Clip joint: monsters

With Halloween just around the corner and Spike Jonze's film of Where the Wild Things Are already scaring up fierce business in the US, steenbeck tracks down the big beasts
Scene from King Kong (2005)
Beauty and the beast … scene from King Kong PR

Is a monster ever just a monster? In literature and film, monsters frequently become vehicles to express some part of ourselves we struggle to keep hidden, the skeletons creeping out of our closet – Scrooge's unresolved guilt, Frankenstein's overweening scientific ambitions, Max's "wild emotions" in the new film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. Since they're so much a part of us, it's no wonder that we sometimes become very fond of them, and they become the unlikely heroes of our tales. Nothing adds drama to a friendship like a healthy fear of your new friend's fangs, fur, tentacles or 50-foot stature. The monster genre takes the cliche of the mysterious, misunderstood outsider to a whole new level; and the vagaries of monstrous ethics add an exciting edge of moral complexity to a film. This week, just ahead of Halloween, shake hands/paws/claws with some monstrously good friends.

1) The Iron Giant doesn't know he's a weapon, and his robot heart is broken by the murder of a deer, as his friend Hogarth tries to explain death from a young boy's point of view.

2) Madeline Kahn overcomes her fear to take monster love to the next level in Young Frankenstein.

3) Hyper-verbal, caustic and yet strangely appealing – a typical Hal Hartley character. What sets him apart is the horns. In No Such Thing, Hal Hartley gives us a challenging retelling of a monster fable.

4) In Cocteau's La Belle et le Bête, Belle overcomes her fear to form an irrepressible fondness for the Beast, in a fairytale ripe for reinterpretation.

5) Really want to impress a woman? Save her from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ann Darrow and King Kong form a friendship so compelling it's become the subject of innumerable YouTube tributes.

Last week framescourer commenced the party by calling for the finest examples of festivities on film. Here are the ones that float our, erm, boat:

1) The anti-Ferris Bueller in Tim Burton's parade-noir for Batman.

2) Here's a timely Oktoberfest-like sequence from The Student Prince (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927) – nice to have a clip with some serious drinking in it too!

3) The Carnival Dance from Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus does exactly what it says on our tin.

4) There's more Latin abandon in Fellini's I Vitteloni, a succinct example of festival frenzy and fallout.

5) Finally, swanstep gets the prom queen crown for really getting the whole "counterpart to the serious" issue with this gloriously staged key sequence from The Godfather: Part II.

With thanks to Nodule, greatpoochini, steenbeck and PhilHoad.