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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Atomic Horror.

  
 
moriarty
23:23 / 07.09.02
One of my all time favourite genres is the Atomic Horror movies, mainly from the 50s, namely movies that deal with horror along a scientific or pseudo-scientific rationale(rather than supernatural or mundane). I have quite the extensive collection copied from late night horror marathons. Though I'm not nearly as obsessive as many fans of the genre, I do have a deep appreciation for these gems, and have gone so far as to film an homage to them (Giant Ants - The Movie). On a recent trip to Montreal I found a video store that carried Earth vs. the Spider, in which the local high school rock n' roll band wakes the giant spider that the authorities are keeping in the school gym.

Another aspect of this genre, though it's practically a genre of its own, is the kaiju films of Japan, most famous for the Godzilla series. Tonight, prompted by my recent read of the Godzilla vs. Devil Dinosaur comic, I'll be watching my fourth favourite Big G flick, Destroy All Monsters.

The funny thing is that I actually, really enjoy these films. I can't say they scare me, but when I let my guard down, I find that they're good fun. Some of my favourites include...

The Fly - Ah, what a classic ending. I just rewatched this one after finding out that I had it on tape without realizing it. Two years ago I went out for Halloween as the Fly. I had a mask made of pantyhose and tiny pasta strainers, arranged in such a way that you couldn't figure out how I managed to cobble it together. Nobody could figure out who I was, and the only clue I gave them was the occasional high-pitched "help me...help me..." Not strictly canonical, but it had to do.

Godzilla vs. Monster Zero - Made at the height of the classic Godzilla era. A great cast of characters, fantastic fights, really sexy aliens, and one truly scary moment. This one just edges out Godzilla vs. Mothra for my affections.

King Kong - The greatest monster movie of all time. Sorry, let me try that again. The Greatest Monster Movie of All Time! Also one of the greatest movies, period. Pure, brilliant, poignant cinema. And Fay Wray, to boot!

So, similar to the many zombie threads, I was wondering if anyone here feels the same.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:06 / 08.09.02
Fiend Without a Face - Slightly deranged scientist, living on an army base with a nuclear reactor, pushes his experiments too far. Local people start dying, all in the same manner - two puncture marks on their heads, brains and spinal cords missing. 'Mental vampires'. And sure enough, when you see them the word 'mental' sums the monster up precisely.


Them - Surely the best-known atomic monster movie. Like it says on one of the fansites, "You will never see ants or say the word "them" in the same way again."

Funny how these are all monster-flicks. The atomic threat seemed to latch onto the idea of nature gone awry and hardly ever seemed to try something different. Apart, of course, from one of the best films ever made:

The Incredible Shrinking Man - Okay, so it's SF rather than horror, but there are horror moments in it, the 'giant' spider being the most obvious. The special effects still stand up today and the (((SPOILERS))) ending is absolutely beautiful.

Oh, and The Blob is and always will be shit. Yes it's unintentionally funny, yes it's quaint. Unintentionally funny and quaint do not a good movie make. The only thing it's got going for it is the Bacharach-penned theme tune.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:23 / 08.09.02
My God. How could I foget Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Pod-people! A big warehouse full of the blighters! I don't know if it really qualifies as Atomic Horror in the way you mean, moriarty, in that the threat hasn't come about as a result of an atomic leak/scientific meddling/nature taking revenge, but I'll argue for its inclusion on the grounds that it deals with the same themes as a lot of other movies in the genre - cold war paranoia, impending doom at the hands of an unknown, outside force.

In the same vein:

Invaders from Mars - Brilliant paranoia-fest. Young boy sees flying saucer landing behind his house. Nobody believes him. Hang on, though... could it be that nobody wants him to knw the truth... that they are all MARTIAN LOOK-A-LIKES WHO'VE TAKEN OVER HIS TOWN? Also features Mekon-like super-baddie and a heroine who's gradually disrobed as the film progresses.

The Thing from Another World - Turn that heater off! If memory serves, it's an interesting oddity in that not only does it have an 'open' ending (as with most of these films, the immediate threat may have been dealt with, but you're left in no doubt that there's more of these things out there somewhere and it's only a matter of time before it all kicks off again) but the heros don't actually manage to defeat individual crature/threat that they're dealing with. It's not dead when we leave it, only back in a frozen, dormant state once more.

