3 Monster Stories, 2 From Movies, 1 Reported By Real People: Can YOU Find The Fiend?
Posted by Justin on April 15th, 2010Below are descriptions of three grotesque monsters. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a creature that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?
a.) Said to prowl the dry air above the deserts of the American Southwest, these winged creatures appear to propel themselves using jets of flame that light up the night sky.
b.) During the 1980s, two American carnival owners spent countless hours trying to hunt and capture this legendary 8-foot-tall avian monster.
c.) Usually sighted in the vicinity of swamps and rivers, this African pterosaur-like beast is known for sinking boats and attacking locals.
Answer AFTER THE JUMP…
The correct answer is c.)
The Kongamato, which Wikipedia promised me translates to “breaker of boats” in some unspecified African tongue, is a big Pterodactyl with a correspondingly sizable ‘tude. According to Frank Mellan, an early 20th century author who penned several volumes recounting his African travels, the creature is usually described by natives as either red or black, with a wingspan the size of a grown man. It was Mellan who attested to the animal’s boat-breaking acumen, and it was Mellan who helped local Kaonde tribesmen identify the Kongamato as a Pterodactyl (by shoving a dinosaur picture book in their faces and having them flip through it as if it were a binder of mug shots). While an engineer reported seeing a few weird flying things, and an injured man at a Zambian hospital claimed he was attacked by a giant bird, neither encounter occurred on boats that got broken, so either Wikipedia is wrong or “breaker” is African slang for “ignorer.” And if you thought titmice were disappointing, how about the Kongamato? It’s neither a giant ape-sized tomato nor a red, tomato-sized ape.
Statement a.) described ass-blasters, which represent director and co-writer Ben Maddock’s effort to thoroughly scrape the bottom of the Tremors barrel, put wings on the scrapings and then give the resulting monstrosities the power of fart propulsion. Also, these latest evolutions of the classic Graboids have infrared sight. In his largely positive review of “Tremors 3: Back to Perfection,” BET’s James Hill enthusiastically described the movie as “the third best of the series,” a phrase that could also be applied to “Superman III,” the one where superman gets so drunk that he fights himself to the death in junkyard.
Statement b.) described Big Bird, who, in the 1985 feature “Follow that Bird,” was relentlessly hunted by the Sleaze brothers (played by SCTV alums Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty), who wanted to add the hulking mutation to their traveling sideshow. In the end, Big Bird’s friends help him escape after the Sleaze brothers trip over Muppets and fall into Fraggle Rock, where they’re promptly raped to death.
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