The Monster That Challenged the World

Starring:Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, Hans Conried, Barbara Darrow, Max Showalter, Harlan Warde, Gordon Jones, Mimi Gibson, Marjorie Stapp, Jody McCrea, Eileen Harley, Hal Taggart, David McMahon, John Carlyle (II), Sarah Selby, Dennis McCarthy (II), Milton Parsons, Michael Dugan, Ralph Littlefield, Bob Benevedes
Director: Arnold Laven
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Description

IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE: Original Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews:

SLIMY,ALIEN 50s SCI FI At Its Best.......2007-05-07

These two 50s Sci-Fi flicks are similiar to many of this era. Good acting beautiful women n nice cars. Monsters are not real scary but both have good story lines. MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD stars TIM HOLT (Treasure Of The Sierra Madre) Story is filmed in Southern Caliornia around a series of Canals. The Giant Worms start in THE SALTON SEA and migrate into the inner water canals. Story moves along at a good pace with a good ending. Recommend the film for a very good sample of 50S SCI-Fi at its best. IT the other film in the 2 disc set was a original film the ever popular ALIEN films in the 70s were base on.This is a good two disc set an I highly recommend both of them.

excellent 50s sci-fi, quite scary if clunky effects.......2007-02-15

These were two of the scariest films I saw as a kid, genuine late-night TV fun at sleepovers. I was totally engrossed in them, tho on re-viewing them I didn't quite feel the same as I did 40 years ago. While Monster is a pretty typcial, well, monster flick, it has lots of funny twists - mutunts (with radiation thorwn in), good heros, and a suspenseful plot. The one that really got me was IT, this mysterious alien that sneaks on a rocket. It duels with the crew, picking them off one by one: in many ways, it is almost the same film as Alien, but much scarier to me at the age I was if less slick. There are really wonderful films, with memories from my past. Thus, I wd recommend them for 50s nostalgia and xcellent on their own if you can get beyond the old-style effects.

IT! The Terror From Beyond Space.......2006-12-10

Edward Garea did an excellent review about this wonderful old film on April 4th, 2006. There is not much I can say, but I just want to share my thoughts. To start, this is a wonderful old black and white "B" horror film from the 1950's. I can not understand why we never see these old films on TV. I see many old black and white films on AMC and really enjoy them, but most I've never heard of. I recall when growing up, sitting up to the wee hours of the morning, waiting with anticipation, for these wonderful movies to come on. In our area, Double Chiller Theatre came on at 11:30 each Saturday night and I begged my mother to let me sit up and watch these movies. Two movies would be shown and I recall my favorites were, "House On Haunted Hill". "War of the Colassal Beast", "I Was A Teenage Werewolf", "The Werewolf" and "It,The Terror From Beyond Space". In my opinion, it is sad that the kids of today do not care for, or appreciate these wonderful old films. I only hope that more of the "B" horror films are released soon on DVD. Let's face it, once our generation is gone, nobody will care about these wonderful old films.

Great Sci-Fi 50s Double Feature.......2006-04-05

It's always a pleasure when the B-movies of our childhood are released onto DVD. We don't see these little gems anymore on television (even though we have over 100 channels), mainly, I think, because they are in black and white and this is a color TV world.

But these are the films we stayed up on countless Saturday nights to see and they remain with us psychotronic fans as a most pleasant memory. This MGM Midnite Movies entry is a perfect example, as we find that we enjoy these films all over again. Now, if we can only get the kids to sit still for black and white.

The first movie "The Monster That Challenged the World" (1957)is an intelligently thought out little picture. Mysterious disappearances are occurring in the Salton Sea. Tim Holt (Remember him from "treasure of the Sierra Madre"?) and scientist Hans Conreid (Uncle Tounoose from "Make Room for Daddy") investigate and discover that an earthquake has freed prehistoric mollusks. If not stopped, they will overrun the environment. The movie moves at a brisk pace and has several good chills. Look for character actor Milton Parsons in a small role as the county archivist.

