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"Psycho" and "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms"

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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The other day I was reviewing my lists of "favorite movies" and I found that Hitchcock got the default favorite position for much of the fifties:

1950 Sunset Boulevard
1951 Strangers on a Train
1952 High Noon
1953 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
1954 Rear Window
1955 To Catch a Thief
1956 The Wrong Man
1957 12 Angry Men
1958 Damn Yankees
1959 North by Northwest

Yep -- five out of ten; 50%; half. But that's another way of saying I'm not much of a movie fan. I pick some favorite filmmakers(Hitchcock, Siegel, Peckinpah, Spielberg, Scorsese, and nowadays, QT) and like their movies while rather just watching the rest.

But sometimes Hitch didn't make my favorite movie of a fifties year, and that's where the other five films come from.

Of that group, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms(Henceforth The Beast) is the amusing one to me.

For it is one of the few times I'm allowing a "childhood favorite" to stay put on a more "adult" list.

Others of that nature include: The Great Race(1965), and arguably Its a Mad Mad Etc World (1963) which I liked as a kid and still like very much as an adult.

Most films of my childhood stay in my childhood, but those are still strong. And a couple of near misses: The Guns of Navarone is my favorite of 1961, but close behind is Disney's ORIGINAL 101 Dalamations, which, I've always figured, locked in my "thriller love" early on -- arch villainess(Cruella DeVille) and her henchmen; the Psychoish house in which she kept the puppies prisoner - and the great rescue and final chase. Hitchcockian touches abound in this animated film(as when the white puppies are disguised as black via charcoal -- but water from a melting icicle gives away the ruse). I dunno, maybe someday 101 Dalmations will knock Navarone off the list.

The same goes for the original Mary Poppins, which always threatens to usurp the "Best of '64" award on my list from Dr. Strangelove.

Weird, though: OK, so those are films FROM my childhood, made FOR children. But what of the many such films that became my favorites when I was age 20 on up: Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, arguably the 1989 Batman, and Jurassic Park is my '93 fave behind Carlito's Way. I suppose as we well know today -- adults still like films "made for kids" sometimes. (Though Raiders -- much like North by Northwest -- is rather an adult film with a kid's fantasy sensibility.)

Anyway, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. 1953. The Hitchcock movie that year was, maybe , Dial M for Murder(I see it listed as 1953 OR 1954.) I like Dial M(the central murder is adults-only Frenzy circa 1953, but reversed; the villain is great, the Columbo template on view) but I like The Beast better.

The Oscar Best Picture of the year is one of my favorites: From Here To Eternity. I love how that film skirts the Hays Code and feels like it is filled with sex and violence when it really isn't. Donna Reed is clearly a hooker -- but its not said. Borgnine tortures Sinatra to death in the brig; but it is not shown. The knifefight twixt Borgnine and Monty Clift(fresh from playing a priest for Hitch in I Confess) ends with the men obscured from view and the slain victim not seen(rather like Arbogast getting it in Psycho.) I love the "criss-crossing characters"(how Lancaster interacts with Clift and Sinatra is rather "indirect.") And I love the disaster movie doom of Pearl Harbor climaxing the movie.

But I'm figuring "Eternity" for second best, behind The Beast. The Beast was a big deal on early 60s TV in Los Angeles: the movie got a special local Sunday night showing one year before moving to the "Million Dollar Movie" the next year for showings all week long. Research reveals that The Beast, a ratings hit in the 60's, was a big box office hit in the 50s: Warners picked it up and made $5 million off a $150,000 production(paying $400,000 for the privilege to the indie makers.)

Indeed, Warners had two back to back big Sci Fi hits in the 50's: The Beast('53) and Them('54) (which was about giant ants in the desert and played like a grisly noir detective film) and they are both favorites of mine and it takes Rear Window in all its cinematic glory to knock Them down to Number Two for '54 in my book.

