Wednesday, October 03, 2012

The Black Scorpion

The Black Scorpion is a 1957 horror film about giant scorpions, set free from their underground home by volcanic activity, which erupt to rampage through Mexico. It begins with one of those ubiquitous voice-over narrations. The stop-motion effects were created by Willis O'Brien, who is more famous for his earlier work in The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). There is a terribly annoying child whom you may remember from all the help he and his friends gave Charles Bronson in The Magnificent Seven. There's also a german shepherd in this.



Moria says, "the creatures are invested with enormous detail and character that most of the other monster movies of the era lack" and "O’Brien creates some excellent set-pieces". 1000 Misspent Hours says,
If you’ve come to The Black Scorpion looking for surprises, you’ve come to the wrong place. But does any of us really expect to be surprised by anything we see in a 50’s monster movie? I didn’t think so. No, we watch these things because we want to see shit get smashed by something huge, ugly, and made of rubber, and on that score, The Black Scorpion delivers.
DVD Talk has a mixed review. There's no critic score at Rotten Tomatoes, but audience score is 36%.

No comments:

Post a Comment