"It! The Terror from Outer Space" (1958) is a better movie than one would suspect from the title. In the year 1973 (!) a ship is sent to Mars to rescue the survivors of a previous manned excursion. Of that original crew, only Marshall Thompson is left alive. Circumstantial evidence has him pegged as the killer, but as the crew soon learns, a Martian stowaway is responsible and will kill this crew if nothing is done to stop it. Intelligently scripted by Jerome Bixby (who wrote a few "Star Trek" and "Outer Limits" episodes in the 60s), the picture always keeps us involved. The acting is also solid, with Thompson, Dabbs Greer, and Ray "Crash" Corrigan in the monster suit. It may be of some interest that the film was remade by Ridley Scott in a fashion as "Alien."

All in all, a most pleasant evening at a bargain price.

Average customer rating:

SCARED THE BE-JEEZUS OUT OF ME!!!
MERELY RIDICULOUS
much better than its title suggests
A Monster or an Appetizer? You be the judge!,
The Monsters that Terrorized the Canal System

The Monster That Challenged the World
Starring: Tim Holt , Audrey Dalton , Hans Conried , Harlan Warde , and Max Showalter
Director: Arnold Laven
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Similar Items:

It! The Terror from Beyond Space
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
The Black Scorpion
Target Earth
Beginning of the End (Special Edition)

ASIN: B00005K3O9
Release Date: 2001-08-28

Amazon.com

A highlight among 1950s creature-features, The Monster That Challenged the World is a near-classic B movie that never goes out of style. When an earthquake reveals a nest of giant, prehistoric sea mollusks at the bottom of California's Salton Sea, the local body count skyrockets. Navy lietenant Twillinger (Tim Holt) takes command, assisting the obligatory scientist (Hans Conreid) while wooing the June Cleaver wanna-be (Barbara Darrow) who inevitably tangles with the monster--a flailing caterpillar-like beastie with snapping mandibles and a voracious appetite. With a moment of vintage gross-out ("Get the eye! Get the eye!"), well-handled suspense, and the requisite balance of tepid romance and sci-fi jargon, this is a prime companion to any film in the atomic-monster lineup. The aging Holt made only two more movies after this (following a thriving career in Westerns), but he gives Monster his best shot and comes up a winner. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

SCARED THE BE-JEEZUS OUT OF ME!!!.......2007-06-12

I saw this as an impressionable young tyke & it's gastly images still hold root.
Played in a pretty straight-forward sombre tone this sci-fi thriller shocked me right off in the opening sequence when the Navy diver...well, no sense spoiling anything... And a wife's loss of her husband is certainly more touching than most of what this genre offers.
And it's these little touches that make this offering somewhat more realistic than let's say, THE GIANT CLAW.
Good acting, good direction and an interesting story keep this moving right along. Hero Tim Holt is not your ordinary military type; he's revealed to be more humanistic, awkward at times, uncomfortable in the romantic situations, unsure of his actions yet determined to put an end to THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD!
I fondly remember Holt with actor Richard Martin in an earlier series of B-Westerns in which they usually played Tim & Chito respectively. These were lots of fun and should be checked out by those who may be interested.
THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD is a very well-made example of 1950's Horror/Sci-fi.,competently made and executed on all levels.
And the MGM print is EXCELLENT!!
This is a must-have.

MERELY RIDICULOUS.......2006-08-08

There are two glaring omissions in this movie that send it below the camp category to the merely ridiculous bin.

First, is that thoughout the movie, the U.S. Navy fights the monsters with no weapons. Even at a research lab you would think the Navy might have a spare .45 or M-1 lying around. Yet even when the sailors go out to find the monsters they carry no weapons. Here plot necessity drives reality. Since the mollusks are soft-bodied they are easy to kill. Therefore, the Navy has to be disarmed to sustain the tension. Even when it becomes clear that monsters are indeed challenging the world, no armed troops show up. Instead, the "hero" {Tim Holt} is reduced to throwing glass beakers at a mollusk threatening the love interest and her adorable daughter {Mimi Gibson}.