Jack Warner reportedly hated his Sci Fi hits of the 50's. He was more interested in prestige works like Giant and Rebel Without a Cause than his dinosaur and giant ant movies. Its understandable for the era -- but that era is long past. The Beast and Them are harbingers(along with Psycho and The Birds) of "where the movies would go" -- kid and teenage audiences, genre films, the biggest hits (its led to the comic book movies of today.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I could talk as much about Them! as The Beast, but since The Beast made my list (not enough competition not to), I'll talk about it.

There is a direct "Psycho" connection: both films had as their DP John L. Russell, who spent most of the 50's and 60's(he died in '67) as a TV series DP. That's how he GOT Psycho(Hitch wanted a DP who could work fast and cheap, so he dropped Warners slow-moving heavyweight Robert Burks for Russell) and evidently he ended up on "The Beast" because it wasn't A list enough for a heavyweight DP.

TV in the main, yep -- but Russell also worked for Orson Welles on MacBeth back in '48, so he joins that short list of folks(Herrmann, Perkins, Leigh) who worked for both Hitch and Welles(and Welles didn't direct many times.)

In fact, I found an IMDb quote that Orson Welles felt that John Russell was the greatest camera operator(not DP?) of all time.

And this: critic Manny Farber noted that the first half of Psycho was "as bare, stringent and minimal as an old Jack Benny episode" -- and whaddya know -- John L. Russell filmed some of THOSE, too.

Its funny: "TV man" John Russell's cinematography on Psycho(which was Oscar-nominated) is just as crystalline and 3-D ish as Robert Burks cinematography on so many other Hitchcock films(Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW.) Maybe Hitch with his knowledge of lenses made the difference. That said, John Russell is responsible for the crystalline but creepy imagery of my favorite shot in all of Hitchcock: Arbogast climbing the hill to the old house.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I found praise for Russell's cinematography on The Beast in a net review. The film is in b/w, like Psycho, and plays to some scary genre imagery, like Psycho(the great shot in that regard if of the giant dinosaur in full silohette, attacking a lighthouse at night.) Russell evidently also choreographed the now classic high angle travelling shot over people running down the street in terror from an attacking giant monster(see also: Godzilla, Jurassic Park II: The Lost World; The Birds.)

Another Psycho connection to The Beast: Vera Miles is NOT in the movie, but she IS in the trailer, filmed separately looking into the camera and saying something dramatic about this prehistoric monster unleashed by the A-bomb. Vera is quite a looker in the trailer, especially looking right at us, and she unleashes some of that "Lila Crane panic power" in describing the Beast. Funny: two men are also filmed separately for that trailer, they, like young Vera Miles were evidently on Warners contract at the time. The two men are Paul Picerni(from House of Wax) and ..Merv Griffin! Yes, Merv Griffin(who was in the 3-D WB horror picture Phantom of the Rue Morgue, a House of Wax follow-up, around the same time.)

So with John L. Russell and Vera Miles on board as direct "Psycho" connections, "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" wracks up its own pop classic status. THIS is the first "dinosaur destroys city" movie -- Godzilla(Gojira) came out the next year (and a film critic noted that the 1998 Godzilla followed the plot of The Beast, not the Japanese Godzilla; both films have the monster attack NYC , not Tokyo.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The film begins in the Anarctic(or is it the Arctic, I get those so confused, at opposite ends of the earth) with folks in parkas and an atmosphere not unlike a third major SciFi classic of the fifties...The Thing from Another World(which rather takes too long to get going and doesn't have enough monster action, THIS movie is the real deal.) An A-bomb test unleashes this dinosaur from a glacier. Our hero(a scientist played by one of those yeoman B-actors of the fifties, this one with a French accent, named Paul Christian) sees the monster -- but nobody else does, which adds a Hitchcockian "they won't believe me!" suspense to the picture. (They don't believe a fishing boat first's mate either -- until the hero says he does, too.)

