Dino Flicks: The Giant Behemoth (Behemoth, the Sea Monster) (1959)

Here's yet another film that I was first introduced to via Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies, but unlike a good number of the other movies whose trailers were part of that compilation (like The Giant Claw, Tarantula, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Jason and the Argonauts, and many others), this is one that I feel was actually appropriate given the subject matter. What it did have in common with a lot of those films is that the trailer would stay in my memory throughout my childhood and I would read more about it in some library books on old sci-fi flicks that I found both at school and at a library twenty minutes away from where I lived, but I wouldn't see the actual film until many, many years later. The first time I actually did see it was when my parents and I were on vacation in Florida. I'm not exactly sure when that was but, if I were to guess, I would say that it was anywhere from 1998 to 2000, placing me within eleven to thirteen years old at the time. Mom and I had just gotten back from the nearby zoo and when we got up to the room in the condo we were staying at, Dad was watching it, either on Turner Classic Movies or AMC (I miss what AMC used to be, don't you?) I got to see the last half of it, particularly the Behemoth coming ashore and marching through London, as well as his destruction at the end, and naturally, being a fan of monster movies, I had fun with it and wished that I could have seen the whole thing. Funnily enough, the next year, when we went back to the same place in Florida, Destin (it was a tradition for us back then), Mom and I went to a video store one day and I ended up finding and buying the VHS of The Giant Behemoth. Talk about serendipity! In any case, after we had gotten back home and I watched the movie, I was a bit disappointed because I quickly realized that I had pretty much seen all of the scenes involving the Behemoth himself the previous year. I had thought that there was more stuff involving him that I'd missed but, as it turned out, the first half of the film is build-up, which, for an energetic, monster-loving pre-teen, was more than a little disappointing.

Naturally, though, as I got older, I began to really appreciate the build-up to the Behemoth and now, after watching the film again for this review, as I hadn't seen it in a long time, I feel that it's actually the film's best asset. Don't get me wrong, the monster himself is still quite nice, as I'll get into shortly, but now that I'm an adult, it's my opinion that The Giant Behemoth is one of those films whose build-up is a bit more satisfying than the payoff. Also, I was originally going to make this another installment of B to Z Movies but, after watching it again, I think that it's actually very competently made, save for some technical hiccups here and there, so I couldn't in good conscience make it part of that series. And by extension, I don't think the DVD deserves to be in a 3-pack with Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Queen of Outer Space, as it's much better than either of those movies.

In London, American scientist Steve Karnes gives a lecture to other scientists about the number of nuclear tests that have been conducted over the years and his concerns about the effects these tests are having on the ocean, particularly the increasing amount of radiation that has made its way into the food chains in the areas near the test sites. He concludes his lecture with his fear of something rising up from the sea and striking back at humanity if the radioactive pollution continues. His feelings are soon given validity when a fisherman in the seaside village of Cornwall dies as a result of strange, hideous burns that he received from something that he only managed to describe as "Behemoth" before expiring. In addition, tons of dead fish are found to be washing up onto the beach soon afterward, threatening the livelihood of the village. Hearing about this on the news in London, as well reports of a sea monster from another village, Karnes, along with British scientist Prof. Bickford, travel to the area to conduct some tests. While none of the fish left and no traces of residual radiation are found at the spot where the fish and the man were discovered, Karnes still believes that there's something very bizarre and alarming going on. After examining specimens of fish taken from along the coast, it's eventually discovered that something is indeed contaminating the fish in certain areas with deadly radiation. Karnes becomes determined to find out what this thing is and, after he gets a small glimpse of it while searching the coast in a small boat, the creature eventually reveals itself to be an enormous, undersea dinosaur called a Paleosaurus, now intensely radioactive and able to physically project the radiation from its body via its natural electric currents. Now, they must come up with a way to destroy it quickly because, according to an expert on the subject, the creature's instincts are leading it to the Thames and, by extentson, London.

The film's director, Eugene Lourie, was certainly no stranger to giant monster pictures, as he'd directed The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms back in 1953. In fact, many have seen The Giant Behemoth as the first of two instances where Lourie would redo that film, with the other one being Gorgo a couple of years later. In any case, since The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Lourie had mainly directed television but, the year before The Giant Behemoth, he made The Colossus of New York, a pretty good flick that, sadly, has been virtually forgotten by the mainstream. What's interesting is that, while this film may have ended up being a virtual remake of Lourie's well-known directorial debut, by all accounts, it didn't start out that way, and it's quite possible that Lourie may have been disappointed with how it all worked out, which I'll expound upon later. In fact, according to the opening credits of the UK version, Lourie wasn't the only director; Douglas Hickox, whose son Anthony would direct the Waxwork movies and Hellraiser III decades later, was a second unit and assistant director who supposedly got his first shot at being an actual one by sharing the reigns of this film with Lourie. That said, the details of this affair are quite sketchy, as I can't find any info on exactly who directed what and I've even heard some dispute the idea that Hickox did any work on the film at all. I originally thought that, since Lourie's main profession was art direction and effects, and given the fact that he actually did some effects work himself on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, he handled the filming of the stop-motion effects with the Behemoth whilst Hickox directed the live action stuff but, again, due to conflicting reports and opinions, I'm not so sure if that was the case. In any case, to keep things simple, I'll treat Lourie as if he were the sole director, since he's the one who gets the lion's share of the credit and he did help write the screenplay as well.

