Underrated Mid-Budget Monster Movies That Deliver Big-Budget Thrills
For generations, fans have shown up with popcorn for every monster movie, no matter the budget. After all, there’s a joy watching powerful creatures – big or small – chasing around human beings for self-defense, or vengeance, or just plain fun. Jurassic Park and Godzilla may be famous entries in the genre with their unparalleled budget and spectacle, but there are a host of mid-budget monster movies that deliver the same thrills as their more expensive counterparts.
Whether you’ve gotten tired of watching the monster blockbusters, or simply want something a little more under-the-radar, these less-heavily pushed monster films will still get the scares you need.
Photo: USA Films
What’s the Setup? A group of passengers, including criminal Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) who is being escorted to prison, crash-land on a barren planet with constant daylight due to its three suns. Unfortunately, the survivors land right as an eclipse is about to hit, providing a rare window of darkness for underground-dwelling monsters to come out and hunt the humans on the surface. Using enhanced sight thanks to his surgically-modified eyes, Riddick takes on the creatures to protect the other survivors and earn his freedom.
What’s the Monster? Nocturnal, light-sensitive, reptilian monsters. With small wings, they can achieve limited flight; their wide heads, claws, and spiked tails make them a spooky sight that’s better off in the dark.
What’s the Best Part? The moment when the eclipse begins, which Riddick views, and notes is “beautiful.” However, the reprieve from constant sunlight isn’t pleasant for very long. As soon as the darkness envelops the planet, a horde of monsters flood in, leaving Riddick to fight for his life.
Photo: Warner Bros.
What’s the Setup? Holed up in a deep underwater facility, scientists conduct research on sharks to try to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. However, when the sharks begin escaping as well as attacking the scientists, corporate investigator Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) arrives at the facility to help the team get the predators under control – or kill them.
What’s the Monster? Mako sharks that have been genetically engineered to increase their brain size, in the hopes of harvesting a key protein to cure Alzheimer’s – with the side effect of making them larger, smarter, and deadlier.
What’s the Best Part? As Russell gives an impassioned speech to the crew of how they need to work together in order to survive the attacks, in the middle of his fiery monologue, a shark zips out of the water and munches him whole. It’s an unexpected and jaw-dropping moment that catches the audience off guard.
What’s the Setup? A new species of spiders rises and attacks a small town in California with a lethal venomous bite . It’s up to a local doctor (Jeff Daniels), who suffers from a terrible fear of spiders, to team up with his neighbors and take down these creepy crawlies.
What’s the Monster? A prehistoric breed of deadly Venezuelan spiders who operate as a hive, led by an aggressive and venomous “general” spider.
What’s the Best Part? One of the most memorable scares is when Becky Beechwood (Cori Wellins) takes a shower, and a spider drops down on her forehead and crawls all the way down her body. It’s spine-tingling even for viewers who don’t suffer from arachnophobia.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
What’s the Setup? A monstrous crocodile wreaks havoc on Black Lake, Maine, crunching on human bones. A team of local sheriffs and game officers need to figure out a way to stop nature’s killing machine, without getting any limbs bit off along the way.
What’s the Monster? A colossal crocodile willing to eat humans or live black bears alike, which developed its particular tastes after an old hermit by the lake (Betty White) fed it for years.
What’s the Best Part? One of the team members, crocodile enthusiast Hector (Oliver Pratt), swims away from the crocodile and hops onto a helicopter, only for the croc to lunge out of the water and bite into the chopper. The humans narrowly escape, but it’s quite the scene to see a crocodile versus a helicopter.
Photo: Miramax Films
What’s the Setup? Entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) saved New York City from an outbreak of diseased cockroaches by designing a hybrid bug to kill the roaches and then die off themselves. A few years later, she learns that not only did her killer bugs find a way to mate, they’ve produced thousands of generations and rapidly evolved into larger, much more dangerous monsters. She teams up with her husband Peter (Jeremy Northam) to hunt down the single fertile male and take out the big bad bugs.
What’s the Monster? The mantis-termite hybrid Judas Breed utilized the hyper-metabolism enzyme Susan gave them to rapidly reproduce and evolve to the size of a person, with the terrifying ability to take on a human appearance.
What’s the Best Part? Every frame of the bugs approaching provides stunning visuals, thanks tomasterful director Guillermo del Toro. The scene where Peter finds himself surrounded by a nest of the evil insects and uses a loose gas pipe to set the entire room on fire is a pulse-pounding action sequence, too.
What’s the Setup? A band of criminals led by Captain John Finnegan (Treat Williams) board a luxury ocean liner, hoping to line their pockets with all the shiny objects. What they discover is not riches and gold, but terrified passengers hiding in the ship’s vault, who explain that the other passengers were killed by a sea monster.
What’s the Monster? Though the survivors initially think they’re attacked by a swarm of tentacled creatures, they eventually realize the huge ship is besieged by one gigantic, fluid-draining, octopus-like monster known as the Octalus.
What’s the Best Part? After lifting him out of view with a spiky tentacle, the Octalus spits Billy (Clint Curtis) back into the ship – mutilated, missing half of his face and much of the other flesh on his body – leaving him to pass away in horrible fashion at the feet of the other survivors.
Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
What’s the Setup? Erotic thrillers were in high demand in the ‘90s, and director Roger Donaldson combined that genre with the monster genre in 1995’s Species. Scientists led by Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) attempt to grow a female alien in a lab, only for the creature, Sil, to take on the form of a human woman and seek out a human male to breed with. The government then assembles a team with unique skillsets – biology, empathy, and extermination – to track and eliminate Sil before she reproduces.
What’s the Monster? A seductive human-alien hybrid, who’s born looking like a young girl, but matures rapidly into an attractive adult woman form (played by Natasha Henstridge).
What’s the Best Part? Sil lures a potential mate into a romantic rendezvous in his hot tub. He gets cold feet when she tells him she wants a baby, so she transforms into her true alien form and drowns the poor sucker.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
What’s the Setup? When Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History becomes the hot spot for a number of murders, it’s up to detective Vincent D’Agosta (Tom Sizemore) and biologist Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) to find the mythical monster responsible, and also to uncover the creature’s origins.
What’s the Monster? A reptilian monster known as the Kothoga, which feeds on the hypothalamus extracted from human brains. It’s later revealed that the Kothoga is the museum’s anthropologist, who mutated after consuming a strange fungus.
What’s the Best Part? Margo lures the monster into a confined space in a lab. Margo looks done for, but it’s all a trap so she can set a huge fire in the lab to burn the Kothoga, while surviving herself by hiding in a lab tank.
