Shocking Scenes in 1950s Sci-Fi: Special “I can’t believe my parents let me watch that stuff!” Edition

In the all-encompassing, 24/7 infotainment/social media bubble we live in, the things that shock, frighten and disgust us keep changing and mutating like the titular monster in the remakes of The Thing from Another World. (Guess what -- since the original and the remakes didn’t shock or disgust us quite enough, Hollywood wants to do it yet again… yeesh!)

While the most extreme depictions of violence and dismemberment elicit yawns in Anytown USA, millions of Americans gasp and groan at the latest Trump tweet, then, like rats in a conditioning experiment in Hell, keep swiping at their feeds to be shocked all over again.

In simpler times, screen time meant shelling out a quarter at the neighborhood theater for a newsreel, a short subject, and a feature (or even two B pictures if your gluteus maximus could handle it). The things that spooked audiences of the 1930s and ‘40s -- like Jack Pierce’s 1931 Frankenstein monster make-up -- would be hard-pressed to nudge the films into PG territory today.

Many people did not like how this scene ended.

Speaking of the original Frankenstein, that film might be the exception that proves the rule. The scene in which the monster inadvertently kills the the little girl who has befriended him by throwing her into the pond got the attention of several state film boards, which demanded that it (and another scene, in which Henry Frankenstein exalts that “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”) be cut. When Frankenstein was reissued to theaters the scenes were gone, and wouldn’t be restored until the 1980s.

Today there are no state boards demanding cuts to films, but most filmmakers don’t need censors or social media condemnation to deter them from killing off children in their movies -- that taboo is still going strong.

Eventually the classic Gothic monsters punched out on their time clocks, and the next shift -- the radioactive and space-traveling menaces of the atomic age -- punched in. There were plenty of monsters and horror elements in the new ‘50s & ‘60s breed, but most fans remember them for the thrills and not so much the chills (Them!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, and their ilk notwithstanding).

The Duke, Malcolm and Esmeralda of Gravesend Manor
(broadcast in central Iowa, circa mid-1960s.)

When I was in elementary school, I was lucky to live within the range of two TV stations that broadcast creature features. On Friday nights we’d get mostly sci-fi from the ‘50s and early ‘60s, including things like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Invisible Invaders, World Without End, etc. (I wish I could remember the name of the show). Then on Saturday nights the horror host ensemble of Malcolm, the Duke, Claude and Esmeralda at Gravesend Manor would introduce the old Universal classics that were part of the Shock Theater TV package. (I was even lucky enough to get a signed photograph of the cast from a friend whose dad worked at the station!)

At first it was like pulling teeth to get my parents to allow me to stay up, but I think when they realized I’d do anything for viewing privileges -- clean my room, eat my vegetables, do my homework -- they wearily relented.

There was one incident that no doubt had them rethinking the wisdom of late-night horror shows. My parents were entertaining guests upstairs, while downstairs my brother and I, already in our pajamas, were watching a Twilight Zone re-run. It was the classic episode with William Shatner as the nervous airline passenger who can’t get anyone to believe that there’s a gremlin on the wing of the plane, dismantling the engine (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," 1963).

"Hey buddy, do you have an extra set of earbuds?
I want to catch the in-flight movie."

When Shatner’s character drew the window curtain aside to see the hideous thing’s face pressed against the glass, we both shot up the stairs, screaming at the top of our lungs. It’s testimony to my parents’ stoicism that the “Nightmare in the Basement” incident didn’t end the horror show privileges right then and there.

I would get plenty more adrenaline rushes from the late night shows. The classic Universal monsters on Saturday night were more fun than scary. I especially liked the monster “rallies” -- Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein -- that featured monsters galore and were like professional wrestling matches in some dark universe.

Interestingly, it was the Friday sci-fi creatures, not the Gothic monsters, that more often haunted my childhood dreams. Of course, the sci-fi Bs had their share of lame, low-rent monsters that no self-respecting kid could possibly think were scary (see my last post for some examples). But once in awhile, I’d be cruising along, munching my popcorn and enjoying a seemingly innocuous sci-fi programmer, and bam!, it would hit me with a scene that would have me shaking under the blankets later that night. Some of the examples below I watched for the first time on the Friday night sci-fi show. I don’t think my parents had any idea how rough some of these movies were. After all, how bad could something called The Atomic Submarine be? If they’d known, I suspect the late nights would have been cut-off, and I might have grown up to be a stable, semi-respectable member of society. I’m so glad they never suspected a thing.

Disclaimer: The content below may not be suitable for all audiences, including, but not limited to, children, adults and other living things. The clips below are queued up to the scenes described in the text. Click the Play button if you dare!

The Angry Red Planet (1959): First man to be turned into jello salad

When I first saw this movie, I handled the Rat-Bat-Spider monster with equanimity. But the scene in which one of the astronauts gets absorbed and digested by the giant amoeba monster stuck with me for some time. In retrospect, perhaps the most shocking thing was the filmmakers’ decision to use their “Cinemagic” process, in which the scenes on Mars’ surface look like a glowing, red-tinted cartoon made by someone on LSD. Experience Cinemagic for yourself by playing the clip below! (Interesting facts about the making of Rat-Batty can be found at my post “How to Make a Monster.”)

The Atomic Submarine (1959): These are the voyages of the expendable crew members

Several years before the original Star Trek series, a hard-charging Captain led his men into a confrontation with a menacing alien intelligence and managed to get them killed in a variety of gruesome ways. In addition to the horrifying deaths in this scene, the shadowy, minimal sets and the echoing voice of the spaceship’s occupant set up an uncanny, surreal atmosphere.

