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America's "Infestation Invasion" of the 1950s!

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 27, 2020 2:38 pm    Post subject: America's "Infestation Invasion" of the 1950s! Reply with quote

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From 1954 to 1958 Hollywood had a love affair with common household pests — insects and arachnids.

For four years, movie audiences swarmed ( Wink ) into movie theaters to watch the tiny creatures that crawled around in their backyards — when these creatures suddenly become giant monsters which threatening mankind!

It started with ants and ended with a tarantula — with hordes of scorpions, grasshoppers, and wasps, along with a praying mantis so large it climbed the Washington Monument!

Here's a respectful analysis of America's "Infestation Invasion" of the 1950s.
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Them! (1954) — Opinions on the FX are polarized; some folks think the full-sized ants are effective, while others (like me) feel like the method that was used severely limited the ants locomotion. And I've always been bothered by the shaggy bodies.

But all the other aspects of this movie are excellent! And the premise is solid.

Ants outnumber humans by 70 to 1, with an estimated world-wide population of 500 billion. When Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) tells a group of scientist and military leaders that the giant ants might become the dominate species on the planet within a year, he was unwittingly suggesting a great sequel to this movie, one which has a gloomy premise.


Planet of the Ants!

Let's see, it would start with a spacecraft returning from a two-year mission to Mars, and when the three astronauts touch down they discover . . . well, you get the idea. Very Happy










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Tarantula (1955) — From a movie with lots of big ants, to a movie with an even bigger arachnid, created by an unusual artificial food that's supposed to make animals grow faster and larger than normal. Jack Arnold helmed this popular sci-fi film, starring the prolific John Agar and the luscious Mara Corday.

The plot is not very complex: spider gets big, spider gets loose, spider gets hungery, spider eats horses, cows, and farmers.

Meanwhile, boy meets girl. Cool

But they never even kiss! Apparently Jack Arnold wanted his audience to get as much of the arachnid as possible, with no unnecessary amorous interludes. Rolling Eyes






I might not care for the ants in Them, but the spider in this movie is real, and the FX are impressive. The one scene that probably DOES use a spider prop is the climax, in which fighter pilot Clint Eastwood incinerates it. The climactic shot looks as real as the rest, and it's obvious that what we see burning in not a six-inch tarantula. Miniature flames always look like miniature flames. Very Happy










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Beginning of the End (1957) — Peter Graves is the stalwart hero, and Peggie Castle is the fetching blond heroine in this low-budget but enjoyable bug invasion by grasshoppers who want to do to mankind what they've done to African countries for thousands of years!

Namely eat everything in sight.






The FX range from fair to downright-unjust in Bert I. Gordon's movie that delivers more thrills than other movies have for the same low-low price. And the climax involves some admirable science-minded strategies which save mankind through the brilliant thinking of Mr. Graves, with the help of distinguished science fiction veterans like Morris Ankrum and Thomas Browne Henry,

Kirk Alyn, who played Superman in the serial, has an uncredited roll as a B-52 pilot. Famous voice talent Paul Frees provides the voices of both a helicopter pilot and an airplane pilot.

Mr. Gordon went the cheap route with his giant bug movie, but critics can't accuse him of giving us fake-look grasshoppers — because they were absolutely real!

Furthermore, the buildings which the grasshoppers climb up when they invade the city aren't fake either! They're real too — because they're photographs of the buildings, which the real grasshopper crawled on!

As ridiculous as that sounds, the effect actually works better than one might expect. As a result, this became an enjoyable drive-in feature for bug-hungry fans of the genre!

Wait . . . that sounds a bit disgusting. Shocked

If you can forgive the clever cost-cutting stradegies and the less-than-perfect special effects, this movie is quite enjoyable.









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The Black Scorpion (1957) — This is as close as the great Willis O'Brien came to making a movie as good asKing Kong (other than Mighty Joe Young), but the budgetary restraints he had to endure where like the iceberg which sank the Titanic. Sad

The great Pete Peterson literally worked shoulder-to-shoulder with O'Brien to give the public a movie as successful as Ray Harryhausen's previous movies. During the amazing year of 1957, Ray released 20 Million Miles to Earth, and giant bug movies were as plentiful as ants at a pick-nick, with this movie and three others dazzling the sci-fi crowd at drive-ins and local theaters!

The cast is a plus, with Richard Denning and Mara Corday as the main characters, falling in love while battling a plague of giant scorpions — which I'm sure can't be easy!








The two biggest flaws in this otherwise impressive movie are the frequent close-ups of a roaring, drooling scorpion and the many unfinished FX shots in the climax with a black silhouette of the monster which was supposed to have an image matted over it.

But the big battle in the sports stadium at the end presents a wealth of stop-motion, and even though it tends to lack the flare of Harryhausen's work (like quick cuts and changes in camera angles, along with the insertion of composite scenes with both live action and animation), fans of stop motion still enjoy it.









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The Deadly Mantis (1957) — Despite some great FX and a good cast, this one is a disappointment. The model of the mantis seems perfect in every detail, and it moves pretty well, a good imitation of the way a real mantis moves. Naturally the walking scenes were limited by the use of the puppet. Stop motion would have been better if they could have gotten Harryhausen for that, but I doubt he'd have been interested in this project. It just doesn't seem like his kind of film or his kind of creature.

Also, the guttural roar the mantis makes from time to time was a mistake. In the 1950s, Hollywood monsters always had to roar . . . even when they're insects (with the exception of the giant ents, who made annoying "squeaky wheel" sounds constantly).

In this movie, I think some nice creepy music (low and sinister) would have worked better. The music they did use with the monster was always loud and dramatic. That was okay for some scenes, but not for others.


___________ The Deadly Mantis trailer (1957)


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Monster from Green Hell (1957) - All Sci-Fi member Rick presented such a solid case for why this movie couldn't be taken serious, I doubt even Perry Mason could get it acquitted for its crimes against good filmmaking! Shocked

The only thing I can add to his analysis is the amusing idea that we have a horde of mutated wasps . . . who never fly! They just crawl around in the underbrush, buzzing like a sawmill while they sneak up on natives and "sting" them with long spikes on both sides of their mandibles " instead of stingers in the tails. (As I mentioned in my own review on the thread for this movie, these are mutated wasps, so naturally they do things differently than the local boys!) Laughing







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The Spider (1958) aka Earth vs the Spider — The last giant bug movie of the 1950s (released in September 1958), is certainly not the least of group. In fact, it offers more thrills, chills, and spills than most of the films in this sci-fi sub-genre. For example, we get a sock hop AND a captured giant spider in the same gymnasium . . . at the same time! I can just imagine the class president making an announcement before the dance!

"And we'd just like to thank the decorating committee for providing that swell giant spider over there by the bleachers! Come on guys, let's give Marsha and Sylvia a big hand, okay!" Cool

The hero scientist is actually a high school science teacher who gives his students a Mr. Wizard demonstration on the subject of electricity by frying a town-wrecking arachnid right in its own web-filled cave lair!

I'd gladly buy the DVD if the dang thing weren't priced at $69.99! Shocked











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Well, that's The Magnificent Seven Bug Movies from the 1950s. If I missed any, please add them to this thread. I'm sure there are some "honorable mentions" which I've overlooked, and I'd hate for this discussion to be incomplete.

That would really bug me . . . Rolling Eyes

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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