Let's address the film's title for a little bit. Normally, I don't put movies' alternate titles into the headings of these reviews but I felt that it was appropriate to do so here, simply because I've heard people call it by that title just as much as its American one (the film's own Wikipedia page used to refer to it as such). The original UK title was Behemoth, the Sea Monster but, for some reason, the American distributor decided that The Giant Behemoth would be better. Um, why?  Personally, not only do I think Behemoth, the Sea Monster sounded just fine, I actually like that title more. Not only does it have a much more dramatic and cool ring to it but The Giant Behemoth is an extremely redundant title since "behemoth" is simply another word for "giant." The film's Goofs section on IMDB does try to throw it a bit of a bone, given that behemoth also comes from the Hebrew word for "beast," but when most people use it, it is as another term for giant, so you really might as well just call this film The Giant Giant, as that's what many are going to see it as. In general, I've never understood this trend of re-titling movies from other countries when their original titles were just fine. I understand giving the original Hammer Frankenstein and Dracula films the titles of The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula when they were brought over here so as not to cause confusion with the Universal films (although they had no problem with the Hammer version of The Mummy having the same title), and I can even buy them changing Radon to Rodan so as the monster wouldn't have a name similar to a brand of soap, but, again, what was wrong with keeping the title Behemoth, the Sea Monster? It's kind of silly, don't you think? However, even though I like that title more, since The Giant Behemoth is its American title and what most people over here know it as, I will continue to refer to it as such for the rest of the review (that will also be the case for future reviews of movies that have different titles depending on the country).

While it does follow the giant monster movie formula for the most part, there are some aspects of The Giant Behemoth that I feel distinguish it from the norm for these types of films. One is the tone. While most of the giant monster flicks from this time period have quite a bit of humor interspersed within the story and the rampages of the monster(s), this one has very little. There are tiny bits here and there but, for the most part, this is a very serious film and does not play its subject matter for laughs whatsoever. I think that could be the British influence. While stuff like the Hammer films and such did have humor here and there, it usually just came and went and wasn't dwelt upon for very long. I think the fact that the film is set in the British Isles adds to its overall atmosphere. With the skies almost always being gray and overcast and the waters of the rolling, choppy ocean having a virtually black look to them, enhanced even more so by the black and white photography, it gives off a rather gloomy and foreboding feeling. To see for yourself, look at the quiet, partially foggy shots of London right before the Behemoth comes ashore and attacks the city. From that image alone, you can feel the eerie, foreboding feeling that's in the air, as they keep an eye on the harbor, waiting for the monster to appear again. Finally, the film does not have a hopeful conclusion. With most of these types of movies, once the monster is killed, the crisis is over and everyone can go on with their lives. However in this film, after the Behemoth has been destroyed, the two main characters get into a car and hear on the radio that dead fish are washing ashore in America, suggesting that another Behemoth or a similar radioactive monster has just reared its ugly head. After hearing that, our main character, Steve Karnes, makes a very frustrated face and briefly shakes his head, knowing that not only is it not over but it probably hasn't even begun. You can almost see it as an answer to the ending of Them!, where the main characters become concerned about the effects of all the other nuclear tests that have happened since the original one in 1945 that created the film's giant ants. The Giant Behemoth ends by telling us point blank that whatever test created the Behemoth was only the beginning and validates Karens' statement about, "a biological chain-reaction, a geometrical progression of deadly menace" in the film's opening lecture.

An extension of the film's tone is how, unlike most movies that have dealt with monsters created by radiation, this one not only discusses the effects of excessive radioactivity but actually shows it. The film begins, as I've said, with Karnes giving a lecture about the dangerous implications of ongoing nuclear tests and all of the radioactive material that's ending up in the ocean. What really surprised me was that, during this lecture, Prof. Bickford mentions how in Japan, boatloads of fish had to be destroyed even though they were very far from any nuclear test sites. That sounds remarkably similar to a real-life incident that inspired the opening of the original Godzilla, where a fishing vessel was exposed to radioactive fallout from a nuclear test and, not only did the men aboard the ship all die, but, according to one report, some of the contaminated fish actually made it to the market! I can't help but wonder if Lourie and the other screenwriter heard of that incident, which occurred much earlier in the decade, and decided to subtly incorporate it into this film. In any case, this lecture is just the start of this film's surprisingly overt depiction of radiation. We see the effects of the Behemoth's radioactivity long before we see the monster himself, in the form of the tons of dead fish washing ashore at Cornwall, the contaminated fish that Karnes discovers in the laboratory, and, most graphically of all, we see the effects the creature's radiation has on people who come into contact with it. We see the burns on the old fisherman who's the first one to die at the beginning of the film, the end result of one guy touching a bizarre, gooey material that the Behemoth left behind, and several demonstrations of what happens when the Behemoth directs his radiation straight at someone. Moreover, when the Behemoth attacks London near the end of the film, he leaves many people either dead or dying from his radiation and we see this stuff up close and it's not pretty. Finally, they mention the fact that if they hit the Behemoth with explosives, they would blow him to pieces and London would be covered in his radioactive remains, which prompts them to try to find a way to destroy him with his body intact. In short, the fact that this film doesn't shy away from the real-world effects of something huge and radioactive running around makes it stand out from other such films that simply use the radiation as an explanation for the monster's origin and nothing more.

