A nuclear bomb test in the arctic (ummmm…in the arctic? Why are they testing a bomb in the arctic?), awakens a dinosaur that’s been frozen for a hundred million years. Nuclear physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian) sees the creature, but no one believes him. When several ships are sunk, paleontologist Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway) and his beautiful assistant Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) join Nesbitt in searching for the beast. After more people are killed and the reality of the dinosaur becomes obvious to all, Col. Jack Evans (Kenneth Tobey) is given the job of stopping it, before it destroys New York.
It all started here. Well, if you want to count every giant monster, then I’ll have to say it restarted here, since that big ape was around in 1933 and there were those dinosaurs living in the lost world over twenty-five years earlier, but this is where the craze for oversized creatures stomping on cities began. It is the first film to use a nuclear bomb as the reason for the monster’s presence. It is the first film where stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen was in charge of the effects. And it laid out the template for all the many enormous bugs, dinosaurs, and mutating humans that followed.
What are the pieces that were used over and over again in every drive-in atomic giant creature flick? Of course there is the bomb, that started it all. Then there is the young heroes, at least one a military officer. There’s disbelief in the existence of the monster. There’s the old, eccentric scientist and his hot assistant. There’s a romance between that hot assistant and one of the young men, that doesn’t get all that exciting. There’s a search for the monster, since it tends to disappear for the middle of the movie. There’s the rampage through a populated area. There’s a complication to killing the beast. There’s stock footage of military vehicles moving about, and crowds running. And finally, science and the military, working hand in hand, prove that nothing can stop the American way of life, a way of life that includes really big weapons. Sure, our nuclear technology can cause unknown problems, but that’s because nature isn’t under our control yet. In the end, we’ll beat it too, and then mom, apple pie, and the middle class will live happily ever after.
In this case, it’s the young scientist, instead of the young military officer, who gets the girl. Swiss-born Paul Christian wasn’t your normal ’50s American action hero. He had the look, but it isn’t often that you hear an accent in this sub-genre. I found it refreshing. Christian (real name: Hubschmid) does a serviceable job, as does Kenneth Tobey (who played essentially the same role in The Thing from Another World and It Came From Beneath the Sea) and Paula Raymond. Character actor Cecil Kellaway is the standout, with his short, pudgy build and distinctive voice. He’s hardly a man who can fade into a crowd, and he has the advantage of being given the fun role. The eccentric is always a better part than the true-blue hero.
The plot runs smoothly without dragging and doesn’t require the audience to accept too many scientific impossibilities, which is all it needs to do. The story—and the actors—only need to be good enough not to distract from the real point: the monster. Ray Harryhausen created scores of magical creatures that kept generations enthralled. His rhedosaurus (don’t try looking it up in a paleontology book) may be one of his earliest, but it is also one of his best. The beast’s New York romp, smashing through buildings, grabbing cars, and chewing on a roller-coaster, is a classic scene that fans of the genre should have permanently embedded in their brains.
A “suggested by” credit is given to Ray Bradbury, for his story, The Foghorn, in which a dinosaur is awakened by the sound of a foghorn, thinking it is one of his kind, and dies of a broken heart when he discovers otherwise. It is a haunting tale by one of the great science fantasy writers, and has very little to do with the movie. After reading the story, the producers added a scene where the rhedosaurus knocks down a lighthouse, which Harryhausen then filmed in silhouette, creating the most effective moment of the movie.
Ray Harryhausen’s other features are It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The First Men in the Moon (1964), One Million Years B.C. (1966), The Valley of Gwangi (1969) ), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and Clash of the Titans (1981).