Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 2: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
Speaker 2: about the nineteen fifty three creature film The Beast from
Speaker 2: twenty thousand Fathoms, a very interesting precursor to movies that
Speaker 2: would come later, like Godzilla, and you might say one
Speaker 2: that follows in the footsteps of King Kong. I had
Speaker 2: never seen this before today. I watched it for the
Speaker 2: first time this morning, and yeah, this one was a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. I was noticing how even though there
Speaker 2: are silly things about it, it really does fit more
Speaker 2: in that first half of the fifties monster movie bucket
Speaker 2: than the second half of the fifties monster movie bucket.
Speaker 2: It got me thinking about this division and where like
Speaker 2: these early fifties movies are the monsters are a thing
Speaker 2: of seriousness. They're more kind of adult oriented creature films,
Speaker 2: usually made or at least distributed by these major studios,
Speaker 2: and they deal with serious themes, very often about the
Speaker 2: Cold War in one way or another, thing from another
Speaker 2: world and them and this movie too, and then sometime
Speaker 2: you get sometime in the mid fifties, you get this
Speaker 2: handover where things start getting silly, where your monster movies
Speaker 2: are like lower budgets, more independent features that are kind
Speaker 2: of focused on the teenage audiences. This is your time
Speaker 2: of the AIP takeover and Roger Korman and all that
Speaker 2: attack of the crab monsters that sort of thing. And
Speaker 2: there are exceptions, of course. I remember when we did
Speaker 2: our episode on Robot Monster, we were noticing that, like, man,
Speaker 2: that's this really feels like a movie from like five
Speaker 2: years later. That one is from nineteen fifty three as well,
Speaker 2: same year as Beast from twenty thousand fathoms, but it
Speaker 2: fits in more with that drive in era. But generally
Speaker 2: the trend really does hold, and I would say Beast
Speaker 2: tightly conforms to the trend. This is a relatively serious
Speaker 2: early fifties creature feature, and I would especially single out
Speaker 2: the grim imagery of the conclusion right at the end
Speaker 2: of the movie. It's one of the weirdest, spookiest looking things,
Speaker 2: I think, especially because of the imagery we get to
Speaker 2: of the roller coaster on fire with the main characters
Speaker 2: wearing these deathly looking radiation suits. Yeah, interesting movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah is It definitely has that serious tone, but to
Speaker 1: be clear, early fifties serious tones, not a sixty serious tone,
Speaker 1: not a seventies or eighties. So don't feel like this
Speaker 1: is a monster movie that is going to necessarily demand
Speaker 1: a lot off you. You can definitely give it a
Speaker 1: casual viewing. You can definitely just check in for the
Speaker 1: monster scenes. But I do think it's worth watching in full.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I get to watch this one
Speaker 1: at Atlanta's own Plaza Theater as part of the Silver
Speaker 1: Screams spook Show series and the Beast in question, I think,
Speaker 1: to nobody surprise if you're familiar with it at all,
Speaker 1: this is a Ray Harry Howsend creation. Looks absolutely terrific
Speaker 1: on the big screen, big screen, black and white. You
Speaker 1: can really imagine what it was like back in the days,
Speaker 1: back in the early fifties to see this thing up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Yeah. I think most people agree that
Speaker 1: the monster absolutely holds up here, and the monster is
Speaker 1: primarily the reason people come back to it with a
Speaker 1: few other bits of interest as well. Some have said
Speaker 1: that they find the rest of the movie a bit
Speaker 1: slow at times, and I agree somewhat when it comes
Speaker 1: to the research the research portion of the film, but
Speaker 1: absolutely worth sticking out, especially for the ending. The ending
Speaker 1: is just bonkers and I love it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was kind of going in for
Speaker 2: the flirty dinosaur identification scene.
Speaker 1: No, no, that was good, and of course the lighthouse
Speaker 1: scene is terrific. I mean, all the scenes with the
Speaker 1: monster are terrific, and the humans are very likable as well.
Speaker 2: I'll take your modification on this. I don't want to
Speaker 2: oversell the seriousness of it. It is also, I think,
Speaker 2: in some ways unintentionally funny. I think, especially to audiences today,
Speaker 2: some of the dialogue scenes and its treatment of scientific
Speaker 2: skepticism is pretty funny, but not nearly the level of
Speaker 2: seriousness and darkness you would get when treating the same themes,
Speaker 2: or at least similar themes in Godzilla a year later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To be clear, this was the first time I'd
Speaker 1: seen the film as well, and I knew that I
Speaker 1: needed to be excited about a giant lizard rampaging down
Speaker 1: Broadway in New York City, but I didn't know that
Speaker 1: we're going to kick things off in the Arctic. That
Speaker 1: was a real treat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was actually thinking about this, like these fifties
Speaker 2: creature movies that take place in the Arctic, or at
Speaker 2: least have parts that do. First, I don't know, fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes or so of this movie is in the Arctic,
Speaker 2: and it was making me think about Howard Hawks, the
Speaker 2: Thing from Another World that also has a setting in
Speaker 2: the Arctic. Of course, that movie was the inspiration for
Speaker 2: the Thing which moves from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Speaker 2: And I was kind of thinking about, like, why do
Speaker 2: we get all of these sci fi creature movies set
Speaker 2: in the far North and you know, these icy environments
Speaker 2: in the early fifties. I think that's probably no coincidence
Speaker 2: because when I started thinking about it, that probably has
Speaker 2: to do with what was actually happening geopolitically at the time,
Speaker 2: because in the early fifties, nuclear war was very much
Speaker 2: on everybody's mind. You know, the Cold War is kicking up,
Speaker 2: and we have these new weapons, this horrible technology. But
Speaker 2: because of the state of the delivery systems for nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons at the time, the Arctic was a major strategic
Speaker 2: theater for the Cold War in the early fifties. ICBMs
Speaker 2: wouldn't be operationalized until later like around nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 2: or fifty eight. So in the first half of the fifties,
Speaker 2: people generally understood that if nuclear war ever broke out,
Speaker 2: it would begin with long range bomber planes, and the
Speaker 2: shortest route between available airfields and targets in the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union in the United States would involve flights over the Arctic.
Speaker 2: So as a result, the Arctic was a major zone
Speaker 2: of strategic anxiety. So during this time there was a
Speaker 2: lot of building, building and staffing of these far northern
Speaker 2: bases and airfields, and trying to establish radar lines and
Speaker 2: early warning systems that could detect a first strike coming
Speaker 2: across the North Pole or through Arctic attack routes. So
Speaker 2: I think it very much makes sense that the Arctic
Speaker 2: would be on people's minds when they thought about nuclear war.
Speaker 2: And in one way or another, most of these big
Speaker 2: monster movies from the fifties have something to do with
Speaker 2: nuclear war, either direct or indirectly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously a key thing going on in
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist and our fears take the form of these monsters. Well,
Speaker 1: let's see my elevator pitch for this one would probably
Speaker 1: just be giant lyzard goes crazy on Broadway because that
Speaker 1: is what will happen, and that's the most iconic sequence
Speaker 1: in the picture. But as far as just promotional materials go,
Speaker 1: I love this The original poster for the film, which
Speaker 1: says the Sea's master beast of the ages raging up
Speaker 1: from the bottom of time pretty grand.
Speaker 2: You know. I don't really recall a scene where they
Speaker 2: describe much of anything about the palaeoecology of the Redosaurus
Speaker 2: or the Raydosaurus. I forget how they pronounce it is that,
Speaker 2: but they come up with a fictional dinosaur species in
Speaker 2: this movie, which is what the monster is. It is
Speaker 2: an unfrozen, unfrozen caveman lawyer, except it's a you know,
Speaker 2: rampaging dinosaur monster coming out of the ice and it's
Speaker 2: r h Edosaurus. However you say that, and yeah, do
Speaker 2: they say. Was it supposed to be an aquatic dinosaur
Speaker 2: or a terrestrial dinosaur? It does both, And it really
Speaker 2: is shaped more like a terrestrial animal would be. It
Speaker 2: looks like a big iguana sort of, but with like
Speaker 2: a really gnarly nasty head. But we see it, really,
Speaker 2: we see it moving around beneath the water, much like Godzilla.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. Is this thing supposed to be
Speaker 2: a master of the seas or the sea's master? I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean it can eat a bathosphere, which speaks to
Speaker 1: some mastery of the sea, and it is the beast
Speaker 1: from twenty thousand fathoms. But yeah, it seems as comfortable
Speaker 1: on land as it is in the water. That poster,
Speaker 1: by the way, also in all caps, lets you know
Speaker 1: that it is not suitable for children, which it's always
Speaker 1: fun to reflect on that because by today's standards, this
Speaker 1: is very suitable for children. It might bore some children
Speaker 1: for some set for some segments, but I mean, there's
Speaker 1: nothing out of line here at all, even within the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: I would say. We were discussing this poster before we
Speaker 2: started recording, and one of the things that confused me
Speaker 2: was what's this white stuff hanging out of the beast's mouth.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. The only thing that would make sense is
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be drool, but it doesn't look like that.
Speaker 1: It looks like it ate a white wig, yeah, or
Speaker 1: it almost looks like it is supposed to be like
Speaker 1: beard material, like they as if they added some motifs
Speaker 1: of like Eastern dragons to it or something.
Speaker 2: Because it is a very dragon like organism. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see yeah, like a like a Chinese dragon.
Speaker 2: It's got the trailing kind of wind swept thing, beard
Speaker 2: like stuff coming from the mouth. Also, we have one
Speaker 2: person down in the crowd that's running in terror away
Speaker 2: from the dinosaur. One person gets a speech bubble and
Speaker 2: they're saying it's alive. Yes, Well, what did they expect?
Speaker 1: It's very much alive. All right, If you were curious
Speaker 1: about this film and you would like to watch The
Speaker 1: Beast from twenty thousand fathoms before we really get into
Speaker 1: the spoilers here and all, well, it is widely available.
Speaker 1: It's a whole lot of fun on the big screen,
Speaker 1: but you can very much enjoy it on the small
Speaker 1: screen no matter however small screen you desire. You can
Speaker 1: get it in all digital formats, and there's some nice
Speaker 1: DVD and Blu ray editions as well. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get into the people behind this film, starting with the director.
Speaker 1: This is actually a director we've mentioned on the show before.
Speaker 1: This is our second film by this guy. This is
Speaker 1: Yuzenne Laurie lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: He also directed the nineteen sixty one British kaiju movie Gorgo, Gorgo.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a better movie than Gorgo. This
Speaker 2: is definitely better than Gorgo. Gorgo had there was a
Speaker 2: lot to love about Gorgo. That was the one about
Speaker 2: the big lizard rat that attacks off the coast of
Speaker 2: Ireland and then gets captured and brought back to London.
