Villages Under Attack

Copyright by Gary L. Pullman

In Godzilla (1954), a radioactive, fire-breathing, dragon-like monster attacks Tokyo. After being transported to New York City, King Kong attacks The Big Apple. Other creatures, gigantic and otherwise, have likewise run amok in other big cities. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), an escaped Tyrannosaurus rex attacks San Diego. To be a resident of any such metropolis at the time of an attack by such monsters would, indeed, be terrifying.

Big cities aren't usually isolated from the assistance that police, medical personnel, firefighters, and other emergency services provide, and they are often homes to a variety of experts upon whose knowledge and experience endangered citizens can rely. In fact, since, typically, big cities are served by airports, railroads, interstate highways, and, sometimes, ports, the deployment of military troops is often quick and easy. Such cities as Tokyo, New York, and San Diego may suffer some loss of life and damage, but, in the end, it's likely that the likes of Godzilla, King Kong, and T-rex are going down and staying down.

Villages, which lack the size, population, infrastructure, technological assets, expertise, and protective firepower of large cities and are often isolated in difficult-to-reach terrain are a different story altogether. If a gigantic monster—or a monster of any size—were to attack, I'd rather take my chances in a big city than a village, any day.

Beginning of the End (1957, clearly shows how a small town, Ludlow, Illinois, fares—or fared—against the attack of gigantic monsters—in this case, radioactive mutant grasshoppers. Apparently before it could sound an alarm, Ludlow was annihilated. Its entire population of 150 residents, who are nowhere to be found, are presumed to be dead. The only clue to what happened to Ludlow's townspeople is the barrenness of the surrounding farmlands, which look as though their crops were devoured by a swarm of locusts.

The monstrous grasshoppers do not fare well when their swarm attacks Chicago. Botanist Dr. Ed Wainwright has gathered intelligence concerning the attackers. He knows locusts have eaten radioactive grain stored in a nearby silo, and he has heard of mysterious incidents in nearby communities. When he discovers the gigantic grasshoppers, he realizes that they have devoured the region's crops and are now seeking human prey. He provides the expertise that the United States military forces need to exterminate the grasshoppers. An electronic mating call is devised from test-tone oscillators, and the warm-blooded predators are lured to Lake Michigan, where the cold water incapacitates them, and they drown.

Unlike Ludlow, Chicago survives, because it is a large city that can provide the scientific and military resources needed to eliminate the threat posed by the gigantic, predatory grasshoppers.

The Black Scorpion (1957) is similar to Beginning of the End in its contrast of a helpless village the residents of which are attacked and injured or killed by gigantic insects—the scorpions to which the film's title alludes—while a big city is saved from the predators' threat of mass destruction. Troops under the command of Major Cosio arrive in the Mexican town, San Lorenzo, to provide disaster relief in the aftermath of a nearby volcano's eruption. However, their soldiers' weapons prove ineffective against the gigantic scorpions, and the villagers remain unprotected. Military might, this movie suggests, is not enough; it must be applied in a fashion made possible only by scientists or other experts.

Fortunately for the humans whose lives are at stake, the largest of the gigantic scorpions kills the others. Now, it is up to Dr. Velasco, an etymologist, to determine an effective way to destroy the remaining scorpion. It is only after he provides the information necessary to destroy the insects, as the scorpions approach Mexico City, that the military can stop them. Using meat as bait, Velasco and his team lure the insect into a stadium, and the army attacks it with larger, more lethal weapons, such as tanks and helicopters, than those that were used by Major Cosio's men. Nevertheless, the tactic fails, and it is only when geologist Dr. Hank Scott fires a spear attached to an electric cable into the scorpion's throat—its only vulnerable spot—and electrocutes the gigantic insect that the predator is killed and Mexico City is saved.

Unlike the village of San Lorenzo, Mexico City provided such assets as a stadium, military aircraft and tanks, and the combined expertise of an etymologist and a pair of geologists, Scott and Dr. Arturo Ramos. Scientific knowledge combined with military might and the architecture of the big city were enough, combined, to defeat the scorpion.

Some other horror movies in which monsters attack villages include The Birds (1963), The Blob (1958), Carnosaur (1993), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), Iron Invader (2011), Manticore (2005), The Mist (2007), Monster from Green Hell (1957), Tremors (1990), and Wyvern (2009).