Finally, one last bit of straying from the norm, and one that I, frankly, am happy about, is the absence of a love interest for the lead male character. As much as I love this genre, the idea of there always being a romance between the lead guy and the lead female becomes very tired and cliched after a while and just feels tacked on; The Giant Behemoth doesn't fall into that trap at all. That said, though, the minute you're introduced to the one female character who gets a significant amount of screentime, you're probably thinking, "Okay, she's going to be the love interest," especially when Steve Karnes and Prof. Bickford travel to the village to investigate the reports of the dead fish and the girl's deceased father. But, nope. Karnes and the girl just have one brief exchange whilst he and Bickford are conducting their tests and that's it. On that note, earlier in the film when the girl goes looking for her missing father, she heads into the local pub and meets up with a young man who, even though it's never explicitly stated that they're lovers, you take one look at this fairly handsome guy and say, "Okay, he's going to be the real lead, not Karnes, and she's going to be the leading lady." But, again, no. After Karnes and Bickford finish their testing in this village, these two characters are never mentioned again. In fact, there are no other noteworthy female characters, with the others simply being extras, and if you look at Eugene Lourie's three giant monster movies, it's almost as if he was slowly removing female characters from them completely as he went on. You start with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which did have the typical romance between the lead man and woman; then you have this film, which has only one notable female character and even then, she's only in one small section of it; and finally, you have Gorgo, which has no lead female characters at all and the only women in the movie are buried in the huge crowds of extras. It could all just be coincidence but still, it's a really odd trend that's difficult not to notice. In any case, I'm really glad that this film doesn't have that all-too prevalent trope. Not that I'm against romance but it's just a nice change of pace for the movie to not have that cliched bit of business.

The fact that the male lead, Steve Karnes, is played by Gene Evans is yet another way in which this film breaks with the traditions of the genre. If you've watched a lot of these 1950's sci-fi films, you will have noticed that a good chunk of the leading men in these movies are very good-looking guys who would caught the attention of the the ladies in the audience; actors like Richard Denning, John Agar, and even people like Jeff Morrow and Kenneth Tobey come to mind. However, Evans was just an ordinary-looking guy and yet, at the same time, was fairly well-known, as he was no stranger to fans of westerns and the TV show, My Friend Flicka. I think his casting made the male lead of Steve Karnes much more relatable than had one of those more typical leading men been cast in the role. It also didn't hurt that Evans was a great actor. As Prof. Bickford describes Karnes (saying this to the man himself), he's young and aggressive, and in the opening lecture, he shows us just how much he is so. He makes it clear that he's extremely concerned with the effects that all of the continued nuclear tests are having, particularly on the ocean in regards to the amount of radioactive waste that's being dumped there. Evans plays this scene very well, with so much energy and conviction in his face and voice as he describes the cumulative effects of the nuclear waste on the ocean's food chain that you totally believe him when it comes to the urgency of the situation. But, as often happens in these films, no one else believes him until it's too late. Despite the disbelief that he gets from his peers when he gives his lecture, particularly in regards to his warning that something may rise from the sea and strike back at mankind, he remains undeterred, particularly when he hears about the dead fish and fisherman at Cornwall.

In his determination, he goes down there along with Prof. Bickford, and even though he doesn't find any traces of residual radiation where the fish was, the burn on the hand of the young man, John, which reminds him of similar things that he's seen in relation to the nuclear tests in the Pacific, convinces him that there is something strange and deadly happening. Once he finds indisputable evidence of contaminated fish, he becomes determined to find whatever is causing this, and since there have been recent reports of a sea monster in the same general area, he's sure that must be some connection. Naturally, he turns out to be right again, when he gets a brief glimpse of the Behemoth while searching the area and it's not too long before everyone else believes him as well. He's the one who ultimately comes up with the plan that destroys the Behemoth and he also puts himself in harm's way to make sure it works by being part of the two-man sub that attacks the monster. Unfortunately, though, even after the Behemoth is destroyed, Karnes learns via a radio report that dead fish are washing up in America, proving that his warning at the beginning of the film was more true than he could have possibly imagined and that another Behemoth or a similar creature has made itself known. The look on Karnes' face after he hears this says that he really wishes that he was wrong in this instance.

