ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

I begged my mother to take me to this one in 1955 when I saw the previews on TV, but she declined. Maybe she thought it would scare a sensitive, intelligent seven-year-old.



Actually, I was just itchin' to see all this death and destruction. On second thought, maybe that was the reason she didn't want to take me.

And I don't think it interested her very much — being a sensitive, intelligent mother who wasn't all that big on death and destruction.



Different strokes for different folks, eh?



Anyway, she told her favorite son no . . . repeatedly. Like I said, I was just seven, so I probably whined a lot about wanting to see it. The previews ran pretty often for about a week, I think.



She did, however, take me to others, like "This Island Earth", "Forbidden Planet", and several later Harryhausen movies at the drive-in with the family. Ah yes, happy days, indeed.





Here's a bit of historical perspective about the movie I yearned to go see, almost sixty years ago.

Two years after Warner Brothers and Ray Harryhausen presented us with the beautifully done "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", Harryhausen began his long association with Charles H. Schneer and Columbia Studios.

From a purely technical standpoint, this first joint effort is the least worthy of the films they made together. But even a lesser effort by Ray Harryhausen is a hawk among sparrows when it comes to the sci-fi movies of the 1950s.



It Came from Beneath the Sea offers some eye-popping special effects. The scenes of the giant octopus reaching its huge tentacles into the streets of San Francisco are stunning. Harryhausen made each questing tentacles seem like an individual monster. For example, one of the tentacle smashes a second story window, pokes its tip through the opening, and waves back and forth as if it's "looking around" the room.



A squad of soldiers arrive with flame throwers and drive back the huge, snaky invaders. When they burn the questing tentacles, the octopus actually howls in pain! A very clever bit of personification.





Despite the fact that the monster is supposed to be an octopus, budget limitations compelled Ray to use only six tentacles instead of eight. Some sources have reported that their were five. Ray states otherwise in "The Harryhausen Chronicles", which (we hope) is the last word on the subject.







Ray also describes some of the difficulties in making a film like this, such as the fact that the "San Francisco City Fathers" believed the damage depicted to the Golden Gate Bridge suggested that it wasn't very substantial. So they refused to cooperate with the production crew! As a result, the producers were forced to put a camera into a "bakery truck" and drive back and forth across the bridge to get the footage needed for Ray's FX shots.





The cast includes several familiar (and honored) faces from classic science fiction: Kenneth Toby ("The Thing from Another World"), Faith Domergue ("This Island Earth"), and Donald Curtis ("Earth versus the Flying Saucers"), all do a fine job.



Directed by Robert Gordon from a screenplay by George Worthing Yates, who also did "Earth vs the Flying Saucers". The current DVD includes "The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles", as do all of Ray's great movies.



What puzzles me is the strange situation with the posters for this movie. Good grief, how often have we seen magnificent posters created for abysmal movies. I mean, look at this masterpiece . . . for a film that was an insult to the film industry!



And yet here was a low-budget movie with stellar special effects . . . and what kind of poster do we get?

This!


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

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

If a poster artist can do this for Reptilicus, you'd think they'd get somebody who could really sell It Came from Beneath the Sea in a big way.



And THIS is what the so-called monster looked like.





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

[scotpens]

[Pow]

Reptilicus:When Muppets go Mad!!!

[Brent Gair]

A home video heads up.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA and 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH were released on individual Blu-ray discs as part of a Ray Harryhausen boxed set back in 2007. That set eventually went out of print. Fortunately for fans, Sony has licensed some of it's titles to Mill Creek entertainment who are releasing them as very inexpensive double features.

This double feature can be had for LESS THAN $10.00 on amazon.com! Two Ray Harryhausen movies in high definition for less than a fin each? C'mon..you NEED to buy this.



Furthermore, although I have no disc art to show REPTILICUS is getting a Blu-ray release from Scream Factory. Street Date not confirmed yet.

[Bud Brewster]

Nice looking box art on that item, Brent. I love the way it looks like the ymir is handing the screaming woman to his buddy, the six-tentacled giant sextopus (the name of which explains why it wants the woman . . . )

Unfortunately your hotlinked image stopped working (we've warned you about that, sir), so I had to fix your missing image.

If I had an empty shelf in my DVD rack, that one would look good there! The fact that I already have both movies wouldn't bother me a bit.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]

[Bud Brewster]

Here's another example of the significant difference between the DVD widescreen version and the full screen version on the old VHS tape. It's remarkable how much of Ray's animation we don't get to see when the frame is cut down this way.

Ray didn't seem to want to build "dead space" into the composition so that when the film was shown in theaters we would be able to see all of his creature.

DVD



VHS tape


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

[orzel-w]

Woah! Wait just a confounded minute! IMDb lists the aspect ratio as 1.85:1, which is even wider than a 16:9 screen; more like 16.65:9. Yet the "widescreen" image you showed is simply the fullscreen image cropped at top and bottom. This means the fullscreen image has both ends cropped off, then the top and bottom are cropped again from that to get the widescreen image. We're being doubly-deprived!
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Brent Gair]

[Brent Gair]

[orzel-w]

In many cases of movies screened for TV, the titles would be shown in the "squeezed" aspect ratio in order not to cut off any of the text. Then, once the titles and opening credits were done, the image would revert to the unsqueezed aspect ratio, with the ends cropped. Clearly, this was not the case for Stagevu's You Only Live Twice.

After my dental appointment I'll be back to continue the discussion of CFBTS's cropping.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

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This is consistent with what you demonstrated on the 20 Million Miles to Earth thread, in which you combined the "widescreen" image and the "fullscreen" image from the two versions which the old DVD offers.

This screen grab is from the the widescreen version —



— and this one from the fullscreen version —



— and you combined the two into this . . . Imax version? Or should we called it Orzelscope?



As you demonstrated with your It Came from Beneath the Sea composite above, also derived from the two versions, the fullscreen image looses a little on the sides (even though it has much more image vertically), while the widescreen image looses a great deal at the top and bottom (but includes the narrow side-portions missing from the fullscreen image).

* The small black rectangles at the corners are the portions of the original 35mm frame that does not make it onto either the widescreen or the fullscreen versions!
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)