The Fly in the Ointment of Being a Ghost in a Machine

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Monsters are degenerate. They represent deterioration or disintegration. As such, they are living object lessons, as it were, examples of what will happen to the rest of us if we pursue their course or “suffer the slings and arrows,” as William Shakespeare might put it, of their “outrageous fortune.” Potentially, we are all Frankenstein’s monster; any of us could be the creature of the Black Lagoon; you and I could both become the next werewolf, vampire, or zombie. Horror fiction is about the could-be versions of ourselves, and, often, these could-be versions are our lesser, degenerate selves.

The authors of horror fiction imply that another’s hubris can cause us to suffer, as arrogant Victor Frankenstein, in seeking to play God, makes his creature suffer. Frankenstein lusts after power and glory (or fame), and, like the novel’s author, Mary Shelley, other writers of horror fiction suggest that our lusts, sexual or otherwise, may bring about our downfall, just as the sexual desire of the creature of the Black Lagoon for Kay Lawrence and the infatuation of King Kong with Ann Darrow lead to these monsters’ downfalls and deaths. If we do not control the animal within, we may become a werewolf; if we parasitize others too freely, whether emotionally, financially, sexually, or otherwise, we may become vampires; if we are too passive and compliant (or indifferent), we may be transformed into zombies by those whom we serve (or, both history and politics show, even by those who supposedly serve us).


Often, monsters expose dangers to society and faults within a nation or a system, but they can also show us the perils of ourselves and others. In addition, horror stories show us that it is humans’ inhumanity to others that frequently creates monsters. Beowulf’s Grendel attacks the Danes because, ostracized by human society, he feels envious of the warriors’ camaraderie and fellowship. Grief-stricken, Grendel’s mother is also motivated by her passion: she seeks vengeance against the Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who killed her son. In the same epic poem, a dragon seeks to avenge the theft of gold that it guards--gold that it has itself stolen from the graves of dead warriors. Such stories suggest what is wrong with us as a group.

However, other monsters, such as Godzilla, the gigantic ants of the movie Them!, and the flora of M. Night Shyamalan’s abysmal film The Happening represent--indeed, embody--the dangers of environmental pollution, whereas such menaces as Frankenstein’s monster, the hybrid human-animal creatures of H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the gigantic plants and animals of Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods (and the movie based upon it), the human fly of David Cronenberg's movie The Fly, and the dinosaurs of Steven Spielberg's movie Jurassic Park (based upon the novel of the same title by Michael Crichton), represent, as do the antagonists of many other movies, the dangers of overreaching scientists who would manipulate and control nature, regardless of the potential risks involved in their experiments. Madmen as monsters are another type of this menace. Such characters appear in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” and in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (based upon Robert Bloch’s novel of the same title) and Jonathan Demme’s film The Silence of the Lambs (based upon the novel, of the same title, by Thomas Harris). Such movies suggest what is wrong with our behavior as individuals.


Still other monsters, such as the blob (in Irvin Yeaworth's movie The Blob) or the cosmic forces and entities that appear in many of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories suggest that the threat to humanity is an external force that is beyond our control; the menace comes from outside, infecting us or subjecting us to its will. Such stories imply that, despite our knowledge and our wit, we are but the pawns of fate.

In short, many of the monsters of horror fiction suggest that something is terribly wrong with us as a society or a species, or with our actions as individuals, or with the very cosmos in which we live. Evils, such movies, imply, are social, biological, or existential; they attack (and lay bare) our weaknesses as dualistic creatures whose structure is both physical and spiritual and who necessarily live in societies which are predicated upon and, indeed, result from, both aspects of our nature as ghosts, as it were, in the machines of our own material bodies.