Like Psycho and other genre pictures, The Beast is a tightly constructed, short movie which hits some set-pieces along the way -- attack on fishing boat, attack on lighthouse, attack on professor in diving bell) until The Beast comes ashore in NYC for the big ol' attack on the Big Apple that is the film's glorious final half hour.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms rather taught me, from an early age, how a film can "build to climax." The last set-piece before the New York rampage is a poignant and scary scene in which a kindly, cuddly professor(kindly, cuddly Cecil Kellaway) bravely goes down in a diving bell to get a look at the Beast(walking around on the ocean floor, very eerie) and getting eaten in the process. "But the most amazing thing is..." he says by radio, just as the Beast eyes him and opens wide. The killing of cuddly Kellaway ensures that we won't be TOO sympathetic to the Beast when it arrives in New York("lost and scared" said its creator, Ray Harryhausen.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

After Kellaway's death(which TOTALLY proves that the hero isn't crazy and the Beast exists),we get a brief "breather" scene among the principals -- the woman is mourning sweet little Kellaway's death -- and as a kid, I always relished this scene because it meant: the NEXT scene would be the start of the lollapalooza attack on NYC.

THAT scene begins "on the waterfront"(conjuring up memories now of a movie that wouldn't be made for a year) as some guys smoking cigarettes and pushing freight look up to see: The Beast, emerging from the water, climbing onto the dock, and starting his tour of the city.

I mentioned Ray Harryhausen, and The Beast is evidently his debut as the "King of Stop Motion Photography." Whereas Godzilla was pretty much a guy in a rubber suit, the Beast is as supple and mobile and "real" as all of the great Harryhausn monsters to come(the Cyclops in Sinbad, the giant Bronze warrior in Jason and the Argonauts), and on the whole, the rampage of the Beast is a much more precise and visually satisfying rampage than that of Godzilla in HIS debut.

Its a funny thing watching The Beast as an adult: we all know that giant dinosaurs wont' be rising from the sea and rampaging in NYC anytime soon. And yet we DID see footage of people running down the streets of New York from the falling Twin Towers on 9/11. The Beast, and Godzilla, and The Birds all postulated in a concrete way the dangers of mass destruction that the A-bomb threatened and terrorists made a reality.

Classic funny-grisly bit: An NYC cop in full long coat and hat stands and fires his REVOLVER at the Beast, runs out of bullets, looks down to re-load -- and gets grabbed in the jaws of the beast, lifted into the air and swallowed down like a fish stick. One always wonders if this was intended to be so funny(the cop thinks those bullets will work? He stops to RELOAD?), but it sure is grisly to see him chewed up and swallowed down(Jurassic Park would copycat this several times.)
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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Nucelar/biowarfare angles: Like Godzilla with his nuclear fire-breathing abilities, The Beast has "radioactive blood" which spills in big drops on the street and forces cops and soldiers to collapse from being near it. Also, the Beast is brought down at the end via a rifle shot(delivered by Lee Van Cleef of coming Good, Bad, Ugly fame) with a bullet filled with "radioactive isotope." Sounds scientific, sounds dangerous. Works.

Indeed, the Beast's final rampage is at a roller coaster on Coney Island. He thrashes and roars and knocks the foundation to pieces as our heroes dare to shoot him from the top of the coaster, as the "escape cars" fly off into space and the men must climb down. In short, The Beast delivers the Big Action -- small set-pieces building up to Big Ones in NYC. Its a very satisfying movie -- one that satisfied me in my childhood much as NXNW and Die Hard would later -- we get a LOT of action.

And this: the Beast's death throes are -- sad. Rather like King Kong at the top of the Empire State Building, this monster dies because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time(though it came into NYC voluntarily, not in chains.)

Though "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" shares a cinematographer with Psycho as something concrete, what the movie demonstrates to me is that once Hitchcock got a "piece of the genre action" (Psycho and The Birds specifically), he got to share in the satisfaction of "big action horror" while adding his own stylistic talent to the mix. "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" and "Psycho" were both big thrilling movies that found big enthralled audiences. I will add "Them" to this list, but I won't add "The Thing"(perhaps because of Howard Hawks involvement , that one is too talky and action-free to quite compete.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

...and it remains a Major Mystery of the Hitchcock Career:

Hitch found big box office working in the horror/monster genre with Psycho and then The Birds(and young audiences to go with them)...and then backed off to "serious" thrillers that were more like dramas: Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz. He must have felt it was time to leave "the children's table," and maybe he wanted the long elusive Oscar, but he was wrong.

