1959: ON THE BEACH

What’s it about?

American submarine commander Gregory Peck brings his boat to harbor in Melbourne after the northern hemisphere is wiped out by nuclear war. But the Australian refuge is only temporary, as winds are expected to sweep lethal radioactive dust across every part of the globe within five months. While ashore, Gregory Peck strikes up a friendship with lonely party girl Ava Gardner -- but memories of his wife and family cause him to reject her romantic advances.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the military command send the submarine on a last-ditch mission to investigate wireless signals broadcasting from the vicinity of San Diego. Young Aussie lieutenant Anthony Perkins and scientist Fred Astaire accompany the submarine’s crew on the mission -- but all the while time slips by and hope dwindles, and the crew feels the pangs of being separated by duty from the rest of humanity during their last months.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

No movie that stars both Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire can be all bad. And Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins (looking his gangliest and most baby-faced) are no slouches in the acting department either. The story and dialogue sometimes drift into maudlin and formulaic territory, and the movie is quite a bit longer than your average sci-fi flick. But the actors are mostly terrific, the characters are interesting, and the premise is so grim that I only occasionally got restless. The movie is not exactly your average sci-fi movie and not exactly your average Hollywood romance -- and even though it won’t win any prizes in either category, the mixture is unique enough to be interesting.

ON THE BEACH is also one of those restrained and dignified science fiction movies where characters barely seem to want to mention the fantastic elements. Fred Astaire talks a little about the nuclear war that brought the world to the brink of destruction, but always in vague terms. In fact, nobody in Australia is even really sure who started the war or why, and it’s never explained exactly what kind of weapon poisoned the air. The movie is also only intermittently interested in how an entire nation would react to its own impending destruction. There’s some occasional speculative flashes -- most notably, the government plans to hand out suicide pills so people can spare themselves the horrors of radiation sickness. But otherwise, the movie seems to think that people would just go on doing the same things they’ve always done, only more grimly and sardonically.




The effects of radiation sickness are also never really shown. The symptoms are described, but there aren’t any scenes of hospital wards full of the afflicted. Nor do we ever see any dead bodies -- though, to be fair, there’s no reason for there to be any corpses in Australia yet, and a crew member who goes ashore in San Francisco does describe what he sees. But primarily the movie is concerned with only a handful of personal reactions to the coming catastrophe: Gregory Peck is duty-bound, Ava Gardner is heartbroken, Fred Astaire is fatalistic, Anthony Perkins is soulful. It’s all more or less what you’d expect, but it’s a good enough movie (and, in places, a dark enough one) to be worth watching. It’s also unusual in the sense that there aren’t too many movies from the 1950s that had both all-star casts and sci-fi themes.

Finally, I’d say something about the Australian location, but I can’t really comment on its authenticity. I can report that there aren’t any Crocodile Dundee caricatures -- the Aussies all seem fairly normal and civilized. In fact, they greet the coming eradication of life on their continent with admirable reserve, stoicism, and a lack of looting.




What else happened this year?

-- 4D MAN is a pretty great little sci-fi potboiler about two brothers who develop a process that allows people to walk through walls. As in Universal's version of THE INVISIBLE MAN, amazing powers inevitably bring out insanity and cruelty in those who acquire them.
-- William Castle’s THE TINGLER is worth seeing for a handful of memorable scenes -- among them one in which Vincent Price becomes the first person in a movie to drop acid, and another in which the titular monster famously breaks the fourth wall and goes after the audience.
-- This was also a banner year for horrible movies. The most well-known is no doubt Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, but many others almost equally incompetent were also released the same year.
-- Although many of the B-movies of 1959 would drive anybody to despair, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE will please people who appreciate such things.
-- THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL puts Harry Belafonte in Will Smith’s I AM LEGEND shoes in one of the earliest movies about lone survivors in an empty world. There are no zombies or vampires, but there are unconventional racial and sexual politics (for 1959 at least, and possibly even for today as well).

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1959...

Though it's not the best movie ever made, I think the one from this year that I'd most like to see again is THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL.

BONUS BLOG -- 1958: I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE

What’s it about?

