The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

When film critics talk about influential movies they often rattle off titles like: Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, King Kong, Breathless,The Gold Rush, Psycho, etc. However, a title that you never find in their lists is the 1953 film The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. What? Are you kidding? How can anyone even think of putting The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in the same company as these great films? It's just a silly 1950s sci-fi film made for children!!! The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms may not be in the same league as the titles  listed above, it is nonetheless one of the most influential movies of all time; at least in the science fiction genre. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is important for two reasons:

1) It would establish the template that many science fiction films of the decade would follow.
2) It helped launch the career of special effects master Ray Harryhausen, who in turn would influence many great future filmmakers.

It wasn't made by a cinematic genius, but rather a director for hire (Eugene Lourie) who only made three other films (two about dinosaurs, one about a robot). Its two leads (Paul Christian and Paula Raymond) had rather forgettable careers.  And it was made for an extremely low budget ($200,000).  Yet, despite it's rather humble beginnings, it spawned many imitations for years to come; the most famous being Godzilla.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms owes a great debt to King Kong; both in terms of story structure and allowing for the film to be made. In 1952, King Kong was re-released in movie theaters and proved to be a huge success; even bigger than its initial release in 1933. The success of King Kong naturally allowed for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms to be green lit. Would Warner Brothers have shelled out $450,000 for the rights to The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (a film that cost only half the amount) had King Kong gone unnoticed or hadn't been re-release at all? Probably not! While King Kong's influence is undoubted, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms managed to bring new things to the genre that have been copied ever since.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was the first film to introduce the idea of atomic testing awakening a giant menace; in the film The Beast (the fictional Rhedosaurus) is awaken from its slumber in the Arctic by the blast of an atomic bomb. This plot device was later repeated in films like: Them!, The Giant Behemoth, The Deadly Mantis, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and most famously, Godzilla. The fact that Godzilla movies are still being made to this very day only further enhances just how influential The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was. In the film's climax, the Beast has been wounded and drips blood over the city streets; when soldiers come into contact with it they become extremely ill. It is later revealed that the Beast's blood has been poisoned by radiation. Godzilla replaces the radioactive blood with radioactive breath. It should be noted that shots of people fleeing from the Rhedosaurus would later be reused in other Giant Monster films of the 1950s; most notably The Giant Behemoth. 

As far as I know The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is the first film to introduce the attractive lady scientist. The Thing From the Another World had a strong female presence in Margaret Sheridan, but she was in the more traditional role as a secretary; not to mention doesn't really advance the plot. Her main function is to be the  love interest to Kenneth Tobey's Captain Henry. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Patricia Neal plays Helen Benson, a woman who is sympathetic to Klaatu's mission. However, Neal's character is an ordinary character caught up in events beyond her wildest dreams. In The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) is an expert paleontologist and is the only person who believes Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian) when he claims to have seen a dinosaur. Lee helps drive the narrative of the story by investigating Tom's claim and persuading her mentor, Professor Elson (who has credibility with the military) that this demands serious attention. It is also to the film's credit that the romance between Tom and Lee is hinted at, rather than made into a major, time consuming subplot: the audience gets that these characters are in love just by the occasional glances they throw each other's way. The attractive, but extremely intelligent woman scientist (with a guy's name) would become a staple in 1950s sci-fi films, most notably in: Tarantula, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Them!, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and many more. The relationship between Lee and Professor Elson (Cecil Kellaway) was mirrored a year later in the movie Them! In that film, Dr.  Medford  (the terrific Edmund Gwenn) is called upon to help the military and local state authorities into stopping the threat of giants ants and accompanying him is his beautiful assistant, Pat (Joan Weldon), who also happens to be his daughter. Professor Elson/Dr.Medford are both elderly men who are at the end of their careers and often out of touch with the modern world. They tend to be absented minded and need their young female assistants to help keep them focused. Elson is like a father figure to Lee, while Medford is Pat's father. It's also no coincidence that Pat has a strong resemblance to Lee (both brunettes). And like in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the romance between Pat and  Robert is implicit, rather than a major plot point.

Lee Hunter and Professor Elson in
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

Dr. Medford and his daughter Pat
in Them! 

