Monster Movie Trivia
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This monster movie trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and covers creature features from the stop-motion ape of 1933 to the Oscar-winning kaiju of 2023. There are questions on how King Kong was animated, the octopus that nearly was Godzilla, the man in the suit, the American re-edit with Raymond Burr, the Universal Monsters and their make-up men, the giant ants of Them!, Steve McQueen versus The Blob and Ray Harryhausen's atomic dinosaur. Then the modern era: the malfunctioning shark nicknamed Bruce, the chestburster nobody warned the cast about, Rob Bottin's effects budget on The Thing, the three rules of the mogwai, the Graboids of Perfection, Nevada, the found-footage marketing of Cloverfield, Bong Joon Ho's Han River monster, the Jaegers of Pacific Rim, the blind creatures of A Quiet Place and Godzilla Minus One's $10 million Oscar. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia pages for the films and their makers, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1933 King Kong brought its giant ape to life with what technique?
Stop-motion animation
Stop-motion animation: the models' rabbit fur shifted whenever the animators handled them, so Kong's coat seems to ripple from shot to shot.
Q 02Which New York landmark does Kong climb in the finale of the 1933 King Kong?
The Empire State Building
The Empire State Building: when Dino De Laurentiis remade the film in 1976, Kong climbed the twin towers of the World Trade Center instead.
Q 03Which actress played Ann Darrow, the woman offered to Kong, in 1933?
Fay Wray
Fay Wray: Merian C. Cooper promised her the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood, and he meant the giant ape.
Q 04Which American actor was spliced into the 1956 US re-edit, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!?
Raymond Burr
Raymond Burr: nearly 30 years later he returned as the same reporter in Godzilla 1985, the US version of The Return of Godzilla.
Q 05Who directed the original 1954 Godzilla?
Ishirō Honda
Ishirō Honda: decades later he came out of retirement to act as his friend Akira Kurosawa's right-hand man on Kurosawa's last five films.
Q 06Godzilla Minus One, made for under $15 million, won which Academy Award in 2024?
Best Visual Effects
Best Visual Effects: its sea battles grew after young compositor Tatsuji Nojima showed Yamazaki water simulations made at home, so more ocean scenes were written in.
Q 07Who directed the 1998 American Godzilla film?
Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich: Toho later brought his creature back as a separate monster, renamed Zilla, for the real Godzilla to fight in a 2004 film.
Q 08Which kaiju is accompanied by twin miniature fairies who speak for her?
Mothra
Mothra: when a showman kidnaps the tiny twins for a Tokyo stage show, she swims to Japan as a giant larva and spins her cocoon on Tokyo Tower.
Q 09Which actor played the Monster in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein?
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff: rather than name him, the film's opening credits identified the Monster's actor only by a question mark.
Q 10Which make-up artist designed the look of Frankenstein's Monster for Universal in 1931?
Jack Pierce
Jack Pierce: he said he made the head flat because a surgeon would cut the skull straight across like a pot lid to put in a new brain.
Q 11In Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Elsa Lanchester plays the Bride and which other role?
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley: in her other role, the Bride, Lanchester based the creature's famous hiss on the swans she had watched in a London park.
Q 12Who played the title role in Universal's 1941 The Wolf Man?
Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney Jr.: the Wolf Man's fur was yak hair, glued onto his face a few strands at a time in make-up sessions that lasted hours.
Q 13Which stage actor made his American film debut as the unseen Griffin in Universal's The Invisible Man (1933)?
Claude Rains
Claude Rains: when he asked to express something with his eyes, director James Whale replied that he couldn't, because he hadn't any face.
Q 21Which film ended Jaws's two-year run as the highest-grossing movie in history?
Star Wars
Star Wars: sure it would lose to Close Encounters, George Lucas had swapped 2.5% of its profits for 2.5% of Spielberg's film, a trade that made Spielberg millions.
Q 22Which Swiss artist designed the creature in Alien (1979)?
H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger: Ridley Scott was sold the moment he saw the painting Necronom IV in the artist's book, and the creature was built from it.
Q 23What caught the Alien cast off guard when the chestburster scene with John Hurt was filmed?
Fake blood spraying at them
Fake blood spraying at them: a jet of it hit Veronica Cartwright, who fell over in shock, so the cast's horrified reactions on screen are real.
Q 14The 1954 Universal film about a prehistoric Gill-man has scientists find him in which river system?
The Amazon
The Amazon: the underwater scenes were really shot in the clear waters of Wakulla Springs, Florida.
Q 15In Them! (1954), giant ants mutated by atomic tests are found in which state's desert?
New Mexico
New Mexico: the ants were mutated by radiation from the 1945 Trinity atomic test near Alamogordo, and the hunt ends in the storm drains of Los Angeles.
Q 16Which future superstar had his first leading role in The Blob (1958)?
Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen: paid a straight $3,000, he played the teen who realizes the Blob cannot stand cold, so it is frozen with fire extinguishers.
Q 17Which effects animator brought the Rhedosaurus to life in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)?
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen: the Beast's attack on a lighthouse comes from a Saturday Evening Post story by his boyhood friend Ray Bradbury.
Q 18Which martial-arts star was first cast inside the Predator suit before being replaced?
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme: he was unhappy in the hot, ungainly first suit and left early in the shoot, and the towering Kevin Peter Hall wore the redesigned creature.
Q 19The Jaws crew nicknamed the mechanical sharks 'Bruce' after whom?
Spielberg's lawyer
Spielberg's lawyer: the prop sharks broke down so often that Spielberg had to hint at the shark instead, and he later called the failures a godsend.
Q 20Jaws (1975) was mostly shot on location on which Massachusetts island?
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard: most of the minor roles went to islanders, so many of the townspeople seen on screen are real locals.
Q 24John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) adapts which 1938 novella by John W. Campbell?
Who Goes There?
Who Goes There?: the 1951 film The Thing from Another World dropped the alien's shape-shifting, and Carpenter's version restored it.
Q 25Which young effects artist created most of the creature effects in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)?
Rob Bottin
Rob Bottin: still in his early twenties, he spent over a year on the film's creatures and ended up hospitalized for exhaustion.
Q 26Who won the first competitive Oscar for Best Makeup, for An American Werewolf in London (1981)?
Rick Baker
Rick Baker: the Academy created the category after complaints that The Elephant Man's makeup went unhonored the year before.
Q 27Which of these is one of the three rules for keeping a mogwai in Gremlins?
Never get it wet
Never get it wet: when water spills on Gizmo he spawns more mogwai, and these troublemakers soon trick Billy into feeding them after midnight.
Q 28Complaints about violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom led the MPAA to create which rating in 1984?
PG-13
PG-13: Gremlins itself was rated PG, which director Joe Dante said was enough, but Spielberg pressed MPAA head Jack Valenti for an in-between rating.
Q 29Who provided the voice of Gizmo the mogwai?
Howie Mandel
Howie Mandel: while voicing the cuddly Gizmo, the comic was also playing wisecracking young doctor Wayne Fiscus on the TV drama St. Elsewhere.
Q 30What are the giant subterranean worms in Tremors (1990) called?
Graboids
Graboids: the film stages most of its monster attacks in broad daylight, so the practical creature effects had no darkness to hide behind.