Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: The Giant Behemoth

1959 giant thing movie

Rating: 12/20 (Fred: 14/20 [Note: He did fall asleep for about ten minutes during this movie.]; Libby: 10/20; Carrie:  15/20; Ozzy: 16/20)

Plot: Atomic bomb testing leads to the formation of the titular monster which invades London.

Think about that title--The Giant Behemoth. Can you really have a tiny behemoth? Love the redundancy there. And then look at that tagline at the top of the poster. The biggest thing since creation!? That seems like the type of thing they put up there because they couldn't think of anything else and figured they could think of something else later but then forgot. The biggest thing since creation! I'm pretty positive I've seen bigger things. And I know my wife has if you catch my drift. Anyway, behemoth is a good word to know. And so is bathyscope which, thanks to this movie, my friends and I now know how to spell. This week's bad movie genre was "big things wreaking havoc" and although it took a while for havoc to be wreaked, the monster payoff was a satisfying one. I didn't expect stop-motion animation, and it wasn't the greatest stop-motion animation that I've ever seen, but it added a little personality to an otherwise drab production. Yes, the beast is stepping on the same toy car several times, you see the same people running and screaming in terror, and the behemoth takes far too long to trudge down a single block. But the special effects are at least fun, and the extras do a great job fleeing in terror. You do have to wait a long time before that payoff though. Clumsy science drives the first part of the movie, but at least the acting isn't too bad for a 50's sci-fi flick. My favorite performance by far is that of Jack MacGowran who plays a paleontologist. He's got the oddest expressions and plays the part as if he wasn't sure how a paleontologist should act so just decided to play it nonhumanly. The makers of this leaned a little on giant music to create suspense that otherwise probably wasn't there. This isn't the greatest giant monster movie you're likely to see, but it's not a terrible one and has a final twenty minutes that are definitely entertaining. Oh, and a great scene where the behemoth, which in this movie is pretty large, attacks a boat.