Speaker 2: So really it is the plot of King Kong, except
Speaker 2: it treats Ireland to Skull Island.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the King Kong connection is key here. You
Speaker 1: alluded to it already. But my understanding is that this
Speaker 1: film basically came about because there had been they re
Speaker 1: released King Kong in the studio, in the in the theaters,
Speaker 1: which of course would come out and come out you know,
Speaker 1: decades earlier. They re released it in the theaters. It
Speaker 1: was a big hit, and you know, studio heads were like, well,
Speaker 1: why are we not still making giant monster movies that
Speaker 1: make us giant money. Let's do some more of those.
Speaker 1: And that's where the Beast from twenty thousand fathoms comes in.
Speaker 1: And then it by most accounts, partially inspires Godzilla to come.
Speaker 1: So it does play a key role in the history
Speaker 1: of giant monster movies just Internet nationally m Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One thing I think King Kong gets right. Gorgo does
Speaker 2: not get right, and this movie gets somewhere in the middle,
Speaker 2: is making the human characters of interest. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: there's like some human interest in King Kong. There is
Speaker 2: not really much at all in Gorgo, and this is
Speaker 2: somewhere in the middle. Like the characters in this or
Speaker 2: you're not going to be, you know, falling in love
Speaker 2: with them. They're not like amazingly compelling, but they're fun
Speaker 2: enough to fall especially like the paleontologist guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he is a lot of fun and
Speaker 1: it is of course sad when when he gets it.
Speaker 2: We'll get to.
Speaker 1: Here, okay, but back to lay Here again, our second
Speaker 1: film of his having covered Gorgo before. Russian born French
Speaker 1: art director and then a film director his production design
Speaker 1: where it goes back to the early thirties, but his
Speaker 1: first directorial credit was this film, and this scene still
Speaker 1: have cemented him as a giant monster director to some extent,
Speaker 1: as he followed this up with fifty eight's The Colossus
Speaker 1: of New York, in which a giant robot body has
Speaker 1: a dead boy's brain in it controlling It.
Speaker 2: That's on my weird house list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do want to see that one, and I
Speaker 1: see it on the video rental shelves of Video Drone sometimes.
Speaker 1: Fifty nine's The Giant Behemoth, which is another Giant Dino movie.
Speaker 1: And then he also did an episode of the fifty
Speaker 1: nine TV series World of Giants. This is an incredible
Speaker 1: Shrinking Man inspired series. And then of course he did Gorgo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, getting into the screenplay here, one of the
Speaker 1: most the more interesting connections here on the script is
Speaker 1: that it is based to some extent on a short story,
Speaker 1: very short story by Ray Bradberry, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: through twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Did you notice how in the credits it doesn't name
Speaker 2: the story. It just says based on the Saturday Evening
Speaker 2: Post story by Ray Bradberry.
Speaker 1: It really kind of felt like, oh, crap, I forgot
Speaker 1: to I've got to write down the name. I'll just
Speaker 1: say just just say where it was feltlish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was in the one in the post.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one in the post. That one what was
Speaker 1: it called? It was? It was I'm forgetting the fog Horn.
Speaker 1: The fog Horn was the name of the.
Speaker 2: Songg fog horn leg Horn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Foghorn from nineteen fifty one, which which you
Speaker 1: can find online. It's it's it's a pretty short story,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's it's well written, it's nice. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a quick excerpt from it here. Mcdunn
Speaker 1: fumbled the switch, but even as he switched it on,
Speaker 1: the monster was rearing up. I had a glimpse of
Speaker 1: its gigantic paws, fish skin glittering in webs between the
Speaker 1: finger like projections, clawing at the tower. The huge eye
Speaker 1: on the right side of its anguished head glittered before
Speaker 1: me like a cauldron into which I might drop screaming.
Speaker 1: The tower shook, The fog horn cried, The monster cried.
Speaker 1: It sees the tower and gnashed at the glass, which
Speaker 1: shattered in upon us.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So is this the scene that becomes the
Speaker 2: attack on the light house in the movies?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, Well, one.
Speaker 2: Of the better parts of the movie. Very very interesting scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the emotional heart of the film really as far
Speaker 1: as the monster goes, because essentially what appears to be
Speaker 1: happening is the monster is confusing the sound of the foghorn,
Speaker 1: in confusing the lighthouse with one of its own kind,
Speaker 1: and it sort of comes in and tries to hug it,
Speaker 1: to embrace it, to find comfort in its embrace, but
Speaker 1: instead just collapses a lighthouse and has then desponded, And
Speaker 1: you know, we can understand it's rage at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sadly kills a couple of lighthouse keepers who
Speaker 2: were in the middle of a brilliant discourse on body songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true there was human tragedy here as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was the Ray Bradbury story. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about Bradbury before. He's come up before, but we
Speaker 1: talked about The Soul and the Lame Bass short film
Speaker 1: Quest from nineteen eighty four, which was based on one
Speaker 1: of his tales. And he's the author of such works
Speaker 1: the Martian Chronicles from fifty They Illustrated Man from fifty one,
Speaker 1: The October Country from fifty five. And he was of
Speaker 1: course a successful screenwriter, having written the screenplay for the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six adaptation of Moby Dick, and his work
Speaker 1: was also adapted for TV and film going back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer
Speaker 1: Space in fifty three, and that's one that has been
Speaker 1: kind of on the short list or maybe the long
Speaker 1: list for weird house cinema. There's probably one Jack Arnold
Speaker 1: film in particular. In particular we'll get too before that,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, Yeah, you do see a little
Speaker 1: bit of the fog Horn in this picture, and it
Speaker 1: is kind of the emotional heart of it. I was
Speaker 1: reading about it, and I've found out that there's actually
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety seven episode of the Pokemon TV series
Speaker 1: which also loosely adapts this Bradburry story. It's called Mystery
Speaker 1: at the Lighthouse, and I included a couple of stills
Speaker 1: for you here. I did not have a chance to
Speaker 1: watch this episode, but based on the screenshots, it appears
Speaker 1: that a large dragon like form I'm assuming this is
Speaker 1: what Charizard charizard O.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like Charizard, except in black and white,
Speaker 1: you know, or at least in mist and fog we
Speaker 1: don't get are mostly silhouette, and he is indeed attacking
Speaker 1: a lighthouse, perhaps mistaking it for I don't know, another Pokemon. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Pokemon fans out there, and we know, we certainly know
Speaker 1: we have them right in about this episode, we'll learn
Speaker 1: more from you, all right. The screenplay credits, however, go
Speaker 1: to two individuals. We have Lou Morheim, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two through twenty thirteen, writer and producer who's other
Speaker 1: credits as a writer include five episodes of the original
Speaker 1: Outer Limits plus a bunch of Westerns, which makes sense
Speaker 1: given the time period. And then also Fred Freiberger nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen through two thousand and three, film and TV writer
Speaker 1: who went on to create the Neanderthal Saturday More live
Speaker 1: action TV show Corg seventy thousand BC. This ran from
Speaker 1: seventy four through seventy five, nineteen episodes narrated by Burgess.
Speaker 2: Meredith. Huh yeah, I didn't know about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like I was reading about it and it
Speaker 1: was like, oh wow, this is like a serious caveman
Speaker 1: drama and they're like, no Saturday Morning TV.
Speaker 2: Show, Okay, it's not like the Inheritors.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that's what I was thinking, Like, is this
Speaker 1: a real serious treatment of maybe, you know, somehow connected
Speaker 1: to a lot of the other like seriously minded prehistoric
Speaker 1: people novels and so forth. But I don't think that
Speaker 1: was the case. More of a light land of the
Speaker 1: lost flavor here I think, all right, let's get into
Speaker 1: the actors here. So our protagonist is Professor Tom Nesbit,
Speaker 1: played by an actor credited as Paul Christian, his real
Speaker 1: name Paul Hubschmid. He was a Swiss actor with film
Speaker 1: credits going back to nineteen thirty eight. He lived nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen through two thousand and one. He worked in German cinema,
Speaker 1: including during the period of Nazi rule, which he later
Speaker 1: expressed regret over and had difficulty finding Swiss roles because
Speaker 1: of in the years following the war. I'm to understand
Speaker 1: that these German films of the Nazi era he appeared
Speaker 1: in were light romantic fare with only faint ideological references,
Speaker 1: but it was still kind of a lasting blight on
Speaker 1: his career. So to be clear, not a Nazi, but
Speaker 1: a young Swiss actor working in Germany at the time
Speaker 1: who was just kind of going with the flow and
Speaker 1: did not ask questions about who he was working for.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he kept working and continued to find success
Speaker 1: in Europe and then branching over into Hollywood. He signed
Speaker 1: a deal with Universal in forty eight, starring in the
Speaker 1: forty nine film Baghdad, alongside the likes of Marin O'Hara
Speaker 1: and Vincent Price, all playing Middle Easterners, and did a
Speaker 1: string of other big studio films, including nineteen fifty two's
Speaker 1: No Time for Flowers, directed by Don Siegel. Other credits
Speaker 1: include The Indian Tomb from fifty nine, The Day the
Speaker 1: Sky Exploded from fifty eight, Oh Sounds, Explosive, Funeral in
Speaker 1: Berlin from sixty six, and Skullduggery in seventy, a screwball
Speaker 1: adventure movie starring Burt Reynolds that does not sound good,
Speaker 1: looks like it has not aged well and probably came
Speaker 1: out of the oven offensive. And then he was also
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty eight German language horror movie Broken Silence.
Speaker 2: When I was watching this, I wondered if I was
Speaker 2: subconsciously holding his accent against him. I hope that's not it,
Speaker 2: But he just like he wasn't totally selling the movie
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I found his accent charming. I think I
Speaker 1: like that. Like he's, for the most part, very much
Speaker 1: by appearances, your square jaw protagonist from an early fifties film,
Speaker 1: Like he's very definitely definitely fits the mold in pretty
Speaker 1: much every imaginable way. On that front, but his accent
Speaker 1: I felt like, gave him like maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of charm where I was like, oh, this is this
Speaker 1: is not just an American monster movie. This is this
Speaker 1: is a you know, a Transatlantic monster movie. This is
Speaker 1: a you know, it has a little bit of European
Speaker 1: flare to it.
Speaker 2: Even. Yeah. So he's supposed to be a nuclear physicist
Speaker 2: who exactly what his relationship is to his work is
Speaker 2: not totally clear, And some of the monologues in the movie,
Speaker 2: his character seems to be kind of ambivalent or even
Speaker 2: kind of negative about what nuclear technology means. Other Times
Speaker 2: he's like talking about how he's paving the way for tomorrow,
Speaker 2: and you know, he's like that he's talking about the
Speaker 2: curative properties of the radioactive isotope. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I feel like there's some ambivalence in the way that
Speaker 2: the character is realized. But also, as I said, I
Speaker 2: was saying, I hope it wasn't the accent was making
Speaker 2: me feel this, but something about him was awkward for me.
