Creature Features revisited – More Giant Monsters

A look back at the golden age of sci-fi, the 1950‘s. Our subject today… More giant monsters!

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Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Giant Gila Monster, Tarantula, Earth vs the Spider…

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Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

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A group of scientists investigate the effects of radiation on a Pacific Island near the Bikini Island Nuclear experiments. They are attacked by a couple of giant crabs that also have gained intelligence and psychic powers. They have telepathy and they absorb the knowledge of the victims they eat. One by one the group are killed in horrible attacks which leave them headless. The last three scientists communicate with the female crab and learn of her plan to reach the mainland, have her babies and devour all of mankind.

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Roger Corman told writer, Charles B. Griffith, that he wanted this film to be experimental and have every scene to have action or suspense. The film was quite successful, costing only 70k but making over one million dollars. While it doesn’t have the best Giant creature effects to stand up to other films of the time, it makes up for it by using close-up shots and movement of the camera. This keeps the flaws of the creature design obscured. If you had talked to teens that saw this in the theatres, they would have told you this film was frightening. I think the main reason for that was the beheaded victims and discovering that the crabs were eating the heads. That was very gruesome for the 1950s

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Trivia:

Russell Johnson as, Hank, spends his time while stuck on the island trying to fix the radio so they can call for help. Many years later he plays the Professor on Gilligan’s Island who, while stuck on the island, spends his time fixing the radio so they can call for help.

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The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

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I enjoyed the 50’s/60’s hot-rod and rock-and-bop feel of The Giant Gila Monster. Typical plot of 1950’s sci-fi without the budget of better known films of the era. Young couples in their cars go missing as the Gila Monster stomps some vehicles early in the film. The monster also causes a train wreck. It isn’t until the big dance party that the monster really makes itself known, coming out of hiding because of that crazy loud rock music. The town is saved by a guy named ‘Chase’ and his hot-rod! It’s budget film fun with a couple of good Gila Monster scenes, but it won’t win any awards for special FX. Watch for nostalgic entertainment on a day you have nothing else to do. Directed by Ray Kellogg. There’s a colorized version which doesn’t look too bad. And there’s a remake that looks SyFy style terrible.

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Trivia:
Actress Lisa Simone was a contestant for Miss Universe in 1957.

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Texas Drive-in theater owner, Gordon McLendon produced this film and The Killer Shrews as second features to the main attractions he had at his theaters.

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Danzig used the font from the movie posters for his album logos.

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Tarantula (1955)

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The film stars John Aagar, Mara Corday and Leo G. Carroll. A scientist secretly experimenting with a nutrient that effects the pituitary gland looses one of his specimens, a tarantula the size of a dog. The next time they see this tarantula it has grown significantly. Another scientist (John Agar) investigating the death of a biologist who had stumbled in from the desert with deformed features meets with his lovely assistant, (Mara Corday).  They discover the Giant mutant spider and work to get the situation under control before it can reach town. There’s a tense scene where the tarantula is looking through the window at Stephanie and attacks the house looking for a meal. The film has a better than average plot, story and acting, making it one of the more respected giant bug films of the time. My only dissappiontment as a kid was the Tarantula never makes it to town to cause destruction. Directed by Jack Arnold (Creature from the Black Lagoon).

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Trivia:
Clint Eastwood has a bit part as a pilot for the jet fighters that shoot at the tarantula at the film’s end.

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The tarantula is the same spider that performed in The Incredible Shriking Man.

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Earth vs. The Spider (1958)

 

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(aka: The Spider – not to get confused with Tarantula – 1955)

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A girl in high school is worried about her dad, who hasn’t come home from a road trip the night before. She convinces her boyfriend to go looking for him. These two teenage kids, Mike and Carol, they ain’t no Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, that’s for sure. They find Carol’s Dad’s car crashed off the highway and search the area. Carol sees a cave and figures her injured Dad may have crawled into there for shelter. They fall into a big web and are nearly killed by the humongous spider. Ironically, the spider’s growl sounds pretty close to Carol’s scream with effects on it.