The Hyperfeminine Monster: What Does She Look Like?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Some hypermasculine fictional characters are good guys (of a sort, at least), among whose ranks we may count The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine or, on a slightly more realistic level, James Bond or Dirty Harry. More often, however, especially in horror fiction, such characters tend to be the heavies, the Predators and the Xenomorphs or, on the slightly more realistic level of the espionage and the police dramas, the Odd Jobs and the Scorpios. In real-life, the hypermasculine good guy might be a cowboy, a policeman, a soldier, or a mercenary, and the hypermasculine bad guy might be a gunfighter, a sociopath, an enemy commando, or an outlaw biker. Whether comic book super villain, horror story monster, or police drama bad guy, the hypermasculine character is fairly familiar, but what does his counterpart, the hyperfeminine monster, look like, and how does she act? Hyperfeminine characters exhibit exaggeration of feminine qualities. Typically, they stroke the male ego, are passive, naïve, innocent, flirty, graceful, nurturing, and accepting, even, sometimes, of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. They want to be seen as all-woman women, and they are drawn to hypermasculine men (men who exaggerate masculine traits). If the aliens of Predator and Alien represent horror fiction’s image of the hypermasculine monster, does Sil, of Species (1995), represent the female equivalent, the hyperfeminine monster, or are we talking something more along the lines of another extraterrestrial creature, the Blob? “Sil” is the name given to a female alien-human hybrid produced by scientists, using instructions transmitted to them from the alien species, by splicing human and alien DNA together. When she reaches adolescence in only three months, breaking free of her confinement, the scientists view her as a potential menace, and the government seeks to hunt her down and destroy her before she can mate with a man or men. Able to revert to her alien form at will, Sil is extremely strong, agile, and intelligent. She also has incredible regenerative abilities. She seeks a mate, killing two men, the first because he is a diabetic and, therefore, unworthy of her, the second because the couple are interrupted as they’re about to, uh, couple. Disguised, she does mate with one of the scientists in the hunting party, killing him when he recognizes her. Ultimately, she and her offspring are killed in a cave. (The monstrous Sil was created by H. R. Giger, the same superb biomechanical artist who designed the xenomorph that appears in Alien and its sequels.) Although in her human guise, Sil is beautiful (Michelle Williams plays her as an adolescent, and Natasha Henstridge portrays her as an adult) and she is adept at turning men’s heads (both literally and figuratively), Sil seems to have too many traits that are traditionally categorized as masculine (or, indeed, as hypermasculine) to qualify as a hyperfeminine monster: she is aggressive, physically powerful, and violent. Although she becomes a mother, she doesn’t appear to be the nurturing type, and she most definitely is not at all concerned with stroking the male ego, is not passive, is not naïve, is not innocent, is flirty only in a clumsy fashion, and is anything but accepting of others’ flaws. It’s hard to imagine any female creature that is less likely to tolerate physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. In fact, if anything, she is the predator and the abuser. A more recent movie, Teeth (2007), may offer us the image of the hyperfeminine monster. The premise seems promising: Dawn O’Keefe, a young woman, has teeth in her vagina. She’s certainly able to defend herself: when a new acquaintance refuses to take no for an answer, forcing himself upon her in a cave after a quick swim, she--or her vagina dentata (vagina with teeth)--bites off the offensive offender’s penis, and she flees the scene of the crime, leaving him to bleed to death. After researching the topic of the vagina dentata, Dawn visits her gynecologist to see whether her condition qualifies. When the doctor, pretending to examine her, molests Dawn, she--or her vagina--responds, biting off his fingers. Later, learning that her classmate Ryan has bet that he can seduce Dawn, her vagina dentata bites off his penis. She recalls an earlier victim of sorts: her stepbrother, who molested her when she was younger. It wasn’t with her mouth, as she had remembered until now, that she’d bitten his finger at the time; it was with her vaginal teeth. She leaves home on her bicycle, but, when it has a flat tire, she accepts a ride with a male driver. He locks the car’s doors when she tries to get out at a gas station, and intimates that he wants to have sex with her. Dawn responds with a sinister smile. Both aggressive and violent, Dawn isn’t really a predator as such, attacking only those who have or would molest or otherwise harm her, so it seems difficult to imagine her as a hyperfeminine monster. Maybe the much earlier movie, The Blob (1958), offers a better idea of the hyperfeminine. Although the alien’s sex, if it has one, is not identified in the story, it does seem to have some traits that are traditionally identified as feminine, and it seems extreme in its exercise of these qualities. An alien, the Blob is a formless creature resembling a colossal ameba. Able to envelope its prey, incorporating animals and human beings into its jelly-like mass, it is repelled by cold temperatures, and the military dispatches it to the arctic after it is frozen in carbon dioxide, where it remains until the movie’s sequel, Beware! The Blob (1972). In the latter film, Chester, a construction worker who is helping to lay the Alaska oil pipeline, brings home a mysterious, jelly-like substance. When it thaws on his kitchen countertop, it is hungry, after being frozen for fourteen years, and appeases its appetite by devouring increasingly bigger prey: a fly, a kitten, Chester’s wife, and Chester himself. Afterward, the monster attacks and eats hippies, police, a barber and his customer, homeless people, a Scout master, bowlers, skaters, and even chickens, before it is frozen inside the ice skating rink. The 1988 movie is a remake of the original, rather than another sequel. The Blob is aggressive (in a somewhat passive manner) and, in its own way, violent, which are attributes that are traditionally associated with males. However, its ability to envelop its prey; its passive-aggressive nature; its aversion to cold (i. e., its preference for warmth, which, symbolically, might signify a desire for sociable contact, if not affection; its open acceptance of all; and its womblike “smothering” of others are qualities that are traditionally linked to females. It seems, then, that the Blob is more hyperfeminine than either Sil or Dawn O’Keefe and, for the present, at any rate, earns the title of horror fiction’s most nearly hyperfeminine monster.