Speaker 2: It didn't totally click.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well that's like him or not. That's
Speaker 1: her character and the love interest. The supporting character here
Speaker 1: is the character Lee Hunter. And she is played by
Speaker 1: Paula Raymond, who live nineteen twenty four through two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, American actress with credits going back to thirty eight.
Speaker 1: She acted in a variety of genres, including noir such
Speaker 1: as fifty threes City That Never Sleeps, westerns such as
Speaker 1: fifties Devil's Doorway, as well as romance. Her other horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi credits include sixty two's Hand of Death,
Speaker 1: starring John Agar as a monster that looks an awful lot.
Speaker 1: People have commented on this like Marvel's Thing, who debuted
Speaker 1: in the pages of Marvel Comics the year before, and
Speaker 1: then she's also in sixty nine's Blood of Dracula's Castle
Speaker 1: with John Caradine.
Speaker 2: I like her. She's fun when she shows up, though
Speaker 2: you do kind of get the feeling with her character
Speaker 2: that like, so she shows up when Nesbit is like,
Speaker 2: I've seen a monster, nobody will believe me, and she's like,
Speaker 2: well you're handsome, I believe you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there is that. It's it's a mix of
Speaker 1: things here with this the way this character is presented,
Speaker 1: because she's presented as a confident female scientist, which is great,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, she's still fetching coffee and
Speaker 1: kissing old men on the cheek before there are only
Speaker 1: the lips before they get into the bathosphere. So you
Speaker 1: know it's a mixed bag here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She makes some little sandwiches with the crusts cut off
Speaker 2: while they're trying to do their research.
Speaker 1: You need that crust for the research, though, I think
Speaker 1: doing them a disservice.
Speaker 2: Are they five years old? While don't they leave the
Speaker 2: crusts on?
Speaker 1: I will say she is very stylishly dressed. There's one
Speaker 1: scene where she's wearing this black like this big black
Speaker 1: coat with a big, wide white collar, and you know
Speaker 1: this is a big this is a monster movie, so
Speaker 1: you know, certainly I was poking the person to me
Speaker 1: and say, you're looking at this monster. But in a
Speaker 1: couple of these scenes, I'm like, are you looking at
Speaker 1: this coat? This is incredible. It looks amazing on the
Speaker 1: big screen.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed her wardrobe. But in the first scene where
Speaker 2: we meet her, she's got the Is that the scene
Speaker 2: in the paleontologist's office where she's ring like a trench
Speaker 2: coat over there? I don't know. I don't know yet.
Speaker 1: She's also wearing more of like a beige trench coat
Speaker 1: and another scene, but in general, just you know, very
Speaker 1: well costumed.
Speaker 2: Also, I think she gets to be the only character
Speaker 2: in the movie who expresses care or concern for another character.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's that like she she's she's the
Speaker 2: person who gets to grieve when Elson gets eaten by
Speaker 2: the monster. The rest of the movie is very it's
Speaker 2: very process and action oriented. She's one of the only
Speaker 2: characters who gets to have emotional reflection on the proceedings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Well, let's talk about Professor
Speaker 1: Elson or the Professor, the aged Professor, much beloved professor
Speaker 1: that is also part of the monster investigation. Played by
Speaker 1: Cecil Calaway lived eighteen ninety through nineteen seventy three South
Speaker 1: African British character actor who started out in Australian theater
Speaker 1: in film in the thirties before making them move to Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Two time Oscar nominee for forty nine's The Luck of
Speaker 1: the Irish and sixty eights Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Speaker 1: Replayed the Monsignor character in that. His other films include
Speaker 1: The Invisible Man Returns and The Mummy's Hand from nineteen
Speaker 1: forty and Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Well, I like this guy. He was, you know what.
Speaker 2: They set it up like the cop movie, like he
Speaker 2: was two days away from retirement. Except this guy's thing
Speaker 2: is he was like two days away from his first
Speaker 2: ever vacation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a very likable, grandfatherly character, and it was funny.
Speaker 1: I saw this with my family and afterwards I was
Speaker 1: asking my kid what they thought about it, and they mentioned,
Speaker 1: and to be clear, like they've seen Aliens at this point,
Speaker 1: and various other films. They watched Stranger Things. It's not
Speaker 1: like they've only seen films in which the endings are
Speaker 1: super happ but they were like, oh, yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: that they were going to cut open the beast at
Speaker 1: the end of the film and find the Bathisphere and
Speaker 1: he was going to be all right. And that obviously
Speaker 1: does not happen, but I can understand, like what the
Speaker 1: characters presented in such a sweet way, and then he's
Speaker 1: just totally destroyed, you kind of, I guess they're holding
Speaker 1: out hope.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, if the Bathisphere had had its own
Speaker 2: internal oxygen supply, m this may be conceivable. I don't
Speaker 2: think it did I think they had an air hose
Speaker 2: from the surface.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Or of course, then you get into a
Speaker 1: weird area. If he's in there, that's a whole second
Speaker 1: movie where he's communicating to the outside. It's like innerspace,
Speaker 1: except he's in a dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Like he still got that phone and he's making calls
Speaker 2: from inside this Yes, the monster.
Speaker 1: I'm almost out of coffee. Yeah. All right. So those
Speaker 1: are I guess are three main characters, but we have
Speaker 1: we have some other supporting characters. Want to mention real quick.
Speaker 1: There's Colonel Jack Evans and he was played by Kenneth Toby,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen seventeen through two thousand and two. If
Speaker 1: that square jaw and no nonsense demeanor seems familiar, it's
Speaker 1: because he was the lead in nineteen fifty one's The
Speaker 1: Thing from Another World, which of course covered on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this guy was ready to punch a communist
Speaker 2: at a moment's notice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's got a signature, signature face. You recognize
Speaker 1: him once you start looking for him. He was also
Speaker 1: in fifty fives. It Came from Beneath the Sea. Just
Speaker 1: a ton of TV and film credits going back to
Speaker 1: I think nineteen forty five. And in his later career
Speaker 1: he did a lot of cameos. So there were a
Speaker 1: lot of like, you know, new and up and coming
Speaker 1: directors who grew up on some of these old fifties pictures,
Speaker 1: including Joe Dante. So he pops up in The Howling
Speaker 1: Grimlins two Inner Space, and he even cameos unrelated to
Speaker 1: Joe Dante in hell Raiser Bloodline. Mmm, okay, yeah, which
Speaker 1: I think he's a priest on a hologram. Still a
Speaker 1: tempted to come back to that one.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, is that the one that's got the
Speaker 2: segment different segments in time? There's like one on a
Speaker 2: space station.
Speaker 1: One in the past, Yes, yes, the past, the future,
Speaker 1: Adam Scott.
Speaker 2: It's got little baby Adam Scott. He's in like seventeenth
Speaker 2: century clothing.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, he's in the past. All right,
Speaker 1: let's say moving along, We've got Captain Phil Jackson played
Speaker 1: by Donald Woods, who have nineteen oh six through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight Canadian born actor whose credits include nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: Thirteen Ghosts and nineteen sixty nine's True Grit.
Speaker 2: And then we.
Speaker 1: Also have a character by the name of Corporal Stone.
Speaker 1: Corporal Stone is going to come into play pretty late
Speaker 1: in the picture, but he is played by Lee van Cleef,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen eighty nine, only
Speaker 1: a year into his film and TV career, coming off
Speaker 1: of small roles in such films as fifty two's High
Speaker 1: Noon his earliest credit. He was in his late twenties
Speaker 1: at the time. So a very small but pivotal role
Speaker 1: here in which old angel Eyes really gets to shine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he plays a crack shot, right. They bring him
Speaker 2: into to slay the Beast because he's the best with
Speaker 2: a rifle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is essentially barred the bowman from The Hobbit
Speaker 1: and all that. We'll dwell on this a bit more
Speaker 1: when we start talking about the scene. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: is the sharpshooter brought in to use a special weapon
Speaker 1: against the Giant Monster's one week point.
Speaker 2: Which came first this movie or The Hobbit. I don't
Speaker 2: know when the Hobbit was first published.
Speaker 1: Well, the Hobbit was first published in thirty seven.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it wouldn't be that Beast inspired.
Speaker 1: The no, But it's also not necessarily the fact that
Speaker 1: the Hobbit inspired the beast, because, as I'll get into
Speaker 1: later in the episode, the trope of a hero using
Speaker 1: a special weapon to slay the monster by hitting a
Speaker 1: very specific spot on its body is basically one of
Speaker 1: the oldest stories in human mythology. So we have multiple
Speaker 1: examples we can point to and works of ancient literature
Speaker 1: in which this exact same thing happened. So I think
Speaker 1: it's it may be it maybe have been a case
Speaker 1: where they were inspired by the Hobbit, but just as
Speaker 1: likely that it's just this is a very human story
Speaker 1: about people standing up to monsters.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess the other big point of
Speaker 2: comparison is that it's a character who shows up late
Speaker 2: in the story. It's not like the hero for the
Speaker 2: whole time is the one who makes the strike at
Speaker 2: the weak point.
Speaker 1: That's true, yeah, because I think in many of the
Speaker 1: other examples, it's like you're gonna have a key hero
Speaker 1: who it's like, oh yeah, we don't have to bring
Speaker 1: an outsider in because our structural protagonist is already the
Speaker 1: best shot within bow and Arrow in the entire world.
Speaker 1: In this case, they're like, who can do this shot?
Speaker 1: We got to bring into Lee van Cleef more on
Speaker 1: that scene when we get to it, like he's part
Speaker 1: of He's just one element in the fantastic finish to
Speaker 1: this picture.
Speaker 2: You know, he does the same thing at the end
Speaker 2: of it Conquered the World, except instead of a rifle,
Speaker 2: it's like a you know, a little butane torch. Oh
Speaker 2: remember that. Yeah, we brings up to the art to
Speaker 2: choke with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about him previously in that episode and
Speaker 1: a much different character like he's because he's he's on
Speaker 1: the side of the villains in that one for a
Speaker 1: long time and then has a change of heart and
Speaker 1: decides that space communism is bad. In this one, he's
Speaker 1: just yeah, they just like, we need to bring in
Speaker 1: a guy who really knows how to shoot, and they're
Speaker 1: like here he is, and he's like, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: up for the job. He pulls it off.
Speaker 2: I don't remember them mentioning his name in the movie,
Speaker 2: but I guess maybe they do.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, I don't remember as well. I was
Speaker 1: more at that point in the film. I knew Lee
Speaker 1: van Kleeff was going to be in it, and then
Speaker 1: I forgot that who's going to be in it? And
Speaker 1: the movie was about over and then suddenly they brought
Speaker 1: him out and I was like, yes, he's finally here.