After leaving his bachelor party, a man has an encounter with a horrific alien on the road home. The alien imprisons him, assumes the man’s form, and is subsequently married to the man’s fiancee the next day. The new wife almost immediately notices the difference in her husband, but isn’t sure at first what to make of it. A year later, the situation comes to a crisis when the woman starts to worry both about her inability to get pregnant and her husband’s apparent penchant for killing animals. Following him one night, she discovers that he is reporting to an alien spaceship hidden on the outskirts of town.

The woman tries to convince others that her husband has been taken over by an alien being. At first afraid that others will think she’s crazy, she soon begins to realize the real danger is that others in town may also be aliens themselves -- including the police. Desperate to escape, she finds that all communication has been cut off with the outside world. After begging her doctor to investigate the site where the spaceship is hidden, she returns home and -- at her wits’ end -- confronts her husband with her suspicions.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Somebody could probably take this premise and make a truly fantastic movie about the ways that people discover strange new truths about the people they marry. This is not that movie -- but it’s nevertheless a very interesting thriller with some neat sci-fi excitement and spookiness. But what really makes the movie interesting is how much of it is underplayed. There’s a generous helping of aliens and spaceships and ray guns, but there are also plenty of scenes where the husband merely appears to be irritable and secretive, and the wife uncertain and confused. Except for a brief moment when the husband vents his frustration with inhuman strength, it would be easy to believe that this was simply an ordinary young couple who were starting to feel the strain of married life.




Much like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956), the alien invaders here have a sympathetic story to tell -- their women were all killed in a planetary cataclysm, and they need to find a way of mating with another planet’s women or else their race will die out. But also like that other movie, these alien bodysnatchers display moments of intense and off-handed cruelty -- as when the husband strangles the family dog, or when a cop casually executes a human who has learnt too much about his alien nature. The contrast makes for a great tension, especially since the actor who plays the husband is a pretty physically terrifying guy. He often looks on the verge of snapping, and it’s easy to understand why his wife is so afraid. The aliens also react differently to finding themselves in human bodies -- some are disgusted, others simply resigned, and others actually enjoy the experience. It probably wouldn’t take much to find some subtext about human reactions to marriage in all of that.

The final confrontation between alien and wife also reveals that the aliens are slowly becoming more human the longer they stay in their bodies. Unable to love or feel happiness at first, they begin to experience emotions by the end of the movie. So even as the humans begin to close in on the hidden spaceship, there are more and more reasons to be sympathetic towards the invaders. After all, the alien version of the husband is the one that we’ve known for almost the entire length of the movie. If the “real” husband is brought back, then he would be more of a stranger than the alien (at least to the audience). All in all, this is a pretty terrific movie and one that I would definitely recommend. The plot is obviously pretty similar to that of many other bodysnatcher movies, but the movie is just so compelling and intense that the familiar situation doesn’t seem trite or worn at all.

1958: FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

What’s it about?

A U.S. air force outpost in Manitoba conducts experiments with atomic powered long-range radar, but can’t seem to generate enough power to keep their equipment working consistently. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths near the air base cause the locals (already suspicious of the Americans) to question whether they want the GIs there at all. Things only get weirder when autopsies of the victims reveal that their brains and spinal cords have been removed through tiny holes in the back of their necks.

Military investigators -- convinced that the atomic reactor can’t be the cause of the deaths -- begin to zero in on a local scientist who is researching telekinesis and other mental phenomena. After some hemming and hawing, the scientist breaks down and confesses that he siphoned power from the atomic reactor to aid him in experiments that he hoped would create physical manifestations from thought alone. It seems that one of these invisible manifestations is responsible for the spate of deaths, sucking out its victims’ brains and spinal cords in an attempt to reproduce itself. As the monsters grow more and more numerous, they take control of the power plant and jolt themselves with enough juice that they take a fully physical form and finally become visible. Meanwhile, a handful of desperate humans barricade themselves in a farmhouse surrounded by the brain monsters -- and then things get crazy.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Let me put it this way: I cannot imagine anybody watching the last fifteen minutes of this movie and being disappointed. The first hour is a decent sci-fi procedural that alternates between invisible monster attacks, the official military investigation, and vigilante action by the angry Canadians. It’s pretty standard stuff, with its fair share of both neat moments and silly ones. But nothing in that part of the movie can prepare a person for the exuberant insanity of the last fifteen minutes. It starts with frightened people looking out the windows as disembodied brains and spinal cords menacingly climb the trees outside, and only gets crazier from there.

