Monster mash-up
Look forward to a monstrous Halloween as MARION McMULLEN turns the spotlight on 1950s creature features
CINEMA audiences were warned “Not since the beginning of time has the world beheld terror like this!” The Gill Man made his first appearance in The Creature Of The Black Lagoon in 1954 and proved such a box office hit that he went on to cause mayhem in two sequels – The Revenge of The Creature the following year and The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956.
The first movie began with scientists discovering a prehistoric beast in the “Black Lagoon” in the Amazon Jungle.
It was the first film horror writer Stephen King remembers seeing and director Jack Arnold said: “It plays upon a basic fear that people have about what might be lurking below the surface of any body of water.
“You know the feeling when you are swimming and something brushes your legs down there. It scares the hell out of you if you don’t know what it is. It’s the fear of the unknown.”
Revenge Of The Creature saw the Gill Man back again and turned into an aquarium exhibit. It also marked a young Clint Eastwood’s movie debut as a lab technician called Jennings.
The Colossus Of New York in 1958 saw 7ft tall former circus giant Ed Wolff as a robot monster created by a scientist who puts his dead son’s brain into the machine with disastrous results.
The robot costume weighed 160lbs and was made of plastic, rubber, hessian and chicken wire while the inside was fitted with batteries, cables, air tanks and oxygen tubes. It took 40 minutes for Ed to climb in and out of the suit.
Low budget monster movie The Alligator People in 1959 described itself as “nerve-shattering terror!” and saw a bride lose her husband on their honeymoon only to later find he has been turned into an alligator mutant.
Actress Beverly Garland, who played the wife said: “The hardest thing in that movie was simply to keep a straight face.”
The movie was released as a double bill with The Return Of The Fly, which saw the son of scientist Andre Delambre repeat his father’s mistakes with matter transmission ending up as half man and half fly.
“Blood-curdling giant fly runs amuck!!!” said the posters, , but the budget was tight and d the production used the same standing ding sets that were used in the original 1958 movie The Fly.
Audiences were warned: “For your own good we urge you ou not to see it alone!” but American can actor David Hedison, who played d Andre, rated it as one of his films he e never wanted to see again and confessed ssed he would invite his friends over er to dinner when it was on TV so o they could not watch it.
American sci-fi horror orror I Married A Monster From Outer r Space in 1958 saw extraterrestrials take over the bodies of men in a small mall town in an attempt to father children ildren to save their dying race.
“Shuddery things from beyond the stars, here to breed with human women,” screamed the movie’s publicity and it became ame a drive-in favourite in America. a.
In the film, only one ne new bride in the tow town realised something was wrong when her husband Bill started acting strangely. When she figured out the truth, she asked the alien inhab inhabiting the shell of her husband: “Your race has no women. It can’t have children. It will die out.” “E “Eventually we’ll have children with you,” it informs her.
“Wh “What kind of children?” she asks. “Our kind,” is the chilling reply. Ak A killer tree monster who survi survived on female flesh was at the cent centre of 1958 British horror movie Wom Womaneater.
Am A mad scientist kept the tree suppli supplied with its favourite snack and it in t turn provided him with a ser serum that brought the dead back to life.
“No beautiful woman is safe!” warned warn the movie posters.
The original flesh-eating tree constructed const for the movie apparently perished in a fire before shooting began and the props department had mere days to make an alternative.
It was a meddling scientist causing trouble in 1953 movie The Neanderthal Man starring Robert Shayne as Professor Clifford Grove and Doris Merrick as Ruth Marshall. The professor develops a serum which can regress a man into a Neanderthal and, of course, tests it on himself.
His colleague Dr Ross Harkness later says: “He experimented on himself. Here lies the result.”
For American journalist-turnedactor Robert Shanye the movie was a chance to get top billing after working in Westerns and small films, but alas a monstrous mistake was made ... his surname was misspelled Shane in the movie’s credits.