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Naturally they tell the authorities, the authorities go into the cave, find Carol’s dead Dad and kill the spider. A professor of takes the spider to the university and has it on display for study. The staging area is in the auditorium. At night the band comes to play a gig and all the teens come to dance to the rocking sounds. And I’ll be damned, that crazy rock-n-roll music revives that damn spider! (told you that rock n roll music was bad for ya’). Screams, gasps, running… we got ourselves a monster movie! The monster terrorizes a suburban town, threatens a mom and her baby, and follows our hero‘s car back into the woods. The Authorities follow the spider back to its cave and kill it once and for all. There’s some not-so-great matt compositing for FX and in some scenes it looks like they may have used miniature buildings. It didn’t look like the real spider they used wanted to co-operate much. The film was produced, directed and written by Bert I. Gordon, who was an avid B-horror film producer of the time.

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Trivia:
In a scene with a movie theater where Mike works at, you can see a poster for The Amazing Colossal Man in the Coming Soon display case and the Marque shows Attack of the Puppet People as now showing. Both are by Bert I. Gordon films.

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photo galleries:

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parlor of horror – classic sci-fi/horror movie reviews

Creature Features revisited – So bad they’re good!

Creature Features revisited

A look back at the golden age of sci-fi. Our subject today…

So bad they’re good!

and by ‘good’ I mean they’re still bad, but you can get a good laugh watching them…

Robot Monster (1953)
The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)

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Robot Monster (1953)
This film is considered one of the worst films ever made perhaps only outdone by Plan 9. It was originally released in 3D. The monster is a gorilla costume with a diving-helmet… how good can it be? For whatever reason I like this the way some people like Plan-9 From Outer Space. In one scene Ro-man kidnaps Alice and runs down the mountainside with her. It is supposed to be terrifying and you hear Alice screaming. But, you can clearly see that actress Claudia Barrett is laughing hysterically the whole way down the hillside. I’m curious as to what Ro-man (George Barrows in costume) was saying to her as they raced through the mountainous terrain. In another scene you can see the human hand that is holding the rocket-ship as it’s landing on earth.

Ro-Man is sent to earth on an invasion mission. The plan goes well and Ro-man holes up in a cave near a family who are the last surviving people on earth. At first the alien leader instructs Ro-man to keep them alive for information. Later he instructs Ro-man to kill them, but Ro-man has developed feelings for Alice. His communications machine/computer shoots bubbles. It would be nice if our computers shot bubbles, there would be much less bullying on Facebook. Somehow in the end of the film, there’s dinosaurs. No one really knows why.

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The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
A bulbous giant brain with glowing eyes seeks to take over the earth and get some action from Steve’s fiancé, Sally, in the interim. Steve is possessed by the space brain, Gor, and Sally seems initially turned-on by Steve’s aggressive kissing. (Hubba-hubba) But his strange behavior prompts her to call her dad. They investigate a desert cave and find another floating brain, Vol, who seeks to stop Gor. Vol takes over the body of George, Sally’s dog and reveals how to kill Gor. Steve’s friend, Dan is killed but there’s hardly an investigation. Then Gor blows up a commercial airliner just for fun. Steve attempts to date-rape Sally in the desert (his 2nd attempt) but George stops it from happening. Steve says, “awe lets forget the whole thing.” Steve/Gor plans to attend the nuclear blast test in Indian Springs, where he will unleash his plan to overtake the whole world. He kills the sheriff with a radioactive blast from his eyes.

Gor blows up the atomic test and demands to meet with the countries leaders at 8:pm. He returns home for a nap. At the meeting he blows up another commercial airliner and laughs insanely. This one looks like a model with strings attached and a few firecrackers blowing up around it. The leaders agree to Gor’s demands. That was easy.