Ray Harryhausen is a legend among special effects men and got his start by working as an assistant to Willis O' Brien. In 1949, Harryhausen's work on Mighty Joe Young helped O'Brien win the Oscar for Special Effects. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was Harryhausen's first major work as a solo artist and the success of this film made it possible for him to make other films like: Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and a film that has been tremendously popular with my generation, The Clash of the Titans. Harryhausen's special effects work has inspired so many filmmakers that is almost impossible to imagine the cinema without him.

The film was inspired by a short story by Ray Bradbury called "The Foghorn." In that short story, a dinosaur destroys a lighthouse after hearing the foghorn coming from it. This short story gets condensed into one memorable scene in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, in which The Rhedosaurus destroys a light house. This scene is nicely shot, set in the dark, where only the outline of The Rhedosaurus can be seen as it collapses the light house. Bradbury himself didn't care too much for the film, but he was happy for the pay check it brought him and the work that it gave to his good friend Ray Harryhausen.


There have been many Giant Monster movies made since the release of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but for my money, none has ever topped the scene in which the Rhedosaurus rampages through New York, toppling buildings in its way and picking up cars in its jaws and tossing them across the street. In one memorable moment a foolish police officer tries to stop the Rhedosaurus by firing his pistol at it and promptly gets swallowed whole for his effort.

Sure, special effects have improved over the years, but this sequence is still a lot of fun to watch. Despite being limited by an extremely low budget, the filmmakers were able to turn out a very memorable moment in cinema history; Spielberg would later pay homage to this bit in Jurassic Park, with the lawyer on the toilet being eaten by the T-Rex. This scene also popped up in Gremlins 2: The New Batch; the Gremlins are channel surfing and come upon this clip, and laugh when the police officer gets eaten.  

Harryhausen's effects hold up surprisingly well; it's amazing how he was able to give the Rhedosaurus a personality, despite it being rubber model. The beast's death at the end is oddly moving, despite all the terrible things it has done. This is largely due to the fact that the Rhedosaurus never seems malicious in  its attacks, but rather just an animal stumbling into a new world that it is not equipped to handle. Its attack on the lighthouse seems to be done out of curiosity, rather than for any sinister motive. 

While the Rhedosaurus is the "star" of the film, it must be said that the actors do a fairly admirable job. There is not much depth in the characterizations, but the actors add credibility to the film by playing their parts completely straight; a sense of urgency is prevalent throughout the film, thanks to the seriousness the actors bring to their roles. In the 1950s, many actors dreaded being in science fictions films and often their condescension to the genre came out in their performances. The main flaw in many big budgeted films of today is that the actors are so cheerful and lackadaisical in their performance, that it's hard to take the "threat" of the film seriously. It seems very out of place for characters to be cracking jokes while being surrounded by endless death and destruction; the Transformer films spring to mind. It should be noted that The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms helped launch the careers of two actors; Lee Van Cleef, who would go on a great career in westerns, plays the role of the marksman who fires the isotope into the Rhedosaurus open wound. And James Best, who played Sheriff Roscoe on The Dukes of Hazzards, appears briefly as a radar operator.  

I first saw The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms when I was nine years old. I had often heard my dad speak about it; he would often mention  it while I was watching my Godzilla films, telling me that it was the movie that inspired Godzilla. Finally, on one fateful Saturday I finally saw it on the local program "Saturday Night a the Frights." In my mind, nothing could top the awesomeness that was Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster or Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, but I was wrong, this film did. The ending in which the Rhedosaurus is tearing up a roller coaster is the stuff of dreams. It was exciting when I was a kid and it's still exciting now.

Credits:
Cast: Paul Christian (Prof. Tom Nesbitt), Paula Raymond (Lee Hunter), Cecil Kellaway (Prof. Elson), Kenneth Tobey (Col. Jack Evans), Donald Woods (Capt. Phil Jackson), Lee Van Cleef (Corp. Stone), Steve Brodie (Sgt. Loomis), Jack Pennick (Jacob Bowman), Frank Ferguson (Dr. Morton), King Donovan (Dr. Ingersoll).

Director: Eugene Lourie
Screenplay: Lou Morheim, Fred Freiberger
Running Time: 80 minutes.