So very many more excellent films to remember...
 
 
moriarty
01:49 / 08.09.02
Sure, add links to make me look bad.

I opened up the definition of what I'm talking about in the topic abstract, Randy. Invasion of the Body Snatchers and other paranoid-ridden alien invasion movies are fair game. In fact, I'd say Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of my favourite horror movies. I actually enjoyed all three versions, each for entirely different reasons.

Haven't seen Fiend Without A Face, but I've always wanted to. I'm a huge admirer of disembodied brain/head movies overall. I was going to mention Them, but since my email is giant_ants@hotmail.com, I thought it would be too obvious.

I know what you're saying about the open-ended nature of some of these movies. My brother and I were watching bits and pieces of Starship Troopers last night. We were amazed that they were playing it so close to September 11. The retaliation of an alien invasion ending in a constant vigilance against evil, from the inside as well as from the outside, was such a constant theme. I'm surprised that more of these movies didn't have sequels.

I love how in so many Atomic Horror movies the juvenile delinquents, in the face of an outside threat, turn out to be Good Americans after all. In the Slime People, the headlights from the kids' hot rods destroy the monsters, and a similar scene appears in the Giant Gila Monster. The same theme could be seen in the sci-horror movies of the 80s, at the height of Reagan's America. It's no surprise that the 80s spawned a good number of Atomic Horror remakes (The Blob, Invaders from Mars, The Thing, etc.)

Oh, and I liked the Blob. Both of them. Help me.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
11:40 / 08.09.02
I always justify the remakes by prtending that they're sequels. Carpenter's version of The Thing, for example, is only fulfilling the promise of the original's parting shot ("Keep watching the skies!").

I agree about Body Snatchers. One decent remake is a rare thing, but remaking a film a second time... madness. Except in this case, where each version takes the basic idea and runs in a different direction with it, so that the term 'remake' isn't entirely appropriate any more. The 80s version of The Blob is okay, too, a lot more enjoyable than the Steve McQueen version (always seemed to drag on for far too long).

The 'good fun' thing even extends to the promotional art that accompanied these films. I love some of the taglines:

"AT THIS VERY MOMENT SPACE SHIPS FROM THE BEYOND MAY BE ON THEIR WAY TO DESTROY OUR PLANET!" (War of the Worlds)

"FROM OUT OF SPACE... came hordes of green monsters!!" (Invaders from Mars)

"THE SEA'S MASTER-BEAST OF THE AGES - RAGING UP FROM THE BOTTOM OF TIME!" (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)

"Once it was human... even as you and I!! FOR YOUR OWN GOOD WE URGE YOU NOT TO SEE IT ALONE! THE MONSTER CREATED BY ATOMS GONE WILD!" (The Fly)

The red menace fear of Invaders from Mars was carried on by the awesome Quinn Martin TV show The Invaders, which, despite being made in the late-60s, feels like one of the 50s invasion movies. Owes a huge debt to Invaders from Mars in terms of plot, too - tired businessman, David Vincent, pulls his car in next to a deserted diner, only to witness the landing of a flying saucer. Spends the next couple of years trying to persuade people that the Invaders are real (complicated by the fact that they manage to rid themselves of the one problem in assuming human form - an inability to bend their little fingers - early on in the first season).

The Day the Earth Stood Still stands out from the crowd of atomic fear movies in that it tells the alien invasion story from a completely different angle. The alien is our friend, come to help and warn us off the self-destructive path we've set out on. McCarthyism and mob mentality are roundly attacked as hateful, reactionary idiocy. A plea for good-sense and individual thought. Unfortunately, the only real legacy it seems to have given us is the one that sees 'clever' directors sticking the words "Klaatu barada nikto" into their films.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:05 / 23.05.03
Had to bring this thread out of retirement because I've just watched The War of the Worlds again. It's going to sound daft, but I never noticed the fairly obvious commie-fear present in the fact that the attackers hail from the red planet.

And what marvellously shit aliens these were. I mean, RGB eyes?

There's another theme shared by a number of AH movies and that's the religious message. It's present in WotW (albeit tacked-on, the director previously revelling in the death of a priest and the depths humanity can shrink to) and also the classic When Worlds Collide, from the same producer, which includes the creation of an ark and the discovery of a new Eden.

