1959
Not Rated
80 Minutes
Alternate Titles
- The Undersea Monster (Brazil)
- The Monster of the Sea (Greece)
- The Dragon of the Abyss (Italy)
- Hippo: Sea Monster (Russia)
- The Monster of Loch Ness (West Germany)
Tag Lines
- The Biggest Thing Since Time Began!
- The Biggest Thing Since Creation!
- SEE the Beast that shakes the Earth! LIVE in a world gone mad! WATCH the chaos of a smashed civilization! FLEE from the mightiest fright on the screen! NOTHING so Big as Behemoth!
This is very impressive, but I'm not going to perform surgery... I'm going to cut a fish.
-Steve Karnes
I first saw The Giant Behemoth way back in the days when TNT was still running it's MonsterVision programming on sporadic weekends. This was even before Joe Bob Briggs took over. This was when they had that dude with the weird gruff voice and the claymation moon.
You remember this fella, don't ya?
Ahhh, memories!
Anyway, one night they were showing a bunch of old giant monster flicks...stuff like The Giant Behemoth, Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Gorgo, Them, The Deadly Mantis....you get the picture....non-Godzilla big fellas...or as I like to call 'em American (or British) Kaiju. I suppose in the case of Reptilicus that'd be a Danish Kaiju....which sounds more like something your Aunt Barb would make around the holidays and bring to a party.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked (shocker, I know!). The Giant Behemoth is a UK/US film production starring Gene Evans and André Morell as a couple of fellas working for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who catch wind of a story about a man found badly burned on the beach and a metric shit ton of dead fish. So off they go to investigate.
Steve here is giving a lecture on....er....nuclear stuff. I'm not even gonna try to paraphrase, that shit is WAY beyond my pay grade.
A fisherman comes home with his catch. His daughter, Jean meets him on the shore and he gives her some fish to bring back up to the house to clean up and prepare for a meal. Off she goes, happy as a clam. Old Man Fisherman™ hears a noise coming from the ocean and turns around to look. There's a bright light. He knocks his hat of trying to cover his eyes! OH MY GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING???
Sometime later, Jean is finished preparing the fish and Old Man Fisherman still isn't home. She figures he popped by the pub for a pint and goes to look for him there. He is not there. Her brother John is though and together they go to the beach to find their dear old dad. They find him. It isn't pretty.
He's all burnt and mumbling....and the mysterious shadow of a boom mic hovers in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Ah, professionalism!
I've captured that magic moment for you here:
Our heroes arrive on scene and start questioning the local fishermen, including John. They head down to the beach with him and collect a few of the dead fish that hadn't been either swept back out with the tide or burned but the locals.
John shows them where he got his hand burned as well.
Speaking of John's burns.....
The Creature makes landfall and the fun really starts.
This family is sitting here eating dinner when the dog starts to go nuts. So the father grabs his gun and Junior goes along with him to see what's causing all the commotion.
More bright lights and a minute later both the man and his boy are turned to ash! Holy crap! This thing is getting stronger! This isn't looking good.
After the man and his son are found dead, so is a MASSIVE footprint (when I say massive I mean it dwarfs a police car!) So our heroes go to talk to a paleontologist to help identify the footprints. It appears to belong to the brontosaur family and he estimates that the creature is between one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet long. Plus, you know, radioactive.
The Behemoth attacks a ferry killing a bunch of folks. And this was not just a "people in the wrong place at the wrong time, big ol monster doesn't realize what he's doing" type of attack. He maliciously overturns the ferry. I'm not sure if he ate anyone or not, but I would assume he did.
It's decided that the best way to deal with the creature is to introduce radium into it's system. The radiation is already slowly killing the monster and the radium would act as an accelerant, killing the monster quickly, but it must be done underwater to keep the radiation out of the air. Or something like that. I would think that radiation in the water is just as bad, but what do I know. I review bad movies, I'm no scientist.
The Behemoth takes a stroll around town, destroying everything in it's path and irradiating everything as well.
This was the last film that legendary stop motion animator Willis O'Brien worked on. O'Brien, in case you didn't know is the gentleman responsible for bringing King Kong to life in 1933
The monster looks much better in his animated form, definitely less goofy than the stiff plastic head that they had rearing out of the water earlier in the film.
Radiation burns and panic do not mix well. As the people flee from the destruction some of them get completely muckled by radiation like the dude in the first photo. Poor guy. He either trips and falls or dies...but either way, other people start tripping over him and things are getting worse.
Let's tally stuff up!
Monsters
A giant radioactive dinosaur!
T&A
In a giant monster flick from 1959? Er, no.
Gore
No gore to speak of but we do see a few radiation burns, which kinda look like silly putty on skin.
Fun Factor
Super high fun factor here! I mean you've got a giant stop motion radioactive dinosaur rampaging through England! What's not to love?
Final Thoughts
Any way you slice it, I have never met a giant monster flick that I didn't love.
If you love giant monsters and especially if you love stop motion animation then you really can't go wrong with The Giant Behemoth.
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