So much average

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

Now, let me tell you I could be a little biased here with my scoring. For this film lit the light of remembrance and melancholy within me. As it took me back to my childhood. There was a time when the good old BBC would play these movies on a Saturday afternoon: On BBC2 while BBC1 had Grandstand. I remember watching these Sci-Fi monster flicks with my Nan on cold and wet winter days, usually in front of a warm gas fire. Those were good days. So, I thank the makers of the film for giving me this memory.What you have is a pretty bog-standard tale of nuclear radiation mutation... as was par for the course in the fifties. Here though, not only does it mutate a creature to an enormous size, but apparently resurrects a long-dead dinosaur. This then goes on the rampage through London. Though what makes this a little better than the average film in this genre is the extra details. We don't start in London but in a little fishing village in Cornwall where strange things have been occurring; a man being burned with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns, shoals of dead fish washing up on the beach, and strange lights under the surface of the sea. This pulls the viewer in with the mystery. There's also the brilliant usage of the radiation because if you get too close to the creature then you burn. When we arrive at the rampage, the director uses parts of London not fully rebuilt after the war to create an atmosphere that works well. Also, the large amount of extra's running from the monster is just right - not one or two people, but a hole streets worth of men and women.The director is very good at his work. He sets the pace of this film perfectly. There's a small crescendo at the beginning when Marine Biologist Steve Karnes' is warning the government about the possible side effects of radiation on the oceans and their populace. Then drops to a steadier pace with the mysterious happenings. Building up slowly to the rampage at the climax. Spot on perfect.The special effects, for their time, are not quite as good as others. However, they are passable. It's nice the puppeteer changed out to a fully automated Behemoth for the later scenes as the fixed mouth version that attacked the ferry looked a little silly. I have to admit I really loved the part where the Behemoth walks through the dockyards. The part where he wrecks one crane by tearing it apart with his teeth and the other by simply walking through it is one of the better stop animation sequences I've seen. I liked the fact the director filmed it from the position of the pavement, which had the effect of giving size to the creature.This was a very enjoyable flick, to say the least. The story and the filming were solid as too was the acting. Everybody put their skills into making this a very watchable movie. Not remembering the movie fully, I thought that the two main characters in the fishing village section Jean (Madison) and John (Turner) would be in the whole show, their acting is that good. However, when we leave the village we never see them again.If you've never caught a '50's sci-fi monster flick then this one would be a nice place to start. And if you are a fan of the genre, then find a copy and watch this once more, it's worth it.

"King Kong" visual effects supervisor Willis O'Brien cooked up a Paleosaurus on a shoe-string budget for French director Eugène Lourié's "The Giant Behemoth," another amphibian monster epic like "Godzilla." Reportedly, the producers wanted Lourié' to steal from his earlier but better monster picture "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" instead trying to scare audiences with a blinding blob of a monster. Neither as good as "Beast" nor as "Gorgo," "The Giant Behemoth" qualifies as a respective entry, even if the same car gets squashed three times from different angles. No, it doesn't surpass "Godzilla." The interesting thing about this atmospheric Allied Artists production is the conspicuous absence of a romance. Gene Evans and André Morell serve as the two heroes. Evans does the heavy lifting, while Morell furnishes him with something to lift. Reportedly, too, Lourié collaborated behind the camera with freshman helmer Douglas Hickox. Later, Hickox went on to direct his own share of distinctive movies and television shows. There is no way that you can tell what Hickox contributed and what Lourié did. The film has a gritty look, and you don't expect that The Grim Reaper has earmarked certain characters. For example, we see a little girl on a ferry playing with her doll baby. Later, after the ferry has sunk, we see the little girl's doll but no sign of its owner.Overall, "The Giant Behemoth" is a serious but dreary escapade, even the doomed monster takes himself seriously. The British Government conducts itself admirably and doesn't stint on anything in the storyline. The English settings are a welcome change from Tokyo or America. Gene Evans has the rare occasion to take top billing, and he plays Dr. Steve Karnes as a methodical but boring American marine biologist. The writers do not have him call on women but he spends far too much time catch that Paleosaurus. Karnes, however, is only one man, and he helps virtually all the help and information that he needs from Professor James Bickford (André Morell) who oversees the Atomic Energy Commission in Great Britain. If Karnes is like James Bond, then Bickford is like Q who supplies 007's wants and needs. "Exorcist" supporting actor Jack MacGowran steals the show as Dr. Sampson, the Paleontologist of the British Museum. He babbles on about the monster until he realizes that the photograph of the amphibian's foot dwarfs the size of a car parked near it. Unfortunately, the nerdy paleontologist isn't around longer. "The Giant Behemoth" benefits from MacGowran's antics. Evans does well for what is required of him and he shows that he had more range that American producers usually allowed him. André Morell delivers another of his usually reserved but wolfish performances."The Great Behemoth" has an uneven quality, probably because the nature of the monster changed from when the fisherman discovered it until Karnes caught a glimpse of it through his binoculars. Initially, it looks like thick shaving lotion and then it emerges as a dinosaur. The monster lacks any sort of personality. The movements seem primitive compared with Ray Harryhausen's stop-action stuff. Sometimes, the directors let the shots of the monster linger far longer than they should have.

So what happened here—no 1950's busty babe to snuggle up to the hero while he saves the world from the latest mutant monster. Certainly, we teen boys expected some eye candy between fun special effects. Of course, the blue-collar middle-aged Gene Evans is not exactly the romantic type. But he sure knows how to deliver a nuclear warning that still makes a lot of sense, and may be the best thing about this 1959 installment of Godzilla stomps Tokyo. Except here, it's a radioactive lizard making a mess out of London. Nothing new or different about this drive-in special, just the usual squashed cars and screaming people. The lizard's okay, as these special effects go, but the toy cars could use some work. I'm just sorry one of those fast-buck Hollywood operators didn't get the epic first. Then we would get a busty babe, for sure, and us guys in the back row would have had something to cheer about.