Dino Flicks: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

This was one of many classic monster movies that I first became aware of by seeing its trailer on an old VHS compilation I had as a kid called Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies. I've always considered that tape to be one of the major parts of my "education" in this genre, as it introduced me to many, many movies that I wanted to see very badly, and this was definitely one of them. The trailer in question has to be one of the best for any movie of this era, as it showcases creepy music, a nice narration, and plenty of shots of the awesome title monster, which quite dazzled me as a kid. But, like most of those movies, I wouldn't actually see this film until I was much older, well into my teens, in this case, and by that time, I had learned something about this movie that I was incapable of comprehending when I was a little kid: this movie is the one that basically gave birth to the 50's giant monster era. After this came a bevy of flicks, from bonafide classics like Them! and the original Godzilla (it's been said that this film itself had such a big influence over in Japan that it directly inspired Godzilla's creation) to not-so-classic but nonetheless enjoyable movies like Tarantula, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and The Deadly Mantis, among many others. Plus, following his debut on Mighty Joe Young where he assisted Willis O'Brien, it was the first movie where the legendary Ray Harryhausen had full control over the special effects and was really able to strut his stuff, resulting in a very memorable and well-executed movie monster who's definitely the best part of the movie. The movie as a whole is still a good little flick, with nice direction and a story that's pretty well-told, but the characters, in spite of some notable actors here and there and their overall likability, are a bit on the bland side, which is par for the course with a movie of this type.

Beyond the Arctic Circle, Operation Experiment, a top-secret H-bom test, is conducted under the supervision of the U.S. military. During the explosion, two of the base's radar-men spot a large object on the screen but, by the time they tell Col. Jack Evans of it, it's gone. After the test, Prof. Tom Nesbitt and fellow scientist George Ritchie go out to the site to investigate the results via observation posts. Forced to strike out on foot after finding their path blocked by ice, both men encounter an enormous, prehistoric monster out on the glaciers. Ritchie is killed in an avalanche and Nesbitt is badly injured, so much so that he has to be flown back to the United States. While recovering in New York, Nesbitt discovers that no one believes his story about the monster, as the only other witness is dead and all signs of the creature have been covered over by a blizzard. The doctors and Col. Evans chalk it up as a traumatic hallucination but Nesbitt is not convinced, nor should he be: the monster is very much real. A carnivorous reptile called the Rhedosaurus, it was released from being frozen inside a glacier by the nuclear test and is now on a rampage across the North Atlantic, sinking ships and destroying lighthouses. Hearing of the reports, Nesbitt tries to convince paleontologist Prof. Thurgood Elson of the creature's existence but the scientist, although sympathetic, is skeptical of it. After he's released from the hospital, Nesbitt is approached by Elson's assistant, Lee Hunter, who shows him some sketches of all the know prehistoric animals to see if he can pick out the one he saw. Sure enough, he does, and he's eventually able to get a survivor from one of the ship sinkings to corroborate it. With Elson now thoroughly convinced, they're now intent on making the authorities believe that the monster exists as well, and the sooner the better, because the beast is heading straight for its ancestral home: the waters of the Hudson River Valley, near New York City.

The film was directed by Eugene Lourie, a Russian-born Frenchman who started out in the business in Europe as an art director and production designer, working for directors like Jean Renoir, Max Ophuls, and Rene Clair. He especially worked well with Renoir and came with him to Hollywood in the 40's, going on to work with Sam Fuller, Charlie Chaplin, and Robert Siodmak, before making his directorial debut with this flick. This was the first of four films Lourie would direct from 1953 to 1961, along with some television work, before returning to art direction, production design, and even effects work for the rest of his career. He would to on to basically remake this film twice, first as The Giant Behemoth in 1959 and later as Gorgo, his last movie as director, in 1961 (the trailers for both of those movies were also featured on Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies). For me, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is about tied with Gorgo in being his best film, as both movies do really well in the spectacle department (in fact, I think the latter may have a bit of an edge over this film there). That said, though, they both have problems with some fairly bland characters who sometimes struggle in keeping you entertained when the monsters aren't onscreen. But, that may be more the fault of the scripts, as Lourie did manage to get some pretty good performances out of the actors in all of his films (the fact that he had some good ones probably didn't hurt either). One thing's for sure, however: he knew how to utilize Harryhausen's amazing effects, as the Rhedosaurus' attack on the lighthouse, his rampage through New York City, and the finale in the amusement park are all very well staged and filmed.

Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian, a Swedish-born actor whose real name was actually Paul Hubschmid), is kind of the ideal lead scientist character of these types of films: brilliant, eager to learn about the unknown, and courageous. The former two qualities are made clear from the get-go, as Nesbitt is both interested and slightly concerned about what the end result of all the atomic tests that have been conducted will be, and when he regains lucidness after being flown back to the U.S. following his encounter with the Rhedosaurus, he's eager to get back to the Arctic and investigate, even though paleontology isn't his field. This leads to him being discouraged when everyone tells him that the monster exists only his mind, especially after even a well-renowned paleontologist like Dr. Elson refuses to believe him, and he becomes temporarily reluctant to get involved in any more discussions about the beast when Lee Hunter, his only supporter, tries to help him. However, Hunter manages to convince him to try to identify the beast from the drawings she has of prehistoric animals and sure enough, he comes across one of the Rhedosaurus, which he immediately identifies as what he saw. Nesbitt proceeds to go to amazing lengths to prove the Rhedosaurus' existence, even when one of the surviving eye-witnesses refuses to see him due to ridicule, and his resolve does eventually lead to the creature being discovered and destroyed before he can harm more people than he already has. Nesbitt even takes it upon himself to help in destroying the monster, coming up with the method and, along with crackshot Corporal Jason Stone, puts himself in danger to do so, riding to the top of a roller-coaster during the climax so Stone can get a clear shot with the radioactive isotope used to do the job. Overall, Nesbitt may not be the deepest main character of these types of movies, but in the end, he has a very likable, charming personality, aided by his determination to prove the truth and his courage (plus, he looks quite dapper in the trenchcoat he wears during the latter half of the movie).

Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) serves as the token female lead and romantic interest for the male lead that you almost always have in monster movies during this era (something that Eugene Lourie would dispense with in his later films) and, like most of them, there's not a lot to her, although she's certainly not unlikable. She's the one who's good enough to believe Nesbitt's story when no one else does and convinces him to look through a bunch of drawings of all the known dinosaurs to see if he can pick out the beast he saw. Like I said, she ends up, by default, becoming Nesbitt's love interest, despite the fact that they haven't known each other for very long, which is cliche, although it never bugged me that much in this instance. You also have to like her admiration and fondness for Dr. Elson, the curator of the museum she works at, as well as her mentor. While she does disagree with him quite a bit (she even says at one point that he probably made her his assistant because she was the one who had the gumption to constantly argue with him), especially when it comes to the existence of the Rhedosaurus, you can tell that she really does respect him and love him like a grandfather. She's especially hard-hit when he's killed by the Rhedosaurus during the diving bell scene. Finally, and this has to account for something, Lee doesn't scream once in the entire film, which already puts her above a number of other female leads in this genre for me.

Dr. Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway), a well-renowned paleontologist and museum curator whom Nesbitt goes to with his story about the beast, is sort of a subversion of the scientific authorities you often get in these movies in that, while a very jolly and likable old professor, he's initially skeptical about Nesbitt's story. He doesn't come off as pompous or overly stern about it, saying that he would actually like to help Nesbitt, but does not believe that it's scientifically possible for an ancient creature to have survived into the modern age, frozen in suspended animation or not. Even though he still scoffs at the idea when Nesbitt brings him a supposed eyewitness to the monster, he does become open to the possibility when Nesbitt talks to him about how, eyewitnesses or not, something that exists does exist and uses the possibility of a particle of the sun breaking off as an example. When the eyewitness, a survivor from one of the ships that was sunk by the beast, picks out the same drawing of the Rhedosaurus that Nesbitt did, Elson becomes thoroughly convinced and determined to find the creature and study him rather than destroy him. To that end, he goes out to the area of the ocean where he believes the monster will come and goes down in a diving bell to find him. Eventually, he does come across the monster and is absolutely ecstatic, excitedly telling Nesbitt, Lee, and the others his description in scientific terms. Unfortunately, this scene ends with Elson being killed by the monster when he attacks the diving bell, which I was actually surprised by when I first saw it. These types of characters usually don't die in monster movies of this sort, for one thing, and for another, the fact that they would kill off such a character who's also very likable is quite ballsy.