Moreover, the film makers did this on a shoe-string and a very frayed one at that. The Navy has no boats. Instead, the sailors float around on a couple of tacky looking wooden rejects, no doubt borrowed from the localfishing fleet.

You may enjoy the primitive amateurishness of this, but only if you keep your tongue very hard pressed against your cheek.

Blaine in Seattle.

much better than its title suggests.......2006-02-16

This is not at all a bad movie. It is certainly not Mystery Science Theatre 3000 material. The special effects are decent for its era. The acting is generally commendable (the little girl who accidentally hatches the monster's egg in the laboratory being the sole exception). The story is sort of a combination of Them and Jaws (considering the impressive mandibles possessed by these giant irradiated mollusks, the film could have been titled Them Jaws!). Like Them, it deals with giant irradiated creatures (mollusks instead of ants). Like Jaws, a small seaside town is thrown into chaos when its beaches are closed after several mysterious undersea killings. Also like Jaws, we've got the sexually active girl who goes swimming at night and becomes one of the first victims of the underwater terror. And then there are the suddenly-appearing heads of underwater corpses, similar to the scene in Jaws where Hooper drops the shark tooth after being frightened by the bloated and decayed head of a dead fisherman. The production quality here is relatively high for a B movie. The dialog is intelligent if not terribly inspired.The story is livened by various oddball secondary characters -- a telephone receptionist who spends all her time talking to her mother, a rare-documents archivist who speaks 18 languages and spends all his time complaining about a ballot proposition whose defeat he laments. Don't expect a masterpiece, but this is a good solid piece of sci-fi filmmaking that still works as a suspense story. The monsters, though a bit cheesy, are nonetheless effective and frightening. You can find this film doubled up on the same disc with "It! The Terror From Beyond Space," the 1958 film that inspired the Alien franchise. Both are better than average examples of the 1950s creature feature genre. These are the kinds of movies that, during the 60s and 70s often played on the late show on TV, where they attracted more viewers than they ever got in the theater. This is not a movie that's so campy its funny. It provides a few unintended yuks (as well as many intended Yuck!s), but it will not disappoint fans of the genre.If you liked Them, War of the Worlds, It Came From Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you are sure to like this movie. I think it is even better than many much more highly regarded films, such as The Thing From Another Planet and Invaders From Mars.

A Monster or an Appetizer? You be the judge!, .......2005-09-07

This movie gets high marks first, for the ability of the cast to keep a straight face and play this silly melodrama like it might really have happened. However, a funny thing starts to happen after the first boat/monster scene, it starts getting interesting. So well is this seriousness executed by the entire cast, that the cliche plot and low-tech special effects can be overlooked, making this movie a "reel" winner on that basis. Also, there are genuine tense moments both under and above the water and excellent pacing. Somehow when it is all said and done this B Creature Feature develops enough collective energy and tension to please most fans of "Atomic Era Creature Features." The 83 minute video buzzes by all too quickly somehow making me wish for more.

The star of the film is Lt. Cmdr. John Twillinger, played by Tim Holt who co-starred as "Curtain" opposite Bogart in, "The Treasure of Sierra Madre". Though he appeared in over 60 films, this was his last starring role. Also, Hans Conried as Dr. Jess Rogers co-stars and is best known as the voice of "Captain Hook", in Disney's "Peter Pan".

If you liked this movie try "The Giant Claw," and "Reptilicus." I liked all three, mostly for the same reasons.

The Monsters that Terrorized the Canal System.......2005-07-01

This is a suprisingly good sci-fi/horror entry in the 1950`s starring monsters(in this case a horde of giant vampire slugs) that are suprisingly creepy. This movie itself with horrific scenes of overgrown snails creeping up the canal system and sucking the blood of unexpecting people. Of course the Monsters are reawakened by an A-Bomb test and lay tons of eggs. In the chilling final one hatches and the huge mollusk inside battles the hero, heroine and her tiny daughter and three guards with riffels. The title gets its name because the monsters can lay thousands of eggs and if they all hatch could destroy Earth!

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