Speaker 2: It took me a minute to recognize who he was,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh wait, that's him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well they're getting the lead box out of the container.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's like what you got here? A monster? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot that, which his whole vibe. He's cool,
Speaker 1: all right. Technical effects created by, of course Ray Harry Housen,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen twenty through twenty thirteen American British Oscar
Speaker 1: winning animator and special effect creator, major pioneer in the industry.
Speaker 1: We talked about him before in the show because we
Speaker 1: covered Clash of the Titans from nineteen eighty one, which
Speaker 1: was essentially his swan song, but so many other films
Speaker 1: in between that one and this one, and really, like again,
Speaker 1: the effects in The Beast from twenty thousand fathoms absolutely
Speaker 1: hold up. And you hear about fairly recent films, including
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson's Hobbit adaptations. I'm to understand that in figuring
Speaker 1: out how they were going to present Smog the Dragon
Speaker 1: and animate Smog the Dragon like this was one of
Speaker 1: the films they look back to look back to see
Speaker 1: how Ray Harry Elsen brought a creature like this to life,
Speaker 1: because it's one of these things. When you see it
Speaker 1: on the screen, you admire it. But sometimes, like not
Speaker 1: being in effects and not ever actually having tried to
Speaker 1: create something like this, you maybe miss out on just
Speaker 1: how sublime it really is. How this creature moves like
Speaker 1: a creature. You know, it's a you can easily take
Speaker 1: it all for granted because the magic is absolutely working totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it looks excellent. You know, I've said
Speaker 2: many times on the show how much of a sucker
Speaker 2: I am for Ray Harry Housen and stop motion creature effects.
Speaker 2: I love them. I really like them, even sometimes when
Speaker 2: they're not great. There's just something about the texture of
Speaker 2: the effects themselves I just find pleasing. And then when
Speaker 2: they look really good, as this one does, it it's
Speaker 2: even more of a treat. So yeah, I think they're
Speaker 2: just great. You know. There were a lot of little
Speaker 2: things where I felt like I noticed moments that resembled
Speaker 2: different types of effects, maybe stop motion, maybe puppetry, maybe
Speaker 2: computer effects from later movies, and I kept wondering or
Speaker 2: those later movies calling back to this one, Like there's
Speaker 2: one part where the creature eats a policeman in New
Speaker 2: York here, and it was like, I was like, man,
Speaker 2: that really looks like the first time the t Rex
Speaker 2: eat somebody in Jurassic Park. I wonder if that was
Speaker 2: in space Olberg's mind, where they like, I kind of
Speaker 2: want to have this look like when the monster eads
Speaker 2: somebody in Beasts from twenty thousand Fathoms.
Speaker 1: I mean, I bet it was. I mean it is also,
Speaker 1: of course the thing you would want a giant monster
Speaker 1: to do. But yeah, yeah, I think it's probably hard
Speaker 1: to overstate the importance of a film like this and
Speaker 1: it effects history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was some visual signature in common there though,
Speaker 2: with like the biting the top half of the body
Speaker 2: and the legs sticking out and wiggling in a certain way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because this is a creature that is this
Speaker 1: in effect a lizard, and there are aspects of a
Speaker 1: lizard to its locomotion. But it also I think it's
Speaker 1: clear that that Harry Housen was looking at other animals
Speaker 1: as well and determining like how he was going to
Speaker 1: animate it and how it was going to move. And
Speaker 1: when we've talked a little bit about that, I think
Speaker 1: in previous episodes about how like he would go to
Speaker 1: the zoo and watch animals move around and to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly how he was going to animate things. So
Speaker 1: he really put in the work here. But to your point, though,
Speaker 1: whether it's Harry Housen's work or anyone else's, like when
Speaker 1: stop motion effects or puppetry effects practical effects when they
Speaker 1: are less than perfect, yes they can be hilarious, but
Speaker 1: they can also still absolutely resonate on this level that
Speaker 1: it is a form of puppetry. It is this form
Speaker 1: of human storytelling that has very much been in play
Speaker 1: as a medium throughout our history as a species.
Speaker 2: As I often say on here, stop motion effects don't
Speaker 2: have to look realistic to look great. You know, there
Speaker 2: are two different dimensions of like how well realized the
Speaker 2: effects are. One element is kind of realism blending in
Speaker 2: with the human action or the backdrop or whatever. But
Speaker 2: then there's a whole other dimension that's just kind of
Speaker 2: artistic pleasingness that doesn't really correlate necessarily with it looking
Speaker 2: like real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, all right. Finally, the music here is
Speaker 1: by David Buttoff, who we've mentioned before. Butt Off lived
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two through nineteen eighty three imposer who also
Speaker 1: did Hitchcock's Rope forty eight thirty nine's The Gorilla That's
Speaker 1: Not Hitchcock, And we previously mentioned him for his score
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty three's House of Wax.
Speaker 2: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: So the title appears in this movie over a whirlpool
Speaker 2: water spiraling down a drain, and this in the credits
Speaker 2: here is when we get that note that this was
Speaker 2: inspired by the Saturday Evening Post story by Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 2: So at the beginning of the movie, a voiceover monologue
Speaker 2: sets up the action while we watch footage of workers
Speaker 2: moving cargo around on an airfield in the far North
Speaker 2: with these twin engine propeller planes lined up into the distance.
Speaker 2: And I was actually kind of curious about a air
Speaker 2: you know, aerospace technology question. Did you notice all these
Speaker 2: big hoses they were running from machines on the ground
Speaker 2: up into the airplane engines. I was wondering, are these heaters?
Speaker 2: Are they blowing hot air into the engines before the
Speaker 2: planes take off, maybe to prevent them from icing or something.
Speaker 1: That would make sense, But yeah, I don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know either. I wondered what that was.
Speaker 2: Folks out there, if you know what's going on there
Speaker 2: right in contact at stuff to blow yourmind dot com. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the narrator sets up what's going on here. The narrator says,
Speaker 2: this is Operation Experiment. Experiment is the name of the operation.
Speaker 1: I think they should have workshopped at a bit more, but
Speaker 1: fair enough.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is Operation Experiment, a secret base far north
Speaker 2: of the Arctic Circle. Experiment was the code name for
Speaker 2: a top priority scientific expedition. These men arrived here on
Speaker 2: X day minus sixty. It has taken them the full
Speaker 2: two months to get ready. Today is X day. It
Speaker 2: is now h hour minus fifty nine minutes. There is
Speaker 2: less than an hour.
Speaker 1: Lefe left a lot of babel to get through. But okay,
Speaker 1: something technical is happening.
Speaker 2: I like how it does the math for us. So
Speaker 2: at h our minus fifty nine minutes, that means there's
Speaker 2: less than an hour. Oh okay, thanks. So now we
Speaker 2: see the airplanes that we saw earlier. They're like getting
Speaker 2: ready to go. So the engines are running, they're preparing
Speaker 2: for takeoff. And I thought it was kind of cool
Speaker 2: here to notice that instead of wheels at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the landing gear, they have skis, I guess because
Speaker 2: they're out on these ice fields. And the narrator goes
Speaker 2: on to say, the plane must arrive at its rendezvous
Speaker 2: two hundred miles away in exactly fifty eight minutes. There
Speaker 2: can be no room for error, there can be no
Speaker 2: second chance. So then the plane takes off. We see
Speaker 2: this big radar aerial spinning on top of a metal tower,
Speaker 2: and it goes on narrating about like, here's the rendezvous,
Speaker 2: and it's doing more of the countdown, here's for the
Speaker 2: scientists or double checking their equipment, and we see shots
Speaker 2: of inside a facility where a bunch of men dressed
Speaker 2: for cold weather are looking through instation. They're doing calculations
Speaker 2: on paper with like you know, a pencil and compass
Speaker 2: and a straight edge and all that. And then we
Speaker 2: see eventually the radar operators kicking into action. They detect
Speaker 2: the airplane and they get on the radio and they
Speaker 2: report its heading. And then outside on the ice we
Speaker 2: see men in fur lined jackets and boots standing around
Speaker 2: with binoculars watching the sky. The narrator says, every man
Speaker 2: here knows his job he does it quickly, efficiently, silently.
Speaker 2: The men are ready, the equipment is ready. We're like, okay,
Speaker 2: what is it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but I guess I'm
Speaker 1: feel confident about the people doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the countdown continues, The narrator goes on building
Speaker 2: up the tension. People are standing around waiting. Then we
Speaker 2: get the final countdown from ten down to one, three
Speaker 2: to one, and it's a nuclear explosion. So there is
Speaker 2: a blinding flash of light, a mushroom cloud blooming up
Speaker 2: into the sky, and then lots of footage of I mayhem.
Speaker 2: So we see glaciers calving off and dropping sheets of
Speaker 2: ice into the sea. There are icebergs that split in
Speaker 2: half and then crumble into the water, all kinds of
Speaker 2: like ice crumbling and falling. So we have just witnessed
Speaker 2: a nuclear test conducted somewhere over a northern polar ice sheet.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems fine, probably won't be related to anything
Speaker 1: else in the plot. That the world absolutely will be
Speaker 1: the same. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the radar operators flag something weird right after
Speaker 2: the blast. They say they detect a foreign object, and
Speaker 2: one of them says it's silhouetted like five hundred tons
Speaker 2: at least, but by the time they call the superiors over,
Speaker 2: the object is gone without a trace. So after the
Speaker 2: test we join a couple of guys in charge here
Speaker 2: reflecting on the successful detonation. This is Colonel Jack Evans
Speaker 2: played by Kenneth Toby and Professor Tom Nesbitt played by
Speaker 2: Paul Christian or Paul Hugh Schmidt, but billed as Paul Christian.
Speaker 2: And so the colonel comments with some amusement that they
Speaker 2: spend eight weeks preparing for this kind of test and
Speaker 2: then it's all over in a second. But then Nesbit
Speaker 2: comes back with some opposing consideration. He says, quote, when
Speaker 2: energy of that magnitude is released, it's never over. What
Speaker 2: the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests
Speaker 2: will be only time can tell. And then the Colonel's like,
Speaker 2: what you mean, Scientists don't know, You don't know the
Speaker 2: answer to everything, And Nesbit goes on. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the world's been here for millions of years,
Speaker 2: man's been walking upright for a comparatively short amount of
Speaker 2: that time. Mentally, we're still crawling, he says. And then
Speaker 2: after this there is I thought a one two punch
Speaker 2: of dialogue that for me, like the first line lands
Speaker 2: great and the second not so good. So there's another
Speaker 2: professor nearby named George Ritchie who comments that quote every
Speaker 2: time one of these things goes off. I feel like
Speaker 2: we're helping to write the first chapter of a newt Genesis.