Completely different from Karnes is Prof. Bickford (Andre Morell), the much older British scientist who eventually becomes Karnes' friend and partner. Bickford is the one attendant of Karnes' opening lecture that doesn't scoff at his warnings about the dangers of the cumulating amount of radioactive materials that's ending up in the ocean, reminding one disbeliever about the incident involving the contaminated fishing boats in Japan. That said, though, he's much less gun-ho than Karnes is, coming across as much more patient and thoughtful. There's a great moment between the two of them early on when Karnes tells Bickford that he's planning on going down to Cornwall to investigate the reports of the dead fish and the man. When Bickford advises him not to rush into things, Karnes comments, "Well, we just can't sit here on our tails and do nothing! In a thing like this, every hour counts!", Bickford reminds him that he's the chairman of a commission that deals with this type of situation and says, "You don't really imagine that we sit around on our tails, drinking tea, do you?" Karnes apologizes for what he said and comes along with Bickford on his investigation. In other words, Bickford wants to find out what happened as much Karnes does but he's not going to jump to any conclusions until he sees the evidence for himself, whereas Karnes has pretty much already made up his mind what's going on. The different ways these men go about their science does make for a rather interesting dichotomy between the two of them. Throughout their investigation in Cornwall, Bickford remains steadfast in his resolve to not be too hasty when it comes to what they find, which isn't much, and while he doesn't dismiss Karnes' feelings that something unusual did happen there, he gives many reasonable and possible alternatives to Karnes' more outlandish ones. What sums up their feelings on the matter and how they go about things in general is when the subject turns to the burns on John's hand. While Karnes says that he knows for sure that those are radiation burns, Bickford says that he'll know it once he hears the report from the London clinic that they sent John to. However, when the mounting evidence does corroborate Karnes' feelings, particularly when it comes to the supposed sea monster, he spends the rest of the movie doing nothing but supporting his friend as well as advising the defense ministry on the best ways to protect London and to destroy the monster. And at the end of the movie when they hear the report of dead fish washing up on American shores, he's now on the same level that Karnes was at the beginning. There's no doubt in his mind whatsoever as to what that report means.

Three characters who are nothing more than a brief subplot in the film are Tom Trevethan (Henri Vidon), the poor Cornwall fisherman who's the first one to die from his encounter with the Behemoth, his daughter Jean (Leigh Madison), and her possible boyfriend, John (John Turner) (again, I say possible because it's only hinted at but never dwelt upon). As you might expect, there's not much to say about these characters since they're only in a very brief part of the film. We do learn a little bit about Tom, in that he loves to boast at the local pub whenever he makes a substantial catch of fish, particularly to John and his friends, and also, according to something that Jean says, he likes to have a drink every now and then. Tom is also obviously quite well-informed about the Bible as well, since he's the one who calls the monster "Behemoth" right before he dies. In fact, during his funeral service, the priest says that Tom was a lot like Job in that he had his fair share of hard times and he even proceeds to read the story of the Behemoth from that chapter of the Bible, almost as if Tom was fated to see and be killed by the monster. In any case, while I can say some interesting things about Tom, I can't say much about Jean and John. Jean clearly loves her father and also likes to tease him about his constant boasting, which Tom playfully denies when she brings it up, but other than that, there's not much to her. John has even less of a character but, again, that's not the fault of the actor but simply because he's only in this small section of the film. John is gregarious enough at first but after Tom dies and he burns his hand on the odd blob thing that the Behemoth leaves behind (which was a very dumb thing to do, I might add), he becomes far less happy-go-lucky, particularly when it comes to the government's lack of reaction to what's happened in the village. However, what doesn't change is how he clearly cares for Jean very deeply. What's strange about John, though, is that, as I've mentioned, once Karnes and Bickford get a look at the burn on John's hand, they send him to a clinic in London where the burn can be more properly examined and Bickford even mentions how he's going to reserve judgment about what happened until he hears from the clinic. You know what the clinic's findings were? Beats me. John is never seen again and we never hear anymore about it, which says to me that either his burn wasn't that severe or he died. Whatever happened, it's amazing that this character was seen as so inconsequential to the film that his fate was never revealed!

One guy who is only in the film for a very brief amount of time but does leave an impression is Dr. Sampson (Jack MacGowran), the paleontologist who identifies the Behemoth as a Paleosaurus. While he's most definitely the typical eccentric scientist, I just love his childlike enthusiasm when he realizes there's a living Paleosaurus swimming around in the ocean, saying that ever since he was a child, he knew that they were actually still alive somewhere, the cause of all the reports of sea monsters, but if he had said anything about it, he would have been ridiculed by his peers. Besides identifying the monster, he also informs Karnes and Bickford that he's heading for the Thames since that's where he was born, that the species has an instinctual drive to die where they were born, and that the creature has a natural electric charge similar to an electric eel. I also love how forlorn he gets when Karnes informs him that the creature is intensely radioactive, meaning that it will have to be destroyed. After he comes to this realization, he just stares straight ahead in an almost catatonic state and answers a question that Bickford asks with him with a very sad and distracted, "Yes." But as they're leaving, he snaps out of it and energetically tells them to first make a thorough study of the creature, with photographs and the like. Sampson, however, knows that they probably won't bother with any research and decides to do it himself, going out over the ocean in a helicopter along with his assistant to search for the Behemoth. This is another similarity between this film and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, as in that film, Cecil Kellaway's character of Prof. Elson, also goes searching for the title monster and, sadly, another similarity is that Sampson, like Elson, finds what he's looking for but it ends up costing him his life; in this case, Sampson's helicopter is destroyed by the Behemoth's radioactive waves.