Why the monsters look like brains and spinal cords is never really satisfactorily explained. That’s what the scientist who was doing the thought-materialization experiment envisioned, and that’s what appeared. But as to why he decided to envision that -- well, who cares? The important thing is that everything about them is totally creepy. They are, after all, essentially motile internal organs with little eyestalks waving around on top. The way they inch along the ground is creepy. The way they sound as they approach is creepy. The way they fly through windows -- well, that’s hilarious actually.




I’m not even really sure what else to say about the movie because after you see the ending the rest of it just doesn’t matter anymore. The fiends are rendered in a combination of stop-motion and rubber prop effects, both of which are done fairly well. Although they are very squicky and creepy, they are not particularly scary and there were definitely moments during the climactic fight at the end where I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. So this is neither the tense claustrophobic horror of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), nor is it the cruddy campiness of an Ed Wood movie. But it has its own brand of unabashed audaciousness that makes it both utterly indelible and completely unique. And even though this is far from the best movie of the decade, it is still absolutely something that every fan of 1950s sci-fi or horror should see for themselves.




What else happened this year?

-- Vincent Price gave his budding career as a horror icon a big boost by starring in THE FLY, one of my favorite movies of all time.
-- Meanwhile, Steve McQueen was fostering his own career by starring opposite a blob of purple silicon jelly in, well, THE BLOB.
-- ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN is one of the cheapest and worst sci-fi movies I have ever seen, but somehow it is still considered a camp classic.
-- I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE puts its own spin (and social commentary) on the bodysnatcher premise by swapping a bridegroom for an alien invader on the eve of his wedding.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1958...

It ought to be either THE BLOB or THE FLY.

BONUS BLOG -- 1957: THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

What’s it about?

Botanist Peter Cushing disregards the objections of his wife and mysterious warnings from a local wise man to join an expedition scaling the Himalayas in search of the fabled Yeti. Tempers soon flare on the five-man expedition when it becomes clear that not everyone is there for the same reason. Nerves fray even further when one man is injured by the carelessness of another, and vital equipment is destroyed in an angry scuffle. By the time a Yeti appears (only to be promptly shot at by a trigger-happy trapper), the men in the party are already practically at each other’s throats.

Meanwhile, Peter Cushing’s wife becomes concerned when the expedition’s native guide returns to the base camp in a panic. Though the locals try to hide the truth, she insists on mounting her own rescue party to seek out her husband. But things go from bad to worse on the mountain as foul weather moves in and the Yeti begin literally playing mind games with the survivors of the first party.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Peter Cushing would eventually go on to play Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, the vampire hunter Van Helsing, and many other roles in Hammer movies, but this is one of his first for the studio. I haven’t seen many of Peter Cushing’s other movies, but he is certainly one of the very best things about THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN. And in a movie where the focus is heavily on interpersonal interactions rather than scary monsters, appealing actors are pretty darn important.

It took me a while to identify the pattern, but there’s a coyness about Hammer’s sci-fi flicks that sits in stark contrast to most American movies of the period. Whereas American movies usually start developing right away whatever fantastic mystery or conflict they have for their centerpiece, Hammer flicks instead reserve the sci-fi elements until almost the last possible moment and spend most of their early running time on character interactions. (This is not necessarily true of every single Hammer movie -- but it’s true of many of them, and none more so than THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN.) Consequently, the Hammer movies often seem more naturalistic since we see many of the characters dealing with perfectly ordinary conflicts at home or in their jobs. “More naturalistic” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”, of course, since it’s perfectly possible to make a very boring movie about domestic discord and work stress. But it certainly gives the pictures a different mood than most of those from other studios, and often they come off feeling as though the scripts were written for a more adult audience. The fact that it’s a different approach makes it feel a bit like a breath of fresh air for that reason alone. But anybody who approaches this movie with the quite reasonable expectation that they will see a lot of exaciting abominable snowman action is going to be sorely disappointed.




