The Giant Behemoth

The Giant Behemoth

Allied Artists

1959

90 min

Starring

Gene Evans

Andre Morell

John Turner

Featuring

Leigh Madison

Jack McGowran

Maurice Kaufmann

Henry Vidon

Leonard Sachs

A David Diamond Production

Directed by Eugene Lourie

Screenplay by Eugene Lourie

Special Effects Designed and Created by

Jack Rabin

Irving Block

Louis DeWitt

Willis O’Brien

Pete Petterson

Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) is a marine biologist from La Jolla, California; he’s speaking at a Conference on Atomic Research in London. Karnes is fiercely denouncing our handling of radioactive materials; “Gentlemen, we are witnessing a biological chain reaction—a geometric progression of deadly menace.” (Watch Evans in reverse on the DVD at 1X speed—it is a glorious set of ugly faces.)

*

This isn’t a particularly good movie—it’s not terrible but it’s not really good. It seems to be a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, also directed by Lourie in 1953. That movie was the first that Ray Harryhausen had complete control of special effects. This movie doesn’t have particularly good effects despite the talent—Rabin, Block, DeWitt, Petterson and O’Brien all had done excellent work before but that talent doesn’t show on the screen this time.

I read somewhere that this was originally planned as a movie more in the vein of X-The Unknown but the studio ordered Lourie to include a giant dinosaur so the picture turned into a remake of the earlier picture. Some of the effects are good but others are repeated (see below) and there is the incongruity of prop plane sound effects as a jet takes off—I wonder if some of the bad things in the movie were little bits of revenge.

It has some gruesome moments for the time. I would suggest that it’s only for the sci-fi movie fan who pursues a complete collection; if you only want the better sci-fi pictures, try Beast from 20,000 Fathoms instead.

*

Details (Spoilers Galore):

A fisherman Thomas Trevethan (Henry Vidon) and his daughter Jean (Leigh Madison) land their boat in a cove in Cornwall; he gives a big whitefish to his daughter, tells her to take it to the house and says he will take the rest of his catch to the village. She replies, “So you can go by the pub and brag to all your cronies?” He tells her to be on her way—and as soon as she’s out of sight, a bright light shines in his face, a loud sound cycles—the old man puts his hands in front of his face and screams.

After dark, Jean hears the door—but no Dad, it’s just the wind. She declares that he’ll be drunk as a lord and heads to the pub. At the pub she finds John (John Turner); he says that he hasn’t seen her father since morning—and that he couldn’t have come through town with whitefish or the whole world would know of it. He sees her concern and goes out with her to search.

(Nice use of hand held on Turner as he searches the beach)

John finds Tom with his face badly burned—but he’s still breathing. John asks him what happened; “From the sea—burning like fire.”

“What was it?”

“Behemoth,” Tom says as he dies.

The vicar makes heavy use of the Book of Job in the funeral—14:1 and 40:15.

After the funeral, Jean doesn’t want to go home so she and John walk on the beach; they come upon thousands of dead fish. John finds a strange pulsating blob, wonders what it is and touches it—his hand is badly burned.

Back in London, Karnes is waiting for a plane reservation; he sits to watch TV while the hotel clerk tries to get him a seat on an airplane. He hears that the fishing industry has come to a complete standstill—thousands of dead fish and no explanation. The newsreader finishes by noting that a sea monster has been sighted in Scotland—evidence that all the Scotch whisky has not been sent to America. He cancels his reservation and calls Professor Bickford.

Bickford tells him that the Cornwall business is more serious than the news has it—a man has been found dead—dead of strange burns.

Karnes declares that he is going to Cornwall; Bickford says that he’s chairman of a committee on the subject—they can be there at eleven the next morning.

They walk along the quay—fishermen line the railing; they say that no one dares to go out after what happened to Trevethan. One fisherman says that he saw lights a few days earlier—no one else has seen anything unusual. No one has been fishing for five days.

John takes Karnes and Bickford to see Dr. Morris. They ask the cause of death—he says first, second and third degrees and shock. Bickford asks what type of burns—he’s never seen them before, then says to wait a minute—he cuts off the bandage on John’s hand. Karnes says that John’s burns look like what he saw from atomic tests in the Pacific. Bickford tells Dr. Morris to send John to a clinic in London.

John takes Karnes and Bickford to the beach in the cove where he got burned; the two scientists test for radiation—with a crowd of villagers watching. They don’t find any radiation (Karnes pronounces algae as “al-ghe”.) Jean comes along; they ask her if her father said anything—she tells them about the Behemoth.

Back at Dr. Morris’ office, Bickford prepares to return to London; Karnes asks him to get reports from all his stations on the coast to check for radiation.

In the lab in London, Karnes meets Ned Lee, a scientist for the AEC. Tests so far have found no evidence of radiation. Karnes dissects several fish to examine the internal organs for signs of radioactivity using a method called “radio autograph”—after removal of the meat on both sides of the fish, he places the organs and bones on a glass plate for 20 seconds. The radiation from the fish exposes the plate. They check the plates after they’re developed; the 14th plate shows signs of radioactivity all through the fish.