One last character I want to touch on briefly is this newscaster (Neal Arden) who gives the report of the dead fish in Cornwall that grabs Karnes' attention early on. I don't know why but I really like this guy, with his relaxed and chatty way of reporting the news rather than the uptight and dramatic way that American newscasters tended to do so in these types of movies made around this time. I particularly like what he says when he moves on to the report of a sea monster from a nearby village, describing it as being, "No doubt one of the Loch Ness variety, with fire-breathing and all that," and closes with this dry remark, "But it does prove one point, ladies and gentlemen. It proves all the Scotch whiskey has not been exported to America." Of course, he's proven to be very wrong later on but nevertheless, I just smile during this scene. I wish newscasters over here were like that instead of being so uptight and gloomy most of the time.

In stark contrast to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which gave you your first look at the title monster practically at the beginning of the movie, The Giant Behemoth keeps the monster off-camera for a good chunk of it. You don't get your first brief glimpse of him until quite a bit in and, by the time he appears in the River Thames and soon after comes ashore to attack London, there's only thirty or so minutes left in the film. I would like to think that Eugene Lourie went about it this way in order to build suspense (which, as I've said, the film does a pretty good job of) but, when you look at the film's production history, it's more likely that it was done out of necessity as originally, the monster in the film was supposed to be completely different from what we actually got. By all accounts, it was supposed to be a radioactive version of the Blob but the distributor decided they'd rather have the film be about a huge, radioactive dinosaur instead and so, the script was reworked to accommodate this concept. Despite this radically different story, though, they kept aspects of that original idea in the finished film in the form of the gooey, radioactive mass which John touches and burns his hand on. However, while we know what that thing was originally meant to be, they never explain what it is in the context of the story that they went with. They probably didn't have the time or the money to reshoot that scene in a way that would accommodate the new story and they had to keep it in since they needed something that would convince Karnes beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's something going on involving radiation, but still, as is, it feels out of place in regards to the rest of the movie. We assume that blob was something left behind by the Behemoth but what was it? Was it, as John himself suggests, a jellyfish or similar such animal mutated by the Behemoth's radioactivity? Was it a part of his skin or some other material from his body that somehow became detached from him? (That doesn't explain why it appeared to be breathing, though.) Was it some type of parasite that was attached to him and got mutated after feeding on his contaminated blood? These are all good questions but after the section of the movie at Cornwall, this thing is never brought up again and even Karnes and Bickford aren't able to explain what it was or why it was shining, which Karnes explains is a quality radiation doesn't have. It's like the giant sea louse in the American version of The Return of Godzilla, called Godzilla 1985, but at least in that case, you have an alternate version of the movie that explains it, whereas here, you don't get anything whatsoever.

After doing a little bit more research, I've found that it seems as if the blob-monster wasn't the only concept that was proposed for the film. Another was for a monster that was completely invisible, which could account for the scene where they discover that the Behemoth doesn't show up on radar (which is never explained in this context either but I think you could surmise that his radiation screws up the radar), and I've also heard one person say that Lourie himself told them that the threat was supposed to simply be radiation emanating from the Thames. These are all some extremely varied concepts we have here and I have to wonder how much truth there is in them, as well as if any of them actually made it to the first draft of a script before it was finalized with the Behemoth. Hopefully, someone else who reads this will know more about it than I do and will be able to provide an answer. In any case, one other thing that I have to wonder about is how Lourie himself may have felt about the concept's very drastic change. It's been said that, in spite of its big success, he was not too happy that The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms pigeonholed him as a monster movie director and, therefore, I'm sure he couldn't have been too thrilled that this film ended up getting reworked into a virtual retelling of that film. These circumstances probably encouraged his decision to retire from directing altogether after Gorgo, which it has been documented was motivated by his realizing that he wasn't going to be able to do anything else.

Regardless of what the monster was originally intended to be, the buildup to the one we got is very well done indeed. Long before we see the Behemoth, his presence is very much felt. We see Tom Trevethan succumb to the Behemoth's radioactive waves, while the monster himself is kept off-camera, and after Trevethan's badly burned body is found, he just manages to say that something came out of the sea and he names the creature as "Behemoth" before he dies from his injuries. Then, of course, after that we get all of the dead fish that were washed onto the beach and the mysterious radioactive blob that burns John's hand. When Karnes and Bickford arrive in Cornwall, they discover that whatever is going on has crippled the fishing that the village depends on, threatening the people that live there with starvation. One of my favorite moments in this section is when a few fishermen are asked if they saw anything unusual and one admits that he saw some strange lights beneath the water, saying it looked like a large cloud, like what you might see when you look at a city at night with a storm coming on. The music that plays in this section really adds to the mysterious, eerie quality of whatever it was he saw. Even though Karnes and Bickford don't find any residual radiation in the area, the reports of the dead fish, the lights the one fisherman saw, the burns on John's hand, and the deceased Trevethan's last words of "Behemoth" tell Karnes that there is something going on that requires more investigating. As they pack up to leave, Karnes says, as he looks out the window at the sea, "One thing's for sure: something has happened here that isn't in the book. Something came out of the ocean... and now has gone back into it." Gene Evans' delivery of that line, the shot of the ocean that accompanies his statement, and, again, the music, give you the sense that something is definitely out there.