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

If I had to choose my favorite decade overall for filmmaking, it would be the 1950s. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the films of the 50s were vastly superior to those of any other decade, it’s mainly due to the fact it was quite possibly the most eclectic time for cinema.  It was a decade in which the genres ranged from the big budget musicals to low budget science fiction films. It was a decade in which, out of panic, the studios devised all sorts of gimmicks to steal back their audience from the ever growing threat of television. If you want to know how filmmakers viewed television, watch any film from the 1950s and it’s never portrayed in a positive light. It was the first time that studios (primarily American International Pictures) started making films that pandered to a teenage audience; the mid 50s saw a boom of teenaged theme movies with titles like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Caveman. What’s interesting is that despite their ridiculous titles, some of these films (Teenage Werewolf) are actually quite good; certainly a lot better than they have any right to be.  My favorite out of the bunch is the 1957 Invasion of the Saucer Men, because despite its silly title monsters and teenage sensibilities, it’s actually a far more interesting film than the filmmakers ever intended.

Invasion of the Saucer Men is the type of movie that gets absolutely destroyed by the film critics, because it usually gets lumped in with all the bad science fiction films of the 50s. For instance, Leonard Maltin in his video guide book gives the film one and a half stars, but never really explains why. After all, it’s a silly science fiction film, therefore no explaining is necessary. While Invasion of the Saucer Men is no classic, it’s certainly not as bad as most movie critics would have you believe, in fact it holds up fairly well to most sci-fi “classics” of the decade like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet.  Both films are horribly overrated by the critics solely for the fact that they were made by prestigious studios (FOX and MGM), where as The Invasion of the Saucer Men was released by AIP, which specialized in schlock (entertaining schlock). 

Invasion of the Saucer Men has an interesting subplot that details the cover up of a UFO that the Air Force accidentally blew up. In the film, the Saucer Men land in a heavily wooded area and start scouting the area. The Air Force gets wind of it and drive down to investigate the saucer.  The men try to communicate with the saucer verbally, but when they get no reply, they come to the conclusion that it is empty and decide to enter by force.  Air Force engineers cut through the hull of craft, but in the process set off a fuse that causes the saucer to explode.   The local authorities hear the explosion and send a policeman to investigate. He is greeted by Lt. Wilkins, who tells the officer that one of their jets crashed and everything is under control.  The police officer accepts Wilkins story and drives away. The most interesting part of this subplot is that it is implied that this is not the first time that the Air Force has covered up a UFO crash. In the end, with the cover up a success, Lt. Wilkins and Col. Ambrose have the following exchange:

Ambrose: Makes you proud, doesn’t it?

Wilkins: What does colonel?

Ambrose: Being part of a show like this; protecting our country from alien invaders. Just think about it, only this special unit and the president of the United States will know what happened here tonight.

Wilkins: You mean you think we know what’s happened!

Ambrose: Well, of course we do!

Wilkins: Colonel! This top secret service is like scratching; once you get started it’s hard to stop.

Ambrose: What are you getting at lieutenant? SPIT IT OUT!

Wilkins: Well, did it ever occur to you colonel that there might be other units just like ours covering up other things?

This may seem like a standard science fiction plot, but it was basically unheard of the 1950s to portray the military in such an unflattering light; Colonel Ambrose is a pompous boob who elicits nothing but disgust from Lt. Wilkins.  Ambrose takes pride in defending the country from alien invaders, when in reality  all he did was botch a major operation (explode a flying saucer), while the real protagonists of the film, teenagers Johnny and Joan, are defeating the Saucer Men in another area of the woods.  

In a nice twist, it’s not only the Air Force that is covering up the Saucer Men’s existence, but the Saucer Men as well. While driving back from the local make out spot, teenagers Johnny and Joan accidentally hit a Saucer Man.  Johnny is afraid that he ran over a kid and gets out of his car to investigate, only to find the corpse of bulbous extra terrestrial lying underneath his fender.  Before Johnny has a chance to look at the Saucer Man, one of its hands detaches itself from its wrist, crawls over to a tire on Johnny’s car “Elvis,” sprouts needles from its fingertips and proceeds to stab the tire, causing it to deflate.  With his car out of commission, Johnny decides the best thing to do is call the police from a nearby telephone. While Johnny and Joan are away, the other Saucer Men come to collect the body of their compatriot and replace it with the body of would be conman, Joe Gruen, who has met an untimely end at the hands of the Saucer Men.  The police arrive at the scene before Johnny and believe that Joe is the victim of a hit and run accident. When Johnny arrives at the police station, he is unaware that they have found Joe’s body in place of the Saucer Man and is duped into signing a confession.  When he tries to persuade the police that he hit an extraterrestrial, they just ignore his pleas and chalk it up to him being a “mixed up teenager”.  