In fact, I will admit that I find Hammer’s skewed focus frustrating at times -- breath of fresh air or not. The abominable snowmen do eventually show up, but they are kept entirely off-screen (except for a single hairy arm) until the final minutes of the movie. I’m not sure if that was done for budgetary reasons or if it’s the manifestation of some perverse British desire to deny the audience, but the refusal to show a clear shot of the title creature pretty quickly became both annoying and absurd. Fortunately, much of the picture would work just as well if there weren’t any Yeti at all, and the story is really quite good. Peter Cushing is a scientific man who comes to realize that the expedition he’s joined has commercial objectives that he strongly disagrees with. But by the time he learns the truth, the party is already high up among the peaks of the Himalayas, and there’s nothing he can do about it without endangering himself and the others. There are also some interesting theories put forth about who the Yeti are -- rather than evolutionary throwbacks, it’s suggested that they could be the inheritors of the Earth who are simply waiting for man to annihilate himself. So despite the disappointing dearth of actual live Yeti action, there are still quite a few things to recommend THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN -- but primarily to those already disposed to like Peter Cushing or Hammer movies.

1957: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN

What’s it about?

While cruising the ocean in his brother’s yacht, a man is exposed to a strange shimmering mist. The event doesn’t seem to have any ill effects at first, but six months later the man suspects he is getting smaller when his clothes no longer seem to fit. After several trips to the doctor, a set of X-ray photographs prove that he’s not just losing weight but is in fact gradually shrinking. Eventually the man reaches a height of about three feet -- at which point his doctors discover a method of arresting the shrinking, but still no way to reverse it.

Treated like a freak and hounded by the media, the man and his wife stay confined in their home where their nerves soon fray. The man finds brief solace in the friendship of another little person, but soon discovers that he is shrinking again despite his treatments. Ultimately reduced to a height of just a couple inches, disaster strikes one day when the family cat chases and traps him in the basement. His wife believes he’s been killed, and the man soon finds himself faced with several seemingly insurmountable challenges -- supply himself with the necessities of life, evade a monstrous spider, and contact the others in the house to let them know he still lives. And all the while, he continues to grow smaller and smaller.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

I knew that this would be my kind of movie as soon as the jazzy, hip opening credits started to roll. (Pro tip: Jazzy, hip opening credits are always a good sign.) And when I realized just minutes later that the main character isn’t any kind of scientist -- well, that was just the icing on the cake. Until I started watching a lot of 1950s sci-fi flicks all in a row, it had never registered just how many of them have scientists for main characters. Movies with scientist protagonists tend to be largely about the heroic leads trying desperately to solve whatever fantastic problem they’re facing with the vigorous application of (more or less ridiculous) science. But since the hero here, played by Grant Williams, isn’t a scientific person at all, it shifts the focus of the movie from problem-solving to simply coping with a strange condition and then eventually to surviving in an weird and hostile world. It’s a much easier kind of story for me to relate to, and the fact that it was different from most of the other movies I’ve been watching is a bonus as well.




The first half of the movie follows the shrinking man as he incredibly diminishes in size. This is taken in a few stages, and there’s a long interlude where he’s about three feet tall (the height at which his shrinking is temporarily arrested) that’s full of terrific over-sized props. Everything looks very realistic, and the movie never tries to play the difference in scale for laughs. Don’t get me wrong -- it’s always funny when a tiny man talks into a giant telephone, but the movie does its best to show the horror and humiliation of the situation rather than just the absurdity. This is also the section where Grant Williams is the least likeable -- he’s self-pitying, jealous, paranoid, angry, petulant, and frightened. Afraid to leave his house, he pouts and seethes and is pretty believably unpleasant.

It’s not until he’s left entirely to his own resources to survive in the basement that the shrinking man really starts to show his heroic side. Reduced to only a couple inches in height, ordinary tasks (like climbing the stairs back up to the first floor) become impossible. But he quickly finds a hitherto untapped resourcefulness that lets him claw his way -- ever so briefly -- to the top of the basement food chain. The only real weakness of this part of the movie is the melodramatic first-person narration that crops up from time to time. The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson (based on an earlier novel of his own), and the blame for the purple prose no doubt falls on his shoulders. I’d almost say that the narration ought to have been cut entirely, but it does help to reinforce the ultimate desolation of Grant Williams’s situation -- even as he surmounts the challenges of the basement, he continues to shrink all the time and even problems he’s already solved grow continually more difficult. And, of course, even being reunited with his wife won’t be more than a temporary happy ending since he’s quickly approaching a size at which he’ll be too small even to communicate with other humans. Consequently, the ultimate ending is surprisingly uncertain -- not the only ambiguous ending in the annals of 1950s sci-fi, but one of the few.




What else happened this year?