When Karnes dissects many specimens of fish from up and down the coast, one of them is revealed to contain a strange substance that glows in the dark and, sure enough, the fish itself is revealed to be intensely radioactive. Karnes decides to go to the area where that fish was found and use a chartered boat to hunt down the cause of the contamination, going on the reports of a sea monster not far from there. While doing so, the skipper of his hired boat asks Karnes what he's looking for and Karnes responds, "Skipper, did you ever spend a night in the jungle... and you feel something out there, beyond the light of your fire, prowling around?" "Tiger?" "I don't know, any more than I know what we're looking for right now." Again, Evan's delivery of the line gives a feeling of eeriness to the proceedings, along with the idea that they're on a small boat in the middle of the dark, choppy ocean. Not too long afterward, the ship's radiation counter goes crazy and we then get our first brief glimpse of the Behemoth through a POV shot of Karnes' binoculars as he dives beneath the waves. This first shot of the monster is intensely creepy because of how dark it is and how he's almost completely in shadow. I personally always think of the Loch Ness Monster when I see that shot, with the Behemoth's long curved neck, the small triangular spikes on the back, and how he dives beneath some very dark-looking water. Plus, during this brief glimpse of the Behemoth, we can also see that, just like his namesake from the Bible, he's making the water around him sizzle and bubble. While he manages to evade Karnes and the skipper when they attempt to give chase, shortly afterward they're ordered back to shore, where Karnes is taken to the wreckage of a large steamship that was reported missing while they were on the ocean searching for the monster. The incredible damage of the vessel gives some ideas to just how large and powerful the monster is and, as you find out, the entire crew has died from being poisoned by his radioactivity. With all of this evidence attesting to his existence, and the discovery that the glowing substance that was removed from that fish contains cells from the stomach walls of an unknown creature, it's not too long before the Behemoth finally makes himself known in a way that's impossible for anyone to dismiss, coming ashore and destroying a small farm, leaving a huge footprint, and killing a farmer and his son with his radioactive waves. We also get our first glimpse of the stop-motion that will be the predominant way in which the monster is brought to life.

Normally, when a dinosaur is made into a villain in a movie like this, it's typically a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a similar such carnivore. Even if it's a made-up dinosaur, like the Rhedosaurus in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the title monsters in Gorgo, or Godzilla himself, they still bare something of a resemblance to the T-Rex because of its familiarity with the public and because, if you're going to do a monster movie involving a dinosaur, it's the natural way to go. So, with that in mind, it's interesting that the Behemoth is similar to a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur such as a Brachiosaurus or Apatosaurus. True, there have been villainous examples of this species of dinosaur before, like the Brontosaurus that rampaged through, ironically, London at the end of the original 1925 version of The Lost World and the one that chased and chomped on several members of Carl Denham's crew in King Kong but, in the years since then, I think paleontology had shown that those dinosaurs, in reality, wouldn't do that and so, they stopped depicting them that way in movies. Granted, the Behemoth technically isn't an example of any of those aforementioned species but he looks so much like them that it's still breaking with tradition. (Incidentally, I looked up Paleosaurus, the type of dinosaur that he's supposed to be, and information about it is so sketchy that I think it's safe to assume that the filmmakers simply took the name and made their own creature from it, which was hardly uncommon at the time.)

His major biological feature is his natural electricity, like that of an electric eel, which explains the lights the one fisherman saw and also creates a vague outline of the Behemoth's body beneath the surface of the water, which we see when Prof. Sampson is searching for the creature. Near the end of the movie when the Behemoth has fallen back into the Thames, we get underwater shots of him swimming while flashing his electricity, apparently as a means to navigate his way through the water. The Behemoth, for some unexplained reason, doesn't show up on radar, despite his size, but, again, I think it's safe to surmise that his radiation scrambles the radar signal. Speaking of which, as Karnes explains at one point, the Behemoth's electric current projects his radioactivity in the form of bright, whistling waves of energy that destroy whatever is threatening him and he seems to know how to aim it just as well as he knows how to use his electricity, seeing as how the waves zero in on their target. As I said earlier, we get some rather grisly closeups of the effects of the radiation, from the burns on various people's bodies (the textures of which are quite hideous, with their white outer layers and the dark inner layers where the skin appears to have been burnt through) to others whose bodies appear to be smoldering. Those latter effects are a bit hard to physically describe. Whenever they happen, it looks as if the contrast of the movie's picture is turned up and it's rather hard to make out the details of the images, as if the film itself becomes a painting (which is possibly the case). Either way, while they are hard to make out, you see enough of them to know that the aftermath isn't pretty. Prof. Sampson suggests that the Behemoth is heading for the Thames because of some natural instinct to die in the shallows where he was born. Not only does he prove to be quite right in regards to where the monster is heading but, as theorized by Karnes, the Behemoth has absorbed so much radiation that he's slowly dying from it and, therefore, the theory that he's heading there in order to die where he was born is also quite sound. But, even though he's slowly burning out from his radiation, that doesn't mean the Behemoth can't have a little fun before he goes.