Johnny and Joan escape from the police department in hopes that they can find evidence to back up their story; they track down Joe’s roommate Art and hope to persuade him that they are telling the truth. Art is skeptical, but agrees to go along with them and is attacked by the Saucer Men for his effort.  When Johnny and Joan call the police for help  the police once again ignore them and tell them that the  hit and run charges have been dropped, because the autopsy revealed that Joe died of alcohol poisoning hours before the alleged accident.  It turns out that the Saucer Men’s main defense is injecting alcohol into their victims, Joe was already wasted when he ran into them, hence the alcohol poisoning, while Art survives the ordeal slightly tipsy.

The Saucer Men are probably the only screen villains (extraterrestrial that is) not hell bent on taking over the world, rather are part of a scouting mission that goes horribly awry. It’s not revealed what their mission is, but it is made apparent that they do not want their presence known; to extent that they are willing to frame a young couple who have seen too much.  They will do anything to ensure secrecy, include murdering the scheming Joe Gruen, who was planning to make millions off the dead Saucer Men before biting the dust himself.  The Saucer Men, however, have only vital weakness….THEY HATE LIGHT!  The meet their demise when Johnny and Joan gather up all their teenage friends and have them turn their headlights on the slowly advancing Saucer Men. The Saucer Men evaporate into thin air and the make out point is saved.

Invasion of the Saucer Men is one of the first (if not the first) science fiction films to have teenagers as its lead protagonists, prior to this most science fiction heroes were scientists, military men, or men in higher positions in life.  There was usually a science vs. military subplot prevalent throughout these films; the scientists wanted to understand and, if possible, communicate with the creature, whereas the military only wanted to destroy the damn thing.  The military usually came out on top in the end, when it was revealed that the creature had no desire to communicate and was bent on taking over the world/or destroying large cities. Invasion of the Saucer Men discards this subplot altogether, focusing more on Johnny and Joan’s attempts at getting the local authorities to believe their story about the Saucer Men, and when failing to do so, taking the matter into their own hands. This is a trope that would dominant science fiction/horror films for the next 50 years, but it’s interesting to see it first hand in a fairly obscure 50s sci-fi thriller.  Johnny and Joan are determined to fight these monsters, while the adults just stand around and sneer at them.  The police and Joan’s father perceive Johnny as a hoodlum, who is destined to wind up in prison, while crotchety old farmer Larkin threatens to blast them full of rock salt for trespassing on his property and getting his cows drunk. It could be argued that the real antagonists are the adults, because in the end, the Saucer Men really aren’t much of a threat and are defeated rather easily, whereas farmer Larkin is still out and about, ready to blast the next teenager that trespasses on his property.

I know what you must be thinking at this point:
This movie sounds absolutely ridiculous! Extra-terrestrial invaders that inject alcohol into their victims and are allergic to light! That sounds lame!

It would be lame, if the film was a straight horror film, but the filmmakers approach it in a very tongue in cheek manner.  It is rumored that it was initially supposed to be a straight out horror film, but when director Edward L. Cahn saw the Saucer Men costumes he decided it would be best to play for laughs. However, it must be said that Cahn (with the exception of the climax) does an excellent job of handling the creatures, often showing them in shadows or in close ups, but never allowing the viewer to get a good look at them. The scene in which Johnny hits the Saucer Men is especially effective, because the Saucer Man is briefly glimpsed in silhouette, giving the scene an appropriately eerie edge.  The humor is largely supplied by Joe , Art, and old man Larkin. The opening shot is of Larkin’s dilapidated house, punctuated by a flash of lightning, just then Art’s voiceover (he’s the narrator of the film) intones, “Spooky, huh?”  He then informs us that, “a plain, old farmer lives in this house, an easy going sort of guy.” Just then a car drives by and out comes old man Larkin brandishing a shot gun, grumbling, “I’ll get the law after them.”  We are then introduced to Joe and Art sitting in a diner; Joe, in a drunken stupor, asks a pretty waitress, “I wonder if you can tell me how to…..get to first base with you tonight.” The waitress walks away offended, Art gives Joe a dirty look, and Joe defends his actions with, “At least I tried!” It’s not pivotal to the plot, but it’s a scene that sets up the characters and their relationship with one another: Joe is always looking for an angle, while Art is fairly indifferent to everything. Joe is played by Frank Gorshin, who would later find fame as The Riddler on TV's Batman.