Speaker 2: And then the second line from Nesbit is he says,
Speaker 2: let's hope we're not writing the last chapter of the
Speaker 2: old one. That was like the last chapter of the
Speaker 2: Old Genesis. That's like I had to look it up.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's the death of Joseph. Like I think
Speaker 2: what he must mean is the Book of Revelation, not
Speaker 2: the last chapter of.
Speaker 1: That would make But yeah, it's the line is written
Speaker 1: or delivered in a way here that doesn't specify that
Speaker 1: like it should. So it sounds like these guys have
Speaker 1: just had nothing to read but the Bible. Up here,
Speaker 1: they're about to list launch and do a very nuanced
Speaker 1: discussion of Old Testament literature.
Speaker 2: The Gideons left Bibles and they're beside all of their
Speaker 2: ice field sleeping bags, and yeah, they've been really getting
Speaker 2: into it anyway. So the scientists after this, they're going
Speaker 2: to take some readings. They load up onto a motorized
Speaker 2: ice tractor and they head to the forward observation post.
Speaker 2: They promised to turn back when their Geiger counters start
Speaker 2: going berserk. So out on the ice, the mood is
Speaker 2: very eerie. There's soft music and the wind is whipped,
Speaker 2: and while the scientists are away from the vehicle taking
Speaker 2: readings from their instruments, a blizzard starts coming on, so
Speaker 2: the two scientists become separated. And then through a narrow
Speaker 2: gap in some tall sort of columns of ice, one
Speaker 2: of the scientists, Professor Ritchie, sees something shocking, a giant, black,
Speaker 2: scaly figure moving quickly, like what on earth was that?
Speaker 2: Richie calls out for Nesbit, but no one can hear
Speaker 2: him through the wind, so he climbs up on a steep,
Speaker 2: icy hillside and then there at the top he sees
Speaker 2: in all its glory, the monster of the movie, which
Speaker 2: will later be called the Ritosaurus. So the monster of
Speaker 2: the movie is a giant quadrupedal lizard shaped dinosaur with
Speaker 2: pebbled skin and sharp teeth. It does a dorsal crest
Speaker 2: running down its back with these small triangular sail shaped spines.
Speaker 2: It has very mean looking eyes, small, cold, eight full eyes,
Speaker 2: and it walks on four feet, but it has an
Speaker 2: upturned posture like some lizards do, usually kind of raised
Speaker 2: up higher in the front, as if it's somewhat kind
Speaker 2: of proud. I don't know, robbed you of any other
Speaker 2: comments to add on the monster design?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, in addition to it just being
Speaker 1: so very well executed, I would say it's general design
Speaker 1: here it speaks to more what we would think of
Speaker 1: as archaic paleo art, you know, like older depictions of
Speaker 1: what dinosaurs might have looked like. And then there is
Speaker 1: a definite there's a definite dash of you know, Saint
Speaker 1: George and the dragon here, I said, I in the
Speaker 1: sense that there's some you know, classical dragon illustration folded
Speaker 1: into the into the design as well.
Speaker 2: Now we didn't talk about this beforehand, so I may
Speaker 2: be catching you off guard here, but it just occurred
Speaker 2: to me. What do you think the difference in feeling
Speaker 2: is with a prehistoric radioactive monster that walks on four
Speaker 2: feet versus one that walks on So we will get
Speaker 2: Godzilla a year later, who is who looks a lot
Speaker 2: like this in many ways, similar kind of dark pebbled,
Speaker 2: scaly skin texture, similar kind of dinosaur, you know, tyrannosaur
Speaker 2: shaped head in a way. But Godzilla, of course is
Speaker 2: firmly bipedal, walks on its two back legs. This monster
Speaker 2: walks on four feet. Do you think that has a
Speaker 2: significant difference in the feeling created?
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: it was really in play at this point, but I
Speaker 1: think having you know, comparing the two, a bipedal monster
Speaker 1: is going to feel more human and maybe we're going
Speaker 1: to be more inclined to give it human motivations and
Speaker 1: see some sort of humanity within it, whereas a four
Speaker 1: legged creature is more of a beast. That being said,
Speaker 1: I think execution also plays a role here, because with
Speaker 1: the excellent stop motion like this, you can have a
Speaker 1: four legged creature that is brought perfectly to life and
Speaker 1: you completely buy it as a four legged creature, whereas
Speaker 1: in the Godzilla era when you do encounter quadrupedal monsters,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a man in a suit crawling
Speaker 1: around on all fours, and you can suspend disbelief, but
Speaker 1: that reality is going to be there on some level
Speaker 1: or another for you. And I think That's why, while
Speaker 1: you do find quadrupedal kaiju, a lot of kaiju are
Speaker 1: going to be bipedal, or there's going to be some
Speaker 1: sort of arrangement that is bipedal in basic structure and
Speaker 1: in its actual performance elements.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with what you're saying. The while the
Speaker 2: characterization of Godzilla did change a lot over time, so
Speaker 2: certainly they found characteristics of Godzilla much later on that
Speaker 2: we're not there in the first movie. You can see
Speaker 2: how the bipedal Godzilla turns into more of this protector
Speaker 2: sort of human, you know, personality possessing character later on.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine that with the Ritosaurus in this movie.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine this thing ever becoming like having
Speaker 2: a human intellect in the way that later Godzilla seems too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I agree, But already the monster looks great here,
Speaker 1: and in general, I just want to say that this
Speaker 1: whole opening sequence in this snowy wasteland with a monster
Speaker 1: stalking and you know, with me behind a fair amount
Speaker 1: of like blizzardy weather, just looks really good. And we
Speaker 1: get already getting a nice sense of tension and horror here.
Speaker 2: Right, So the scientist Richie sees this beast and then
Speaker 2: screams and falls backwards into a crevasse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right on his butt too. Got some mild laughter
Speaker 1: from the audience, but also like it's it was an
Speaker 1: impressive stunt, so it's like that looks like it hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So eventually the other scientist, Tom Nesbit, comes to
Speaker 2: the rescue and he finds his colleague granting deliriously about
Speaker 2: a prehistoric monster. And then after climbing back out of
Speaker 2: the crevass, Nesbit sees it too. He turns and he
Speaker 2: sees the creature and the beast snarls as it kind
Speaker 2: of whips over the lip of a nearby cliff, and
Speaker 2: with its body it causes an avalanche that buries the
Speaker 2: other scientist, Professor Ritchie in Ice. Then sometime later we
Speaker 2: see Professor Nesbitt brought back to the base by a
Speaker 2: rescue team, and the doctors conclude that he has to
Speaker 2: be rushed back to a hospital in the States immediately,
Speaker 2: So he's going to be taken back to New York eventually.
Speaker 2: And then while they're waiting on a plane to take
Speaker 2: him away, Nesbit mutters in his sleep about a monster.
Speaker 2: I do think it's funny that. I don't know what
Speaker 2: was New York the nearest hospital to where they I'm
Speaker 2: surprised they didn't take him to like a base hospital,
Speaker 2: so I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like there would have been another option. But no,
Speaker 1: we can take the plot right to New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So we're in New York City now. At
Speaker 2: the hospital, Nesbitt seems to be making a good physical recovery. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: he is suffering from what the staff believed to be
Speaker 2: traumatic hallucinations, and they bring in a psychiatrist named doctor
Speaker 2: Ingersoll to talk some sense into this raving madman. So
Speaker 2: Ingersoll goes on a monologue about how like he sits
Speaker 2: down next to Nesbit's hospital bed and he's like, let
Speaker 2: me tell you about some other monsters people have claimed
Speaker 2: to exist. There is the famous monster of Scotland, you know,
Speaker 2: the lake Monster of Scotland, the loch Lomund Monster.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I ever heard of that one generic brand?
Speaker 1: Is that? Really?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I tried to look it up, and
Speaker 2: I was confused about whether the only references I was
Speaker 2: seeing were from this movie or whether it's independently a thing.
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to investigate. Fully, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a long time since I've read
Speaker 1: into many monsters of the Loch. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: do know that there are various lake moderate monster traditions
Speaker 1: in the British Isles, so I would not be shocked
Speaker 1: if this were referring to some legitimate tradition or an
Speaker 1: alternate name.
Speaker 2: Could be a thing, but I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 2: The other thing he brings up are those green serpents
Speaker 2: off the coast of Ireland, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what that is, but that makes me think.
Speaker 1: Of gorg Oh yeah, yeah, foreshadowing.
Speaker 2: So Colonel Jack Evans, remember the colonel. He shows up
Speaker 2: at the hospital to convince his friend that there was
Speaker 2: no monster. He says, he went out and he tried
Speaker 2: to reconstruct the whole scene and there was no trace
Speaker 2: of an animal like Nesbit described. But Nesbit is he's adamant.
Speaker 2: He says, I was not hallucinating. The monster was there.
Speaker 2: And you know what, there was a blizzard, so the
Speaker 2: snow covered up the tracks and everything. That's why you're
Speaker 2: not finding the evidence. Did you notice this set? I
Speaker 2: was like, what is with the walls and the door,
Speaker 2: like there's crown molding in here. It just didn't look
Speaker 2: like a hospital room. It looked like somebody's house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I did look ornate.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we eventually start getting attack scenes where the creature
Speaker 2: has made it out into the world and is attacking boats.
Speaker 2: I think there is a scene very much like what's
Speaker 2: coming up, a scene like this in the original Godzilla.
Speaker 2: So it's a dark night, there's moonlight sparkling on the seawater.
Speaker 2: You've got a grizzled boat captain and his rum soaked
Speaker 2: first mate, and they're just staring down the dark waves.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly the beast attacks the boat, kind of
Speaker 2: fumes up out of the water, filled with hate, has
Speaker 2: this horrible cruel look in its eye, and it smashes
Speaker 2: the boat to pieces. And then meanwhile we cut back
Speaker 2: to the hospital. Nesbit is getting his newspaper in the hospital.
Speaker 2: He asks the nurse, you know what's in the paper today,
Speaker 2: and the nurse says, death in politics. The comics page
Speaker 2: is the only thing that makes sense anymore in this
Speaker 2: crazy world.
Speaker 1: Give me that, Marmaduke. Yeah, the only thing that's going
Speaker 1: to make me feel better.
Speaker 2: The only way to become saying once again is Marmaduke
Speaker 2: gasoline ally, but he does not take her instruction. He
Speaker 2: starts looking at the news part and what do you know,
Speaker 2: there's a headline that says sea serpent reported off grand Banks. Well,
Speaker 2: Nesbit is convinced. Now he's like, see, I told you
Speaker 2: there is a sea serpent. That's the dinosaur I saw.
Speaker 2: So Nesbit goes to the nearby Natural History Museum to
Speaker 2: meet a new character. This is Professor Thurgood Elson, a
Speaker 2: palaeontologist played by Cecil Kellaway. Nesbit wants Elson to authorize
Speaker 2: an investigation to see if the creature awakened by the
Speaker 2: atomic test in the North was a one hundred million
Speaker 2: year old dinosaur. Elson quite reasonably has some objections to this.