That is all.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

The film begins in the Antarctic(or is it the Arctic, I get those so confused...with folks in parkas and an atmosphere not unlike a third major SciFi classic of the fifties...The Thing from Another World(which rather takes too long to get going and doesn't have enough monster action, THIS movie is the real deal.)

I watched Beast for the first time just a few years ago and was quite surprised both by how *quickly* we get to the monster action & how *much* there is of it overall. Kids like that [see also Deluge from the same year as King Kong, which gets right down to the business of apocalypse & destroys NYC and most of civilization in the first 20 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AbXQcwHyt4
Deluge's kid problem is that *after* the apocalypse the film turns into an Old Testament soap opera and not-fun subsistence survival tale..... whereas Beast delivers all the way through.]

Anyhow, a lot of the best '50s sci-fi continues to work well as an adult: Day The Earth Stood Still from the beginning of the decade & Invasion of the Body Snatchers & Forbidden Planet & Incredible Shrinking Man from 1956/7 are just terrific, exciting, thoughtful films. All still look great & play fine today. They'd all be in the top-10 films in any year they'd been released.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I watched Beast for the first time just a few years ago and was quite surprised both by how *quickly* we get to the monster action & how *much* there is of it overall. Kids like that

Yes kids do -- and eventually , with more adult films, adults to , too.

I spent my childhood "learning" movies mainly through monster movies, horror(but not the truly gory stuff from the 70s on), SciFi. Both The Beast and Them take a fair amount of time to establish their monsters "in reality" -- Them is pretty much about an investigation of several murders (one of an entire family EXCEPT the poor little girl left alive) that is so realistic once the big ants DO show up...you believe it.

The Beast spends time in the Artic and sets up an A-bomb explosion premise so...when that beast emerges, again...you believe it.

This was prep for Hitchcock's and other's thrillers -- opening exposition and premise, then a rapid move into thrills --and possibly even for The Godfather, with its long expository wedding sequence allowing the rest of the movie to move like wildfire, with murders as punctuation.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyhow, a lot of the best '50s sci-fi continues to work well as an adult: Day The Earth Stood Still from the beginning of the decade & Invasion of the Body Snatchers & Forbidden Planet & Incredible Shrinking Man from 1956/7 are just terrific, exciting, thoughtful films. All still look great & play fine today. They'd all be in the top-10 films in any year they'd been released

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I think so. These were thoughtfully written and produced films; Day the Earth Stood Still was from Robert Wise, who went on to big things in the 60's; Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an early one for noir-action specialist Don Siegel.

Those of us from a certain age remember them from our childhood(50's films in the SIXTIES -- on TV, I don't think my generation saw them first run in the fifties), so there's nostalgia, but they DO move like thrillers and they are still satisfying.

I'm reminded that of the 1960 critic who postulated Psycho as "the sickest film ever made" but went on to say that its brash, fast-moving, lean and mean style likely predicted the future of movies far more than "the giganticism of Ben-Hur." And he was right. But that brash, fast-moving, lean and mean style could also be found in Them and The Beast and Shrinking Man. Hitch learned well from it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms on DVD and I took a look at the trailer, and the lines delivered by the three "semi unknown actors"(partially obscured by superimposed A-bomb and Arctic footage) saying spooky things to set up the trailer.

Merv Griffin first(with eyeglasses on) "I believe that some things were not MEANT to be discovered." Its Merv alright; the voice, the verve -- he had charisma enough to do SOMETHING; a talk show is what it turned out to be.

Then a very sexy looking Vera Miles, but she's scared/outraged, just like Lila Crane: "Who KNOWs what lurks out there in the unknown No Man's Land?" (said in the tones of "It doesn't MATTER what he said to the detective, does it?")

And finally Paul Picerni, all serious with "Some find it unbelievable, but I tell you these things EXIST."

Ah the olden days, the olden trailers.