American Giant Monsters Movie Review

The 1950s were, among other things, the decade of technology. The fledgling science of nuclear energy was seen as mankind's savior; magazines of the period looked forward to a day when every household would be virtually run by the friendly atom. But there was a darker side to this dream, and the science-fiction movies popular at the time helped visualize it.

The ‘50s were a golden age for giant monster movies, just as the ‘60s saw an explosion of “demonic possession” movies and the late ‘70s were the era of the slasher movie. Some of these monsters were from outer space, like the “Ymir” of 20 Million Miles to Earth, but a surprising number hailed from Earth. Many were survivors from the prehistoric past, like the giant insects of The Black Scorpion and The Deadly Mantis, the titanic ocean-dwelling monstrosities of It Came from Beneath the Sea and The Monster that Challenged the World or the reptiles of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Gila Monster. As every child knows, there's something strangely satisfying about the idea of a gigantic whatsit smashing down buildings.

But a number of these critters were a direct result of man's monkeying with things better left alone. The question implied by many of these films was, “Suppose we create something we can't control? Suppose that something destroys us"? Take for example the 1955 classic Tarantula. All the elements of the ‘50s monster film are in evidence: a scientist experimenting with a substance that causes growth in animals accidentally unleashes one of his less pleasant experiments – a colossal tarantula that begins killing everything in sight.

It's interesting that so many of the ‘50s monster brigade were tiny pests in their original forms; there were no films about giant mutant horses, for instance. Of course, from the filmmakers’ perspective, this had the advantage of making for cheap monsters. Impressive effects could be had by superimposing shots of screaming people over footage of live critters ambling harmlessly around little model cities. This could be overdone, however. The Beginning of the End, a film about giant radioactive grasshoppers (!) used footage of real grasshoppers crawling over PICTURES of buildings for key scenes. Other giant mutant monster movies, however, used impressive full-size mechanical monsters or animated models, like the giant ants of Them. The majority of these varmints, however, were more on the level of The Killer Shrews, who were simply dogs with papi-er-mache snouts and fangs.

After the ‘50s, really good monster films got harder to come by. The legacy continued well into the ‘70s in Japan of course, with Godzilla, Gamera, and friends, but the rest of the world became fascinated with vampires, witches, zombies, and serial killers. Or maybe it was only the shape of the monsters that changed. Maybe under the skin, monsters and the fears that inspire them are fundamentally the same.