Speaker 2: He says, reports of sea monsters are very common, and
Speaker 2: we don't believe all of them. Why do we have
Speaker 2: reason to think that this one is the one that's true?
Speaker 2: He says, dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years.
Speaker 2: It is not possible for them to still be alive.
Speaker 2: And Nesbit says, but what if one was frozen in
Speaker 2: ice the whole time? Don't bears hibernate over winter in
Speaker 2: a state of suspended animation. Elson says, yes, they do
Speaker 2: for one winter on food they have stored as body
Speaker 2: fat from the previous summer. A hibernation of one hundred
Speaker 2: million years would take quite an appetite.
Speaker 1: It really sound like the screenwriters are talking themselves out
Speaker 1: of the whole premise here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like the professor, the skeptical professors make a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. But then from across the room, we
Speaker 2: suddenly cut to a different character. There's a woman who's
Speaker 2: been standing against the wall in this imposing looking kind
Speaker 2: of trench coat with this like cape around it, and
Speaker 2: she butts in. She says, Professor Elson, isn't it true
Speaker 2: that ten thousand year old mammoths have been found perfectly
Speaker 2: preserved in ice, with fur still intact and meat still edible?
Speaker 2: So we're gonna learn this is Elson's assistant, Lee Hunter's
Speaker 2: she's also a paleontologist, and Elson says yes, But nevertheless,
Speaker 2: I do not buy nesbit story. Dinosaurs don't freeze for
Speaker 2: millions of years and then come back to life.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've researched mammoth that remains
Speaker 1: found in the purple frost and so forth, But I
Speaker 1: forget details about the meat being edible, But did they
Speaker 1: eat the meat?
Speaker 2: I mean, technically, is anything edible if somebody will eat it?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I guess a note to self to do
Speaker 1: more research on mammoth jerkey.
Speaker 2: I feel like this has come up at some point.
Speaker 2: Didn't we talk about a famous dinner at you like
Speaker 2: the Explorers Club in New York where they where they
Speaker 2: ate frozen mammoth remains or so that's.
Speaker 1: Ringing a bell. That's ringing a bell. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you may be right.
Speaker 2: So Nesbit leaves, and then Lee Hunter here tells Elson
Speaker 2: when he first came to this country, I attended his
Speaker 2: lectures on the curative properties of the radioactive isotope. He's
Speaker 2: a brilliant man. Isn't his story in any way feasible?
Speaker 2: So she's trying to find a way to get there,
Speaker 2: but Elson says, nope, sorry. I like him, I want
Speaker 2: to help him, but I just don't believe it. And
Speaker 2: then also throughout the scene, they're talking about how Elson
Speaker 2: is about to take his first vacation ever. I think
Speaker 2: he's never been on vacation before. He's always been down
Speaker 2: in his work, but now he's about to go to
Speaker 2: somewhere on holiday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those vacation days rolled over. So he's about to Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's about to go to I don't know, oh man,
Speaker 1: Panama City for twelve months, I don't know, three years
Speaker 1: of vacation.
Speaker 2: So back at the hospital, Nesbit is licking his wounds.
Speaker 2: And there's a funny thing that We've got radio announcers
Speaker 2: that say a lot of funny stuff in this movie.
Speaker 2: Hear what the radio announcer says is this is your
Speaker 2: hour of mirth and melody. They say music has charms
Speaker 2: to soothe the savage beast. They ought to try it
Speaker 2: on these sea monsters we keep hearing about. From Marquette, Canada.
Speaker 2: Today comes word of a second ship that was destroyed
Speaker 2: by a beast. According to a captain, George LeMay, he
Speaker 2: really ought to stop smoking that stuff and try Virginia Golds,
Speaker 2: the sponsor of today's probably you know, so, I wonder
Speaker 2: what that's rephras is in nineteen fifty three and he's
Speaker 2: talking about smoking that stuff. Was that common parlance then about?
Speaker 1: Oh? I don't know. Oh, you know, I will say
Speaker 1: that one of the radio announcers in the film, uncredited
Speaker 1: is MERV Griffin. But I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: merv Griffin in this point at this point or not.
Speaker 2: Could be so. Lee Hunter, the paleontologist, comes to Nesbit's
Speaker 2: office to follow up, and she talks about how she
Speaker 2: is sympathetic to his story because she says, I have
Speaker 2: a deep, abiding faith in the work of scientists, and
Speaker 2: I was like, is this the work of scientists? It
Speaker 2: sounds like a single scientist claiming he saw a monster?
Speaker 1: Is that what we don't say? Trust all scientists is not.
Speaker 1: That's not how science works.
Speaker 2: Right, to be clear, No trust in science. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: about the process, not so much about like anything a
Speaker 2: scientist says is true.
Speaker 1: A scientist has a very strong opinion that he cannot
Speaker 1: prove about something outside of his particular discipline in science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's believe him.
Speaker 2: Absolutely anyway, So Hunter and Nesbit decide to work together.
Speaker 2: She has Nesbit tried to identify the animal he saw
Speaker 2: from illustrations of dinosaurs, and I should note that all
Speaker 2: of these would be artists interpretations based on fossil skeletons,
Speaker 2: not like photos shots. Y. Yeah, but they're working over it.
Speaker 2: And she she brings coffee and Hunter says, careful, I
Speaker 2: make coffee strong enough to compete in the Olympics, and
Speaker 2: they have a kind of flirty chat while they're doing
Speaker 2: this work. So Hunter describes how she became Elson's assistant. Basically,
Speaker 2: she she's like, I was his most annoying student. I
Speaker 2: was always challenging him and arguing with him. But he
Speaker 2: was a good teacher and he respected her grit. So
Speaker 2: he's like, come on, you can be my assistant. And
Speaker 2: so clearly they have a very positive working relationship. But
Speaker 2: then they start but then Nesbit and a Hunter start
Speaker 2: kind of flirting with each other. Nesbit says, between us,
Speaker 2: we span the ages. You deal with the past and
Speaker 2: I with the future. And then she says how uncomplicated
Speaker 2: the past was, and he says, and how bright the
Speaker 2: future can be.
Speaker 1: All right, Just so, yeah, the match made in heaven.
Speaker 1: Atomic science and paleontology.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they keep digging through all these sketches of
Speaker 2: dinosaurs and then eventually they land on one. He pulls
Speaker 2: one out and he's like, this is it. This is
Speaker 2: the creature I saw. And I thought it's funny because
Speaker 2: the one he picks out is like a way more
Speaker 2: vivid illustration than all the others. It's like a water
Speaker 2: color and all the others are sketches with pencil.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like the most impressive of the stills
Speaker 1: from the art department here, like this one's in color.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is it. The one I saw was
Speaker 1: in color.
Speaker 2: So they identified the dinosaur as the Retosaurus or the Raidosaurus.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, this is not a real dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Correct and shockingly has not become a dinosaur. You'd think somebody,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's different in different scientific disciplines, but
Speaker 1: nobody has been able to push through this is the
Speaker 1: name of a newly discovered dinosaur either.
Speaker 2: So when they find this picture, Hunter is convinced and
Speaker 2: Nesbit's like, I know what it is now, and they
Speaker 2: get the idea, we could prove it if we could
Speaker 2: get Captain George LeMay from this boat in Canada to like,
Speaker 2: if we could cross reference it with him, and he
Speaker 2: could say, also, that's the thing he saw. That would
Speaker 2: prove it. I don't know if that would prove it,
Speaker 2: but that's what they believe. So they call him on
Speaker 2: the phone and U and Nesbit has to speak French
Speaker 2: to this guy, so there's a lot of wei wei.
Speaker 2: But then the captain doesn't want to hear about it.
Speaker 2: So he hangs up, and then I was confused about this.
Speaker 2: The telephone operator seems to know a lot about the
Speaker 2: captain's the operators like he's a stubborn old man, especially
Speaker 2: on the subject of sea serpents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess this is how it used
Speaker 1: to work. I mean, my understanding of old timey telephones
Speaker 1: and tell phone operators is mostly based on what pops
Speaker 1: up in old movies and TV shows. But I guess
Speaker 1: it was like a local telephone operator who just knows everybody,
Speaker 1: listens into all the calls.
Speaker 2: She's been on the line the whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so after this, Nesbit flies up to Canada to
Speaker 2: meet le May in person. You might try calling a
Speaker 2: second time.
Speaker 1: First, but he ain't answering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. He flies up, he can't find the captain,
Speaker 2: I think he's left town, but instead finds the other
Speaker 2: guy from the boat, the first mate. He is lying
Speaker 2: in a hospital bed surrounded by French nuns, and Nesbit
Speaker 2: goes up to him and he's like, look, buddy, I
Speaker 2: promise you if you come to New York, there are
Speaker 2: going to be a lot of people who believe your story.
Speaker 2: So Nesbit brings the boat guy to New York to
Speaker 2: meet Elson, and Elson is he has this talk with
Speaker 2: Lee Hunter where he's like, well, I could lose my
Speaker 2: job and my reputation for listening to this, but Lee,
Speaker 2: I don't want to mess up budding romance, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna hear him out as a favor to you. And
Speaker 2: then also he reads this historical anecdote about a professor
Speaker 2: from the eighteenth century who was disciplined by the Royal
Speaker 2: Society because he claimed he saw leprechauns uprooting of venerated
Speaker 2: campus oak. So Nesbit arrives with his witness and Nesbit
Speaker 2: when he gets there, he's already gloating about how you know,
Speaker 2: they tried to put Galileo in jail for saying the
Speaker 2: Earth was round, but it turns out he was right,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry to be pedantic. That is not what
Speaker 2: Galileo got in trouble, for everybody knew the Earth was round.
Speaker 2: It was about whether the Earth goes around the Sun anyway.
Speaker 2: So this is also one of the cases where there's
Speaker 2: more like skeptic versus believer dialogue here, And it's one
Speaker 2: of those times in movies where the skeptic that we're
Speaker 2: supposed to be rooting against makes good points, and the
Speaker 2: hero that whose side were supposed to be on keeps
Speaker 2: saying things that don't make sense or are logical fallacies.
Speaker 2: So they have this exchange where Nesbit's like, if a
Speaker 2: particle of the sun broke off and flew into space,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't consider the man who brought that news to
Speaker 2: be insane. As a scientist, I would examine every facet
Speaker 2: of it. Uh, And then Elson makes the reasonable points like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but that would we would know. We would know about
Speaker 2: that because people would see it, like you would have
Speaker 2: direct evidence of it. And then Nesbit says if it
Speaker 2: broke off, it would make no difference if one saw it,
Speaker 2: or if no one at all saw it, it would
Speaker 2: still be the same as the monster. It still is.