Back at home, Gor comes out of Steve’s body for a rest and chases Sally around the basement. Third time is a charm, I guess. Hey! There’s strings attached to that balloon brain! Steve, now back to normal, hits Gor with an ax. The most powerful force and evil mind in the universe, and he’s killed with a sloppy swing of an ax. The world is saved.

Despite the bad effects and silly plot, this flick is still somewhat enjoyable. From Steve/Gor’s psychotic laughter, to his awkward failed attempts at getting some action with Sally, it’s amusing for the wrong reasons

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Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
The aliens are Dr. Evil-like characters and an Egyptian queen, wearing a bad hat with much ornamentation. The guy aliens have fake pointy ears that are about to fall off any second. Actor, James Karen is in this. We start our story at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nice scenes of NASA in Florida from the 1960s. During a press interview with an Astronaut, the Astronaut freezes. The camera zooms in on his teeth (don‘t know why). He must be a robot. There’s some awesome, groovy, early 60s, head trip music over stock footage of the Apollo space missions. Watching the astronauts get suited up and climb into that little space capsule was interesting. It is followed by actual radio recordings from a launch.

The aliens shoot down the missile launch The robot astronaut (named Frank) survives the crash. He fights with the aliens and winds up with half of his face melted off. The damaged Robot-Frank goes insane and runs a-muck, choking everyone he sees to death. Frank then hacks a guy to pieces with a coconut knife for no reason. Meanwhile the aliens have a wickedly, cool looking monster, named Mull, that they intend to let loose against Frank the astro-bot. So the conflict is set, now we just have to sit through a whole bunch of hokey, boring, scenes with scientists discussing what had occurred.

Finally we get to the beach with a sun bathing beauty. The aliens kidnap her and bring her to their craft for Phase 3. There’s a very lesbian-like scene where the alien queen checks out the bathing beauty specimen. Two scientists, Karen (the girl not the actor) and Dr. Adam (James Karen, the actor), show up at the beach. Then, pseudo Caribbean/Beatles music plays as we go on a long ride on a mo-ped/scooter. I shrug my shoulders.

There are several spots in the film where music plays despite the fact we are watching the actors speaking lines. I guess the dialogue wasn’t that important. What is important is more hippy music as guys in space suits with ray-guns, run around collecting women at a pool party! There’s a HUGE military build up (stock footage of course) that goes on for about 10 minutes. The result of this huge build up? A few fire crackers explode near the ship.

Karen and Robot-Frank get kidnapped by the aliens, too. Karen convinces the robot to turn good and fight the evil aliens, he does. The fight lasts about 40 seconds. The bathing beauties escape and the ship blows up. Yeah! Earth is saved again.

Trivia:
This film is ranked #7 in the 50 Worst Movies Ever Made (2004)

Gallery of amusing visuals:

bubbles!

recharges your cellphone for free

always interuptions…

Hey, my girl…go get your own

saw this in Frankenstein

tied up at the moment

scream or laugh?

what’s so funny?

I am the brains of this operation

is it my breath?

hubba hubba!

come on baby, gimme some of that…

insane black eyed smile

I can see the strings!

hatchet to the head

dogs that talk

don’t believe this thing is air worthy

grilled cheese face

I’ve seen this hat before

James Karen

so what if the world is being taken over by aliens, this is fun!

dig the polka-dot bikini

Well, you like it? or not?

bad motor scooter

Stomping Grounds, featuring a short story by Michael Thomas-Knight

 

Giant Monsters abound in Stomping Grounds!

April Moon Books has released an Stomping Grounds, an anthology of Giant Monster stories which includes my tale, The Devil’s Avatar.