-- 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is probably the best movie of the decade to feature Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion effects. This one follows an alien from Venus that starts out tiny and cute, but quickly grows to a frightening size, goes on a rampage and then climbs a famous urban landmark.
-- THE MONOLITH MONSTERS is another Grant Williams picture that casts him in the more typical role of a geologist trying to solve an extraordinary problem. But, uncommon for the 1950s, the challenges he faces are not actually monsters at all but simply forces of nature that are running out of control.
-- Hammer Studios officially took over Universal’s monster franchises with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Starring Peter Cushing as the Baron Frankenstein, it helped set the course Hammer would follow for the next several decades.
-- Peter Cushing also stars in Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, about a Himalayan expedition dangerously beset both by personality conflicts and by psychic Yeti.
-- Willis O’Brien, the other great stop-motion animator of the time, lends his talents to THE BLACK SCORPION, a decidedly low budget entry in the giant monster sub-genre.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1957...

Make it THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN.

BONUS BLOG -- 1956: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS

What’s it about?

A husband and wife working on a rocket project encounter a flying saucer while driving on a desert highway. Though they first assume it was merely an isolated fluke incident, they soon begin to realize that something is shooting down each of the satellites as quickly as they are put in orbit. Then, during their latest rocket launch, another flying saucer appears. Deciding to shoot first and ask questions later, security personnel at the launch site precipitate a conflict that leaves the facility in ruins with the husband and wife apparently the only survivors of the catastrophe.

In the aftermath of the destruction, an unlikely coincidence allows the survivors to decode a message from the outer space visitors demanding a meeting to discuss terms of peace. Although the government seems inclined to take the idea of flying saucers seriously, the bureaucracy moves too slowly to suit the two survivors. They contact the invaders on their own and are taken up in one of the flying saucers where they witness a display of destructive power. The visitors then issue an ultimatum -- the Earth must surrender within 56 days or else. (The “else” is not clearly explicated, but it seems to involve beams of energy that make things explode.) When the flying saucers return at the end of the period, they expect the Earth to give up without a fight. But the scientists have used the 56 day reprieve to build a new weapon which will level the playing field between man and invader.




Is it any good?

This is the second sci-fi collaboration between producer Charles Schneer and stop-motion special effects master Ray Harryhausen. The first was 1955's IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, which is a pretty ho-hum giant monster movie about a radioactive octopus that gets a craving for the citizens of San Francisco. EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS is a big step up in terms of originality and excitement -- though it still doesn’t compare with the good times of the best Schneer/Harryhausen collaborations from the sixties.

One of the most admirable things about this movie is that it doesn’t avoid showing the spectacle of an all-out alien invasion -- something that’s more rare in sci-fi flicks than I would have suspected at the start of this project. With the obvious exception of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, most 1950s alien invasions involve aliens that either look almost exactly like humans or who assume human form to infiltrate and conquer from the inside. But here we get plenty of flying saucers, disintegrator rays, inhuman aliens, and a climactic full-scale attack on Washington, D.C. The best parts of the movie take place on the flying saucers, where the aliens and their human guests have a long conversation about the reasons for the invasion and the fate of the Earth. At times, the aliens are almost sympathetic -- but then they demonstrate a casual brutality that proves it’s really us or them.




The flying saucers are also some of the best looking ones I’ve ever seen. Ray Harryhausen’s living monsters have so much personality that I wasn’t really sure what he’d be able to do with a mechanical object that doesn’t have facial expressions or body language. But the effects of the saucers in flight are pretty great, even if the crumbling buildings look like they’re falling apart in slow motion. It’s disappointing that the aliens are people in suits (rather than Harryhausen effects), but they at least look fairly respectable. But as with so many sci-fi flicks from the time, the script is once again the weak point. It’s certainly not terrible and it stays pretty exciting almost entirely throughout, but there are some parts of it (such as the inexplicable 56-day window the invaders give Earth to prepare their defenses) that make no sense at all. The climactic battle is also a bit of a let-down, save for a few nice shots of flying saucers destroying famous Washington landmarks. To be honest, there is plenty you could laugh at here if that’s your kind of thing, but this one definitely delivers enough of the good stuff (like nifty special effects, weirdo alien technology, and overall excitement) to be better than your average 1950s B-movie.

1956: THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US

What’s it about?

