"The Crawling Eye", not a classic, but I like it

Funny, we just watched this one last night. I love it, and have since I was a kid. My kids make fun of it (they've seen too much MST3K)

 

Use to scare the be-jeebers out of me also as a kid.

 

Yes that's a personal favorite of mine too!...One of the many Cool Sci/Fi's of the 50's/60's Era...Just to name few others...

Them!
The Amazing Colossal Man
War Of the Colossal Beast
The Giant Behemoth
Beginning Of The End
The Deadly Mantis
War Of the World's
Godzilla
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
Valley Of Gwangi
This Island Earth
First Men On the Moon
The Time Machine
The Thing From Another World
The Incredible Shrinking Man

I love them all

 

I love those nicely remastered(from cam negatives) foreign films as much as any buff, but there has to be a space in your life for pure junk, also from the original camera negatives.....thanks for pointing this one out, Steve.


The 'perfect' video version of THE BLOB may yet remain to be released...but when it its, I can hardly wait!


ED

 

And fittingly enough, it was The Crawling Eye that was featured on the very first national (Comedy Central) episode of "MST3k" in 1989.

 

Isn't it funny how movies that used to scare us as kids seem really lame when you watch them years later? I remember being scared silly by that 3D movie The Mask when they used to play it on Ch. 11 in the '80s.

 

Ed Bishop: "The 'perfect' video version of THE BLOB may yet remain to be released...but when it its, I can hardly wait! "

I don't know if it's perfect, but the Criterion Collection DVD of THE BLOB is pretty close!

I watched the recently released THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD last night, and it's another fifties science fiction gem that got a very nice release on DVD. No extras, but the picture looks very nice and I believe it's complete (unlike some of the earlier video releases). Great Dimitri Tiomkin score.

I liked the giant eye in THE CRAWLING EYE as a kid, but I'm sure it's seen as pretty hokey by today's kids. (It still looks more believable to me than the recent CGI Hulk, tho!). It's an entertaining film, and Janet Munro (later in several Disney films) is wonderful.

 

What the heck was the name of the one where the Germans had her girlfriends head on a table and kept it alive?

 

Body parts run amuck

"The Crawing Eye" Perhaps Forrest Tucker's finest hour. But let's not forget "The Crawing Hand" (1963) starring Kent Taylor. or another disembodied hand in "The Beast With 5 Fingers (1945) starring Robert Alda. Can you imagine these parts meeting up with that giant crawling tit from Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex?"

 

I can't answer that one, but I remember when a local TV station used to show afternoon movies, they'd feature a "bad movies" week, and they'd show a film called, They Saved Hitler's Brain. I wish I had watched it, just to see how bad it really was.

 

Oooh yeah, the original "Invaders From Mars" is THE ONE that scared the willies out of me as a kid. The image of that little siphon forming and sucking people down into the sand will be ingrained in my brain forever. The idea that people could just "bloop--disappear!" was very unsettling.

"The Blob" (original) freaked me out too, and after seeing "Night of the Living Dead" I didn't sleep for a week.

 

Let's put it this way: I love bad movies, but Hitler's Brain is soooo bad that I've never made it to the end. It's not "fun bad," it's just "bad bad"! I mean, while Plan 9 From Outer Space is bad but enormously entertaining as well, Hitler's Brain has no redeeming qualities at all.

 

As long as we're on the topic, a couple other 50s/60s horror movies that freaked me out as a kid:

From Hell It Came. Anybody remember this one, with the guy in the "walking tree" outfit, lumbering around with a big knife sticking out of it, oozing sap throughout the picture? Finally meets his end drowning in quicksand?

Attack of the Crab Monsters. A Roger Corman effort, starring Russell Johnson (The Professor on Gilligan's Island). After eating you whole, these giant crabs absorb your brain and can then use your voice to communicate with humans! That is a very scary idea to a 9-year-old (at least it was back in my day).

 

The only German disembodied head movie I know of is THE HEAD. Here's an interesting review of it.
http://www.kinoeye.org/02/06/delvalle06.php
I've never seen it, but this article makes it sound pretty interesting. It features the decapitated head of Michel Simon, who was in a Jean Renoir's BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING and Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE.

Larry's description actually sounds more like THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, which prominently features the decapitated head of a doctor's fiancee on a table through most of the film. Except it's an American film; it looks like it was filmed in upstate New York. The doctor looks for a replacement body in the same way any red-blooded American male would, by going to strip clubs and camera clubs. This fun B-picture was on MST3K, and it's available on DVD from them (in its original version and MST3K version) and by itself on a restored version. One cool bit is a deformed creature that is kept in darkness in the closet. The disembodied head can communicate with it telepathically and drive it crazy!

I love THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS with Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner. It can be found on a full frame (unfortunately!) DVD for $6 or so at Best Buy. It's an unsophisticated Martin movie, but VERY funny. It's a parody of all of these brain movies. "Into the mud, slime queen...."

Speaking of fifties science fiction, I've REALLY enjoyed watching one of my Christmas presents - the DVD set of the second season of THE OUTER LIMITS. I like to watch one or two episodes of it mixed with one or two episodes of the second season of THE MONKEES - another great gift. They put too many episodes on each DVD and the second season wasn't as consistent as the first. But even the lesser episodes are fun, and the best episodes such as DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND and THE INHERITORS are as good as science fiction ever got on television. The early sixties (and late fifties) seems to be the golden age for acting on television, look at all of the great performances from up and comers and old pros on shows such as THE OUTER LIMITS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, ROUTE 66, NAKED CITY, THE FUGITIVE, COMBAT, etc., etc. It's pure magic seeing a young Robert Duvall play opposite Steve Inhat in THE INHERITORS, and supporting actors include Ivan Dixon and James Foley (who went on to direct many episodes of THE MONKEES).

 

Steve,
I remember that Superman episode with the little bald men. "Superman vs. the Mole People." I think it was several episodes and was later released as a feature. Here's an Idea for an awards show for the best body part sci-fi film. "The Anatomy Awards."

 

Steve,
I took a copy of "Invaders From Mars" over to a friend of mine's house. He had not seen "Invaders..." since he was a kid and he had fond memories of it creeping him out too. However, it didn't hold up for him at all. He was stunned at how it didn't hold up for him....too bad...I still love it. Trivia: Did you know that the walls of the underground tunnels (at the end of the movie) were covered with inflated condoms?

dave #24
A breed....a part

 

BTW, here's a link to a page on a web site that I had the pleasure of helping with. This horror show host almost single-handedly got me interested in bad sci-fi and horror movies. I think there are a couple other members here who grew up in the Tampa Bay area, so this site will REALLY bring back some memories: http://www.big13.net/Shocktale.htm

dave #24
A breed....a part