Monster Madness: Revisiting the Bloodbath

The final round of our TV Madness tournament last year only procured 106 votes. Last week’s Monster Madness final scared up almost five times that number. People care deeply about their movie monsters. While Godzilla and Predator stayed neck-and-neck for the first few days, Godzilla ended up pulling out the win. This was a battle for the ages.

Weight Class Winners

Because movie monsters come in various shapes and sizes, we created separate weight classes in this tournament. An entire half of the bracket was dedicated to huge heavyweight monsters, a quarter of the bracket focused on middleweights, and another quarter put the lightweights up against one another.

Lightweight Winner: Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog (Creepy Bracket)

Middleweight Winner: Predator (Scary Bracket)

Heavyweight Winner: Godzilla (Terror and Horror Brackets)

Ultimate Movie Monster Champion: Godzilla

Upsets

I thought that the first round was full of some pretty interesting match-ups. Personally, I didn’t think Cloverfield would take out a Sandworm.

The Cinderella of the tournament had to be the Balrog, which made it as far as the final eight monsters. Balrog was able to take down Rhedosaurus (easy), the Mist Walker (hard) and Gamera. I still have no idea how he won that last one.

I was really surprised that Imhotep the mummy made it as far as he did. I thought he was a first round goner when he went up against the scary-ass Pyramid Head. I’m still that disappointed Pyramid Head didn’t make it past the first round.

Hitchcock’s Killer Birds also made an improbable run. Their last victim was Chucky. Yes, a bunch of birds beat Chucky! That was a huge win.

Regrets

Putting Orochi and Cthulhu into the tournament are my biggest regrets. We didn’t have enough background on either monster, and I think people just voted on how scary their pictures looked. I’m sure that I could have found two more established big-ass movie monsters to take their places.

If you want to check out the finished bracket to see how the whole bloody affair shook out, click on the image below. Thanks for voting. This was a long, but very fun tournament.

15 comments

  1. Joe Campbell

    Looking at some of the “upsets’, I’m honestly not all the surprised.

    The Balrog isn’t just a big horned animal with a fire whip and a sword…in the Lord of the Rings universe he’s basically a freaking demon. He can summon up a lot more power than he showed off in his brief screen time in FOTR. The only reason Gandalf beat him was because he was a wizard…the Lord of the Rings equivalent of an angel.

    The Mummy having those sandstorm powers as well weighed very heavily in his conquer over Pyramid Head…who is slow and clumsy to begin with despite his cool looks.

    The Birds as well more than made up for their nature by being, well, a freaking flock of killer birds. Chucky could take down one or two of them, but even if he can’t die, they would easily tear him to shreds.

    Finally, when it comes down to Cthulu, he’s not just a big tentacle-faced creature…he’s an evil god. Just that alone would practically be enough for him to wipe the entire rest of the board. I’m honestly kind of surprised he didn’t win this one because who knows what powers he holds? Being a supernatural all powerful being makes him practically invincible!

  2. I have to say that I’m very impressed with how well Predator gave Godzilla a run for his money. That race was really close for the first few days, until Godzilla finally pulled ahead. I expected Godzilla to just stomp all over everyone straight through to the championship.

  3. I’m kinda disappointed at the Godzilla win… (Never been a big fan), but that’s why it’s a democratic voting system lol!

    You shouldn’t regret including Cthulhu. He got that far because he’s a supernatural god with an extensive literary background, not because of his picture. 😉

    Personally, I wish the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog had won, but that’s just me… 😀

    • Aaron Peck
      Author

      re Cthulhu: His literary background is extensive, yes. His movie background? Not so much. That’s why I regretted it. We weren’t really judging Cthulhu on what he’d done in movies and this was a movie monster contest.

      • EM

        Cthulhu has many attributes that were well established in the film, including enormous size, claws, wings, tentacles, the ability to survive in the air or deep underwater, defensive intangibility of some sort, and the ability to disturb the sanity of others worldwide.

      • William Henley

        Sounds like this needs to applied to Balrog as well (Joe). If we are only going to judge a monster by what is shown in the movie, then Balrog can be defeated by any old person or animal or whatever that can trip the Balrog up and make him fall into the depths.

      • William Henley

        Okay, so the rabbit lost to The Preditor. Okay, I get that. The ironic thing is, if Preditor had of went up against Godzilla before it went up against the rabbit, Godzilla would have won, then if the Rabbit went up against Godzilla, the rabbit would have won.

        Its all a matter of where something falls in the brackets. Some monsters that were eliminated first round might have made it to the semi-finals had they fallen in a different bracket.

        But that is true with anything, not just movie madness stuff. Had this happen back when I was in high school – one year, we made it to state in the first round playoffs. Problem is, in that first round, they had put us up against the team that had won state for the previous 5 years. We didn’t stand a chance, but schools who made it to second and third rounds were not as good as we were – it was all where we fell in the brackets.

  4. EM

    I felt several monsters were unduly robbed by being eliminated in the very first round. In some cases this was due to bad luck in being placed against a formidable or closely matched opponent: the giant ant against the xenomorph queen, the Frankenstein monster against Brundlefly… And I still find the Thing’s first-round elimination (by Samael) inexplicable.

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