31 Days of Cheese Day 15: The Monster That Challanged the World

Continuing the “atomically enhanced invertebrates are coming to eat us” side bar, today’s slice of cheese is 1957’s The Monster That Challenged the World.

This film is set in the Salton Sea an accidentialy created (in 1905) salt water lake in California that at the time was a tourist attraction in the middle of the desert and a naval base as well. Since then the sea has changed and what is left is now extremely toxic (High salt levels and fertilizer and pesticide run off from farms nearby, it’s a mess) and the hotels and the naval base have been closed and the whole place has been simply abandoned except for a few hangers on.

Anyway back in the 50’s it was still riding high and the naval base was going great guns.

The film starts and we learn that the navy is using the base to test parachutes – which strikes me as high stress job.

“His last message was: ‘Ted, this design is a bust’ then there was a lot of yelling and the last thing we heard was this kind of meaty thud.”

Today there is a problem. The jumper has vanished and the boat that was going to pick him up has broken radio contact.

And thus we mean the male lead. He is an unlikeable dick with the personality of a block of wood

This isn’t the only 50’s sci fi film were this happens, you have to wonder what was about the 50’s that prompted films to put forth unlikeable dicks like this as the lead. You also have to wonder if there wasn’t anything people in the 50’s weren’t afraid of? The films simply reek of fear, repression and paranoia bugs, commies, rock n’ roll all these and more are viewed as things of terror in film after film. It’s rather unsettling to watch actually.

Getting back to the story at hand. Major Dick. I’m going to call him that because I’m too lazy to look the name up starts investigating. The first thing they find is slime, then one of the boats crew members dead of fright, then the guy testing the parachute and he’s been drained of all body fluids. (It’s a nicely done creepy moment when his body bobs to the surface.).

Trying to put the clues together Major Dick goes to the base lab where he meets the female lead (a widow of ten years) and her daughter. The daughter is annoying cute and is one of the idiot children in monster movies who leave nothing but death and destruction in their wake.

I’ve constantly found children are portrayed in movies, especially these kinds of movies to be really really annoying. It’s like everybody on the film forgot what it is like to be a kid and you get this weird stilted over sweet little adult version that acts weird because the script demands it.

In this case the girl loves the rabbits in the lab. We’ll get back to that later.

As it turns out, to nobody’s real big surprise, that the cause of these deaths are giant snails. The eggs were lurking under the lake for a long time then an earthquake and some radiation thing or other (the film kind of waves its arms about here and doesn’t explain really) released them. The navy and the local sheriff’s office deal with the mess, find the snails and their nest and kill them.

This is while several more cast members are sucked dry of fluids and the female lead and Major Dick get involved. (it’s mostly her idea. This makes me wonder about her. “A humorless jerk with barely controlled anger issues. That’s the man for me!”

This leads up to the last scene. Earlier they had recovered on egg which is being kept cold to keep it from hatching. Idiot child, who is allowed to be in the room alone, is worried that the bunnies cold, so she turns up the heat in the tank holding the egg. The snail hatches then eats the bunnies (which is touch I liked I have to add) and then tries to eat the female lead and the idiot child. At this point Major Dick wanders in and eventually kills the beast. Note fire extinguishers are not very good weapons against 10 foot snails.

Kind of creepy – the giant snail effect is good for the era; the major weakness of the film is the unlikeable plank of wood playing the male lead.

Enjoy with anything except escargot. Really that’s too obvious a joke by miles.