The Bigger & Badder Halloween Top 13 #12: The Beast from 20000 Fathoms (1953)

Nukes, man. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times; you can't hug with nuclear arms. Hmm, maybe I didn't say that, but I should have because it’s pretty cheesy and clever at the same time. After the world witnessed the awesome force of a nuclear blast at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the awe inspiring power lead right into the nuclear panic age of the 1950’s, and with it came the giant creatures. Today, I'm getting a chance to talk about the first such film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. While it doesn't have the distinction of being the first giant monster movie, that distinction goes to 1931’s The Lost World which saw a dinosaur menacing London in the film’s climax; it does herald the first of the nuclear age monsters. Inspired by the success of the 1952 re-release of 1933’s King Kong, the producers turned to Ray Harryhausen, a protégé of Willis O’Brian, the man behind the world’s most famous giant ape, to bring to the screen an extremely loose adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” first published in 1951 by the Saturday Evening Post. Join me as we travel from the frigid Arctic Circle to the bustling streets of Manhattan with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms!

Absentia (2011) Absence Makes the Heart Grow Colder

Absentia is a film that I started to watch a dozen or more times before finally making the plunge. I don’t know if it was the generic looking art of a screaming woman being dragged away or the legalese sounding title which looked out of place on a horror film, but it just didn't seem like the kind of horror that would appeal to me. However, after hearing about it for a while, and Netflix’s relentless campaign to suggest it to me, I relented and I am glad I did. There seems to be a new wave of horror that combines the bone chilling and the supernatural with a hefty dose of human drama. Stories of longing or loss pervade these films, and while some succeed in the balance (Exit Humanity), others (I’m looking at you The Tall Man.) feel more like a bait and switch than horror fare. While Absentia takes some time to get rolling, it is a film that manifests some genuine emotional moments nestled neatly with the notes of a creepy creature feature.

Devil Fish, Killer Crocodile, and The Great Alligator: Italian Film Takes a Bite out of Jaws

Just yesterday, June 20th, marked the 37th year since the release of Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws into the movie theaters, and so some might say I missed the anniversary. However, what I want to talk about is something that’s a bit off, or should I say took a bite off of, Jaws. Like so many trends in cinema, once the Italians got a hold of it, they took it to as many places as you could imagine. Today, I’m going to take a look at three of the many, many giant water based creature films that invaded Italian cinemas for two decades following Hollywood‘s most famous shark. Each is the effort of a different directors and features a different kind of creature, and with a wide margin of success and failure, all of them intended to imitate what the Spielberg had put on the screen. So join me as Sergio Martino, Lamberto Bava, and Fabrizio De Angelis take their shot at aquatic glory.