The Crawling Eye (1958): If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…

This was my first introduction to headless corpses in the movies. The film teases the audience with a pre-titles scene in which a pair of mountain climbers haul up a fallen comrade dangling from a rope, only to find that he is **GASP!** missing his head, but it cuts to their reactions before we see anything. It delivers the goods midway in when rescuers find the headless corpse of another climber in a cabin. Even though the body is somewhat obscured by shadows, I had a hard time sleeping that night.

Fiend Without a Face (1958): This is Spinal Tap, 1950s style

A number of characters are choked to death in this film, at first by something invisible, but the creatures obligingly make an appearance at the climax, taking shape as brains with antennae sitting atop whip-like spinal cord tails. I chuckled when I first saw the stop-motion monstrosities, but stopped when one whipped its spinal cord around its hapless victim’s neck. The sound effects as the creatures lay siege to the house are both comical and hideous. (Find out more about how the “fiends” were brought to life in “How to Make a Monster.”)

Not of This Earth (1957): This was your grandpa’s Alien facehugger

When Ridley Scott’s Alien first came out, many thought it was strikingly original, but fans of old-school sci-fi were well aware that it borrowed liberally from such films as It! The Terror from Beyond Space and The Planet of Vampires. I don’t know for certain that Alien’s facehugger was inspired by the “flying umbrella” in Not of This Earth, but there are disgusting similarities between the two creatures. While no ravenous worms burst out of anyone’s chest in this movie, the blood that slowly seeps out after the thing envelops the doctor’s head and he collapses, is enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine.

A Special Valentine's Day Message from Films From Beyond

Love means never having to say you're scary.

Disguise, Distraction & Deletion in B-Movie Posters: Special “Reveal-O-Rama” Edition

Frankenstein and the Wolf Man battle
for the best spot on the poster.

Some movie monsters are truly immortal. Make-up artist Jack Pierce’s Frankenstein, with his flat head, staples on the forehead, and electrodes sprouting out of the neck, is firmly embedded in the popular collective mind as the definitive monster. Pierce’s Wolf-man and Mummy are not far behind in terms of being instantly identifiable, even to kids who have never seen a classic Universal monster movie (and wouldn’t watch a black-and-white movie if you put a gun to their heads).

Similarly, the original King Kong was one of cinema’s first blockbuster hits in 1933, becoming so popular that the film was re-released multiple times in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Along the way, Kong has inspired more than a few re-makes and spin-offs, with yet another -- a re-make of a spin-off, Godzilla vs. King Kong -- scheduled to be released in 2020. Pretty good for a stop-motion model!

If you leave King Kong off the poster, you
can expect to hear from his agent!

Of course, not all monster makers of the pre-digital era had the resources or the talent of a Jack Pierce or Willis O’Brien. Before Star Wars and The Exorcist made sci-fi and horror into big business, these types of genre films more often than not scraped the bottom of the budget barrel. Effects artists like Paul Blaisdell and Jack Rabin made memorable creatures on next-to-nothing budgets (see my earlier post on “How to Make a Monster: Low-budget Creature Effects"), but it’s difficult to make a monster for the ages when your budget can barely cover the cost of a catered lunch on a mainstream production. The burden of bare-bones budgets, rushed schedules, and harried effects artists often resulted in monsters that elicited guffaws and flying popcorn boxes instead of gasps and screams. These cases presented problems for the marketing department. If you had any faith whatsoever in your monster, you plastered it front and center in your ads and posters. But occasionally, the marketers had to keep the bargain-basement creature off the artwork (or artfully concealed) if they wanted to have any chance of luring suckers (er, uh customers) to the theater.

Without further ado, here is a sampling of B-movie posters that cleverly concealed their film’s disappointing (if not downright laughable) monster. If you have other examples, please don’t hesitate to alert me via the comment form below, and I can collect them for a follow-up post.

Added bonus: Making its debut on this blog is the incredible new technology, Reveal-O-Rama! If you dare, click on the poster image to reveal the monster that the marketing dept. took great pains to conceal!

Movie-goers expecting to see a cool, multi-eyed Chinese dragon-like creature were surely disappointed by this early Roger Corman quickie. Click on the poster to reveal the true beast!

In another example of egregious Roger Corman trickery, the poster promised a giant sea monster, and the movie delivered a laughable faux-creature seemingly made out of seaweed and assorted household items.

With Boris Karloff leading the cast and a classic-looking monster featured on the poster, what could go wrong? Let's just say the monster was more than several steps down from the good ol' Universal days.

The poster art wisely left the creature's head out of the frame. Producer Sam Katzman farmed out his creature to a cut-rate effects shop, and the result was a classic of unintentional comedy.

The movie featured a great cast headed up by Peter Cushing, and was directed by the talented Terrence Fisher. The silicate monsters, however, looked more like something disgusting you'd wipe off your shoes than a terrifying menace.

No, this is not the scary, child-eating clown of Stephen King fame. This particular It looks more like a refugee from an old wood pile than an indestructible monster.

This poster has it all: sex, blood and rockin' rodent tails (okay, so shrews aren't rodents -- play along with me here). The only thing the shrews in this movie look like they could kill off is a bowl of kibble.

I suspect the filmmakers were cynically gambling that few movie-goers would know what "lepus" meant. This is possibly the least scary monster movie concept of all-time.

This is based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. The climactic reveal of the thing in the shuttered room is distinctly un-Lovecraftian and underwhelming.

Not even William Castle's "startling" Percepto gimmick could keep audiences from snickering as they saw a thing that looked like a rubber dog-toy being dragged around by a visible "hidden" wire.