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This monster movie trivia quiz has 50 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 50 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
Willis O'Brien's models were combined with live actors via rear-screen projection; Fay Wray recorded all her screams in one session.
Q 02Which New York landmark does Kong climb in the 1933 film's finale?
The Empire State Building
The building had opened only two years earlier; the 1976 remake moved the climb to the World Trade Center.
Q 03Which actress played Ann Darrow, the woman offered to Kong, in 1933?
Fay Wray
The film's novelisation accidentally fell into the public domain, so the characters and story are free to use even though the film isn't until 2029.
Q 04Before settling on a dinosaur-like creature, effects director Eiji Tsuburaya proposed Godzilla be a giant what?
An octopus
The 1954 film pioneered 'suitmation', with Haruo Nakajima in the suit stomping through miniature sets.
Q 05Which American actor was spliced into the 1956 US re-edit, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!?
Raymond Burr
Body doubles and trick editing made it look as if the future Perry Mason had been in Tokyo all along, while the anti-nuclear themes were toned down.
Q 06Who directed the original 1954 Godzilla?
Ishirō Honda
Guinness recognises the franchise it launched as the longest-running film series in history.
Q 07Godzilla Minus One, made for a reported $10 million, won which Academy Award in 2024?
Best Visual Effects
It was the first Godzilla film ever nominated for an Oscar; the visual effects team took eight months on the shots.
Q 08Japanese cinema's giant monsters are known collectively by what term?
Kaiju
Tokusatsu is the effects-driven genre they star in; Mothra, who hatches from an egg and spins a cocoon, is one of the few heroic ones.
Q 09Which giant moth-like kaiju is accompanied by twin miniature fairies who speak for her?
Mothra
She debuted in a 1961 novella and film and later joined the Legendary Monsterverse in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Q 10Which actor played the Monster in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein?
Boris Karloff
Jack Pierce created the flat-head-and-bolts make-up; Colin Clive played the scientist Henry Frankenstein.
Q 11Which make-up artist designed the look of Frankenstein's Monster for Universal in 1931?
Jack Pierce
The film was adapted from a 1927 stage play by Peggy Webling rather than directly from Mary Shelley's novel.
Q 12In Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Elsa Lanchester plays the Bride and which other role?
Mary Shelley
The film opens with Shelley telling Byron and Percy Shelley what happened next; Ernest Thesiger's Dr. Pretorius does the blackmailing.
Q 13Who played the title role in Universal's 1941 The Wolf Man?
Lon Chaney Jr.
He reprised the part in four sequels, starting with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943; Werewolf of London had come out six years earlier.
Q 21Jaws (1975) was mostly shot on location on which Massachusetts island?
Martha's Vineyard
It was the first major film shot on the open ocean, which is why it ran wildly over budget and schedule.
Q 22Which film ended Jaws's two-year run as the highest-grossing movie in history?
Star Wars
Between them the two films invented the summer blockbuster: wide release, heavy TV advertising and simple high-concept premises.
Q 23Which Swiss artist designed the creature in Alien (1979)?
H. R. Giger
The chestburster's look was inspired by a Francis Bacon painting, and Nigerian design student Bolaji Badejo wore the adult suit.
Q 14Which two Universal Monsters were original creations rather than adapted from novels?
The Wolf Man and the Gill-man
The series ran from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913 to The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956, with Abbott and Costello crossovers along the way.
Q 15The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is discovered by scientists in which river system?
The Amazon
The Gill-man was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning underwater, and the film was shot in polarised 3D.
Q 16Them! (1954), the first 'big bug' movie, finds giant irradiated ants in which state's desert?
New Mexico
The final battle takes place in the storm drains of Los Angeles, and the film earned an Oscar nomination for its effects.
Q 17Which future superstar had his first leading role in The Blob (1958)?
Steve McQueen
The amoeboid alien arrives in a meteorite near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and grows redder and bigger the more people it eats.
Q 18Which stop-motion master animated the Rhedosaurus in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)?
Ray Harryhausen
The dinosaur is thawed by an Arctic atomic test, a plot the following year's Godzilla echoed; the film was based on a Ray Bradbury story.
Q 19The animator of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms called his trademark stop-motion process what?
Dynamation
He learned under Willis O'Brien of King Kong and went on to Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, retiring after 1981.
Q 20The Jaws crew nicknamed the mechanical sharks 'Bruce' after whom?
Spielberg's lawyer
Bruce Ramer was the attorney; the sharks broke down so often that Spielberg mostly implied the fish with John Williams' two-note theme.
Q 24What did the Alien cast not know before filming the chestburster scene with John Hurt?
That fake blood would spray everywhere
They'd seen the puppet, but not the high-pressure pumps and squibs; their horrified reactions are real.
Q 25John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) is set at a research station on which continent?
Antarctica
The shape-shifting alien came from John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, previously filmed in 1951 as The Thing from Another World.
Q 26Which effects artist made The Thing's creatures, spending $1.5 million of the $15 million budget?
Rob Bottin
The film flopped against E.T., which opened two weeks earlier with a much cuddlier alien, and was only later hailed as a classic.
Q 27Who won the first-ever Best Makeup Oscar, for An American Werewolf in London (1981)?
Rick Baker
John Landis had written the script in 1969 and shelved it because backers thought it too scary for a comedy and too funny for a horror.
Q 28Which of these is NOT one of the three rules for keeping a mogwai in Gremlins?
Never let it sleep alone
Stripe and friends sabotage Billy's bedside clock to trick him into a post-midnight snack, and Kingston Falls pays for it on Christmas Eve.
Q 29Complaints about violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom led the MPAA to create which rating in 1984?
PG-13
Steven Spielberg, executive producer of Gremlins, suggested the change himself and it arrived within two months of the film's release.
Q 30Who provided the voice of Gizmo the mogwai?
Howie Mandel
The word 'gremlin' comes from RAF folklore about mischievous creatures blamed for aircraft malfunctions in the Second World War.