Today’s bonus prompt: what is your favorite cinematic human-to-creature transformation?
It’s a horror staple the predates film itself. Something that’s rooting in a very primal and very realistic fear. Your body could be mangled. Our perhaps you have gotten sick. You could start losing the faculties of your once lucid mind. Perhaps it’s just the natural state of things as you give in to old age. Or maybe circumstances were forced on you.
Movies have been depicting such transformations as “body horror.” Typically the protagonist goes through some sort of unforeseen transformation. Maybe they’re turned into a werewolf. Or perhaps they’ve become a walrus. Or they step into a teleporter and their DNA gets mingled with that of a fly.
Parts of your body are chipped away one by one. Falling off. Becoming like boils and rotted flesh. It eats away at you until it corrupts the very soul. Who you were once is now long dead, replaced by a fiendish monstrosity.
The visuals of such a change have been seared into our brains by some of Hollywood’s greatest make-up artists: Rick Baker, Chris Walas, Stan Winston, Tom Savini, and many more. You don’t have to be a make-up artist to be effective, though. One of the most chilling body transformations, which haunts me to this day, is what happens to Tetsuo in the animated film, Akira.
The horror is over.., OR IS IT? Next week: Political satires.
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