Here are a few samplers from the "genre" I would recommend ...
The Angry Red Planet (1960)
What monster shall we
have? A giant rat? A giant spider? No, let’s cut the legs off a spider and
put them on a rat. But that’s going to look shit isn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s on
Mars, we’ll do a weird red glow special effect on everything. Brilliant, let’s
throw some bat bits on the bastard too. Sorted!And so the bat-rat-spider
creature from The Angry Red Planet was born, the creators obviously thought
that this giant abomination of nature wasn’t scary enough on its own and threw
carnivorous plants, a giant amoeba and Martians in for good measure. This is
one of my favourite B-movies, I love the monsters but the terrorised crew of
the rocket ship are the stars. A guy who walks around smoking a pipe in a space
ship, some moron who’s just amoeba fodder and the mission commander who starts
chatting up the red-haired doctor who’s in charge of screaming before they’ve
even launched.
The Trollenberg Terror (1958) aka The Crawling Eye
The Trollenberg Terror was called The Crawling Eye in
America and that’s exactly what this B-movie beast is, a giant eye with
tentacles. And tentacles mean lots of actors writhing around with a limp rubber
special effects draped over them doing their best to look like their being
attacked. It’s a staple of B-movies, I love the limp tentacle attack, it always
brings out the best in an actor. Plus, these attacks usually end up with
someone being decapitated and that’s never a bad thing.The deadly eyes don’t
make an appearance until the latter half of this movie, there’s a lot of creepy
fog first, which apparently inspired John Carpenter to make The Fog.
Also, the film is set
in Switzerland and there’s lots of posters in the background for places I’ve
been to. I’ve never come across The Creeping Eye while snowboarding but there’s
always next year.
The Monolith Monsters (1957)
Big black stones that grow to gigantic proportions. That’s
not scary. Then the massive monoliths topple and all the smashed up smithereens
grow until there’s giant black stone towers covering everywhere. Still not that
scary. If you touch the stone it sucks all the silicon out of your skin and you
turn to stone. Christ, run away!See, stones can be scary, especially with that
classic Universal creepy music blasting out whenever there’s a shot of a rock. Actually,
this film is a top notch B-movie classic. It’s not as well known as some but
it’s a genuinely good old sci-fi film.The cast of usual suspects, including the
square-jawed all-American hero and the brilliant nosey local journalist, some
great performances and any movie with the tag line Mammoth skyscrapers of stone
thundering across the earth! just has to be brilliant.
Fiend Without a Face (1958)
Invisible monsters suck out your brains! That’s the tag line
for this brilliant piece of B-movie magic. But these little critters aren’t
from outer space, they were thought into existence by a brilliantly barmy
professor using just the power of his mind helped by some atomic energy he’s
pilfered from the local Air Force base.The little shits then start terrorising
the town by sucking the brains right out of people, but remember, they’re still
invisible so there’s some quality over-acting during the early attacks. Don’t
worry, they don’t stay invisible for long. After a dose of radiation the
mischievous flying brains with spinal cords for tails and antennae, for some
reason, start garrotting people left, right and centre.It’s hard to believe
that on its release the film got banned in some places, perhaps people laughed
themselves to death. Anyway, watch it, and also watch out for the leading
ladies chest, it looks like a couple of the Fiends smuggled themselves away
under her sweater… a sequel perhaps!
The Giant Claw (1957)
What’s that in the
sky? OMG! It’s a gigantic goggle-eyed turkey with a protective shield of
anti-matter. The big bird beast in the Giant Claw has to be one of the
stupidest looking movie monsters of all time but it still takes our scientists
a while to outwit the feathered simpleton swooping from the skies terrorising a
world made up of stock footage. Perhaps they would have got the job done faster
if they’d concentrated more on the science instead of their bizarre long-winded
metaphors that I think meant they wanted to shag each other.Brilliant B-movie
script and one of the funniest monsters ever.
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