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Once upon a time, Matt Groening, the creator of a show called “The Simpsons” – perhaps you’ve heard of it? – and of another, more consistently funny show called “Futurama,” was nothing more than a lowly alternative cartoonist. His weekly cartoon, “Life in Hell,” was often brilliant, and often just weird. In 1994, he produced an episode of the cartoon entitled “Important Questions About Monsters, by Will and Abe,” Will and Abe being his very young sons. It was an aptly named cartoon. There were a lot of Life in Hells about Will and Abe’s preoccupation with monsters in those days; less so later on. Presumably, their love for monsters was beaten out of them by society, as it is for so many of our nation’s youth. Damn you, society! I could be a king, if not for you!

Anyway, for my next trick, I will now answer Will and Abe’s Important Questions, just 13 short years too late! While balancing on the high wire! You won’t be able to see that part.

Question 1: Is Mothra a good moth or a bad moth?

Oh, a good moth, to be sure. In several films in which Godzilla is purely a menace to humanity, rather than a hero or anti-hero, Mothra defeats Godzilla, apparently out of altruism; see Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and, er, Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992) for just two examples. In the trilogy of Mothra films made in the late 1990s, she (Mothra is a female) defends the earth from a variety of dragon-monsters. In Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966; aka Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster), Mothra rescues a bunch of islanders from the nefarious Red Bamboo organization, carrying them off of Red Bamboo’s island in a net. In Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), she persuades Godzilla and Rodan to team up with her to rebuff the assault of the evil King Ghidorah. And so on. Mothra is in fact perhaps the most consistently benevolent giant monster of the western Pacific. She only destroyed Tokyo that one time because she was looking to save the two tiny little women who can summon her.

2: How do you kill a mummy?

The most generally accepted method is fire. Blowing them up with dynamite is a variant on this that has also seen some success. Burial – often in collapsing buildings or quicksand – is sometimes used, though this probably couldn’t properly be called a “kill.” There are certain ancient, sacred incantations that cause them to disintegrate, though messing around with ancient, sacred incantations is of course not recommended. And regrettably, none of these methods are guaranteed; mummies have been seen to return, after having been seemingly killed by all of these methods. The one method that seems to “take” is praying to Isis, until said goddess animates a nearby statue of herself to raise its hand and blast the mummy in question to ashes. This technique only works for those who are reincarnated priestesses of Isis, so you’ll want to look into that first.

3: How, daddy?

See above. Note that all known mummy attacks have been over the last 120 years or so, and thus no older tradition of mummy-killing exists. Research continues. Also, I am not your daddy.

4: Why do Cyclops have only one eye?

Presumably because they have no real need for depth perception. Assuming that monsters develop according to the same basic principles of evolution as other animals, it seems most likely that a member of one of the other species of giant was born with a mutation, causing one-eyedness; this mutation proved to be no hindrance to survival. And so this individual bred successfully and passed on the Cyclops gene.

5: Why do robots want to kill people?!

For a variety of reasons. Often, this is because they are designed and/or programmed to kill people; see the Battle Droids in the Star Wars prequels for one example, and the Terminators for another. It is also reasonably frequent for robots to want to kill people because of resentment of their enslavement by those people; this goes all the way back to the genesis of “robot” as a word, in Karel Capek’s 1921 play R.U.R.. Simple electrical malfunction, as in Westworld (1973), will also lead to murder. But the reasons that robots want to kill people can be as varied as the robots themselves. In Blade Runner (1982), for example, robots kill people in hopes of forcing them to prolong the robots’ lifespans, which have been artificially shortened (though this is something of an oversimplification of matters). Please be advised, by the way, that not all robots want to kill people; many are very nice, even sickeningly so when played by Robin Williams.

6:

I have not. Typing the title into the Internet Movie Database’s search function nets Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966) as the closest match; it may be presumed that this is a movie about something else. Still, you raise an interesting idea, one that opens up a number of questions. Can Dracula be squished? If King Kong eats Dracula, can Dracula suck Kong’s blood from inside? How long would that take? Can Dracula even hold all of Kong’s blood? Ultimately, I think Dracula would prevail, though it pains me to say it. And he’d only do so by persuading some humans, supernaturally or perhaps monetarily, to shoot Kong with planes.

7: Why do people go to Dracula’s house??

Your father’s answer – “Because he invited them” – is largely correct. Also, sometimes people go to Dracula’s house uninvited, in order to kill Dracula. This is not necessarily a good idea.

8: But why do they go??