Visualizing Horror: Movie Posters

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

For writers, horror is primarily a matter of action described in words. For illustrators, horror is primarily a matter of image depicted in color and shape. A writer has a few sentences with which to snare the unwary reader’s attention, plunging him or her into the action of the story, an illustrator a few seconds in which to ambush the wandering eye. To do so, creators of horror posters, in addition to traditional design techniques and artistic principles, rely upon creating both a sense of the bizarre and an air of mystery. Their pictures pose more questions than answers, arousing viewers’ curiosity and, their creators hope, make them want to see the films that the posters advertise.

In the early days of horror movies, posters were more verbose, as wordy as they were pictorial. Mostly, adjectives suggested the traits of the featured creature and, perhaps, how the moviegoer should feel about the monster. A poster for The Blob read “Indescribable. . . Indestructible. . . Nothing Can Stop it. . . THE BLOB!” The picture showed a massive, blood-red gelatinous mass enveloping a passenger train from which horrified travelers seek to escape on foot while one of them, a woman, screams in the foreground.

Another early poster, even more loquacious, shows a young blonde woman, lying supine. Facing the viewer, she reaches out with her right hand while she attempts to fend off a monster with her left, a look of abject horror upon her face. Although the text suggests she is being raped, the monster is depicted only as a demonic head, out of which tentacles grow, Gorgon like, some ending in suckers, others in animal skulls, and still others in the heads of bizarre beasts. The text reads, “A few years ago in Dunwich a half-witted girl bore illegitimate twins. One of them was almost human! THE DUNWICH HORROR.”

For films that are associated with a particular person, place or thing, such as The Amityville Horror, the action of which takes place inside a haunted house of sorts which is of a distinctive design, the poster depicts the house, with its eyelike windows looming in the background while, at the center of the foreground, the silhouette of a male figure approaches the viewer, carrying an object that is difficult to identify clearly but may be a rifle. Clearly, the gunman and the spooky-looking mansion are related in some way, but how? Why is he armed, and what sway does the apparently haunted house hold over him?

A more recent film, The Descent, shows six women, the characters who explore the movie’s uncharted cave, who, by the unlikely postures they’ve adopted, form a human skull. “Scream your last breath,” the text advises. How are the women related, and why, collectively, are they posed to depict a human skull? Will they be the deaths of one another? If so, how? And why? And into what will they descend?

A poster for Friday the 13th is divided in half horizontally. The left side of the upper half shows the close-up of a young woman’s head as she screams. The right side of this same half of the poster shows a cabin, lit from within, at the edge of a deep woods; a full moon glides across a partly cloudy, starlit sky. The upper and lower halves of the poster are divided by paper, perhaps representing a diary. Words, in red, on the folded-down sheet of paper on the right read, “On Friday the 13th they begin to die horribly. One. . . by one.” The left side of the lower half of the poster depicts typical events at Camp Crystal Lake, and, thrusting in from the right edge of the same portion of the poster, a hand holds a sharp-edged hunting knife. The juxtaposition of innocent fun at a summer camp with an image of brutal death creates a sense of dread.

A poster for Hellraiser shows the close-up of a man’s head into which, porcupine-style, many nails have been hammered, all to the same relatively shallow depth so that he resembles a human pincushion, giving literal expression to the term “pinhead.” Between the nails, lines of blood are visible, dividing his face into a grid pattern. Who hammered the nails into the man’s head and cut the gridlines into his face, and why? Who is this mysterious “hell raiser”?