The supporting cast is full of a number of recognizable actors, especially for a genre fan like me. Kenneth Tobey from The Thing from Another World plays Col. Jack Evans, the commanding officer of the nuclear test that freed the beast. Like everyone else, he, at first, doesn't believe Nesbitt, in spite of their friendship, but he is willing to listen when Elson agrees with him and has a high ranking friend in the Coast Guard to see if there have been any unusual happenings around the North Atlantic. This leads to the discovery of the destruction of a lighthouse on the coast of Maine, which in turn proves that the beast does exist, and once the magnitude of destruction he can inflict becomes clear, Evans is determined to do everything possible to destroy him. Evans isn't in the film much but, like everyone else, he is very likable, which is aided a lot by Kenneth Tobey's natural charisma. In addition to him, you have an appearance by Ross Elliott, who appeared in several of Jack Arnold's science fiction pictures, like Tarantula and Monster on the Campus, as George Ritchie, Nesbitt's friend who first sees the beast and dies before Nesbitt can save him, as well as King Donovan, who would later go on to play Jack Belicec in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, who appears in one scene as Dr. Ingersoll, a psychiatrist who tries to convince Nesbitt, and succeeds in convincing everyone else, that the beast was merely a hallucination caused by the blizzard. This character isn't noteworthy for anything other that that but seeing this actor who would later have a substantial role in a sci-fi classic pop up here was interesting and so, I felt the need to bring it up.

Finally, I have to bring up Lee Van Cleef, who appears during the climax in the small role of Corporal Jason Stone, the sharpshooter who's brought in to fire the radioactive isotope into the Rhedosaurus. Despite having such a small part, Van Cleef manages to exude the badass confidence he would become known for later in his career. When he meets up with Nesbitt at the amusement park on Coney Island, he's asked if he knows how to use a grenade rifle and he takes the gun, saying without hesitation, "Pick my teeth with 'em," and when he's then asked if he knows what a radioactive isotope is, he simply says, "No, but if it can be loaded, I can fire it." He then prepares to fire but finds he can't get a clear shot at the dinosaur and he and Nesbitt have to ride to the top of a roller-coaster in order for him to score a hit. When they do, he manages to fatally wound the Rhedosaurus but their car gets away from them and crashes, setting the coaster ablaze and forcing them to climb down it.

While it was distributed by Warner Bros. and became a big hit for them, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was produced as a fairly small, independent movie, with a budget of just around $200,000. Therefore, it's not surprising that none of the interior sets, which were designed by Eugene Lourie himself, are all that elaborate, with the one exception being the interiors of Dr. Elson's museum, which is fairly big, with some dinosaur skeletons in there (the major skeleton you see there was used before in a previous film). It's also pretty obvious that the exteriors of the snow-covered landscape during the first act are nothing more than a small interior set, with fake snow, matte paintings, and backdrops used to make it more believable, but it works fine for what it has to do. In addition, this film, like a lot of these types of movies that were made on a low budget, uses some stock footage during the opening for the H-bomb explosion and some of the lead-up to it, as well as the aftermath of the Beast's attack on Manhattan and, most obviously, in the scene with the diving bell, where Elson sees a fight between an octopus and a shark. Ignoring the fact that there are no octopi or sharks to be found in the Hudson River, it's clear from the crappy picture quality that this is merely documentary footage that's been inserted into the film (you can even see the footage get reversed and played back to pad the scene out more), and when the Rhedosaurus descends on the two animals, it looks more like he's looming towards a projection screen.

