GIANT MONSTERS OF 1955: TARANTULA, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, & KING DINOSAUR!!

TARANTULA (1955) d. Jack Arnold (USA)
IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) d. Robert Gordon (USA)
KING DINOSAUR (1955) d. Bert I. Gordon (USA)

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Tonight, we step back seventy years to 1955—the cusp of the golden age for giant monster cinema, as atomic anxiety crept from the headlines onto the silver screen, mutating into monstrous metaphors that stomped, crawled, and slithered into our collective imagination. We’ll look at three emblematic 1955 films - Tarantula, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and King Dinosaur - and explore how their monsters weren’t just fanciful products of science fiction, but also reflections of Cold War fears, rapid technological advancement, and the uneasy relationship between scientific progress and military might.

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957) Blu-ray Review

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) d. Nathan Juran (as Nathan Hertz) (USA) (71 min)

“Recognized nuclear scientist” Steve March (John Agar) and his way-too-young assistant Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) pick up some troubling radiation activity on their, ahem, Nucliometer, and determine that the source of the Geiger-jiggering is none other than the ominously named Mystery Mountain (where viewers have seen a bright floating light land and explode during the opening credits). They pack up their equipment and drive out into the blazing hot desert to investigate – leaving Steve’s fiancee Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows) to clean up the dishes from lunch – and encounter a flagitious floating flock of megalomaniacal gray matter calling itself Gor (voiced by Dale Tate). Seems Gor has escaped from his (despite its limited anatomy, this is very much a male presence) home world of Arous and is now bent on dominating ours, starting with the overtly hostile act of frying Dan and then taking over Steve’s body in order to a) threaten the world’s leaders with annihilation and b) sexually assault Sally every chance he gets. Meanwhile, Arous has sent another airborne brain, the intergalactic police officer Vol (also voiced by Tate), who allies forces with Sally, her father John (Thomas B. Henry), and their faithful dog George to deal with the mental menace from beyond the Milky Way. May the best frontal lobe win!

TARANTULA (1955) Blu-ray review

Tarantula (1955) d. Jack Arnold (USA) (81 min)

A plan to feed the world by using a growth formula on plants and animals instead creates terror beyond imagining when a lab accident releases a spider of mammoth proportions upon an unsuspecting public! Feeding on cattle and humans, this towering tarantula has the people of Desert Rock, Arizona, running for their lives. Can this horrifying creature be stopped… or will the world be crushed beneath its giant hairy feet?

THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956) Blu-ray Review

The Mole People (1956) d. Virgil W. Vogel (USA) (78 min)

John Agar (The Brain from Planet Arous), Hugh Beaumont (TV’s Leave It to Beaver) and Nestor Paiva (Tarantula) star as three archaeologists who come upon the Sumerians, an unusual race of albino beings (led by Alan Napier) who shun all forms of light and have mutant mole men as their slaves. Because of their “magical cylinders of fire” (i.e. flashlights), the explorers are treated like gods, with Agar’s character even finding time for romance with the tannest and prettiest of the Sumerians (Cynthia Patrick), until they try to liberate the unfortunate enslaved creatures from their oppressors. Can the archaeologists escape this hallowed mountain in Asia ... or will they be trapped forever in this strange underground world?

BODY BAGS (1993) DVD/Blu-ray Review

Body Bags (1993) d. John Carpenter / Tobe Hooper (USA)

I’ll be honest, until its recent DVD/BR unearthing by Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory division, I had nearly forgotten this made-for-cable anthology effort even existed, much less sought it out. Since it’s billed as “John Carpenter presents Body Bags,” I was even unaware that Carpenter had served as director for the majority of the piece (two segments and the wraparound). Blame it on Wes Craven, whose stream of similarly branded straight-to-video awfulness (Dracula 2000, They, the 1998 Carnival of Souls remake) left me more than a little gun shy. And, in addition to the fact that it was made for Showtime long before its original programming was the stuff of ACE awards, no one within my horror crew ever talked about it. Like, at all. Even when the conversation would turn toward Carpenter and his output, people seemed to go out of their way to ignore this little gem, skipping straight from 1988’s They Live to 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness (with completists throwing in a cursory nod to Memoirs of an Invisible Man from 1992) without so much as a good, bad, or otherwise. Which is a darn shame, because this is horror charm on the cheap, a slice of low-budget cheese that should delight any fan of Tales from the Crypt or the short-lived syndicated series, Monsters.

NIGHT FRIGHT (1967) movie review

Night Fright (1967) d. Sullivan, James A. (USA)

The solo feature directing credit from Larry Buchanan factory member Sullivan (production manager on Eye Creatures and Curse of the Swamp Creature, cojoling the latter’s John Agar to star) opens with a report of an innocent UFO sighting, but before long bodies are littering the landscape. The culprit: a hapless ape gone blood crazy after being exposed to cosmic rays as part of a deep space experiment. (We rarely get a good look at the “monster,” a wise decision since it’s clearly little more than a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a dinosaurized faceplate.)