In the third and final installment of Universal’s Gill-man franchise, a party of scientists again go looking for the creature after he escaped from a Florida marine park at the end of REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955). During a test dive to calibrate their sophisticated sonar equipment, the scientists spot the creature but are unable to get near enough to capture him. The creature then leads them upriver into the dark waters of the Everglades, until the scientists are forced to follow in a small open boat. Having evened the odds a bit, the creature forces a confrontation which ends with his capture -- and with him being badly burned in the process.

The scientists take the creature back to the waiting vessel where they’d hoped to study him, and find that the creature’s gills have been almost entirely burned away. However, they discover that he also possesses an unused set of lungs, so they perform emergency surgery to make them operational. Once the creature begins breathing through his lungs, he undergoes strange physical changes -- shedding many of his fish-like qualities and becoming increasingly human in appearance. Unsure as to whether the “humanizing” of the creature will extend to his behavior as well, the scientists bring him ashore for observation. But rivalries and jealousies among the scientists soon lead to a catastrophe.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Universal’s famed horror unit produced a handful of movies after this one, but THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is the last installment of their last major franchise. It also happens to be one of the best monster movies Universal ever produced, and is well worth watching both on its own merits and also as the conclusion of a film making epoch. In the first two Gill-man movies, the creature is presented as a missing link between man and his distant marine ancestors. (Don’t think too hard about that one.) Though he has some human characteristics, he never does much more than kill intruders in his lagoon, kidnap pretty women, and flee from superior force. But in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, the creature becomes more cunning, more human, and possessed of a great deal more personality.

The first part of the movie -- the hunt and capture of the creature -- is much longer and considerably more exciting than a similar sequence in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. The Everglades locations (or their studio equivalents) are plenty creepy, and the underwater photography is crystal clear. The creature seems to know he’s being hunted, and leads the scientists on a long chase that draws them into less safe territory. And although the scientists are aware that the creature is leveling the playing field, they have no choice but to follow and attempt the capture anyway. It’s all very tense and suspenseful, and really my only complaint about it is that the three male leads are all so square-jawed and hunky that it takes a little while to learn to tell them apart. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clearer that they each have different personalities and agendas -- something that you can’t always take for granted in these kinds of flicks.




But the real payoff is what happens after the creature is captured. The pseudo-scientific explanation of the physical changes doesn’t make any sense -- supposedly the mere act of breathing through lungs instead of gills causes spontaneous mutations that tip the balance of evolution away from fish and towards human. But the changes make the creature far more sympathetic, as does his sudden lack of interest in kidnapping and killing. (There’s a pretty funny bit where he comes across a woman and looks at her for a moment -- apparently ready to snatch her up -- but then moves along without a second glance.) Rather than a killer, the creature here is a pathetic figure who is hunted, persecuted, and stranded by physical mutations in a world he doesn’t understand.

Although I am an unabashed fan of the original CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), I think I’d nevertheless have to say that this is an even better picture than that one. It’s a shame that Universal didn’t make many more monster movies after THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, since they finally seemed to figure out how to fuse their usual sensational sensibility with a more psychological and ambiguous style of horror. But starting in 1957, Universal turned over the rights of its horror franchises to England’s Hammer Studios -- which would go on to produce many, many monster movies (almost all of them featuring either Baron Frankenstein or Dracula) in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.




What else happened this year?

-- Don Siegel directed the first (and, as far as I’m concerned, still the best) iteration of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and managed to turn a pretty silly story into a creepy and tense thriller.
-- The other big sci-fi spectacular from 1956 is FORBIDDEN PLANET, an outer space updating of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST that introduced the world to Robbie the Robot (among many other things).
-- Stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer turned their collective attention to the problem of mechanical marauders in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.
-- The 1954 Japanese monster flick GOJIRA was re-edited and released in America with 100% more Raymond Burr as GODZILLA, KING OF ALL MONSTERS.
-- Hammer released X THE UNKNOWN, a sci-fi/horror flick about a blobby menace haunting the Scottish marshes that was originally intended to be a Quatermass sequel.
-- Universal’s THE MOLE PEOPLE is a surprisingly interesting story about archaeologists stumbling upon a superstitious underground society descended from ancient Sumerians. Actual mole people are also both promised and delivered.

If you watch only one sci-fi movie from 1956...

As terrific as THE CREATURES WALKS AMONG US is, I’d say go for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS if you can only do one.