Speaking of which, let's stop beating around the bush and get to the real star and main selling point of the film: the Beast himself, the Rhedosaurus. First of all, his design is just cool and fairly iconic: he looks like a Tyrannosaurus Rex that's down all fours, with big powerful front legs as well as back legs, a dragging tail, crocodile-like scales, and a row of spikes along the center of his back. I've always been particularly intrigued by his head, which is alligator-shaped, with a mouth full of teeth, including a couple of long fangs out front, and a forked tongue. There are drawings of what the Beast was originally going to look like, which was a creature with a much longer neck and smaller head, akin to a Brachiosaurus and similar to what the monster in The Giant Behemoth would look like, and it looks like it would have also stood on its hind legs. Ray Harryhausen was the one who came up with the final design, as he wasn't satisfied with the original one, and I'm glad he made that decision, because this is much more memorable. And the way the Beast is brought to life through Harryhausen's stop motion is absolute classic and is definitely some of the best stop-motion ever seen in a 50's monster flick. This monster really does feel alive, breathing, and attacking! He may not have much of a personality, other than being just a typical marauding monster, but he looks so cool and feels so alive thanks to the animation that it doesn't matter. When the Beast rampages through Manhattan, it does feel like he's really there: they used a matting process to put the animation footage in with actual background footage of the city, with extras running around, and the result is very well done. I also like his vocalizations, which are these very low, deep, menacing growls and roars, as well as pained yells when he's injured and right before he dies, which manages to make me have some sympathy for him, in spite of all the death and destruction that he's caused.

There are many classic scenes involving the Beast. First, you have the beginning where Prof. Nesbitt and George Ritchie first encounter him out on the ice. The first real look at him following a short glimpse is breathtaking, as he stands on a glacier in front of Ritchie and lets out a loud, booming growl, after which he appears above Nesbitt when he's trying to help Ritchie and causes an avalanche that nearly kills both of them. Following that, you get a scene where the Beast sinks a ship. He looks really menacing when the captain and mate look at him through the porthole, which is obscured somewhat by the water running down the glass, and the shot of him actually destroying the ship by pushing it down into the water repeatedly and biting at it is particularly effective. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the Beast destroys a lighthouse, hearkening back to the Ray Bradbury story, The Foghorn, that the film was inspired by. All shots of the Beast in this scene are done completely in dark silhouette, giving it a very eerie and ominous feel. I particularly like the shot of him coming out of the ocean, onto the land, and growling at the lighthouse, no doubt because of the foghorn, before attacking it. From all the movies I've seen, stop-motion monsters typically don't get to cause a lot of destruction on the level of Godzilla and other suit-actor creature because of the chore of having to animate the crumbling structures but the Rhedosaurus, as well as many of Harryhausen's creations, gets to destroy quite a bit and the lighthouse really looks good when it crumbles. There's some nice underwater water footage of the Beast when he enters the undersea caverns of the Hudson River Valley where the fossils of his ancestors were discovered. Granted, it's obvious he's not really underwater, as they merely put a shimmering effect on the picture to make it look that way, and I thought the environment might have been a miniature set but instead, it looks like just another backdrop, with a few foreground elements here and there. The animation is still good, though, with the only major flub in the sequence being the stock footage and the way the Beast interacts with it. Originally, the movie was sepia-toned rather than full-on black-and-white, with this underwater sequence having a kind of green look to it, but I don't think that print exists anymore, which is a shame, because it sounds interesting.

