Cardboard Science: Siri, How Many Fathoms Are In A League?

Year: 1953
Director: Eugène Lourié
Cast: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway
Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Happy Halloween, everybody! It's time for the final leg of the annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s/60s B-movies. Last time, we covered a film from Cardboard Science stalwart Bert I. Gordon. This time, we're tackling The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which brings us another legend of the genre, in the form of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. Also, it was directed by Eugène Lourié of The Colossus of New York, but I hope nobody will blame me for finding that fact a touch less exciting.

We've seen Harryhausen's work many times before as part of this project and others, in titles including Mysterious Island and It Came from Beneath the Sea. But you know what The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms has that they don't? The distinction of being a direct inspiration for a Cardboard Science Hall of Fame title, 1954's seminal Japanese masterwork Godzilla. 

Comparing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms directly to Godzilla is a fool's errand, and we're gonna do it anyway. But first, the plot.

That is, if you really need a story hook other than "big monster go aargh."

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which, for good measure, is based on the Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn") follows Atomic Energy Commission physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian of The Day the Sky Exploded). After he witnesses a bomb test in the Arctic freeing an ancient, still-living Rhedosaurus from the ice, he tries desperately to get anyone to believe his story as a series of mysterious and deadly incidents take place along the Atlantic coast, heading south.

He, and eventually the lovely paleontologist Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) and her mentor Professor Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and, more importantly, 1959's The Shaggy Dog), are the only ones who know that a giant monster is the reason for these attacks. That is, until the monster surfaces and stomps around in Manhattan for a bit.

Honestly, he's doing the neighborhood a favor. What's knocking over a couple buildings if it lowers the rent?

Let's cut right to the good stuff: the monster. Ray Harryhausen's work is a perfect encapsulation of the best of 1950s science fiction filmmaking. You're never at any point unaware that you're watching a stop-motion creature interacting with composited shots of humans running away screaming. However, at a certain point the magic of cinema takes over and you stop caring about any of the flaws (which include the fact that Lourié keeps trying to shoot the monster through ugly distorted lenses).

That's because, no matter how jerky the frames got, Harryhausen simply got how to breathe life into a stop-motion model. The second the Rhedosaurus stops hanging around and attacks, its muscular physicality is absolutely captivating. Your disbelief has gone weightless. No suspension is required.

I also think that there is one advantage to this being a dry run for Godzilla, which is that the monster is rather smaller than you might expect for a kaiju movie. He is not city-stomping size, which requires him to pummel buildings and rip them apart instead of merely squishing them beneath his sheer bulk. 

Another part of what makes this particular monster so convincing are the little touches. Its eyelids are blinking, and its tongue is flicking out, smelling the air. In addition to stomping around town, it is doing all of those little unconscious, barely noticeable things that living creatures need to do in order to stay that way.

Thanks to Harryhausen's delicacy and attention to detail, when his Rhedosaurus looks toward the camera, you feel like it can see you. And that makes every second spent with the monster absolutely worthwhile and dazzling. Alas, there is a larger number of monsterless seconds than just about anyone would prefer.

Oh yeah. Them.

I'm a seasoned veteran of Cardboard Science, so I knew not to expect 80 jam-packed minutes of monster mayhem. They simply couldn't have afforded that. We had to have a human plot in there somewhere. 

While The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' human characters could certainly have been worse, they mostly just rattle around the frame, reenacting various sci-fi tropes until the screenplay can finally dispense with them in the third act. Yes, the movie itself clearly resents that it had to have people in it, too, to the point that it has the most perfunctory finale, both in terms of the conclusion of its romantic arc and its literal final frame.

That said, the bland human story does have its bright spots. Its requisite "stirring narration about the progress of science" opening sequence is a particularly good one, running through a roughly hourlong countdown in the space of just a few minutes to ratchet up the tension, and kicking around the movie's most dramatic lighting in the process.

None of the rest of the human plot can live up to those moments. Though Lee and Tom do parade around in some pretty nifty coats throughout the movie that prevented my attention from ebbing entirely.