Dracula’s most noteworthy visitor, Jonathan Harker, visited him to complete a real estate transaction. Since most accounts of Dracula’s life and habits do not posit that he has any friends, it may be presumed that most of his visitors come for similar reasons – to conduct transactions or provide services. Also, there are the vampire hunters, mentioned above.

9: Have you ever heard of a movie called “I Married a Biting Witch”?

No. IMDB gives the closest match as I Married a Witch (1942), which appears to have been a madcap romp of some sort, and also zany. It may well have been the ultimate inspiration for TV’s Bewitched, but that’s just speculation on my part. In any case, it is likely that the witch in this film did some biting, as part of the process of eating, but this fact does not seem to have been germane to the plot.

10: Why don’t vampires get kids??

I’m sorry to have to tell you that vampires do in fact get kids. In the first Dracula story, the vampire Lucy Westenra feeds on infants. The Aztecs had a whole breed of Vampiric creature – the Cihuateteo, who were women who had died in childbirth – that preferred attacking babies and pregnant women. In Poland, there is a variety of vampire called the Ustrel, which is a sort of child vampire that comes back from the dead for never having been baptized, because God is meeeeean. Ustrels, too, are noted for feeding on children. These examples are indicative of a general trend: Vampires that get kids are usually vampire women and children. The moral of that, little ones, is to be very, very careful around women and children.

11: Because kids aren’t tasty??

I am not familiar with a very convincing proposal as to what blood tastes like to a vampire, or whether some particular sort of blood is ‘tastier’ than any other. Also, see question 10.

12:

I understand your frustration. He certainly does focus his attention on the Land of the Rising Sun. However, he does not only attack Japan Japan Japan; in Destroy All Monsters (1968), he attacks New York City, and in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) he attacks Hong Kong. As to why he concentrates on Japan, it seems to be nothing more than an accident of location; Godzilla lives by Japan, and he’s got to attack something. In one single instance – 2001’s Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack – Godzilla is suddenly said to be “possessed” by the ghosts of the Japanese soldiers who died in World War II, and that they are goading him into attacking Japan, for vengeance, or something. It’s hard to figure out, and probably best ignored in the long run.

13: Have you ever heard of a movie called “Bride of the Creature of the Black Lagoon”?

I haven’t, and all IMDB gives me for the closest match is The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). Whether there are any other surviving examples of the Creature’s species, male or female, is a question that has never been adequately explored. The Creature does show an attraction to human women, and a desire to carry them off. This is usually assumed to be for sexual purposes, though this is unproven, and it is difficult to reasonably explain why such a creature would desire to have congress with a female that is plainly of a very different species.

14: Cookie?

Why, thank you, Abe.

15: Why can’t zombies run?!

These days, a lot of them can, what with all the fancy new technology and such. But true zombies cannot run, you’re right about that. This is due to a combination of factors. For one thing, the body is no longer really up for running; a mixture of rigor mortis and decomposition stiffens the legs and atrophies the muscles. For another, true zombies are quite witless, lacking even the ability to pay attention to their surroundings required for anything more than a stumble. Finally, perhaps zombies are simply in no hurry?

16: Why did the Bride of Frankenstein marry Frankenstein?

Technically, she didn’t. No legal or religious ceremony was ever performed to create a union between Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride. Also, as this last sentence has implied, the Bride was never intended to be wed to Frankenstein himself, but rather, to his monster. Furthermore, the Bride didn’t even like Frankenstein’s Monster, to which he did not react at all well. Indeed, the only reason she’s even called the Bride of Frankenstein is because she was built, by Frankenstein, to be his monster’s feminine partner. And, typically for sewing-together-life-from-corpses-based planning, this simply didn’t work out.

17: Is there a wolfwoman??

There are tons of ‘em. As early as 1187, the priest Giraldus Cambrensis recorded an incident in which another priest performed last rites over a female werewolf, at the entirely polite request of her werewolf mate. In 1597, a group of French girls confessed (???) to being werewolves. A German folktale tells of a farmer who, spying a wolf attacking his sheep, quite sensibly threw his pocketknife over its head, upon which the wolf changed into a woman, as he suspected it might; he offered to keep her secret if she would marry him, which is quite a coincidence since that’s how I met my wife. There are tons of stories like this. Probably the most important wolfwoman tale of the last century or so was seen in the Ginger Snaps series of films, in which teenage girls become lycanthropes. Other wolfwomen may be seen in movies including, but assuredly not limited to, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), The Howling (1981), My Mom’s a Werewolf (1988), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), and Dog Soldiers (2002). Watch out for She-Wolf of London (1946), though; there is totally no werewolf in it. Gyp!

18: Why do skeletons dance???

‘Cause the music just makes ‘em.