Bickford calls the head of the fisheries department, intending to stop all fish at the ports; he says if radioactive fish got to market, it would be disastrous. Karnes wants to go to Plymouth, where the fish was caught.

The skipper of trawler Molly G takes Karnes to the fishing grounds; after a false start, the Geiger counter starts going crazy. Karnes sees something through binoculars and they pursue but the thing outruns them.

The steam ship Valkerie was found beached, horribly damaged. The Coast Guard calls Molly G and has Karnes returned to port; he inspects the wreckage and then goes to London.

(34:40—jet landing with sound of a prop plane)

He and Bickford visit an admiral; Bickford says that his lab has determined that the mysterious substance that irradiated the condemned fish appears to come from the stomach lining of an unknown species—he now agrees with Karnes Behemoth theory. The admiral orders an alert to all coastal areas and contact with other nations.

A farm house—the family having dinner. The dog barks, so father and son go out to see what the problem is. They see a whirl of intense bright lights—and they die.

A police car stops at a house, a constable rushes in and gives Bickford photos—photos of a dinosaur-like footprint twice the size of a car.

They go to Professor Samson, expert in paleontology; he looks at the picture and declares that the creature that made that print must have been 150 to 200 feet long. He’s excited when he’s told that it isn’t a fossil print—the creature was last sighted the previous night in Kent. He says that it must be headed for the Thames—they always go to fresh water to die. He also says that the creatures are electric. When he’s told that the creature is also radioactive, he says, slowly, that he supposes that it will have to be killed.

Karnes suggests that the creature’s electric charge projects the radiation. Bickford calls for closing off the Thames but the admiral insists that they already have sufficient control of that body of water.

Sampson and the pilot of a helicopter see something under water but Control can’t find anything on radar. They descend to try to get pictures but the chopper is destroyed.

(45:20—Dr Sampson in helicopter; 47:45 different type of copter destroyed.)

(49:10—beginning of ferry scene—ferry is John Benn.)

Our critter emerges from the Thames, growling and biting the ferry—it tries to capsize the boat. (Cars falling from the ferry are clearly models, plopping into the water, while people going overboard make big splashes.)

A doll floats on the water; a dead man rolls over to reveal radiation burns on his face.

A radio report notes, “36 dead and more than 50 missing.”

The military are mobilized (or should I say “mobilised”?). They order evacuations and set up defense positions.

The admiral suggests bombing; Bickford argues that would create a million bits of radiation-- “Why the whole city would be poisoned for God knows how long!”

Karnes notes that the creature is already dying from radiation poisoning but he can’t estimate how long until it is dead.

Bickford suggests that they give the beast more radiation—somehow fire a shell containing pure radium into the creature. Karnes says that a torpedo is the best bet; the admiral orders a minisub.

The creature finally comes ashore, roaring and destroying all in it’s path.

(1:01—first time the little toy car gets smushed; 1:02:18 is the second time—from another standpoint; 1:02:39 is the third time, from the original view but pulled back)

The creature uses its electro-radiation to start burning people—there are some fairly gruesome scenes at this point.

The attack on the city goes on for about seven minutes screen time—pretty long to listen to the canned screams.

As the government prepares a radioactive torpedo, the creature crashes through two sets of high tension lines, ultimately causing a fuel storage tank to explode, triggering a major fire.

(1:12:15—more footage of helo A, this time searching for the critter.)

The torpedo is ready and a detector has been attached to the sub—its called “Solartron” (huh?). Helicopter PB7 detects the critter at map reference L8R17; the sub departs.

The critter is swimming, broadcasting radiation and bouncing the sub around—then it bites the sub. There are water leaks on the sub but it is still maneuverable so they make another attack run. They fire the torpedo and the creature obligingly turns to face the oncoming torpedo with open mouth—there is an explosion.

The sub surfaces and returns to base (with stock footage of a damaged sub).

Everyone is relieved that the threat is ended; Bickford gets in his car, starts it up—he and Karnes hear the news. “Mountains of dead fish have washed on shore in America.”

As Dr. Sam Beckett would’ve said, “Oh, boy”.

*

All in all, The Giant Behemoth isn’t that bad a picture, but it could have been much better. The scenery chewing and mugging of Gene Evans is sometimes amusing, the early scenes of dead fish are well done and the bold and gruesome effects are effective. Unfortunately the obviously tiny budget hurt many of the effects, as mentioned above. I’m going to have to read up on this movie to find out what happened behind the scenes—were things like the wrong sound effects used intentionally? It would be fun to know.

I don’t rate movies with stars or anything like that. It seems to me that you would have to establish a group of rating systems—serious movies, fun movies, so-good-they’re-bad movies and so on—that would make the whole thing so complicated you’d end up spending more time determining what classification a movie fit than you would spend enjoying the picture.

So I’m not going to give this a rating. I’ll just say that it is entertaining—if occasionally groan-inducing—and altogether worth it for fans of sci-fi.

(Oh, all right—I will rate it a little. I would watch this five times before I would watch Armageddon one more time.)