There are two big monster attack scenes in the film, with the first one being when the Behemoth appears in the Thames and attacks a ferry boat. Oddly enough, the VHS of the movie that I had for many years didn't have this scene. In fact, after Prof. Sampson is killed, that copy would skip right to the big meeting that takes place between the military leaders, Karnes, and Bickford before the Behemoth comes ashore and attacks London outright, editing out not only the ferry attack but also a section where the citizens of London are told to keep clear of the Thames and, to that end, the military's evacuating the houses close to the river. More than like, this whole section of the film was cut from that VHS out of negligence but perhaps another reason is that they didn't want viewers to see the really bad modelwork featured in the ferry attack scene. Yeah, for a film that has pretty good special effects for the most part, in spite of the low budget, your first major look at the Behemoth in broad daylight is realized via a really bad model in the water. The thing is just really stiff, with the face absolutely lifeless and the neck barely having any articulation. Even worse, as often happens in these types of situations, the face of the model hardly resembles that of the stop-motion puppet used for the majority of the film. But the most damning part of the whole scene is that you can very plainly see the wooden or plastic base that the head and neck were built on top of in a few shots. I know it was 1959 and they didn't have much money, so I should go easy on it, but, again, the effects, what little there have been up to this point, were so well done, particularly that brief but creepy first glimpse of the head and neck through the binoculars, that this comes across shockingly inept. In any case, there really isn't much to this attack scene as a whole, as the Behemoth just approaches and bumps against the ferry a few times (you can hear Fay Wray's distinctive scream from King Kong at the beginning of this sequence), eventually using his head and neck to turn it over and send the passengers into the water. That said, the aftermath of the attack is something else, with one guy floating in the water with radiation burns on his face and a shot of a doll that we saw a little girl playing with earlier floating as well. We don't see the girl herself, though, which is quite a horrific implication.

Shortly afterward is when we get the scene where the Behemoth emerges from the Thames and rampages through London. While we do have to endure that awful model again when the monster first rises out of the water, we're quickly treated to the great stop-motion effects as the Behemoth comes ashore and destroys high-tension towers that are in his way. The filmmakers were able to get Willis O'Brien, the effects legend who had worked on The Lost World and King Kong, to supply the stop-motion effects, but from everything I've read, at this point in his life O'Brien rarely did the actual animation himself. Apparently, he often just consulted on the films or something to that effect (and sometimes, even that involvement was very limited), acquiring the credit of Technical Advisor, although he actually is credited as part of the effects team in this film (oddly enough, though, in only the American version). In any case, it appears that O'Brien's assistant, Pete Peterson, was the one who did the majority of the stop-motion here, which was quite a feat, considering the guy had MS at this point, and the animation on the Behemoth is very smooth and about as believable as stop-motion can possibly be. The puppet looks good for the most part, with a nice shape to the design, an undulating neck that snaps the head around in anger whenever the Behemoth sees something he doesn't like, and the face, particularly in a scene where the Behemoth stops at a corner and looks down at a group of people who are standing there, sometimes looks very ferocious.

I say "sometimes" because the face appears to be one of the more problematic parts of the puppet. There are many, many closeups of it in this sequence and it often has a kind of dopey expression on it, as you can see. Also, they seem to be having trouble keeping the two sides of the face consistent, since the left side often has that aforementioned vacant look, particularly in a scene later on at night when the Behemoth picks up a car in his mouth and flings it into the Themas, while the right side does look mean. However, they do manage to make both sides look very ferocious at the end of the attack when the Behemoth roars up into the sky. Speaking of which, I really like the hissing roar of the Behemoth. Just the sound of it, with the initial hissing part going into a full-on, angry scream, is quite threatening. And while we're on the subject of sounds, if you listen closely to the screams of the terrified people in these scenes, you will hear some more sounds culled from King Kong, specifically the screams of the doomed sailors. Going back to the closeups of the Behemoth's face, said face is clearly different from the one used in the long-shots. You can tell because the snout is rounder, whereas in the long-shots, the Behemoth has a longer and more narrow snout, akin to that of a crocodile, and also seems to have a bit more of a point at the end. Such a discrepancy is not uncommon, though. In King Kong, for instance, they had two faces for Kong, a round one and a long one, used for various camera angles on him, but it's much more noticeable here.

