the leading man is my tpye

A Disappointing Continuation

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are certainly some fantastic ideas in this science fiction thriller involving a mythological creature who comes to life in the English Channel and other British waterways and leaves destruction everywhere it swims. It isn't just its size or sharp teeth, but the radioactivity it utilizes to kill hundreds of thousands of fish and leave fishermen scarred from the radio activity it oozes from its eyes. It takes forever for the creature to appear, and when it does, everything becomes O.K., but I do not think that the dinosaur crowd of 1959 wanted to sit through nearly an hour of exposition with only hints of what the creature looks like. The military is busy collecting information on every type of danger this creature can perpetrate on mankind, and from a scientific standpoint it is very interesting. But enough is enough; We want to see the creature!Outlines of the radio active creature in the waterways give hints to its enormous size, power and strength, but that's only an occasional glimpse, as well as one brief glimpse of something rising out of the depths that is beyond the control of anything that any nation's armed forces can bring down. There's a bit of a human interest here as a local fisherman's disappearance is what causes the discovery of the creature to arise, with his extremely young daughter later finding him with some sort of radio active gook covering his face. Some blob like substance oozes out of the channel rocks, and one of her beau's stupidly sticks his hand right into it. So not all is smart in the writing here. When the creature does make its appearance and storms through London, the fun begins, but as good as the special effects are, it is nothing that you have not seen before, and certainly not as good as what Ray Harryhausen was doing with his above average sword and sandal masterpieces. This is the type of film that requires much patience to wait for the arrival of the creature, although there certainly have been worse in this genre. The acting is fine, but perhaps the script writers should have given the audience what it wanted much earlier, which would have sped up the pacing and given this a higher rating.

This is a definite Julesy pic...endorsement...of this as a movie for Halloween month that suits my not into horror taste buds...its enjoyable with some chilling creeps and just old fashioned silly scientific fantasy thriller fun so when that suits you're mood...this is surely worth a view...

Like many mutant monster flicks of the 1950's, this one starts out with a compilation of atomic bomb blasts and a premonition that the radiation fallout may have a disturbing effect on nature. It takes it a step further though, with Professor Steve Karnes' (Gene Evans) explanation that these blasts may have a biological chain reaction that causes a geometrical progression resulting in radioactive conglomerates. Okay, okay, he explained it in simpler terms too. Little fish eat radioactive plankton, big fish eat little fish and so on and so on, until you get a giant behemoth. Then they make a movie out of it.I actually thought the behemoth here, a giant paleosaurus, was done pretty well. The concept of a four legged dinosaur tearing up London doesn't sound like it would work on paper but this guy could get up on it's hind legs if he had too. The underwater scenes might have been even better, the monster really had a fluid motion cruising the Thames River, almost as good as present day animation. The stop motion photography and lifelike presentation of the behemoth was good enough that you didn't mind it when he stepped on a few toy cars that got in the way.I'll tell you what was really scary though. There were a couple times during the havoc on the London streets when the camera focused in on a vehicle with it's license plate showing, prominently reading 911. With all the mayhem and destruction going on, who would ever have thought that a future American disaster would be called to mind while watching this film today. To be more precise, the actual number on the license plate was 911MMF, but still, it got a reaction out of me just the same.I guess we'll never know if the film makers intended a sequel but you can't fault them for planting a seed at the end of the story. As the picture closes, TV news of dead fish all along the American East Coast are being reported, so that could have been a springboard for a follow up. After all, now they knew how to build those radium tipped atomic warhead torpedoes.

While the 1950s giant monster movie genre remains almost exclusively dominated by American cinema, The Giant Behemoth marks a rare (and welcome) caper set in Britain. The unconventional setting is what largely helps the film stand out from the ranks of its competitors of the time, as, apart from allowing for some wry tongue-in-cheek quips at the Americanization of the genre (particularly a witty 'ending twist'), the film benefits from an infusion of more (relatively) serious and classy sensibilities, as if leaning more towards breaking ground as opposed to rehashing ground oft-tread. In actuality, the film emerges as a thinly veiled remake of director Eugene Lourie's prior genre staple, 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. However, the comparison is not a negative one. Like 20,000 Fathoms, Behemoth boasts comparatively superb production values for the genre, including gorgeous, highly photogenic location shooting, particularly in the film's Cornwall-set seaside opening, as well as impressively gruesome burn prosthetics administered to the titular Behemoth's victims. Additionally, like 20,000 Fathoms, Behemoth devotes particular care to the 'scientific research procedural' aspect of tracking and classifying the creature and determining means of stopping it. This 'science-babble', delivered fast and furious from under a succession of grimly furrowed brows, is largely convincing, even if the film's attempts to seemingly trump all genre competitors sometimes overstretch the limits of plausibility – the 'Behemoth', effectively a radiation-saturated dinosaur, proved surprisingly 'sellable', until the abrupt and never-explained revelation that it is electric as well ("like an eel!"). Conversely, the film's focus on radiation and its unanticipated environmental effects on all aspects of the ecosystem proves in many ways grimly insightful and prophetic for an entry in a genre normally dismissed as escapism. Indeed, the film, particularly in an opening didactic address, proves chock full of facts about radiation and its varying concerns, almost suggesting it as a strange kind of educational film on the possible outcomes of atomic warfare for a Cold War anxiety- riddled culture. With this in mind, it is interesting to note the thematic effect of the Behemoth itself, being somewhat of a fusion of 'old' and 'new' threats – a dinosaur mixed with the very modern threat of radiation – as if conflating the two to further stress the dire seriousness of atomic power as just as menacing as any primal fears. Nonetheless, the construction of the Behemoth itself is somewhat of a mixed bag. When brought to life through masterful work by stop-motion icon, King Kong's Willis O'Brien, the Behemoth, particularly in a climactic sequence rampaging through London, its impressively textured trunk-like dinosaur legs flattening cars, teeth bared and tongue sweeping back and forth like a murderous serpent, the Behemoth is a delightfully foreboding and captivating adversary. Nonetheless, the creature itself is more often than not betrayed by the film's evidently low budget, with instances of laughably poor continuity (the Behemoth fluctuates in size and shape, occasionally undulating, serpent-like, despite having the physicality of a stocky dinosaur, and in one laughable instance a ship with a deck one second filled with screaming passengers suddenly empty when the Behemoth sinks it in the following shot) and some overly obvious work with miniatures (when the Behemoth sinks into the sea, the water droplets that fly up are curiously nearly as large as its head) undercutting the usual veneer of sustained tension. Cast-wise, while the film does retain the seemingly inescapable (yet unintentionally entertaining) genre staple of wooden acting, it is, again, in general several cuts above many of its contemporaries, as the acting remains largely credible enough to maintain suspension of disbelief. Gene Evans and André Morell offer a satisfyingly sturdy one-two protagonist act as grim scientists from America and Britain respectively. In addition, particularly worth noting is the scene-stealing performance of Jack MacGowran as a loopy, bug-eyed paleontologist, whose (all too brief) presence greatly enhances the film's entertainment factor. All in all, while the film hardly revolutionizes the template for the giant monster genre (it falls particularly prey to the frequent complaint of substantial pre-climax lagging), The Giant Behemoth does prove an unconventionally fun and smart monster camper, and unquestionably a cut above most contemporaries. Indeed, for all monster enthusiasts, the film, whether for the sheer number of antagonistic tropes amalgamated into a single foe, its comparative class or its generally substantial stop motion work, is definitely worth a watch. -6/10