But really, the most interesting way to watch The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is one that was not available to audiences at the time: comparing it to Godzilla. It was fascinating to see how differently a Japanese film handled the idea of a nuclear monster as opposed to an American movie (though with a Russian-French director and a Swiss lead, Beast is hardly the most flag-waving American motion picture there ever was).

It should be no surprise that Godzilla handles things better, tapping into its premise in a more potent and impactful way. Its nuclear monster is a stand-in for the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' approach involving a nation's fear of its own power growing too great (which, come to think of it, is also a thematic motif in Godzilla that is handled better). 

Beast is best represented by its final sequence, which takes place on a flaming roller coaster. It's meant to be a thrill ride that deposits you safely on the ground at the end. It's not its fault that Godzilla sought to be something more complex and interesting and devastating than that. And we should thank Beast for being one of the many reasons that Godzilla exists in the first place. But it's hard to completely admire The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms knowing what was soon to stomp its way through global cinemas just over a year after its release.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*The most fantastical moment of all in this monster movie was the fact that they expected us to believe Professor Elson could climb through a hatch in a diving bell that was clearly about half his size. You can't trick me with a judicious cut, editor Bernard W. Burton.
*Yes, the best place to store those barrels of flammable materials is at the base of the wooden roller coaster, why do you ask?
*I can't even come up with a joke that roasts the name of the top secret research project harder than just telling you what it is: "Operation Experiment."

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*About 25 minutes in, I noticed that Tom Nesbitt hadn't gotten a standard-issue sci-fi movie love interest, and I wondered out loud if he was going to just stay single the whole movie. The movie then answered my question by more or less immediately cutting to the door of the university's Paleontology department, which reads something like "Professor Thurgood Elson, Assistant: Ms. Lee Miller." They quite literally hung a sign on it.
*The duties of said Lee Miller would lead me to believe that she only minored in Paleontology while majoring in Making and Dispensing Coffee and Sandwiches.

Sensawunda:

*Seeing Times Square bedecked with posters for Clark Gable and Judy Garland movies is such a lovely time capsule.
*One less delightful time capsule is the absolutely arbitrary underwater sequence where a shark and an octopus fight to the death, presumably to entertain us without adding to the special effects budget. Boo.
*I must praise the Manhattan sequence for being unusually brutal for a sci-fi movie of its vintage. Sure, we see the monster munching on a person or two, but where the movie really kicks things up a notch is a harrowing sequence of a blind man being trampled as the people around him try to escape the destruction. This is a much more effective "the horror, the horror" moment than the knocked-over mailbox from The Spider.

TL;DR: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms rocks some excellent Ray Harryhausen effects, though the material that surrounds them is understandably a bit drab.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1479

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Cardboard Science: At A Deadly Pace

Round 2 of the 7th Annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen at Kinemalogue. 

Year: 1953
Director: Jack Arnold
Cast: Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake
Run Time: 1 hour 21 minutes

I'm always excited when Hunter assigns me a 50's sci-fi film that was mentioned in "Science Fiction Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, much in the same way that I was always excited to cover a college slasher mentioned in Randy's rant from Scream 2. I just like to understand references, OK? So far he's been meting them out with incredible patience, considering this is only the third one we're covering for Cardboard Science! (Night of the Demon, which is also referenced, was also covered for other reasons). But not only does the 3-D film It Came from Outer Space bear that particular distinction, it's an entry from 50's B-movie golden boy Jack Arnold, who also directed The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In fact, it seems entirely likely that this film was the project that got Jack Arnold the gig for Black Lagoon, certainly his better known 3-D work. But enough about the behind-the-scenes fluff! Let's get on with the show!'

Put on your shitty cardboard 3-D glasses that will dig into the tops of your ears, and get ready to rock!

It Came from Outer Space opens with a giant meteor crash landing over a small town in Arizona, witnessed by astrologer John Putnam (Richard Carlson), who is brash, headstrong, and a fervent believer in scientific progress for the greater good, and his girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush), who is a woman. The meteor just so happens to be an alien spaceship, although nobody in town actually believes John's claims (including, briefly, Ellen, who he refused to allow to come down into the crater with him because she was born with a vagina).

