ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Another great review from Jimbo Berkey's wonderful site, Free Classic Movies — this one for The Crawling Eye.

Unfortunately Jimbo had to remove this movie from Free Classic Movies because the copyright was renewed, so none of the jpegs previously displayed on this post are available. They were hotlinked to Jimbo's site with his permission, but since this movie is no longer on Jimbo's site, neither are the jpegs.

However, his original comments on the movie are still very enjoyable.
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So this creature from outer space has landed at the top of the Trollenberg Mountain in the Swiss Alps and it gets pleasure from ripping the heads from the bodies of local mountain climbers.

The creature lives in a radioactive cloud in a super-cold atmosphere, and has an eye . . . a giant eye . . . for a young girl who can read minds. The space creature must destroy Anne Pilgrim because the girl can read its mind and warn the others about the monster's intentions.

Anne, played by Janet Munro, and her sister Sarah, played by Jennifer Jayne, have a mind-reading nightclub act and they are mysteriously led to the mountain and to the Trollenberg Terror.

At the lodge below the mountain they meet Alan Brooks, played by Forrest Tucker, who is a special investigator for the United Nations. It seems that the space monsters had landed once before, in the high mountains of the Andes, but the incident was hush-hush so that the people of the earth would not panic.

This leads to that, and as the monster becomes more bold it heads for the village at the bottom of Trollenberg Mountain where the young girls are. A handful of folk, including the mind-reading sisters, the United Nations investigator and newspaper reporter Philip Truscott, played by Laurence Payne, climb aboard the ski lift cars and head for the scientific observatory halfway up the mountain.

Once they are safely locked inside the observatory they think that they will be safe, but a space monster has killed and taken the body of Hans, the bartender from the lodge, and the dead Hans enters the observatory and goes in search of the mind-reading sister to kill her.

Meanwhile outside the observatory the crawling eye from outer space is wrapping its deadly tentacles around the building and this may be the end of the people in the observatory, and the beginning of an invasion of earth from the crawling eyes from outer space!

Pop a big bowl of white kernel popcorn with lots of warm melted butter drizzled over it and enjoy the show.

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

[Pow]

Had a crush on Janet Munro. She appeared in some fine films.
So sad we lost her at such a young age.

[Bud Brewster]

Janet was absolutely beautiful.





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

[Bud Brewster]

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This is not a movie I'm overly fond of, but the concept it presents is brilliant. IMDB has some interesting trivia items, shown in blue text below.
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John Carpenter has said that this film, with its creatures hidden in the clouds, was the inspiration for his film The Fog (1980).

Note from me: I watched The Fog a few months ago on a satellite channel, and the story concept was a bit vague, even though the movie is entertaining . . . right up to the unpleasant climax . . . which kinda sucked.

For its release in America the film was cut down to 75 minutes, because American distributors wanted to get to the monsters faster. The full running length of the film is 84 minutes and is fully restored on the DVD release.

Note from me: I'm sure I saw the 84 minute version, and didn't feel frustrated that I had to wait a while to finally see the monsters. It heightened the tension.

The Crawling Eye monster literally makes a cameo appearance in Stephen King's horror novel "It". The children run into the creature in the sewers during a 1958 segment of the novel.

Note from me: Only Stephen King would do something cool like this!

Featured in the first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988).

Note from me: I'd like to see this MST3K episode. I'll bet it's a hoot.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Bud, an excellent download is available HERE...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJgQrjYaLbQ

[Bud Brewster]

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Thanks, Gord, but I gave away my DVD of this movie because I decided I wouldn't want to watch it anymore. It just lost it's appeal for me.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

[Bud Brewster]

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Oh, sorry. I misunderstood.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[MetroPolly]

Well Gord beat me to it, but YouTube does have the MST3K version of this thing. Personally, I won't watch it any other way. BTW, it's not the first ep technically, it's the first network ep. Most people (including fans like me) count their KTMA eps as season 0, mostly cause they were still finding their audience and the quality was frightfully low.

[Bogmeister]

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This sci-fi film (with touches of horror) is unusual because it's like the final act of a longer story. The characters discuss a previous event, a similar situation in the Andes, some time ago, which involved a radioactive cloud like the one they discover in the European location of this story.

The film is derived from a 6-part TV Serial broadcast in 1956.

Speaking of radioactivity — it's referred to here, but there's never any plot about the cloud posing a radioactive threat to humans! Mostly it's just about the extreme cold that the aliens also project.



In the film, another cloud has appeared on the Alpine peak Trollenberg, overlooking an Austrian town of the same name.

The first scene may be the one most fans recall best as kids . A trio of climbers on the mountain encounter the cloud just above them. One of them climbs a bit higher than this friends, disappears into the cloud, and meets a grisly demise.

Tucker plays an American traveling to the area by train. Also on the train are two
sisters (Jennifer Jayne & Janet Munro) who work a mentalist act. The true esper is Munro's character, who suddenly feels strangely compelled to get off the train at Trollenberg for reasons she can’t explain.



It turns out that these alien monsters, hidden in the cloud, have some psychic connection to Munro's character, but I never really understood why the creatures were so intent on doing away with her.

The truly creepy aspect of the story is that the aliens are able to reanimate the humans they kill and send them to do their bidding (like killing Munro's character).

This is graphically demonstrated when one of these controlled humans strikes his head, receiving a long gash which does not bleed. But the fixation on Munro's character is never really explained, as if a scene is missing.



There is at least one other unexplained instance. At the midway point, a couple of other climbers are in a cabin on the mountain. One wanders out into the cloud, the other one stays in the cabin (which is completely sealed), but then he turns in horror at something behind him.

So, what was it? His fellow climber? An alien's tentacle? In either case, how did he or it materialize behind him in the cabin?

Other characters in the story include an undercover reporter (Laurence Payne) and a scientist friend of Tucker's character. The climactic action is at a scientific observatory on a nearby mountain, and it's not bad, but the clay model grabbed up by one of the creatures is jarring in a bad way.



The zombie-like controlled humans predate Night of the Living Dead by a full decade and are also similar to the eerie space zombies of Planet of the Vampires (1965). Unlike Night of the Living Dead, however, it's tough to pick out a walking dead human in this — they behave pretty normally, able to speak, if just a little stiffly.

The first reveal of a horrid one-eyed alien is also effective. It involves a little girl, and the eye of the alien follows her movements for several seconds of startling monstrosity. Whether by accident or design, this scene conveys a frightening, living, breathing alien intelligence. Thereafter, the creatures become kind of typical fifties schlock. But, I was also reminded of some of Lovecraft's work.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10


BoG
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