ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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This may not be the best-made science fiction movie of the 1950s, but it's got a whale of a basic concept.

Scientist Forrest Tucker's radical experiment goes awry and accidentally opens a hole in the ionosphere. (That sounds really awesome — if you know absolutely nothing about meteorology).

Giant insects from another dimension come pouring through, and things look black for planet Earth. But an alien (Martin Benson) arrives in a flying saucer and defeats the insects.





The concept is based on a BBC-TV serial, The Strange World of Planet X — which is an alternate title for this movie. The late lamented Stagevu had a video of it under that title.

The same studio made "The Crawling Eye" in 1958 (which also has a great-sounding plot). Directed by Robert Gunn.
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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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Enjoy this melodramatic trailer with swing-down title cards, an enthusiastic narrator, many outlandish claims, and lots of exciting scenes!

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____________ The Cosmic Monsters trailer 1957


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

[Custer]

ApocalypseLater has a review of the movie — here's a small sample. "This one begins as a pretty intelligent monster movie as such things go, made in the UK by Anglo-Scottish Pictures, sourced from a story by Ren?? Ray. Sure, the introduction is more than a little melodramatic ('Man goes forward into the unknown but how does the unknown react?'), but it settles down quickly into a thoughtful movie. It's actually hilarious to hear such rationality about science juxtaposed with a rampant sexism. 'A woman?' cries Dr Laird when he's told that his new computer operator is a member of the fairer sex. 'This is preposterous! This is highly skilled work!'"

Anyway, surely it's a well-known scientific fact that, if you make a hole in the ionosphere, giant insects from another dimension are likely to pour through?

The review ends with, talking about the actors, "they're all so down to earth and routine that it's hard not to focus on the social aspect of the film and watch it as a slice of life from the fifties, not just the chauvinism but the pub culture, post-war lodging and the way young Jane spends almost all her screen time talking to strangers, just as her mother advised her not to. I'd like to remember the science fiction, but the lunacy it finds spoils it. This could have been a warning about climate change, far ahead of its time, speaking to man's destruction of our planet's protective layers, but it just uses it as an excuse for cosmic rays to mutate grasshoppers into monsters. Sigh."

[Bogmeister]

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_______________ The Cosmic Monsters trailer


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I finally got around to seeing this one during the TCM Sci-Fi marathon on June 9th. This one is British, but it stars Forrest Tucker, who also starred in The Trollenberg Terror (a.k.a. The Crawling Eye).

I read beforehand that it's talky, and indeed it was for its first hour. There's one amusing early scene when the two scientists are outraged over the prospect of a female replacement (Gaby Andre) for an injured assistant.

Later, she solves a power source problem and impresses one of the guys, though the reluctant Tucker is the one she falls for. Actress Andre, btw, had her voice dubbed over.

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!n the plot, the scientists open up some kind of rift with their experiment, allowing cosmic rays to affect the size of insects in the area (mostly some local woods).

At least one male character (a local bum) also becomes homicidal due to all this. And there's an alien visitor (played memorably by Martin Benson) who is here to help. He starts out with this sinister goatee, but after a remark from a local girl, he makes the beard disappear.


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Most of the giant insect action kicks in at the 1-hour mark. These aren't particularly huge insects but they do some grisly work, like chewing off the face of a soldier. The Brits were less restrictive than the USA back in the fifties in showing such graphic scenes.

This shot copies from a similar melting face scene in X the Unknown (56). In his book, Keep Watching the Skies, Bill Warren writes that this film does indeed swipe from the earlier one.

However, the last act is eerie and frightening to some extent, with a couple of the female characters in serious peril. But it's brief and the ending is abrupt.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[ralfy]

Full feature:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBsnVcP-yNw