They’ve also made available these “excerpt cards’ to get a taste for the anthology of Giant Monster horror in STOMPING GROUNDS. (click on each excerpt card for a clearer read)

I have mine posted here along with a few other excerpts. I must say, not to take anything away from all the other anthologies I’ve been in, this is one that I am most excited about reading! Of course you all must know how much a fan I am of Giant Monsters and Dinosaurs, so I am super excited to have a story in this book featuring tales of, among other things: A Giant Wasp, Giant Lovecraftian horrors, a Giant Giraffe, a Giant FROG, a giant CLOWN…

My story The Devil’s Avatar has numerous nods to scenes in Giant Monster Movies including, Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, Talos from Jason and the Argonauts, King Kong, and others. Hopefully, if you read the story, you’ll get to certain parts and say, Hey, this reminds me of the scene in the movie, so-and-so (fill in movie tittle).

So, check out these excerpts and if it sounds good, check out the kindle and paperback release:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RNH5XTG/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_R2oPub06EKNYR

 

Monster Wars – Model on the Mantle

Monster Wars – Episode One
Monster Model on the Mantle

Ok, so here’s a short video I posted on youtube. Any married man that has his guy toys should be able to relate to this. The wives’ never want our guy things in the general expanse of the home; they think they should stay relegated to the man cave or specially cordoned room. See what happens when I try to expand my influence into the rest of the house…

The video gets a little shaky in the middle. I didn’t want the wife to know I was recording. I’ll post some better pics of this model at a later date.

The model is Ymir, 20 Million Miles to Earth by Geometric

Creature Features revisited – Dinosaurs Invade (aka: Rex in the City)

A look back at the golden age of sci-fi, the 1950‘s/early 60’s. Our subject today…
Pseudo-Dinosaurs Invade our cities: (aka: The dinosaur films of Eugene Lourie)
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Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
This is one of Harryhausen’s greatest creations. Eugene Lourie and Jack Dietz approached Harryhausen about creating a dinosaur for their creature feature film. He came up with the Rhedosaurus, a four-legged carnivore. Its head was T. Rex inspired and its body resembled a Komodo Dragon. They brought in Ray Bradbury to help write the screenplay, enabling them to encompass the lighthouse scene, which was a recreation of Bradbury’s story, The Foghorn Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, originally published in The Saturday Evening Post. Thus, came about the title of the independently financed film. They sold the film to WB outright for a measly $4k, upon completion, never realizing that it would become a hallmark of 1950’s sci-fi and dinosaur invasion movies.

Nuclear testing releases the Beast from the artic Ice, where it was frozen in suspended animation for millions of years. A young scientist observing the blast sights the Beast but no one will believe what he claims to have seen. Working with a Paleontologist, he identifies the beast as the extinct dinosaur, Rhedosaurus. After a sighting in Nova Scotia, the beast emerges on the NYC seaport in all its glory, ready to trample its way through Manhattan. There, it stomps cars, eats a police officer, and when fired upon, crashes through buildings, toppling bricks and mortar upon the fleeing people. They finally corral the Beast in Coney Island and our scientist/hero climbs the Cyclone (roller coaster) to the top where he can shoot a poisonous radioactive isotope into an open wound on the Beast. The Beast dies as the Cyclone burns.

The foam latex rubber-over-armature beast model had some impressive detail which really brought the creature to life. Its stride, tail movements, skin textures, expression and eye movements were unique to Ray Harryhausen’s trademark work. Along with his rear projection and masking techniques, this work set him apart from others as the premier monster-maker for years to come. There are some fantastic special features on the dvd including, “the making of the beast” and “Harryhausen and Bradbury” about the working relationship these two men had and how it helped shape the 50’s sci-fi era. The Science: Rhedosaurus was never a real dinosaur. There was an homage to Rhedosaurus in Planet of Dinosaurs -1977.   ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth’ – 1970, has a Dino that is often mistaken for a Rhedosaurus but was actually designed from a pic of a Scelidosaurus.  Rhedosaurus had features and a design more associated with a giant reptile than dinosaurs.