For The Hills Have Eyes 2, a vaguely feminine body, trussed up inside a sheet of canvas, and secured by a rope, is being dragged across the desert by a male figure, dressed somewhat like a mummy, whose back is all the viewer sees. Directly behind the dragged figure, a hand pushes through the soil, clawing at the ground. What the hell is going on here?

A film called simply Horror shows a white-collared priest wearing a cross, except that, in place of a human head, he has the head of a long-horned goat, which is emblematic of the devil. The poster’s text reads, “Expect nothing less than sheer. . . HORROR.” The picture is as humorous as it is horrible, suggesting that the movie may be a bit campy, but it does make the viewer wonder what the satanic priest’s motive is and what plan of action he hopes to execute. Is he merely a deceiver--a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as it were--or is he something much worse?

Jeepers Creepers 2, a film in which a serial killer collects his victims’ eyes, shows what appears to be an orange sky in which a series of crimson lightning bolts flash and out of which emerges the suggestion of a human face, the most distinctive feature of which is its open mouth and teeth. Under the movie’s title, the caption reads, “Feed your fear.” Upon reflection, it becomes obvious that the orange sky and red lightning bolts are really an image such as is produced by a retinal scan--the poster’s viewer is looking at his or her own eyeball and, at the same time, into the face of the serial killer who collects just such trophies. The design for this poster seems to take into consideration the old wives’ tale that the last image that a murder victim sees--that of his or her killer--is imprinted upon his or her retina forever. This poster creates a sense of immediacy, once one sees that the outer world--the sky and lightning--is really the inner world and that, consequently, one might be viewing what will soon become one’s own death

Alfred Hitchcock showed Psycho audiences just how frightening vulnerability can be when he had knife-wielding Norman Bates attack a hotel guest as she was showering in her bathroom. The movie Slither capitalizes upon this same sense of vulnerability. A bather has left her bathroom door ajar, and the viewer--or voyeur--sees her bent knee, rising above the side of the tub in which she bathes, presumably relaxed, unaware of the large, wormlike creature that, poised upon the rim of the tub, is about to plunge into her bathwater while, behind it, others ascend the side of the bathtub--and still more of the loathsome slug-like monstrosities, gathered at the base of the tub, await their turn to join their ilk. The phallic significance of the large worms hardly needs to be mentioned. This poster evokes the fear of both physical and sexual assault.

Sometimes, the movies that such posters advertise actually contain the scenes that the posters depict. For example, the Slither poster suggests that the antagonist--the monster--is going to be a mass of monstrous worms symbolizing, perhaps, the violence of sexual assault, or rape. There is a parasitic worm--a bunch of them, actually--courtesy of a fallen meteorite, which transforms its host--the bathing beauty’s husband, Grant--into a zombie-like monster. There’s sex, too--or a lack thereof--for Grant becomes infected after, refused sex by his wife, Starla, he goes to a local tavern to drown his sorrows, meets a female acquaintance who’s smitten with him, and goes into the woods with her, where, before anything further can happen between them, Grant becomes a host to the alien parasite. At home, he builds a nest for the larvae and, hatching, they possess the townspeople, turning them into zombies as well. Suggesting sexual assault by wormlike creatures, the poster is accurate on a figurative, if not a literal, level.

Of course, it’s not really the task of the poster to provide a faithful and accurate depiction of the movie’s scene; the poster’s task is to sell tickets. To do so, in a few images, digestible by instinct more than reason, within a few seconds, the artwork must create a sense of horror and of fear, and it must also appeal to its viewer’s curiosity by creating an air of mystery that leaves questions unanswered.

Imagining the Monster, Part II

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

We saw, in Part I of “Imagining the Monster,” how H. R. Giger’s design of the extraterrestrial creature in the movie Alien and its sequels uses several strategies to make the creature, sometimes called a xenomorph, especially frightening. The monster is horrifying, in part, because:

• It’s different from anything we’ve seen before.
• It’s an incongruous synthesis of various creatures, unsettling in themselves.
• It’s shown in great detail.
• It’s abilities, like its appearance, is an incongruous synthesis of various other creatures’ capabilities.
• Its life cycle parodies human reproduction processes.

Writers of horror stories can employ some of these same principles in designing the monsters that are to appear in their narratives. For example, we can use other organisms’ senses to envision how the monster experiences its environment--how it sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches.

