The best evil monster cackle in movies

This is a tough contest. I mean, where do you start? After all, that’s what monsters do. Make horrible noises. They love making horrible noises. They get a kick out of it. So would I if I was a monster. In fact, I’d do it just for laughs. Anyway, think how cathartic all that roaring and screaming would be? So show me a monster that doesn’t make a racket and I’ll show you a wuss monster.

Well, let’s have a go. Alien? No. Alien doesn’t do cackle. It hisses/slurps. The Fly? I think he just disintegrates. The Thing? Depends on which shape he’s currently changing into, but definitely no cackle T-Rex? Er, I don’t think so.

No, there’s really only one candidate. The Predator. Check out the scene where the Predator is crushed by a huge tree stem and Arnie is about kill it when he asks in vintage action movie dialogue; “What the hell are you?!” As the Predator engages its self-destruct mechanism, it lets out a terrific cackle. I mean, you must be able to hear it from miles. It fuckin’ resonates, man.

Of course you could argue it’s not really a cackle, more of a maniacal laugh, but often the two are intertwined. For instance, you might decide to lead with a crazy laugh and subside into a low, gurgling cackle. But now is the not the time to debate the finer points of cackle/laugh definitions.

The Predator is a traditionalist. He goes for the classic cackle. Long, loud and pure pantomime villain.

I howled with laugher and fell off the sofa when I first saw it. I hurt my elbow but it was worth it.

Salman Rushdie: he's funnier than you think

I went to see Salman Rushdie talk about his new book, The Enchantress of Florence, at the Charleston Festival recently. In an utterly compelling discussion about stories and their power in society, his interviewer asked him at one point if he thought we look to the writer as a prophet. Straight away he shot back: ‘I hope not. I’ve had quite enough of prophets, thank you very much’

Inevitably he went onto to talk about the Satanic Verses and he made the now long-forgotten point that the novel is actually quite funny. He said if he truly wanted to be offensive he would’ve taken all the funny bits out and just ranted at Islam. In other words, been as rude as he could. Shouted. Screamed. Hollered. Instead of piss-taking. Which is all it was.

Ok, Rushdie’s novels might not be your thing, you might find them boring, you know, ‘er, they’ve got too many words like’, or you might think, ‘one minute he’s talking about real people next minute this crazy shit about angels and devils’, but offended? Give us a break. Look, you’ve been going since the seventh century and you got 1.8 billion followers and you can’t take a bit of piss-taking?

The first casualty of religious belief is a sense of humour.