Crawling

THE CRAWLING EYE-1958-In Trollenberg, American Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) meets The Pilgrim sisters Ann (Janet Munro) and Sara (Jennifer Jayne) when Ann seems to have some psychic connection with the nearby mountains where several villagers have disappeared (one was found decapitated). Alan visits Dr. Crevet (Warren Mitchell) experimenting with cosmic rays who tells him about a mysterious radioactive cloud. After Ann predicts the death of a climber, Alan leads a small group (including a reporter played by Lawrence Payne, later in VAMPIRE CIRCUS) up the mountains to investigate. Another climber who kills two other climbers seems to be possessed. Eventually the small village is terrorized by monsters that resemble giant brains with one eye and tentacles. An air force bomber arrives just in time to destroy the invaders.

An English production, THE CRAWLING EYE has a great script by Jimmy Sangster (who wrote HORROR OF DRACULA and THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN the same year) and good acting but director Quentin Lawrence has too much talk and not enough crawl for me. It's based on a BBC TV production and was known as THE TROLLENBERG TERROR in the UK.

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The Yeti

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN OF THE HIMALAYAS-1957-Dr. John Rawlinson (Peter Cushing) a botanist doing research in the the Himalayas joins up with a boisterous American climber Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) to find the legendary Yeti. Friend wants to capture one alive and show it on US TV. Rawlinson just wants to prove it exists. There's a lot of climbing and soul searching and Friend turns out to be a cutthroat swindler. After a little Yeti they capture escapes (actually rescued) the group finds some large footprints. Later a big clawed hand appears sticking in their tent. Their guide goes mad when he sees one and runs away (but somehow makes it back to the village) and the head Lama there acts very mysterious. The Yetis seem to have some kind of mental power over the group who hear voices and do crazy things. After Friend is killed in an avalanche Rawlinson meets the snowmen and we get our only view of them too. Rawlinson's wife leads her own expedition and finds hubby nearly frozen to death. Nursed back to health the doctor now admits he was wrong. There is no Yeti waiting for man to die off.

When I was a kid my friends and I were always disappointed by the brief glimpse of the Yeti but today THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN holds up well despite this. The acting is great. Director Val Guest probably took a big chance in not showing too much of the creature in the monster laden age of the late '50's but he still does a good job of story telling. He also made ENEMY FROM SPACE the same year which was also penned by SNOWMAN's screenwriter Nigel Kneale. 

This Hammer production is based on a BBC TV drama entitled THE CREATURE (also written by Kneale).

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Cosmic Monster (s)

COSMIC MONSTERS-1958-In a rural section of England a group of scientists are working with magnetic fields to alternate the molecular structure of metal. They are lead by the rather brilliant but  pompous Dr. Laird (Alec Mango). His more level headed American assistant is Gil Graham (Forrest Tucker). They both get upset when a French woman Michele (Gaby Andre')  takes the place of an injured co-worker. "But a woman? This is
preposterous. This is highly skilled work!". 

She turns out to be pretty much a genius and the only one who seems to feel something could go wrong. The nearby town  doesn't like them because the experiments mess up their TV broadcasts. After a "freak storm" where they seem to lose control of the magnetic machine, the mysterious Mr. Smith (Martin Benson) appears.Then a tramp with a scarred face kills a woman. It seems the doctors' magnetic experiments have caused harmful cosmic rays to bombard the Earth making insects like grasshoppers and centipedes into monsters. "It's those insects. They've mutated and they're hungry!". 

A bug loving little girl finds a big egg and Michele gets stuck in a spider's web. There's one fairly gory scene (for the time) where the killer insects munch on a dead soldier. Laird goes crazy in the finale threatening the whole Earth and Mr. Smith's real identity is revealed. A PLAN 9 type UFO shows up to help out. This British production's original title was THE WORLD OF PLANET X but in the US it was referred to as THE COSMIC MONSTERS, yet the title card reads COSMIC MONSTER... 

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