Monster movies where the monster was really in the room

Quick answer: Start the little ones with Jason and the Argonauts (rated G). Move to Creature from the Black Lagoon, Them! and King Kong (1933) for ages nine or ten and up, at your discretion. Save Jaws for the kid who's earned it. Watch the original Godzilla yourself first.

The shark that wouldn't work

The mechanical shark in Jaws kept breaking. Saltwater and machinery don't get along, and the crew spent the 1975 shoot on the water off Martha's Vineyard with a star that wouldn't perform. So Steven Spielberg hid it. Yellow barrels dragged under the surface. A fin. A score of two notes.

The movie got better because the monster failed. That's the best argument for the whole era. When you can't show the creature, you show the people watching it, and you learn what fear looks like on a face. Modern effects can show you everything, so they often do. Then there's nothing left to be afraid of.

These films had other advantages. The monster had weight. Light hit it, shadows fell across it, and an actor stood in the same room and reacted to something real.

Start the youngest with Jason

Jason and the Argonauts (1963, rated G) is where the stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen earned his legend. The skeleton sword fight takes months of frame-by-frame work for a few minutes on screen, and it still beats most of what gets made today. Seven kids will watch it with their mouths open.

Content concerns: sword fights, a giant bronze statue that comes to life, harpies tormenting an old man, and mild peril throughout. Nothing a grade-schooler can't handle, though a sensitive five-year-old may want a lap.

It runs long, around an hour and forty minutes. Intermission is allowed.

Family night: Creature, Them! and Kong

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is under 80 minutes and moves like it. Two actors played the Gill-man. Ben Chapman wore the suit on land, and Ricou Browning swam in it underwater, holding his breath for long stretches. The underwater scenes where the creature trails a swimmer from below are still graceful.

Content concerns: the creature kills several crew members off-screen or in quick shots, a woman is menaced and carried off, and there's some gunfire. It's black and white and tame by current standards. A good first real monster movie.

Them! (1954) is the one people forget. Giant ants from atomic testing in New Mexico, a tight little detective story, and a finale in the Los Angeles storm drains. The ants are full-scale props, and they're better for being stiff and slightly wrong. It plays like a police procedural that happens to have a hundred-pound insect in it. Characters die, including a child's parent early on, and a few scenes are tense. Fine for older kids.

King Kong (1933) is the grandfather of the genre. Willis O'Brien's stop-motion Kong shows something CGI often can't: personality in the little jerky movements. When he looks at Fay Wray, you believe he's thinking.

Plain warnings, since this one needs them. It's a 1933 film, and its depiction of the island's natives is dated and offensive by any decent standard. Talk about it with older kids rather than skipping past it. Kong kills a number of people on screen, the dinosaur fights are violent, and the ending is sad enough to sting. Preview it, or use the eight-minute check before you commit.

Godzilla, the one that means it

The 1954 Japanese Godzilla (Gojira) isn't a romp. A stuntman named Haruo Nakajima wore a heavy rubber suit and stomped through detailed miniature cities, and director Ishiro Honda made it feel like a funeral. Japan had lived through Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that same year a fishing boat was caught in fallout from an American H-bomb test. The film knows what it's about.

Watch the original Japanese version with subtitles. The 1956 American edition cut and re-edited it and added scenes with Raymond Burr. It's a curiosity, not the film.

Content concerns: the destruction is treated seriously, with hospital scenes of the injured, grieving children and a somber ending. There's no gore. It's not a fun monster night. It's a good adult night, and a thoughtful teenager can handle it.

Jaws, the graduation

Jaws is rated PG, a rating from before PG-13 existed, and it earns the warning. A boy is killed in the water early on. Several attacks are bloody. One underwater scene is built to make you jump out of your seat. There's some profanity, a lot of drinking, and a long, ugly stretch at sea.

It's also one of the best-made films of its decade, and the three men on the boat swapping scars is as good as screen talk gets. Watch it with your teenager. Hold off on the nine-year-old.

For grown men only

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and Alien (1979) are both rated R, for graphic violence and language. The creature work in each is extraordinary, built by hand with rubber, slime and a lot of nerve. They're not family night. If you're a grown man with an evening to yourself and a strong stomach, they hold up. Everyone else can skip them without guilt.

How to run the night

• Pick one film. Don't try a marathon. A double feature of anything black and white is a long evening.
• Preview the scariest scene. You know your kid. Ten minutes ahead beats an hour of nightmares.
• Pause when you want to. Someone will ask how they made the thing. Tell them it's a person in a suit, or a puppet, or a model moved a hair at a time. The answer is half the fun.
• Check where each one streams before you commit, since availability shifts. If you're juggling services, take a look at what your streaming bill is actually buying you.

If this goes well, the next step is the classics your kids should see before thirteen.

Stop-motion runs at twenty-four frames per second of film. Every second of Kong on that building took somebody twenty-four small, patient adjustments with their own hands. You can see the work. That's why you still care.