However, the aliens seem to be kidnapping local townsfolk, including telephone repairman Frank (Russell Johnson, best known as the Professor in Gilligan's Island), and disguising themselves as them in order to gather supplies to repair their spaceship. John desperately wants to find out what they're up to and prove his discovery not to be a hoax. But frankly, they couldn't be less interested in humanity as a whole and really just want to get out of this dump we call Earth.

And especially in 2020, who wouldn't agree with them?

It Came from Outer Space is certainly most notable for the way the aliens palpably just don't give a shit about what humanity is up to. It's a unique approach to the story (from the mind of Ray Bradbury, no less) that the visitors from another planet are neither friend nor foe. Unfortunately this doesn't really drum up much conflict beyond John stoically flailing around. This is an especially talky example of the science fiction B-picture (think The Day the Earth Stood Still but dumber), and the characters who are talking just aren't the most dynamic the genre had to offer.

It's honestly mystifying to me why this film got the 3-D treatment in the first place, other than to drum up general interest. Other than the meteor and the pleasantly protruding eye stalk of the hulking, yeti-like aliens (the few times we actually get to see them), the 3-D gags just aren't showing their faces. It does allow for some sets with more depth of field, but other than a mysterious glimpse into the murky depths of the alien spacecraft, we're getting a whole lot of your average suburban interiors. I will grant that the desert roads stretching out behind our characters in 3-D while they drive to the crash site probably look pretty neat though.

But back to that ship sequence. It's uniquely ponderous, the camera wandering into the darkness of the craft unbidden, leaving us to attempt to parse out the murky environs and mysterious noises it produces and providing an eerie, uncanny atmosphere that is actually almost scary. As a matter of fact, It Came from Outer Space is almost scary in a lot of ways. The string orchestra on the soundtrack twists and contorts their sound in a way that predict the more electronic-based scores coming down the pike later in the 50's, and the first gasps of the Body Snatcher effect before you find out what's going on certainly drum up some terrific tension.

Although, just once I'd like to see an alien in a human body speak in anything other than a flat monotone. They already speak English so it's not much of a stretch. Maybe the aliens sound like Krusty the Clown or something. Have some fun with it!

As an effects extravaganza, I've already mentioned that they aren't quite as committed to spectacle as one might hope, but what we get is generally pretty well rendered, at least. Sure, there are shots like the smoke rising from the crater where you can see the individual puffs being coughed out of the machine in the lower left corner. Or the landslide that somehow causes a bunch of rocks to be poured over the lip of an unmoving cliff. But those are the exceptions. It Came from Outer Space boasts a pretty rad laser-shooting baton, a reasonably convincing and organic alien eyeball stalk, and plenty of Alien Vision, which presents a view of the world through a bubble that mostly just makes things a little muddy and unclear, but is absolutely unique nonetheless (come to think of it, this effect almost certainly works better in 3-D, so that's another point in their favor).

I have watched better body snatcher movies for this project (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, duh). And better didactic moral message movies (The Day the Earth Stood Still). Better movies about It (It Conquered the World). And hell, even better movies about where It came from (It Came from Beneath the Sea). But all in all, there is enough going on here to keep it fresh, even if it's not in support of a story or characters I very much care for.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• John waxes poetic about scientific progress, dismissing his naysayers by saying that people used to believe things like the Earth was flat and all quickly changed their minds due to the all-consuming good of Science. He might want to crack a history textbook or two beore his next big monologue.
• Why, exactly, does an astronomer in small town Arizona carry a gun in his car?

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• Maybe I'm too keyed into the chaste 50's vibes, but when I learned that the unmarried John and Ellen were hanging out alone at his house, after midnight, unsupervised, I was scandalized.
• There is a fifteen year age gap between the actors playing John and Ellen, which is honestly pretty decent for the time.
• Maybe this is only funny to me, but the fact that the town policeman could just stand and shout on a street corner and instantly gather a mob of fifteen men wearing identical hats willing to do his bidding really got me going.

Sensawunda:

• We open on John and Ellen lounging in front of a huge roaring fireplace. On a spring evening. In Arizona. Yeah, I don't think so. 

TL;DR: It Came from Outer Space is a decent moralizing science fiction film, but I wish there were more alien fights, what can I say?
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1247

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: