BW Media Spotlight

As fan of both 50s monster movies and Japanese kaiju films I’m surprised it has taken me this long to watch The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Not only was it one of the early giant monster goes on a rampage movies but it inspired Ishiro Honda to create Godzilla, with a Japanese perspective on the atomic bomb. (Obviously their perspective is different from ours in the United States but a lot of monster movies came from a fear of the atomic bomb and misused atomic energy as much as it did worries about communists.) And yet I only saw it today thanks to a recording of MeTV’s Svengoolie. I’ll be sparing you the bad puns but there was some interesting trivia attached as well.

Based on a story Ray Bradbury wrote in the Saturday Evening Post, later re-titled The Fog Horn (where the lighthouse destruction scene comes from), the story was brought to the attention of the producers by another famous Ray, Ray Harryhausen, who ended up doing the effects though originally they wanted Harryhausen’s old mentor Willis O’Brien of King Kong fame. It also features a cameo by Lee Van Clef, who only got billed in the TV guide description because of his more famous later works. All he does is fire a grenade near the end of the film. It’s a 50s monster movie so of course the hero here is the scientist.

RELEASE DATE: 1953

RELEASED BY: Warner Brothers

RUNTIME: 1 hours, 20 minutes (2 hours for the TV Svengoolie version with added trivia and comedy)

STARRING: Paul Hubschmid (as Paul Christian), Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, and Kenneth Tobey

DIRECTOR: Eugène Lourié

WRITERS: Lou Morheim, based on a short story by Ray Bradbury

PRODUCERS: Bernard W. Burton, Hal E. Chester, and Jack Dietz

GROSS INCOME: IMDB doesn’t list it, just the estimated budget of $210,000

Continue reading →