The religious themes all tie in with the fear of science run amock seen in other movies of the time. It's possible that the renewed interest in (fairly bog standard) horror fare over the last few years is in the same vein.
 
 
grant
20:18 / 27.05.03
There's a strong religious component to The Man with X-Ray Eyes as well, which is probably about as much an Atomic Horror film as The Incredible Shrinking Man.

I think in both those cases, the fear had to do with awe... since the atom was such a primal force, the taming of it (or attempts to do so) were met with nothing less than awe.

History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men.

My favorite of the paranoia branch of these was the one with the things that glom onto people necks and take them over. It was basically a remake of the Heinlein story "The Puppet Masters," and far superior to the actual Donald Sutherland movie named "The Puppet Masters."

The Brain Eaters? You could see antenna sticking out behind the possessed people's necks.

These, by the way, are basically zombie movies. Except the zombies are directed by an alien intelligence, and zombies aren't directed by anything.

There's a religious theme for you, too.


------

For the record, The Blob freakin' rules. I got the willies from that one as a kid. Steve McQueen racing backwards! A huge fuckin' alien nobody sees! The remake does the typical late 70s-80s thing, where it's all the gummint's fault, although it's still effective.

Technical note: I took a couple classes from a guy who was on the effects crew for the remake. They made the blob out of parachute silk and the stuff that THICKENS MCDONALDS MILKSHAKES. One guy broke his ribs under the blob before they figured out how heavy it was.

-----

I also like the deadly mantis from The Deadly Mantis. Probably more due to the fact that it got replayed a lot on the local UHF station than any real merit.

Worth noting: like The Blob, it's a big fucking monster that nobody sees until it's TOO LATE.

At first, they think they've found a fang... but then they figure out it's actually a spike from a huge damn BUG'S ARM. Gotta love that.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:33 / 27.05.03
Hmm. It's a while since I've seen The Blob and I'll admit that I was probably being overly harsh on it. I remember thinking, last time I watched it, that it was over-long and included scenes that were pretty much pointless. Mind you, I was just trying to find the running time and discovered that one of its working titles was The Glob That Girdled the Globe, so I'm prepared to give it another shot.

Glad you mentioned X, grant; that's long been a favourite of mine. A wonderful pace, a brilliant combination of humour and horror and an inspired shock end, all made perfect by the presence of Ray Milland. There are scenes from that movie imprinted on my brain from the first time I watched it.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:55 / 09.02.06
The guy who composed the music for Godzilla's theme has just died, and I was interested to learn these tidbits about how they created Godzilla's unique roar (courtesy of the rare non-insane comments in Aint It Cool News talkback):

>> I've heard that Godzilla's... um... roar, or scream, or whatever it is, was created by running a pick or something down the A-string of of a bass cello. Anyway, it was done with a musical instrument, which is why Ifukube can be called the 'voice' of Godzilla.

followed by a separate post...which tells us that

>> "Ifukube created Godzilla's trademark roar - produced by rubbing a resin-covered leather glove along the loosened strings of a double bass - and its footsteps, created by striking an amplifier box."
 
 
matthew.
03:05 / 10.02.06
If I'm not mistaken, Fiend Without a Face plays a very important role in Stephen King's theory about horror movies as written in Danse Macabre (which, if you've never read and you're posting on this thread, is indispensible).
 
 
Jack Fear
11:05 / 10.02.06
You're mistaken, I think. I've got the book beside me, and though the index is pretty exhaustive, giving entries even for films and books that are mentioned only in passing, Fiend ain't there.

Are you thinking of Donovan's Brain, perhaps?
 
 
matthew.
11:18 / 10.02.06
You are 100% correct. I looked it up in my copy after posting.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:27 / 10.02.06
All these movies are great. Someone needs to do a handsomely-tooled box set of the DVDs. I'd buy it.

The Thing From Another World was on TV recently (hadn't seen it in years) and it's amazing how well it still stands up, even if, like me, you're a huge fan of the Carpenter remake. A couple of years back I went on a big Thing revival, when the game came out- I watched the Carpenter, and dug out my old copy of John W Campbell's "Who Goes There" (the story it was based on, which interestingly is actually closer to the remake than the original). Ace, it was. The only think missing was the Hawks- and, as I say, it was on recently. Thus the circle is complete.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
10:21 / 15.08.06
Just popping in to say that while it's not a '50s movie, I watched Kitamura's Gozilla: Final Wars last night, and had more fun with it than any movie I've seen in AGES.