Let’s take the lowly housefly, for example. It sees the world very differently than people do. According to “The Compound Eye,” a fly’s eye is compound, consisting of thousands of clusters of photoreceptor cells and pigment cells, complete with lens and cornea, known as ommatidia. In effect, each cluster is a miniature eye. Each eye sends a single "picture element" to the fly’s brain. The fly sees a "mosaic image" made up of "a pattern of light and dark dots like the halftone illustrations" in comic books or "newspaper illustrations." The fly’s eyes are excellent "motion detectors": one after another, in succession, the eyes "turn on and off" as the fly tracks moving objects. The resulting "flicker effect" enables the fly to see moving objects more easily than stationary ones. If your monster has a compound eye, it will see much as the housefly sees. Describing what the monster sees will make it seem strange to your reader, increasing its fright factor.

According to “Amazing Animal Senses,“ bats use their radar sense (echolocation) to locate prey (and obstacles), but they can also discern other animals’ body heat from a distance of 16 centimeters. The same article supplies a wealth of other information about insects' and animals' astonishing senses that can help horror writers create eerie and disturbing monsters. Describing how a monster “sees” heat, probably as patterns of red, orange, yellow, white, and blue or green splotches, will make the creature appear strange to readers and, therefore, more frightening. Butterflies taste with their feet; if your monster does likewise, it will be bizarre and disturbing. Not only do honeybees have compound eyes consisting of 5,500 ommatidia each, but they are also equipped with an iron oxide ring inside their abdomens that enables them to detect magnetic fields, which they use to navigate. Bees also taste with chemo receptors (essentially, taste buds) on their jaws, forelegs, and antennae. If your monster’s vision is sharp enough to see prey at a distance of 15,000 feet, it’s as sharp-eyed as the vulture. Chameleon’s eyes (like those of the seahorse) move independently of one another, allowing the lizard to see in two directions at the same time. Catfish can taste about 100 times better than humans. Spiders don’t just have eight legs; many of them have eight eyes as well, enabling them to see much more than people. We could go on and on, but the point is that nature shows us how to create monstrous monsters: simply describe what they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The result will scare readers half to death.

Alternatively, feel free to create monsters that have no parallel in nature, such as Giger’s xenomorph. Scientists (and science fiction and horror writers) have done just this, speculating as to how organisms might have evolved in adaptation to environments very different than Earth’s. As “Alternative biochemistry” points out, some of their speculations replace the life-supporting carbon atom with the silicon atom, the nitrogen atom, the phosphorous atom, or with such surprising elements as arsenic, chlorine, and sulfur, and have posited ammonia, hydrogen fluoride, methanol, and other chemicals as alternative solvents to water, and, as “Extraterrestrial life” observes, within our own solar system, besides Earth, Saturn, Titan, Venus, Jupiter, Europa, and comets have been proposed as potential habitats for alien life forms such as ammonia-based, floating animals and various types of bacterial or microbial life. The National Geographic’s Internet article “Flying Whales, Other Aliens Theorized by Scientists” explains why scientists believe that life is likely on other planets; their concepts include winged, lizard-like “caped stalkers flying through a pagoda forest.” If you want help in creating your monster, you might refer to the SETI Institute’s primer on how to create imaginary extraterrestrial life, “How Might Life Evolve on Other Worlds.” It includes helpful tips and a handy, dandy chart by which to keep track of the creature’s features, including (and these are the actual labels used in the primer):

• Kind of skin
• Number of openings
• Long or other
• Segments
• Appendages
• Hard parts
• Hard outside parts
• Size
• Feeding cells
• Moving around
• Sensing vibrations
• Chemical senses
• Number of eyes
• Eating
• Plant eater
• Predator
• Defensive structures
• Poison as a defense
• Defensive behaviors
• Reproduction
• Sexual reproduction
• Mating
• Babies

Creators can use a dice as a stand-in for nature, fate, or God to determine, for example, body type, shape, dimensions, and features.

Of course, the giant ameba-like monster in The Blob is always a possibility as well. Simple, but effective.

Sources Cited:

“The Compound Eye”
“Amazing Animal Senses”
“Alternative biochemistry”
“Extraterrestrial life”
“Flying Whales, Other Aliens Theorized by Scientists”
“How Might Life Evolve on Other Worlds”