ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

I was surprised when I realized that All Sci-Fi didn't have a thread for this great George Pal movie!

This rousing adventure/romance is from the man who brought us Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds, Conquest of Space, The Time Machine, and Atlantis the Lost Continent!

The main character is as tough as Indiana Jones —





— but he's as suave as James Bond.





The damsel ( . . . in dis' dress . . . ) is the lovely Eleanor Parker, a gal so hot that she steams up the jungle without the help of global warming!





Put these stars together and the Polar ice caps are in real danger!







But enough of all this smutty talk, gentlemen!

The important question here is, "Why the hell didn't George Pal make another science fiction movie, instead of this syrupy soap opera?"

Well, don't look now, folks — but he actually did!

In the movie, the advancing horde of "soldier ants" (aka army ants) are described as being "20 miles miles wide and a mile deep" from front-to-back.

How realistic is that? Here's what Wikipedia says.
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When army ants hunt, they form "swarm raids", or column raids. These raids can include between 200,000 and 20 million ants, which spread out to attack prey or defend the swarm.

When army ants forage, the trails that are formed can be over 20 m (66 ft) wide and over 100 m (330 ft) long.
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Wow! Columns of army ants can be as long as a football field, and almost 70 feet wide.

Impressive . . . but not exactly the twenty-mile-wide and one-mile-deep waves of total devastation we get in the movie.

According to this matte shot from the movie when Heston and company get their first long-range look at the invading menace, those hungry little bastards were gnawing the landscape right down to the dirt — tree trunks and all!





Okay, guys, let's be honest. Did George Pal's movie blatantly exaggerated the menace which army ants pose?

Well, we could accuse the movie of that. But I have a better idea.

If Them! could give us mutated ants the size of Shetland ponies which were created by radiation in the desert, I think Mother Nature could mutate army ants in the jungle and create Super Colonies as big as the one in this movie!

Not convinced? Then consider this. Army ant colonies can hold between 150 thousand to 2 million individual army ants!

And get this! Unlike most insect queens, army ant queens do not have wings . . . but these queens can actually change size when moving to a new nest location!

Where did I get that info? From Terminex.com! (Those guys know ants better than Babe Ruth knew baseball!)

So, the idea that a dangerous new species of army ants might suddenly emerge from the dark and mysterious Amazon jungle — home of the The Creature from the Black Lagoon — is just good old fashioned science fiction!

And that's what All Sci-Fi is all about.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

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I love that the fact that Heston character is basically a "macho virgin"! He rules his plantation with head-shrinking natives as his workers, and a competitor's plantation is worked by mistreated slaves!

Into this situation comes Eleanor Parker — beautiful, sophisticated, and sizzling with sexual desire, ready and willing to make a real man out of Heston's sexually/socially frustrated boy-in-a-man's-body.

IMDB has this interesting item.
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Charlton Heston improvised during the argument scene between Eleanor Parker and himself. It was not scripted that he splash perfume all over her. His move intensified the action, and a surprised Parker was able to react accordingly.
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Heston's improvisation proved that he understood his character perfectly. He was pissed because his new wife hadn't used the expensive perfume he'd bought for her. It was the act of an immature young boy who becomes angry at the girl he loves just because she snubs him when he gives her a present.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Captain Starlight]