The film's low budget is quite noticeable in this attack scene, unfortunately. You don't need a sharp eye to notice that many shots are replayed throughout it, in particular the ones where the Behemoth starts walking down the street and when he steps on a car. They used different angles to try to make it look as if it wasn't the same shot but it becomes obvious what's going on very quickly. You will probably think to yourself, "Man, it sure is taking the Behemoth a long time to walk down that one street," and, "That one car is getting pummeled!" And while it's certainly not bad, the matting of the Behemoth in with the live-action elements isn't quite as well-done as other movies made around the same time. Oddly enough, though, despite the budgetary limitations, I actually like this scene more than the attack on New York in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, even though I do think that's a better film overall. Don't get me wrong, that is a good scene, as the Rhedosaurs does a lot more damage by smashing some cars, crashing through a building (the only damage the Behemoth does to the buildings is when he swipes the top of one and causes it fall but it barely does anything to the people beneath it), and actually eating someone, and there's no repeat photography, even though that movie was very low budget too. And yet, this sequence seems to have more urgency to it. I think it's a combination of the gray, overcast sky, the Behemoth's very threatening roar, the score that accompanies the scene, and, most importantly, what happens to the fleeing people. You see some of them suffer from the effects of the Behemoth's radiation, with one poor guy falling down after attempting to continue running and getting trampled by the frightened crowd when they push their way through a narrow alleyway. In addition, there's also that scene where the Behemoth kills several attacking soldiers with his radiation and for me, the image of their charred remains afterward is much more impactful than a policeman getting gobbled up (although that was still a great moment in that film, nevertheless). But, what really puts it over the top for me is just how terrified the people seem to be, as they run through the streets. In The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, I always felt that most of the people seemed to be running rather nonchalantly and didn't seem to be all that scared. Here, though, particularly in a closeup of the fleeing crowd near the end of the attack, the people really look like they're scared out of their wits and are doing everything they can to get out of the Behemoth's way. I know some will disagree but, for my money, this scene is just much more thrilling.

I also like the sequence after the attack here more than what follows the one in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. I enjoy seeing the Behemoth rampage a little more through the countryside outside of London more than the Rhedosaurus in the streets hiding in the streets of New York, getting shot at by the military. As you can probably guess, my favorite part about these monster movies is seeing the monster destroy things and here, you get more of that after the initial rampage, with the Behemoth crushing some electrical towers, causing a substation to explode and create a fire, before walking back into the city, where he grabs a car driven by some morons who should have just continued hiding in the parking lot and throws it into the Thames. The nighttime shots of the Behemoth standing in front of the buildings, illuminated only by the military spotlights, are also a joy to look at because they're so well done and atmospheric. Unfortunately, the climax where the Behemoth is destroyed in the Thames by a torpedo that has a tip made of radium is a bit lacking to me. Seeing the Rhedosaurus tear apart the Coney Island amusement park and then having the place catch on fire while the monster dies from the effects of the radioactive isotope fired into him (sounds a lot like the same ending as this movie, doesn't it?) was awesome; here, though, we just have the Behemoth swimming around in the Thames (good animation on that, by the way) are falling into it in a shot of the model simply being dropped into a tank, slightly damaging the sub when he finds it, and eventually dying from being hit by the radium-tipped torpedo that accelerates the natural process of the Behemoth's radioactivity eventually killing him. While the last shot of the Behemoth is fairly dramatic, with his head and neck above the now boiling water of the river before the radium takes its toll and he sinks back down, it still could have been a much more memorable finale.

Unlike a good chunk of the giant monster movies being produced in America at the time, The Giant Behemoth has an all original score, composed by Edwin Astley. While there are bits of the score here and there that don't sound quite right, like a few moments during the music over the opening credits and the rampage, it's a really good score for the most part. The main theme for the Behemoth is a very loud and threatening, "Dun, dun!" with each note extended for a little bit to sound all the more intimidating. That theme is also played in different ways throughout the movie, be it in a soft, eerie way in that scene where Karnes and Bickford talk to the fishermen in Cornwall and when Karnes is looking out the window at the sea right before they return to London; a fast, urgent way, as it does during several sections of the Behemoth's attack on London; or in a slow manner that's meant to lament the events of an attack, such as the one involving the ferry. Speaking of which, aside from those moments I mentioned, the music that plays during the rampage scene I think does a good job in conveying the panic and fear that the people fleeing from the Behemoth are experiencing. There's also a bit of music that's all over the theatrical trailer but in the movie, you only hear it during the attack on the ferry: an urgent sounding, "Dun dun dun! Dun dun dun!", that loops several times. I remembered hearing that in the trailer when I was a kid but, during the long time that I had the VHS that didn't have this scene, I thought that music was made just for the trailer. Finally, there's a piece of music that plays during the scene where the fish are tested for radioactivity that is quite memorable and has a sound to it that feels appropriate for an important discovery. The rest of the music is pretty good as well but those are the sections of the score that will probably stick in your head after hearing them, as they do in mine.

Despite what most critics may think, I feel that The Giant Behemoth, or Behemoth, the Sea Monster, depending on what side of the Atlantic you live on, is a much better movie than its reputation would have you believe. Despite a limited budget that does become painfully apparent in some spots, some bad modelwork, and a less than stellar climax, it has a really good cast, a great build-up to a pretty memorable monster, good stop-motion effects, nice monster rampage and attack scenes, an above average music score, and while the idea of a giant monster movie may not have been original by this point, this film manages to do some things better than many of its peers in regards to the subject matter of radiation and also doesn't fall into some of the cliched tropes of the genre. If you haven't seen it and have been discouraged from doing so due to negative reviews, I would suggest giving it a watch if you're a fan of these types of movies because it is way above average for its genre.