Scary Movies In 1950s Delighted Us
Ok... Laugh! These were scary. I was a young teenager when these movies came out! But remember, the year was 1955 and these were real possibilities of these things happening because science was advancing so fast! We just began to understand man-made satellites and what they could do. It was an easy step to believe in Monsters from the Atomic Bombs which were being tested! This is real stuff! We would go to the Thrifty Drug Store and get 4 cent candy bars bigger than ANY today and go to the movies all Saturday.... double features with cartoon for 75 cents!!! The theater was in Culver City and was called the Meralta... we rode about 3 miles on our bikes to get there! And if we had extra money, we would sit in the loges (soft high backed seats!)
Frightening Posters Dared Us To Go Into The Dark Movie House!
1957 (20 Millions Miles To Earth) - The first spaceship to visit Venus crash lands in the sea, freeing a small native Venusians creature called the Ymir. Eventually growing to enormous size, it threatens the city of Rome. The first manned spaceship to visit Venus , launched by the USA , returns to Earth and crash lands into the sea off a small Sicilian fishing village. The surviving crewmen are rescued by some fishermen and taken to the local hotel, where a visiting American scientist's daughter (played by Joan Taylor), a medical student, tends to them. One crewman, the ship's doctor, dies, leaving behind his notebook; the other crewman, Col. Robert Calder (played by William Hopper), survives and takes up the quest to find a specimen brought from Venus. Meanwhile, the specimen, shrouded in a jelly within its metal cylinder, washed ashore and was found by a excitable young local boy, who sold it to the visiting scientist. Overnight, however, the egg hatches a bipedal, reptile-like Venusian creature with a manlike torso, which just as quickly begins to grow. It is placed in a cage by the scientist, but shortly becomes big enough and strong enough to free itself. An apparent vegetarian, the creature attacks only when provoked. It goes on a rampage through the countryside and is captured in a net (to which it is lured by sulfur, which it natively eats back home on Venus), eventually taken to the city of Rome , by which time it is the height of a two-story building. After escaping and killing an elephant , the monster goes on a rampage. The American and Italian military authorities combine to stop the menace�which in fact is an innocent animal that is not understood�trapping it atop the Colosseum , whence it loses its footing while under bazooka fire and tumbles to its death.
1957 (Attack Of The Crab Monsters) - People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs. Roger Corman directs. A group of scientists land on a remote island in the Pacific to search for a previous expedition that disappeared and to continue research about the effects of radiation from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests on the island's plant and sea life. They learn to their horror that the earlier group of scientists have been eaten by mutated giant crabs that have gained intelligence by absorbing the minds of their victims. Members of the current expedition are systematically attacked and killed by the crabs, which are invulnerable to most weaponry because of the mutation in their cell structure. Finally, they discover the crabs are the cause of the earthquakes and landslides that are destroying the island. As the remaining expedition members struggle to survive on the ever-shrinking island, they must also find a way to stop the crabs before they reproduce and invade the oceans of the world.
1956 (Forbidden Planet) - An expedition is sent from Earth to Altair in the constellation of Aquilae (some 17 light years from Earth) to discover what happened to a colony of settlers on its fourth planet, Altair-4. What they discover is how and why an alien race of geniuses destroyed itself overnight while leaving their technology intact at some point in the distant, distant past. Still a great movie! I will never forget the Krill and the meters on the wall indicating the energy they needed to break through the largest and strongest door in the world!
1954 (Them) - Nuclear tests in the desert result in the growth of gigantic mutant ants who menace cities in the American south-west as a team of investigators and the army search for a way to control their spread in this Cold War-era monster film. NOT second rate: Look at the credits carefully!
And Many Many More.....
