BY TODD GARBARINI
Long
before a carcharodon carcharias wreaked havoc on Amity Island in New York over
the July Fourth weekend in the 1970s, atomic blast activity in the 1940s
disrupted Mother Nature’s natural chain of events and Hollywood was all too
willing to jump on to the atomic admonition bandwagon, churning out fantastic
tales of miniscule creatures ballooning to hundreds of times their original
size and going medieval on their human counterparts. Gordon Douglas’s Them!
(1954) is my favorite film from this era and I find the overall tone of the
film to be creepy even today. I was eleven when I first saw it and the sight of
oversized, monstrous ants (resulting from nearby military atomic bomb tests) terrorizing
LA from deep within the Los Angeles Riverbed was truly unnerving. James
Whitmore impressed me in his role as the police officer who was determined to
save two small boys captured by the formidable Formicidae. Years later I found
myself smirking when he appeared in the Miracle-Gro lawn ads in the early
1990’s, imagining that the substance would bring these creatures up from the
grass.
Monster
movies were a favorite of mine growing up and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
(1953) made me gaze in wonder at how Ray Harryhausen’s effects pulled off the
illusion of a monster running rampant through Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY.
Future readings and documentary viewings revealed the magic behind the movie. Beast
is the obvious antecedent to Eugène Lourié and Douglas Hickox’s 1959
monster movie The Giant Behemoth (1959), a film nearly identical in
theme and execution that concerns a creature that lives in the ocean – across
the Pond near the fishing village of Looe, Cornwall – that never died during
the age of the dinosaurs. Daniel James, a blacklisted writer who used the
pseudonym of “Daniel Hyatt†to write Beast along with co-director Eugène
Lourié, returns here with a story that appears to be a carbon copy of the Beast
scenario. Scientist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) is giving what today would be a
soporific PowerPoint presentation, a lecture on the dangers to underwater sea
creatures as a direct result of nuclear testing. Professor James Bickford (Andre
Morell) heads up the British scientific group that Karnes lectures.
Coincidentally, a short time later, dead fish wash up on a beach outside of
Looe. Karnes and Bickford launch an investigation which yields the discovery of
radioactivity in the dead fish. Another attack on a nearby farm offers an
astonishing piece of evidence: an enormous footprint which, as paleontologist
Dr. Sampson (Jack MacGowran) states, belongs to a Paleosaurus which emits an
electric pulse that is radioactive in nature. It then becomes a matter of
national security to attack and kill the beast.
Although
the film runs a mere 69 minutes, and the titular monster appears 31 minutes
into the film and stomps around for roughly the remaining 20, there is a great
of deal of dialog and explaining of the scenario at hand. Much of this “actionâ€
is slow in nature, the tell-tale signs of a film on a very low budget. The
acting is what one would expect from a B-movie. Desperate fishermen complain of
dead fish at the height of the season and demand that an answer for the crisis
be forthcoming. Karnes and Bickford are portrayed as intelligent, well-meaning
and earnest investigators determined to unravel the mystery that is plaguing
the area. When the word “radioactive†is used, my thoughts harken back to The
Firm’s 1985 top 40 hit of the same name. The film makes a good double feature
with the aforementioned Beast if for no other reason than to compare the
two.
Special
effects wizard Willis O’Brien, who pioneered stop-motion animation with the
wondrous King Kong (1933) and who later worked on Mighty Joe Young
(1949) with his enthusiastic protégé Ray Harryhausen, lent his talents to this
film following a life full of sadness and terrible tragedy. The scenes of the
behemoth rampaging through London and highly accomplished and worth the wait. Another
special effects artist, Pete Peterson, who also worked on Young, lends his
talents here as well. There is also the requisite use of stock footage of
atomic blasts and 4-alarm fires.
Behemoth made its DVD debut in June 2007 as
part of Warner Brother’s Cult Camp Classic lines. It included an original theatrical trailer and a
feature-length audio commentary featuring Phil Tippet and Dennis Muren,
themselves giants in the contemporary special effects field, and both of these
features have both been ported over to the new Blu-ray available from the Warner
Archive Collection label. The picture looks great; however, the commentary is
one of the most uninspired and frustrating that I have ever heard. For one
thing, neither speaker sounds even remotely prepared (or even interested!) to
discuss the film that they are watching, which is amazing to me considering
Willis O’Brien’s involvement with the picture. They fail to look up even the
most obvious info regarding tidbits, such as the film’s release year! There are
long stretches with no commentary at all, which is unacceptable given the
film’s short running time. A disappointment to say the least.
The Warner Archive
continues to release interesting titles on Blu-ray. I look forward to their
future releases.
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