The most famous scene with the Beast, as well as in the entire movie, is when he comes ashore at the New York docks and goes on a rampage throughout Manhattan. It's a pretty good monster rampage scene, with the Beast smashing cars, crashing through building walls and crushing people beneath the rubble, grabbing one vehicle (with a person in it) in his mouth and shaking it around before dropping it, battling some rifle-wielding policemen, and, in one particularly horrific moment for the early 50's, grabs one policeman who shoots at him with his mouth and swallows him whole! The effect doesn't hold up that well, as the stop-motion Beast doesn't look like he's actually touching the real actor, but still, I'm surprised the censors at the time let it by. The only thing that kind of deters from the excitement of the scene is that the running extras don't movie all that fast and don't seem genuinely scared, with all the screams being dubbed in. There's even one moment where, if you look closely, you can see some people and cars going by casually, in spite of the fact that a big monster just rounded a corner! This tended to be a common problem in crowd running scenes in monster movies, where the extras either wouldn't run frantically enough or, worse, they didn't take it seriously and you could see them laughing (as in the famous theater scene in The Blob). To be honest, the crowds in The Giant Behemoth and Gorgo came across a lot better. After the rampage, you get a moment where the Beast is cornered in the city street, with the military firing on him, and like most giant monsters, the initial bombardment only angers him instead of hurting him. However, he is definitely hurt when a bazooka shot hits him right in the neck while he's snapping at the electrified fence surrounding the soldiers' blockade, causing him to let out a pained howl. He gets away after destroying the fence but the military discovers that he's wounded via a trail of blood going up the street. However, that turns out to not be a good thing, as the soldiers who follow the blood trail suddenly fall deathly ill, as have many of the civilians caught up in the rampage, and it's revealed that the Beast is carrying a deadly disease. Nesbitt then comes up with the notion that the only way to destroy the Beast without infecting the city is to shoot a radioactive isotope that will destroy the germs into the wound along with him.

The finale at the Coney Island amusement park (which was actually shot at the Long Beach Amusement Park) makes for a really good spectacle. While the Beast bites and chews on parts of the roller-coaster (definitely the most elaborate miniature built for the film; Ray Harryhausen is said to have come up with the ending) that's he standing in the center of, Nesbitt and Corp. Stone use the cars of the coaster's car to get to the top of the structure in order to get a clear shot with the isotope. The Beast becomes frantic and pained after being hit with the isotope (the wide shot of them standing atop the coaster to the right and the Beast off to the left after he's been shot is a really good bit of optical work) and flails around, shaking the coaster and causing the cars to slip away from Nesbitt and Stone, leading to their crashing and starting a fire that engulfs the whole structure. While the men carefully walk down the tracks and climb down the side of the coaster to safety (it would have been a little better if it felt like they were in more danger during this bit), the Beast continues to scream in pain as the isotope destroys him from the inside and snaps at the flames, at one point sending a bunch of fiery debris flying into the air with his tail. He eventually walks through the coaster after a section of it collapses to the outside of the park and finally gives out with one last scream. Like I said before, as with a lot of monsters, in spite of what he's done, you can't help but feel sorry for the Beast as he walks around in a circle in the sand, quickly losing his strength, and screams in pain before finally dying. He wasn't an evil creature; he just was what he was and didn't belong in this modern world.

Another big component of the film's success is the awesome music score by David Buttolph. When the film was first sold to Warner Bros., it already came with a score by Russian composer Michel Michelet but the higher-ups at the studio decided it wasn't strong enough and so they hired Buttolph to compose all new music. The result was, in my opinion, some of the best music ever composed for this type of flick. The music over the opening credits, the Beast's main theme, the music during the rampage through Manhattan, and the music you hear playing in a concert hall at one point are all very well-orchestrated, with the Beast's main theme being particularly memorable, with its low, depressing sound created from descending strings that give off a very unsettling vibe. It's particularly creepy in the trailer, where the narrator is talking about supposed frozen monsters in the polar ice caps. My favorite piece of music, though, is the one that plays during the finale in the amusement park to the very end of the film. The last part of it in particular, after the Beast expires, has an awesome and powerfully final feel to it that I just love.

While it's not one of the most well-known movies of the 50's except to genre fans, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is still a landmark film, both for being one of the first of these types of movies to involve an atomic test either releasing or creating the monster (one of my personal favorite subgenres of sci-fi) and for being Ray Harryhausen first solo outing. The actors, despite being a fairly talented, likable lot and playing their roles as best as they can, are a bit bland at times and it's possible you may sometimes find yourself wishing for the Beast to come back onscreen, but once he does, he makes it all worthwhile, as he's a really cool movie monster, with a memorable design, he's brought to life beautifully through Harryhausen's stop-motion, and has a number of great scenes. In addition, the film is simply well-directed, makes the most of its low budget, has some really nice setpieces, and a great music score. It's a film that I very much enjoy, despite its flaws, and I highly recommend it for those who haven't seen it (but, if you like these types of movies as much as I do, you probably checked it out long ago).