Speaker 2: And I was just thinking, wait, I mean, obviously things
Speaker 2: are whether somebody sees them or not. But the question
Speaker 2: is does Elson have any evidence, like did yeah, other
Speaker 2: than the sky just saying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so far he has nothing concrete to present here, Right,
Speaker 1: he saw it. We have another guy who may have
Speaker 1: seen it, and that said no footprints, no, no no
Speaker 1: body nothing.
Speaker 2: Nesbit's just within like not understanding the nature of the critique.
Speaker 2: But anyway, okay, things are about to change because this
Speaker 2: guy from Canada comes into the room, the guy from
Speaker 2: the boat. He is shown the drawings of the dinosaurs
Speaker 2: and he picks out the same drawing that Nesbit did.
Speaker 2: Elson is immediately a convert. He's like, oh, okay, let's
Speaker 2: call the president. I think there's a dinosaur. And so
Speaker 2: they put Elson on the phone with Colonel Evans and
Speaker 2: he says, this is a quote. I'm convinced that this
Speaker 2: creature exists, and I'm willing to stake my reputation on
Speaker 2: the one eighty is hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, two people pick the same photo. What are
Speaker 1: the chances? What are the same chances? The same picture
Speaker 1: other not photo.
Speaker 2: Now, after this we get to a great scene, which
Speaker 2: is the attack on the lighthouse. Yes we mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 2: but whatever you're calling it. The dinosaur, the monster, the lizard,
Speaker 2: the retosaurus. It crawls up up on this rocky shore
Speaker 2: in Maine and it's up there on the boulders and
Speaker 2: we see the lighthouse in silhouette. They've got like a
Speaker 2: miniature model of it against the you know, the the
Speaker 2: black sky in the background with the light on up top,
Speaker 2: and then we cut inside and we have the two
Speaker 2: lighthouse keepers who are talking about their favorite body songs.
Speaker 2: One guy's like, I like songs about gin and women
Speaker 2: and another ones like, oh, I like the you know,
Speaker 2: the sad sad tales. Uh. And you know they're having
Speaker 2: a back and forth, and then suddenly this monster is outside,
Speaker 2: like raw and it looks in through the window. So
Speaker 2: there's like a shot where you see it's face through
Speaker 2: the glass and there's rain falling outside, and it's very
Speaker 2: spooky because the monster in this shot looks like a
Speaker 2: snake with fangs. Did you notice that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah. And indeed, these scenes I think are this
Speaker 1: scene and the Arctic scene are both key because again,
Speaker 1: the most iconic sequences from this film are rampaging and
Speaker 1: broad daylight in New York, and those are impressive sequences,
Speaker 1: but I think we get a bit more of a
Speaker 1: horror atmosphere in these two earlier sequences.
Speaker 2: I love the way it looks later when you can
Speaker 2: get a good look at it, but I agree in
Speaker 2: the earlier scenes it's much creepier. Yeah, So we get
Speaker 2: some different things going on. In the meantime, there is
Speaker 2: one scene where somebody goes to I think it's the Kernel,
Speaker 2: following up on Elson vouching for the idea of the dinosaur,
Speaker 2: and he goes to a military buddy of his and
Speaker 2: he's like, look, I want you to come and report
Speaker 2: back to me if there are any freak happenings. And
Speaker 2: the guy's like, okay, I'll let you know about free
Speaker 2: happenings and let.
Speaker 1: Me know about the freak happenings. Daddy O. I think
Speaker 1: it's an invite to a drum circle. Later and it's
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, I n monster.
Speaker 2: Attacks and then Nesbit and Hunter also they go to
Speaker 2: the ballet they get box seats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in kind of a padding zone.
Speaker 2: In the picture at this point, but much like Godzilla,
Speaker 2: we see characters eventually figuring out they're kind of mapping
Speaker 2: contact points along along the sea coast and they notice
Speaker 2: that the monster is like it's here, and it's here,
Speaker 2: and it's here, and it's plotting a course for the metropolis.
Speaker 2: So they start talking about what can be done about
Speaker 2: this creature. Elson, the paleontologist, does not want the creature killed.
Speaker 2: He wants to study it to understand it, and he
Speaker 2: says I know what we'll do. I'm going to survey
Speaker 2: the undersea canyons where we think the monster is traveling.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do that in person in a diving
Speaker 2: bell to see it for myself. And if I see it,
Speaker 2: then I can think up a means of capture safely
Speaker 2: capturing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now this leads to the diving bell slash Bathisphere scene,
Speaker 2: which is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
Speaker 2: I thought this whole sequence is great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is really tremendous, builds up some wonderful tension.
Speaker 1: You don't want anything bad to happen to the professor,
Speaker 1: even though certainly by modern standards, you know it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. And this also brings back memories from our
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen episodes about the Bathisphere, about the actual underwater
Speaker 1: exploration device, vehicle, enclosure, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in this sort of thing, go
Speaker 1: look those episodes up in the backlog.
Speaker 2: The short pitch on the Bathisphere, which is kind of
Speaker 2: horrifying if you think about it, is that it was
Speaker 2: a device used to observe deep underwater. It was not
Speaker 2: a powered submarine, it had no propulsion of its own.
Speaker 2: It was basically just an enclosed ball, metal ball that
Speaker 2: was dangled off of a boat, way way down deep
Speaker 2: into the water. So if that line falls, you're just
Speaker 2: going down.
Speaker 1: And he claimed to see in some cases things that
Speaker 1: have never been fully verified. So it's a really interesting story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Bathisphere very interesting. But I love the part
Speaker 2: in the movie here where there's this almost ceremonial ceiling
Speaker 2: of the old scientist inside the bell, and Elson is
Speaker 2: just giddy. He's not afraid all really, he's so excited
Speaker 2: about what he's going to get to see down there.
Speaker 1: To give him his coffee, right, he gets a kiss, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then seal him in. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They're trying to Yeah, they're trying to give him drama.
Speaker 2: Mean He's like, I don't need that. I don't need
Speaker 2: my drama. Mean, I'm just I'm high on life, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm ready. But also I love here the underwater landscape
Speaker 2: they achieve with these models and sets. You've got these tall,
Speaker 2: thin spires of undersea rock that look like giant tree trunks,
Speaker 2: and then this tiny diving bell hanging in the black.
Speaker 2: And as they're descending, the professor says, I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm leaving a world of untold Tomorrow's for a world
Speaker 2: of countless yesterdays.
Speaker 1: The screenwriters keep touching on this idea, like of the
Speaker 1: past meeting tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something going on there. I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what it is, maybe maybe suggesting something about barbarity, or
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into that.
Speaker 2: They've got some kind of past future thing.
Speaker 1: It might be there. I think it might might legitimately
Speaker 1: be there. So yeah, I think it's a valid reading.
Speaker 2: But then when they get down to the bottom, so
Speaker 2: he's looking out the window and he sees an octopus,
Speaker 2: and then he sees a shark, and then he says, oh,
Speaker 2: there appears to be a slight difference of opinion between
Speaker 2: two of the local inhabitants, and the shark and the
Speaker 2: octopus start fighting each other. But then oh, a third
Speaker 2: animal makes an appearance, and it is our ritosaurus. It
Speaker 2: is the monster, and Elson is astonished. He's got this
Speaker 2: little wired telephone that he uses to call the ship above.
Speaker 2: He demands that they put Hunter on the line. He's like,
Speaker 2: get these military officers off the line. I need to
Speaker 2: talk to my assistant. So she gets on the line
Speaker 2: and he starts making like anatomical observations. He's like, the
Speaker 2: upper clavicle is cantileveric, and then he's like making these
Speaker 2: kind of observations. But then suddenly the line goes dead
Speaker 2: and we don't see what happened below. He's just looking
Speaker 2: and he's talking and the line goes dead. What happened?
Speaker 2: Obviously it did not end well, and we are I think,
Speaker 2: just left to assume that the monster has eaten the
Speaker 2: diving bell. Yeah, and so here we get more monologues
Speaker 2: like after the fact reflecting from Hunter, where she's very sad.
Speaker 2: You know, Elson was like a father to her. She
Speaker 2: reiterates again that you know, he was about to take
Speaker 2: his first vacation ever, and we see Nesbit comforting her
Speaker 2: while she mourns. But then there's not much time left
Speaker 2: for morning because about now we're gonna have the New
Speaker 2: York attack. So during this sequence, the dinosaur rises up
Speaker 2: out of a harbor around Manhattan, so comes up on
Speaker 2: the docks, first seen by doc workers who run away,
Speaker 2: and then everybody starts noticing. They run screaming as the
Speaker 2: dinosaur comes up onto the shore and then onto the
Speaker 2: streets between the buildings and is making his way down
Speaker 2: the avenue. There's one thing that's almost funny, where there's
Speaker 2: this policeman grimly squaring off against the dinosaur, drawing his
Speaker 2: weapon and just standing there scowling. He takes a while
Speaker 2: to finally shoot, but then he does start shooting at it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work. The dinosaur eats him and we see
Speaker 2: his legs wiggling outside of the dinosaur's mouth. We see
Speaker 2: the creature crushing cars with its feet with this brigade
Speaker 2: of cops with shotguns come out of the precinct and
Speaker 2: start blasting it to drive it back. This whole sequence
Speaker 2: is pretty awesome, Rob, I don't know what else you
Speaker 2: want to highlight from here.
Speaker 1: Ah, No, it is just an awesome sequence. It's very iconic.
Speaker 1: I think if people have seen any clips from the
Speaker 1: film or any stills, they've probably seen this sequence. And
Speaker 1: it just it does. It looks amazing. It creates a
Speaker 1: very believable sense of early fifties New York being attacked
Speaker 1: by a giant monster. And again like broad broad daylight, yes,
Speaker 1: but still great use of shadows, just terrific.
Speaker 2: Stuff, chases people into the subway. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 2: get another radio report, so the radio announcer says New
Speaker 2: York is like a city besieged. A state of emergency
Speaker 2: has been declared and the entire police force put on
Speaker 2: twenty four hour duty. Civilian defense is fully mobilized, and
Speaker 2: shelters have been opened in an effort to stop the
Speaker 2: mounting hysteria. All traffic has been halted and Times Square,
Speaker 2: the heart of New York, has stopped beating.
Speaker 1: Several elmos have been eaten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Superman, where is he now? The National Guard has
Speaker 2: been called out, fully armed to repel the invader. This
Speaker 2: is full scale war against a terrible enemy such as
Speaker 2: modern man has never before faced. Ordinary bullets have no effect,
Speaker 2: and a method of destroying the awesome creature has not
Speaker 2: yet been formulated. But the battlefield has been cleared. Harald Square,
Speaker 2: thirty four Street, Broadway, every section of the city is guarded.