 
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The Giant Behemoth (1959)
It seems that Pete Peterson did a lot of stop motion in films as part of Willis O’Brien’s production team, therefore giving O’Bie credit in a lot of movies he did not actually animate. This one and The Black Scorpion are two examples. The film begins with nuclear testing in the deep ocean. Soon after, a fisherman from a small Scottish fishing village dies upon the shoreline with radioactive burns upon his skin and dead fish wash up upon the shore. Scientists, Dr. Steven Karnes sights some kind of serpent in his binoculars. Eventually, a giant carnivorous sauropod with a radioactive death-ray rises in the harbor of Great Britain. First the dino attacks a ferry in a not-so impressive scene where you can tell the monster is a puppet. But when Behemoth steps onto land it is a nice looking stop-animation Dino that stomps cars and tears down loading dock cranes. Best scenes include Behemoth attacking the power lines in an explosion of electric sparks and the dino knocking a building wall down, on top of cowering city folk. The fight against Behemoth is not all that impressive, we see a few stock scenes of moving troops and Navy ships but gunfire is actually limited. Behemoth meets his demise by a small submarine diving underwater and a torpedo hit into the soft lining of the monsters mouth.

Its not the greatest movie of its kind but there are reasons I like it. Firstly, there are not too many sauropod/brontosaurus style dinosaurs in movies. This one closely resembles a Brachiosaurus with longer front legs than rear. Behemoth was made with foam and rubber over armature, with scale impressions from perhaps an iguana pressed into the rubber outer coating. This made for a nice texture overall, but close-ups had much less detail and expression than the work by Harryhausen around that same time. Close-ups also showed some of the flaws in its design like the seams where the rubber parts connected. This film was also directed by Eugene Lourie. The Science: all sauropods were herbivores (no they didn’t even eat fish) and they lived out of the water their entire life.
 
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Gorgo (1961)
A volcano rises in the ocean sending a shipping vessel aground upon a nearby island off the shore of Ireland. There, the crew discovers a legend that turns out to be a dinosaur, with fins on the sides of its head, alligator-like skin and red glowing eyes. They take the creature back to London for a Piccadilly Circus attraction. They corral and enclose it in a caged area where they sell tickets for its viewing to the general public. What they don’t know is that the dinosaur is a baby and big mamma dino is soon smashing London to bits in hot pursuit. As with most of the era’s sci-fi films, Gorgo is a little slow to start, but when it does, massive destruction abounds. Gorgo lays waste to Big-Ben, London Bridge and a half a dozen other British landmarks. Although it doesn’t breath fire like its Japanese counterpart, Gorgo makes up for it with sheer destruction, as it swats its big paws around, crushing the city to ruble. The military response is formidable and there is quite a bit of explosive firepower unleashed against the monster, although the film uses quite a bit of stock footage from the British Royal Navy. Gorgo finally finds Gorgo Jr. and both head out to sea, leaving the Brits to scratch their heads in wonderment.

This British film produced by the King Brothers and directed by Eugene Lourie (Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) is made with highly detailed miniatures and a guy in a suit. There is a lot of destruction in the film as Gorgo devastates the city of London. Gorgo was released during a lull in Godzilla films after the original ‘Godzilla’ and ‘Godzilla Raids Again’ (1955) but before ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla’ (1962). It beat Toho to the punch of putting out a film of this genre in Technicolor. It was first released in Japan (1960), where it was a huge hit, then released to the world-wide audience where it was a big box office attraction. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a really high-quality release of this film to be found on dvd or Blu-ray.
Update: since the posting of this article they have re-released Gorgo on dvd and BluRay, completely restored, and with special features worthy of the films contribution to sci-fi/monster filmdom
 

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Amazingly, all three of these films were directed by Eugene Lourie. It is said that “Beast…” influenced Ishirō Honda into making “Godzilla” which in turn influenced the making of “Gorgo“. Naturally Godzilla/Gojira would fit quite well on this list, but I think a review of it would be redundant at this point in time.

Both Pete Peterson and Ray Harryhausen worked with Willis O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young. Soon after Ray branched out on his own, while Peterson stayed with O’Brien as part of his production team.
 