Even the relationship between Col. Ambrose and Lt. Wilkins is played for laughs. Ambrose is a pompous, humorless windbag who is suspicious of everyone, while Lt. Wilkins does his best to keep a straight face when listening to Ambrose ramble on and on. It’s pretty fitting that at the film’s end Wilkins can no longer keep himself in check and deflates Ambrose’s ego by hinting that there are other units out there covering up similar things.  The humor certainly helps gloss over the film’s shortcomings.

The most pleasant surprise about Invasion of the Saucer Men is its two leads Steve Terrell and Gloria Castillo; both are extremely likable and are believable as a young couple. It certainly helps that their characters Johnny and Joan are fairly intelligent people, as opposed to the personality free mannequins that usually dominate these types of films.  It’s to the film’s credit that these two characters often behave in a rational and believable manner, when Johnny runs over the Saucer Men, he calls the police.  When the police don’t believe him, he seeks out someone who might (Art). When Art is attacked by the Saucer Men, Johnny phones the police again and when they refuse to send help, he seeks out the aid of his friends. I especially like the character of Joan, because she actually plays a role in bringing down the Saucer Men, as opposed to being just a lovely decoration for the male audience to gawk at. Joan stands by Johnny’s side throughout the entire film and is as determined put an end to the Saucer Men as he is. The film could have easily followed the tired storyline of Joan being kidnapped and Johnny having to come to her rescue, but instead it’s Art that gets kidnapped, and Joan and Johnny come to his aid.  When Johnny goes to rustle up some friends, Joan is right there with him, getting the attention of the teenagers by running from car to car and explaining the situation in a calm, but urgent manner.

It’s interesting to note the role of women in low budget, 50’s science fiction, because they were often depicted as being brave, intelligent, and completely self sufficient.  While their A-movie counterparts were often given nothing to do, the women in these films often played a pivotal role in defeating the title monster, or in the case of Beverly Garland in It Conquered the World went out with a bang.  All one has to do is compare Alta from Forbidden Planet to Joan from Invasion of the Saucer Men.  In Forbidden Planet, a big budgeted MGM film, Alta’s (Anne Francis) sole function is to add sex appeal to the proceedings, otherwise her character is fairly useless, while in Invasion of the Saucer Men, Joan is willing to step into danger with Johnny, because she finds it preferable than waiting at home. She may not be the ass kicking heroine of today, but she’s certainly not the brainless sex kitten that became prevalent throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. 

Invasion of the Saucer Men was remade in 1965 as The Eye Creatures by hack filmmaker Larry Buchanan, whose other noteworthy credits include: The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, Mars Needs Women, It’s Alive, and other AIP remakes.  The title creatures consist of actors wearing black leotards covered with plastic eyeballs, with a rubber eyeball mask to boot.  The Eye Creatures is so cheap and completely inept, that it makes the original look like a Steven Spielberg production by comparison. The star is Beach Movie hunk John Ashley, who unlike Steve Terrell, is completely bland in the lead role.  If The Eye Creatures is remembered at all, it’s for the fact that it became fodder for the boys at Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Credits:
Cast: Steve Terrell (Johnny Carter), Gloria Castillo (Joan Hayden), Frank Gorshin (Joe Gruen), Lynn Osborne (Art Burns), Raymond Hatton (Larkin), Russ Bender (Doctor), Douglas Henderson (Lt. Wilkins), Sam Buffington (Col. Ambrose).
Director: Edward L. Cahn.
Screenplay: Al Martin
based on the short story "The Cosmic Frame Up" By Paul W. Fairman.
69 min.