Speaker 2: No one knows where the monster will strike next. It
Speaker 2: was last seen on Wall Street, close to where it
Speaker 2: came ashore, but Lower Manhattan has become no man's land,
Speaker 2: where the beast at present lies hidden. The National Guard
Speaker 2: is barricading the entire area in an effort to confine
Speaker 2: the death and destruction of what is already the worst
Speaker 2: disaster in New York's history.
Speaker 1: Wow, so even worse than the King Kong thing decades earlier,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: So. Yeah, And we do see some of the aftermath,
Speaker 2: like we see hospitals afterwards, where the doctors are going
Speaker 2: through checking on people, and it really emphasizes the monster
Speaker 2: attack as a disaster with aftermath, not just like a
Speaker 2: conflict between the monster and the military.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's not just people that have you know,
Speaker 1: clearly there's a lot of chaos and destruction, but also
Speaker 1: this sense that it's like making people sick. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it has these different spiraling consequences.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I did like that it was I think rather nuanced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people with fevers and stuff afterwards. So after this,
Speaker 2: you get more scenes of the armed forces versus the Retosaurus.
Speaker 2: They're coming out with bazukas. They've got electrified wire fence
Speaker 2: put up, and they can sort of drive the monster
Speaker 2: back but apparently not kill it. It seems somehow invincible.
Speaker 2: And then they there's a strange observation like soldiers who
Speaker 2: go hunting after the dinosaur after they blast it with
Speaker 2: some weapons, start becoming weak and feverish, and they're collapsing
Speaker 2: in the street. Turns out, in addition to everything else,
Speaker 2: the animal's blood carries a horrible virus that can infect
Speaker 2: and kill humans, and contact with this blood can be fatal.
Speaker 2: So this leads them to realize, Okay, we thought we
Speaker 2: could stop the creature by bombing it, but we can't
Speaker 2: bomb it because that will spread particles of this virus
Speaker 2: into the air, which will spread and kill more people.
Speaker 2: So how can we feed it without spilling its blood?
Speaker 2: Very interesting problem that will be replicated in other stories,
Speaker 2: but mainly the ones I'm thinking of come later. Like
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of Alien. In the original Alien, this is
Speaker 2: a big part of the plot a different reason there.
Speaker 2: In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo figure out that
Speaker 2: the xenomorph has acidic blood that could eat through the
Speaker 2: hull of the spacecraft and kill everybody if they you know,
Speaker 2: blow it up or whatever. So they're like, how are
Speaker 2: we going to deal with it without spilling this acidic
Speaker 2: blood and you know, maybe getting vented into space because
Speaker 2: it ate through the hull. And different thing going on here,
Speaker 2: but it results in the same thing is like, we've
Speaker 2: got to find a way to fight the creature without
Speaker 2: getting its gore out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Nesbit comes in to save the day because
Speaker 2: he's like, I've got it, you know, Colonel Jack. There's
Speaker 2: one way to beat him my personal specialization, which is
Speaker 2: radioactive isotopes.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And so in this they will forge the
Speaker 1: special weapon that can be used against the beast. In
Speaker 1: this we really get into this crazy ending for the picture,
Speaker 1: and I think it really the ending really puts the
Speaker 1: film over the top. And again it's not even that
Speaker 1: crazy of a formula. We have a secret weapon to
Speaker 1: use against a giant monster, we have knowledge of a
Speaker 1: singular weak spot to aim at, and we need a
Speaker 1: skilled marksman hero to deploy the weapon. Again, pretty much
Speaker 1: the exact same formula for killing the Dragon's smog and
Speaker 1: the Hobbit, and just a common monster slaying formula throughout
Speaker 1: mythic and ancient literature. We see it, for example, in
Speaker 1: the North of volsunga Saga, the ancient Mesopotamian and Numa
Speaker 1: a Leish, the Romagnina the as well as the Argonautica
Speaker 1: and concerning respectively the monsters Fafnir, tiamat, Ravana, Talaus, and
Speaker 1: again there are many others from many other different cultures
Speaker 1: and traditions. It's a basic formula, and in this the
Speaker 1: Beast from twenty thousand fathoms is again like nicely positioned
Speaker 1: within the canon of deep human history and monster slang.
Speaker 1: Truly one of our oldest myths, but the movie puts
Speaker 1: things over the top in a most delightful manner. So
Speaker 1: the Beast here is rampage. They've kind of you again.
Speaker 1: These wars between local police and military and the National
Speaker 1: Guard against the Beasts have been raging all over the city,
Speaker 1: across all the burroughs, and now almost like the I guess,
Speaker 1: like the end of the Warriors, the action has been
Speaker 1: pushed to Coney Island and the Beast is rampaging through
Speaker 1: the wooden roller coaster, the Coney Island Cyclone built nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, so it's just shy of one hundred years old,
Speaker 1: still active. You can still ride this thing. I never have.
Speaker 1: I've only done the Wonder Wheel. But yeah, it's rampaging,
Speaker 1: breaking up the Coney Island Cyclone, and it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that the only way that our marksmen, Corporal Stone, this
Speaker 1: is Lee van Cleef, who, like you know, they proudly
Speaker 1: basically they have the weapon. It's like an isotope weapon
Speaker 1: that it's on the front of a rifle something radioactive.
Speaker 2: They're carrying it around in this giant lead.
Speaker 1: Case like Holy hand grenaders.
Speaker 2: So they have to like lift it out of its
Speaker 2: containment because obviously I guess it's ionizing everything around it.
Speaker 2: They put it on the end of a rifle like
Speaker 2: a harpoon, and then Lee van Cleef has to get
Speaker 2: up on the on the roller coaster to shoot it
Speaker 2: at the animal's weak spot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have questions about the ballistics of that, but
Speaker 1: fair enough, we have our special weapon. And they're like,
Speaker 1: who's who's the best marksman. You've got military dudes, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's stone. And then you know, Lee
Speaker 1: van Cleef comes out and he's like, well, you need
Speaker 1: me to do it. Shoot a giant monster. You got it.
Speaker 1: But it becomes clear that they don't have the proper
Speaker 1: vantage point. The only way they can get the proper
Speaker 1: vantage point to make the shot and hit that one
Speaker 1: weak spot on the creature is to ride the half
Speaker 1: destroyed roller coaster up to the very crest. And that's
Speaker 1: what our protagonist and our monster slayer, Le Van Cleef,
Speaker 1: are gonna do. They put on these really kind of
Speaker 1: creepy radio suits. Like you said, they have the box
Speaker 1: with the isotope weapon in it, and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: fire up this half destroyed roller coaster. We're going to
Speaker 1: go up there and do it.
Speaker 2: Brilliant. Yeah, And then also we get to see like
Speaker 2: they go up to the top of the crest and
Speaker 2: the coaster and then the cars go on without them,
Speaker 2: so like they go sliding down and they watch them
Speaker 2: crash and explode, and the Stone gets the shot off,
Speaker 2: it goes into the wound in the monster's neck. The
Speaker 2: isotope gets in there, sickens the monster, and then we
Speaker 2: see it kind of pacing around, clearly suffering. There's something
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of pathos there. You almost feel
Speaker 2: sad for the monster a little bit, and then kind
Speaker 2: of it becomes weak and then it falls down and dies.
Speaker 2: The whole roller coaster is on fire, by the way,
Speaker 2: fire on the coaster. Nesbit and Corporal Stone get back.
Speaker 2: Nesbit hugs with Lee Hunter and the monsters dead and
Speaker 2: that's the end, very abrupt ending, like a lot of
Speaker 2: these fifties monster movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of them do follow this formula.
Speaker 1: What the monster has been killed, the authorities killed the monster.
Speaker 1: At the end, everybody can home, can go home happy
Speaker 1: and safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not even not even he tampered in God's domain.
Speaker 2: Not even a single line of comment. It's just monsters dead.
Speaker 2: The whole thing's over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what an ending. Yeah, I was not prepared.
Speaker 1: I was barely prepared for le Van Kleef to show
Speaker 1: up and just do all the hero work and then
Speaker 1: the roller coaster amazing, So just maximum points for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think really well put together ending. The
Speaker 2: climax really works, I would say, especially because of some weird, unusual,
Speaker 2: very inspired choices of visual texture that go in there,
Speaker 2: primarily setting it at the roller coaster and the use
Speaker 2: of those super creepy looking radiation suits the costumes. Really
Speaker 2: they put you in a different mood for the end here,
Speaker 2: something like our heroes have become kind of monstrous themselves,
Speaker 2: and they don't look they don't look nice in those
Speaker 2: radiations ses. It's very creepy look and so something I
Speaker 2: don't know. It really works right at the end, especially.
Speaker 1: And I also liked that they did have to go
Speaker 1: the extra mile and do the extra daring deed to
Speaker 1: pull off the shot because a lot of these movies
Speaker 1: end with more of an abrupt Oh, authorities are here,
Speaker 1: shoot the monster and it's done, whereas like true heroics
Speaker 1: and a little extra daring did have to go into
Speaker 1: the finish here and it makes it just makes it.
Speaker 1: It makes it far more dramatically satisfying.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so enjoyed it. I like the pick rub Oh yeah, thanks, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun with this one, and again,
Speaker 1: great to see it on the big screen. I encourage
Speaker 1: everyone out there, if you get a chance to see
Speaker 1: any giant monster movie on the big screen, do it,
Speaker 1: because the monsters are bigger that way. That's what the
Speaker 1: format exists for.
Speaker 2: If only they'd had to IMAX back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, so that said the Beast from twenty
Speaker 1: thousand fathoms, though I was never really clear of the
Speaker 1: Beast was truly from twenty thousand fathoms or if it
Speaker 1: just visited twenty thousand fathoms at times.
Speaker 2: So it's from the it was in the ice right, yeah,
Speaker 2: where the ice is on the top of the ocean,
Speaker 2: not at the bottom.
Speaker 1: But it's built from twenty thousand fathoms. It's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's maybe this a show business speak.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe it went twenty thousand Fathoms after it
Speaker 2: came out of the ice, but before it went to
Speaker 2: New York City, because that's where the professor goes down
Speaker 2: to see it.
Speaker 1: I remember, yeah, But once it gets to New York City,
Speaker 1: it can immediately say it's from New York City. I
Speaker 1: think those are the rules. It is officially in New Yorker.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna go and close it out there.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this one.
Speaker 1: If you have experience with the Beast from twenty Thousand
Speaker 1: Fathoms or other Ray Harry Howsen films that you are
Speaker 1: particularly fond of, and you'd like for us to cover
Speaker 1: in the future, right in, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Just a reminder that Steft to Bow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with corpisodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: here on Weird House Cinema. You can find us on
Speaker 1: various social media formats ays stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: but on Letterboxed we exist there just as Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Look us up our name there is Weird House, and
Speaker 1: you can find a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered over the years and sometimes if peek ahead at
Speaker 1: what comes next.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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