ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

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The recently release Blu-ray of Mysterious Island is FAR superior to the old DVD of this film!

Frankly I gave up even trying to watch the old DVD because it was so badly flawed by a frequent strobing of the brightness, along with a terrible graininess in all the scenes that had a blue sky behind the characters or animation.

This scene, for example, looked absolutely hideous . . . until I fixed the damn thing!





However, after years of waiting, the new Blu-ray came out, and when I first saw the improvement in the picture, I was overjoyed!
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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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IMDB has 13 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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~ Willis H. O'Brien and Pete Peterson began filming the special effects of this film in a large remodeled dressing room at the Tepeac Studios in Mexico City — but when money became tight, they finished the picture in Peterson's garage in Encino, California.

Note from me: The dedication of these two men is atribute to dedication to artistic excellence!

~ The sounds of the scorpions are the same sounds as the ant chirps in Them! (1954)

Note from me: Well . . . those sounds seem to work in Them!, but they are less effective in this movie. I don't know why.

~ That giant worm with the "octopus-like arms" seen in this film is a prop from the unused spider pit sequence from the original King Kong (1933).

Note from me: Ah yes, the illusive spider pit scene. Did they really film it? Will we ever see it? The great scenes in The Black Scorpion are a bit like salt in the wound . . .

~ The trapdoor spider that attacks Juanito in the scorpions' underground home is one of the original models left over from the famous deleted spider sequence in King Kong (1933

Note from me: Ditto . . .

~ A typical Willis O'Brien touch — a long shot of the cage descending into the cave, and a tiny stop motion bat flies across the screen. Only O'Brien would add another day's work to a scene where it would be barely noticed.

Note from me: I'll be looking for that bat the next time I watch my DVD!

~ While filming the stop-motion effects at Tepeac Studios, O'Brien and Peterson were assisted with miniature set construction by Ralph Hammeras, who was at the same studio filming the visual effects for The Giant Claw (1957).

Note from me: I'm sure Mr. Hammeras was not as proud of his work on The Giant Claw as he was on this movie . . .

~ As the scorpion attacks and derails the passenger train, the label "Lionel Lines" is clearly seen on the side of the locomotive's coal tender.

Note from me: Here's another detail I'll be looking for the next time I watch this movie.

~ The voice actor Bob Johnson who narrates the beginning, the radio announcer and 3 other v/o's is also the announcer for all the Quinn Martin television series of the 1960's and 1970's.

Note from me: I'm a big fan of voice-over work, but I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't realized that Mr. Johnson was the guy we hear in the opening of The Invaders! :opps:
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Bud, it's William Woodson who does the narration for The Invaders and not Bob Johnson.

Both were very well known for providing their awesome voices for films and television.

Woodson also does narration for the Ray Harryhausen movies : The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, 20,000,000 Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath The Sea, and Earth versus The Flying Saucers.

I immediately caught Bill's voice on an episode of Leave it to Beaver. In the 1963 episode "Uncle Billy's Visit," Woodson plays a theater owner.

[Pow]

From Keep Watching the Skies! by Bill Warren

While the dramatics of the picture are slow, trite, and uninteresting, the monsters are so lively and realistic that the picture overall remains satisfying for a low budget effort.

The plot closely follows that of Them! Both films were from Warner Brothers.

Unlike Them!, however, The Black Scorpion is uninteresting in its live-action scenes, and the dialogue lacks the seminaturalism of the earlier film.

The real stars of the picture are the special effects men, Willis O'Brien and Pete Peterson. The scorpions seem alive and real. There is something unspeakably sinister about scorpions in the first place.

Alas, even the fine animation work in The Black Scorpion is let down by the low budget and other factors.

In the otherwise excellent scene of the attack of the truck and the man on the pole, the film is printed so darkly as to make all the action almost invisible, especially on television.

One of the features that hurts the animation most is the silly drooling head with glassy eyes, which not only doesn't look like any scorpion that ever lived but also doesn't match the animation models used in the film.

The other unfortunate aspect is that when the monster scorpion finally reaches Mexico City, the producers ran out of money, so Obie and Peterson were unable to finish their side of the project. To make a giant creature appear in crowds with real people, a traveling matte is often used.

If it wasn't for the high quality of most of the effects scenes, The Black Scorpion would be a painfully second-rate imitation of Them!, but because of the skill and even artistry of Willis O'Brien & Pete Peterson, it is one of the most watchable of all the big bug movies.

My 2 cents: I enjoy TBS, but Bill Warren's review is spot on.

Funny isn't it? Them! is the superior picture but the giant ants haven't dated all that well, especially in close-ups.

TBS has the superior effects with its stop-motion animation, yet its story was never as strong as Them!, is.

[Krel]

I wonder if the live action scorpion head was something added by the studio after the stop-motion effects were completed.

The scene that horrified me as a kid was the poor military man getting electrocuted when he was loading the harpoon cannon.

The overly dark scenes could be a result of a later generation print.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Sequel!
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~ A Question for the Members:; Would today's Hollywood release a successful movie with a new concept and then abandon it and start over again?

~ Here's what I came up with.: No . . . they would not. They'd concoct a sequel and spend enough money on it to encourage a franchise series of movies.

Back in the 1950s, Hollywood had no idea what a profitable "cash cow" was, so they never had a clue as to how profitable sequels could be.

This movie created the idea that giant insects existed beneath the Earth. But Hollywood didn't realize that they could make sequels about subterranean expeditions which could explore this savage world beneath the surface.





A third movie could present the idea that a hoard of these creatures might burst from the world below and endanger all mankind!





I wish the kind of creative talent Hollywood has today had existed back in the 1950s.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Bob Johnson is probably most famous as the voice for the taped instructions each week for Mission: Impossible.

[Pow]

Wikipedia lists respected special effects expert Jim Danforth as working on some stop-motion scenes in The Clash of the Titans.

Jim worked on portions of the Kraken sequences, the two-headed dog Dioskilos, and most of the sequences involving Pegasus.

I'm not sure if Ray employed anymore animators on this movie. If not, that would mean that Ray was still doing a great deal of the animation this late in his career given all the other stop-motion sequences.

[Bud Brewster]

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Terrific ideas, Tim!

The true beauty of The Black Scorpion's premise was that there was a whole ecosystem under the Earth which contains numerous giant-sized creatures.

Perhaps the cavern we saw in the film was just a portion of the full ecosystem that housed hundreds (or thousands) of creatures. There could be a much larger system of caverns that would resemble the areas described by Jules Verne in Journey to the Center of the Earth — areas with bio-luminescent light and bizarre plant life.





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