I'm not a Godzilla fanatic (and I understand that this one has stirred some controversy over long-term G-fans... reading the online reviews of it, everyone hated it), but I loved the hell out of it.

It's like giving a six-year-old three hundred Pixie Stix and telling him to write the BEST MOVIE EVER. Aliens fly around in a geodesic dome, monsters rampage across the globe, ninjas fight on motorcycles, and a giant moth battles a combination of the Black Hole's Maximilian, Robocop and a buzzsaw while on fire. A giant armadillo rolls over Japan. A huge shrimp smashes an oil refinery or something. Of course, Godzilla stomps on everything about eight times... but is out of the action for about the first half of the picture, so it's even more impressive when he finally rises, bigger than ever, and smashes things angrily and with rekless abandon. The (human) heroes of the picture are the ubiquitous Japanese "mutant" ninja dude (who turns into a Matrix Warrior at the end of the movie, no less), and an actor I can only describe as 300 pounds of American Meat with a bad-ass moustache who pilots a giant flying screw. There's sort of a plot, but basically it's just ninjas and monsters and explosions and aliens in kinky leather outfits for two hours.

This is Kitamura going apeshit in the Godzilla sandbox. Recommended for your inner eight-year-old, but probably not if you take the Godzilla canon super-seriously.
 
 
grant
18:23 / 17.08.06
Oddly, the same day you posted that, a review copy of a new DVD box set came into the office and right into my sticky hands. It's the original Japanese version of Gojira, apparently the first time it's been released on DVD (or to the English-speaking market, I guess). Comes packaged with the American re-edit with Raymond Burr in it.

The PR material says the original is a lot less trashy & more meditative, but I'm witholding judgment until I see the thing for myself.
 
 
Chiropteran
18:38 / 17.08.06
The Gojira DVD is out??

*runs and checks*

Okay, street date (according to Amazon) is September 5. I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer. Let us know what you think, Grant!
 
 
Henningjohnathan
15:14 / 23.08.06
A Korean monster movie called THE HOST following a sort of Godzilla type creature and plotline recently broke box office records in that country. Looking forward to an American release.
 
 
grant
15:35 / 28.08.06
Gojira is sublime. The second quarter of the film felt to me like nothing as much as waiting for the hurricane to come -- starts with people chatting about shelters, then descends into oppressive shadows, evacuations. And the noise the thing's footsteps make.... people know it's coming.

That's the thing -- I just realized. The film was obviously done by people who'd seen something large and horrifying happen in their own lives. They knew it was coming. They just didn't know what it was.

I can't remember if the scientist finds the trilobite in the footprint in the American version. He does in the Japanese. I know (from reading the nice liner notes) that the American version didn't have the mother huddled in the doorway, city in flames around her, telling her small child "Don't be frightened -- we'll be with your father soon! Very soon now!"

All about that waiting.

It's a physically dark film, too -- the B/W is very moody, and manages to conceal a lot of the goofiness around the rubber suit. It's almost impressionistic -- silhouettes of this lumpy, organic thing overwhelming the geometric icons of technological prowess. Cables, power pylons, tanks -- if it shines or gleams or dissects the sky, Godzilla will destroy it. He's all soft and bumpy and grotesque. He's organic.

According to the liner notes, the movie was actually inspired by an incident that's been all but forgotten -- the year before Gojira came out, a Japanese fishing boat strayed too close to one of the American nuclear tests in the South Pacific and got blown up. The filmmakers had seen Hiroshima, but it was on a flight from Indonesia that the producer looked out the window, thought about the ocean, thought about the accident and the diplomatic fallout (or lack thereof), and came up with the idea. The Beast from 10,000 Fathoms had just done well in the States, too. But from the outset, this wasn't about the dinosaur -- it was using the dinosaur to represent the Bomb.

And the real conflict in the film isn't between the humans and Godzilla. It's between the scientist who thinks the creature deserves to live, and the victims who want to find a way to hunt it down and kill it. It's about aggression vs. pacificism.

So it's kind of amazing -- the rubber-suit kind of fades into the background, almost.
 
  
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