Sure, the monsters that stalk through horror films aren’t great guys but they aren’t all bad. Matt Finley investigates the Upside Of Evil…

I just re-watched the 1997 horror film “The Relic,” and I gotta say: Not bad. It makes you pine for the bygone days of leading lady Penelope Ann “Cute as a Bug’s Ear” Miller, and R-Rated horror films that were less about graphic torture and gore than they were about a superstitious cop and a sexy, hard-nosed evolutionary biologist using suspect science and street smarts to immolate a CG monstrosity. While the late Gene Siskel’s assertion that the film’s primary antagonist – Kothaga, a wily, mutated beetle-mohawk-lizard monster de-braining its way through Chicago’s Museum of Natural History’s staff – could “hold its own with the Alien” is enough of a stretch to dislocate something, the Stan Winston-designed creature definitely managed to a do a number on my preconceived notions of beetle-mohawk-lizard monsters. For every heart Kothaga broke, and every head he ripped off, ate parts of and then discarded, he did some nice things to:

Encouraged the Museum to Up its Exhibit Quality

Basically, if you’re the curator of a museum, you want to make sure that all the exhibits you’ve intentionally displayed are at least as interesting as the incidental stuff that just happens to be wandering around. It’s why there aren’t any art museums in the red light district. Additionally, if something’s actively murdering patrons, you should make it your beeswax to ensure that said patrons are risking their lives for a reason. A stuffed giraffe and a water tank that doesn’t make a whirlpool because the button broke aren’t going to cut it anymore. Maybe attach wires to all the dinosaur bones and host an elaborate prehistoric marionette show where the skeletons act out scenes from “The Land Before Time” and “The Crying Game.” Or wax down the main hall and let everyone use the mummies like boogie boards. Maybe just get a liquor license, a bigger tank and fix the button. No matter what you decide, no one should be leaving the museum saying that the coolest thing they saw was the freak beast that glory-holed their head bone.

Democratized Gala Crashing

Time was that if you wanted to break up a swanky fundraising soiree, you had to be, like, Mr. Freeze or the Penguin, and perpetrate some sort of outrageous stunt, like filling a giant cake with poison-beaked hummingbirds or shooting a freeze beam out of a largish pie. The message: if you can’t bring the goods, find a block party or a bridal shower to hijack because black tie means in it to win it (feel free to use that sentence as the backbone for a zany movie called, “Grand Theft Party,” or a poignant novel entitled, “Last Year’s Daughter.”) Kothaga arrived to let everyone know that if you want to crash a ritzy, elite gathering of the city’s diamond-spangled, champagne-quaffing blue bloods, all you need is a mouth full of teeth, a heart full of crazy and the legs to transport them. Or a hand truck. Keep in mind there are stairs, though.

Gave Hope to the Children

If you haven’t seen “The Relic,” let me ruin it for you – it turns out that Kothaga, which just kind of shows up at the museum one day, is actually a former anthropologist who ate a hormone-laced fungus and mutated into the horrible beast that Penelope Ann Miller’s character explodes apart using chemicals. The point being? You can grow up to be anything. Seriously! If a smart, wealthy research scientist can turn into a monster, and “Ghostbusters” Harold Ramis can turn into “Knocked Up” Harold Ramis, there’s no reason why a poor kid from the murder capital of the Bronx can’t grow up to be an astronaut. Or why an astronaut can’t go broke and join the Latin Kings. Or why the Bronx can’t become a sentient monster that gets sent to explore an impoverished, crime-ridden galaxy. I think what I’m saying is that you can grow up be anything you want unless it requires a credit check.

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