beetle-259-554148 Eugene Lourie, director of The Beast From 20'000 Fathoms and future director of Gorgo (1961), brings us the second part in what I like to call "The Eugene Lourie Monster Movie Trilogy" by way of Behemoth the Sea Monster or as it's know here in North America, The Giant Behemoth.As with his 1953 film that inspired Godzilla, which in turn inspired countless other giant monster movies, the titular Behemoth is awakened by nuclear bomb testing. However the Behemoth is able to shoot a beam of concentrated nuclear energy out of its mouth. The creature also manages to heavily damage several ships. Our main character, a typical scientist, manages to track the creature since it's emitting an electric pulse. He notifies a paleontologist who is at first doubtful but quickly becomes excited at the thought of seeing a dinosaur, having wanted to see one since he was a child, a secret he has kept to himself.This paleontologist is a similar role to Thurgood Elson in The Beast from 20'000 Fathoms but he is a much smaller part.This film does have some inconsistencies, though; in one scene we are shown a photograph of the monsters footprint with a police car beside it and the car is dwarfed by the footprint. During the creatures rampage however, it crushes a car but the car is considerably bigger than the monster's foot.The stop-motion monster effects were done by the legendary Willis O'Brien, best known for bringing to life King Kong.

srubinfilms This is a definite Julesy pic...endorsement...of this as a movie for Halloween month that suits my not into horror taste buds...its enjoyable with some chilling creeps and just old fashioned silly scientific fantasy thriller fun so when that suits you're mood...this is surely worth a view...

Jmorrissey5-1 Yes, yes, yes, it's a pallid remake of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms with a mixed bag of effects, but the commentary by special effects masters Dennis Murren and Phil Tippett is condescending in the extreme. Granted their focus was on the special effects - which in many cases are poor due to a low budget - but their absolute ignorance about some of the cast members was shocking. Most particularly they were sarcastically dismissive of the great Jack McGowan who's credits include "The Quiet Man" and "Lord Jim" to name just a few. They didn't even realize that he was in "The Exorcist" and in fact died while making that film. In future, Warner Brothers might be better served by including commentaries by film makers (or even fans) who are not so narrowly focused and who might contribute to one's enjoyment of the film rather than detract from it.

pyrocitor While the 1950s giant monster movie genre remains almost exclusively dominated by American cinema, The Giant Behemoth marks a rare (and welcome) caper set in Britain. The unconventional setting is what largely helps the film stand out from the ranks of its competitors of the time, as, apart from allowing for some wry tongue-in-cheek quips at the Americanization of the genre (particularly a witty 'ending twist'), the film benefits from an infusion of more (relatively) serious and classy sensibilities, as if leaning more towards breaking ground as opposed to rehashing ground oft-tread. In actuality, the film emerges as a thinly veiled remake of director Eugene Lourie's prior genre staple, 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. However, the comparison is not a negative one. Like 20,000 Fathoms, Behemoth boasts comparatively superb production values for the genre, including gorgeous, highly photogenic location shooting, particularly in the film's Cornwall-set seaside opening, as well as impressively gruesome burn prosthetics administered to the titular Behemoth's victims. Additionally, like 20,000 Fathoms, Behemoth devotes particular care to the 'scientific research procedural' aspect of tracking and classifying the creature and determining means of stopping it. This 'science-babble', delivered fast and furious from under a succession of grimly furrowed brows, is largely convincing, even if the film's attempts to seemingly trump all genre competitors sometimes overstretch the limits of plausibility – the 'Behemoth', effectively a radiation-saturated dinosaur, proved surprisingly 'sellable', until the abrupt and never-explained revelation that it is electric as well ("like an eel!"). Conversely, the film's focus on radiation and its unanticipated environmental effects on all aspects of the ecosystem proves in many ways grimly insightful and prophetic for an entry in a genre normally dismissed as escapism. Indeed, the film, particularly in an opening didactic address, proves chock full of facts about radiation and its varying concerns, almost suggesting it as a strange kind of educational film on the possible outcomes of atomic warfare for a Cold War anxiety- riddled culture. With this in mind, it is interesting to note the thematic effect of the Behemoth itself, being somewhat of a fusion of 'old' and 'new' threats – a dinosaur mixed with the very modern threat of radiation – as if conflating the two to further stress the dire seriousness of atomic power as just as menacing as any primal fears. Nonetheless, the construction of the Behemoth itself is somewhat of a mixed bag. When brought to life through masterful work by stop-motion icon, King Kong's Willis O'Brien, the Behemoth, particularly in a climactic sequence rampaging through London, its impressively textured trunk-like dinosaur legs flattening cars, teeth bared and tongue sweeping back and forth like a murderous serpent, the Behemoth is a delightfully foreboding and captivating adversary. Nonetheless, the creature itself is more often than not betrayed by the film's evidently low budget, with instances of laughably poor continuity (the Behemoth fluctuates in size and shape, occasionally undulating, serpent-like, despite having the physicality of a stocky dinosaur, and in one laughable instance a ship with a deck one second filled with screaming passengers suddenly empty when the Behemoth sinks it in the following shot) and some overly obvious work with miniatures (when the Behemoth sinks into the sea, the water droplets that fly up are curiously nearly as large as its head) undercutting the usual veneer of sustained tension. Cast-wise, while the film does retain the seemingly inescapable (yet unintentionally entertaining) genre staple of wooden acting, it is, again, in general several cuts above many of its contemporaries, as the acting remains largely credible enough to maintain suspension of disbelief. Gene Evans and André Morell offer a satisfyingly sturdy one-two protagonist act as grim scientists from America and Britain respectively. In addition, particularly worth noting is the scene-stealing performance of Jack MacGowran as a loopy, bug-eyed paleontologist, whose (all too brief) presence greatly enhances the film's entertainment factor. All in all, while the film hardly revolutionizes the template for the giant monster genre (it falls particularly prey to the frequent complaint of substantial pre-climax lagging), The Giant Behemoth does prove an unconventionally fun and smart monster camper, and unquestionably a cut above most contemporaries. Indeed, for all monster enthusiasts, the film, whether for the sheer number of antagonistic tropes amalgamated into a single foe, its comparative class or its generally substantial stop motion work, is definitely worth a watch. -6/10