a fiberglass shell, foam and wolf hair. The teeth in the jaw are larger than the actor's teeth, but smaller than the final teeth of the werewolf, which I believe is one of the things that lends to the scene's realism.

When taking into consideration that Baker was 30 years old and worked with a crew with an average age of 19, many of whom never worked on a film before, I think they did a fantastic job.

But it's not just the visual effects that make this scene scary, it's the sound effects as well.  This storyboard from the movie shows us that these sounds were desired from the very beginning of the movie design.

The sounds of bones crunching, hair growing, the feet elongating and the spine popping are so well timed, that it makes the scene all the more believable. Truly, it's a work of art that has yet to be outdone.