Ray Harryhausen   …………….  Pete Peterson

Eugene Lourie

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Stay Away from these:

Reptilicus
The Giant Claw
Even a die-hard monster movie fan like myself find it difficult to get through these films. Cartoon-ish monster designs and mediocre miniature modeling. There is just not enough monster action in either to make up for the poorly written story-lines.
 
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And, here’s some pics from the three featured films:

Creature Features revisited – Giant Bugs

Creature Features revisited – Giant Bugs

A look back at the golden age of sci-fi, the 1950‘s. Our subject today…
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Giant Bugs:

Them! (1954)
The film starts out with a catatonic little girl walking alone through the desert in New Mexico. The State Police pick her up and this leads to a discovery of her parents decimated camper-trailer a few miles away. Further investigation leads to a colony of giant ants. James Whitmore (Bonanza, Gunsmoke) and James Arness (Gunsmoke) play the State police and Edmund Gwenn (yeah, Santa Claus from Miracle on 34th  Street) plays the scientist. He explains the ants gigantism as a fallout from nuclear radiation. The giant ants were filmed nicely for that time – mechanical creatures with giant mandibles that crushed their prey. They also emitted a strange whining noise when they were near which ramped up the tension. The troopers manage to destroy the colony but they discover that two queen ants have escaped and must be re-colonizing somewhere. That somewhere is in the Los Angeles storm-drain canal system, where the Terminators would battle with motorcycle and truck many years later. This is the epitome of 50’s sci-fi films, playing off the concerns and dangers of nuclear testing in the 1950’s mid-west and man’s inability to control what he has accidentally created. The film created a lot of suspense, action, and giant creature terror for its time. One of the best of the era.
 
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The Deadly Mantis (1957)
A volcanic eruption causes the polar ice-packs to shift and releases a giant praying mantis. The ‘prehistoric’ insect has a hunger for humans, killing several men in a military outpost then attacking some unsuspecting Eskimos. From there it takes flight, stops briefly atop the Washington Monument in DC, then finds refuge from the military attacks in the Manhattan Midtown Tunnel. The special-FX in this classic sci-fi giant bug flick are fantastic. The mantis looks mostly realistic (if you don’t look too closely) and the artic scenes are chilling (chilling, get it?). There is some minor destruction at the military outpost and some fine work within the tunnel for the movie’s finale. Despite plot similarities to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, this is one of my top picks in the giant bug film category. There is something intriguing about a real praying mantis itself, and the films giant replica is nicely portrayed. Naturally, we have the love-story sub-plot in the face of this catastrophic event, a common staple in many 50’s sci-fi films.
 
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 The Black Scorpion (1957)
Believe me, the cover of the dvd, poster, blu-ray and vhs box, does the film no justice. I had been looking for this film by memory, not knowing the name and kept dismissing this dvd because of the cover art. But, low and behold, I discover this is Willis O’Brien’s giant scorpion movie! (w/Peter Peterson). A volcano and resulting earthquake in Mexico releases a nest of giant scorpions who proceed to feed on Mexican farmer’s livestock. When the Mexican army, with the help of an entomologist tries to seal the cavern containing the scorpions, the beasts escape and attack the nearby village and a commuter train. Eventually, the big daddy of scorpions is released from the cave and first attacks and eats the smaller scorpions, then sets its hungry claws on Mexico City. There is no need to tell you that the stop-motion, special effects in this film are outstanding. The train attack sequence is a plethora of destructive action. The big scene at the end that really impressed me was when the Giant Black Scorpion fights the military helicopters in Mexico City. It manages to grab one and throw it to the ground in a heap of twisted metal, then stings it several times to make sure the helicopter is dead – a fantastic sequence. Starring, Mara Corday and Richard Denning.

The special features of the dvd feature an interview w/Ray Harryhausen about his friendship with O’Bie and clips from test footage of never made films, The Las Vegas Monster and The Beetlemen, amongst other fine tidbits. A must have for any 50’s sci-fi fans and O’Brien/Harryhausen fans!

 

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Pics: