Here's my special 4th of July holiday post. That's right, I'm glad I missed these movies in the fifties at the theater, because, hindsight is 50/50. Here are the reasons for such a seemingly ridiculous statement from Tabonga!..
I saw 67 monster movies from 1953-59, that's amazing to me, but, I didn't see all of them. I had quite an imagination and after I would see a monster double feature, I was a basket case! My mom would say, because of that, I was banned from going to any more monster movies! That was fine until the next batch made it to the theater, then, I would throw a giant fit until my mom was forced to relent yet again! There was no way in Hell that I was going to miss them... Then, I would come home from the movies and the whole cycle would begin again!!
I saw INVADERS FROM MARS from 1953 in the late fifties on TV. It freaked me out then, so, I can't imagine what it would have been like for me to see it on the big screen! The very first monster movie my parents took me to was THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS in 1953 at age 5.
X THE UNKNOWN hit the screens in 1956. Even now, this movie gets under my skin. I'm glad I missed this one because there's just no way my little 8 year old imagination could withstand Jimmy Sangster's insidious writing skills. This one would have ground my brain into sausage!!
I'm glad I missed FIEND WITHOUT A FACE in 1958, the monsters were so damn terrifying. They were invisible until near the end, creepy crawling brains attached to spinal cords!!! I actually saw the trailer for it while I was at the theater to see CURSE OF THE DEMON!
I'm also grateful to have missed FIRST MAN INTO SPACE in 1959, it was a shock fest from beginning to end! The monster was unique in its eeriness and would have surely forced me into the rubber room again! The poster is also very misleading. The last still is for our London Correspondent, the Professor!!
3 comments:
We have really liked "creepy" looking Movie Monsters... "Fiend..." was a favorite ... (but then again I like the "Creeping Terror", mid 1950's)The Green Slime was my most anticipated Movie Monster when we were to start School. (Had to wait till the CBS Late Movie to watch the premier on TV one Friday night a few years later)We loved the "Creepy" monsters... he one that really scared me as a kid was "The Prey" (last tale on the TV Movie "Trilogy of Terror"), written by Richard Matheson. .. And Curse of the Demon was a Great one too !!
.. just dropping by to wish you Guys a great 4th of July... and Hello from Marshville
Hi Doc - Your input is always valued, thanks - Happy 4th to you, too!
Thank goodness I was an adult when I saw Nosferatu on TCM, and I was a teenager when I saw Psycho on TV. If I had seen them when I was a child, I probably would have been in psychiatric treatment for years afterward.
I vaguely recall seeing part of It Came From Beneath the Sea on TV when I was very young, but I don't remember being traumatized by it. I think I was a little scared by a trailer for King Kong vs. Godzilla at a drive-in when I was about four. I think my parents had to explain to me that real gorillas were not that big. I saw the movie itself when I was ten, and loved it.
Other than that, AFAIR, I was ten or older before I saw any horror movies, and I wasn't particularly bothered by them. Although I had nightmares about giant statues after seeing Jason & the Argonauts and/or Majin Monster of Terror. (In fact, years later, I passed by an antique shop on my way to work each day. They had life-sized gladiator statues in the lot in front of the building, and I shuddered when I passed by.)
I saw Fiend Without a Face on the weekend TV late movie show when I was twelve or thirteen. That's another one that probably would have freaked me out if I'd seen it earlier. I knew Marshall Thompson from Daktari, so I always liked seeing him as the good guy Air Force officer in old 1950's sci-fi movies.
The poster for First Man Into Space is kind of odd, now that you mention it. Usually, posters for science fiction-horror movies played up the monster. Some of those were misleading in the opposite way; posters for Forbidden Planet and Day the Earth Stood Still made the aliens and/or robots look menacing, and made the movies look more horrific than they really were.
Happy 4th.
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