Monsters and Matinees: Creature Feature Fans owe a Debt to ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’

Creature Feature Fans owe a Debt to ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’

With its thick legs, protective scales, spiked back and laser-sharp teeth, the 200-foot-long fictional Rhedosaurus is a terrifying creature.

As the title character of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), it carries one of the most entertaining and important films in horror/sci-fi history.

How important? It’s the film that laid the groundwork for the creature features, big bug and B-movies that defined the 1950s and inspired films for decades (and me for life). Them!, Tarantula and even Godzilla may never have been made without Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

That’s why this story about The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms will focus more on those accomplishments and other interesting facts than it will about the film plot. Oh, we’ll share how the beast was rudely awakened by a darn atomic blast, then traveled along the Arctic current to Canada and down the East Coast of the U.S. How it crushed lighthouses and boats; destroyed entire city blocks and left a trail of contaminated blood that was lethal to humans. And finally, how the wild ride ends on an amusement park roller coaster.

But first, here’s what we owe to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

THE LEGACY

It lifted Ray Harryhausen into the spotlight

The film was the first solo feature by stop-motion animation wizard Ray Harryhausen, finally bringing him out of the shadows of being an apprentice and assistant to start his path as the groundbreaking “auteur” we consider him as today. The success of this film gave Harryhausen the credibility to create more amazing creatures in a string of movies including It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) with its giant octopus, 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) and its Ymir from Venus, and The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and a delightful array of creatures including the Cyclops and the unforgettable Skeleton army.

Beastly genres, themes

It revitalized one monster theme and led to the creation of a new genre.

The “monster on a rampage” was popularized by King Kong (1933), the movie that inspired a young Harryhausen to create his own monsters. Twenty years later, Beast revived the theme and inspired one of the greatest creatures in cinema, Godzilla. That film’s original title was The Giant Monster from 20,000 Miles Under the Sea and Harryhausen, it is well documented, was not happy and considered Godzilla a rip-off of his movie. The rampaging beast was such a popular subject, that even Beast’s director Eugene Lourie would reluctantly go on to make two other similar movies, The Giant Behemoth and Gorgo.

The idea that the Rhedosaurus was awakened from its lengthy slumber by nuclear testing was so popular that it led many, including its producers Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester, to research similar ideas for movies. Within a year they came up with a doozy – Them! That 1955 film about ants made gigantic from atomic testing started the big-bug film craze and remains one of the finest examples of the genre today. The effects of nuclear testing brought horrific results on people, too, from small ways (The Incredible Shrinking Man) to big (The Amazing Colossal Man). Double the movie fun by combining those themes in films like It Came from Beneath the Sea,The Beginning of the End and Attack of the Crab Monsters.

The creation of Dynamation

On Beast, Harryhausen created a process he would later call “Dynamation” that, in overly simplified terms, used rear-screen projection to help combine stop-motion animation and live action footage. The result would be the appearance that a creature and actor were interacting in the same place. He would continue to use this process to great effect in at least 15 movies including Mysterious Island (think of the great fight between the castaways and the giant crab) and Clash of the Titans.

THE MOVIE

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms opens with the ubiquitous voice-over narration that accompanies many 1950s sci-fi movies. We are introduced to “Operation Experiment,” the code name for a secret base set up north of the Arctic Circle.

Two months of preparations have led to this day – X-Day, which is counted down in the film’s early minutes. (“H-R minus 52 minutes,” the narrator says in a bland but super serious voice.

A plane is on the way on a mission where, “There can be no margin for error. There can be no second chances.”

The seconds count down: 10, 9, 8 …. Then a giant explosion. Glaciers fall, ice chunks crash in the water and then, worst of all, a mushroom cloud appears. The images are terrifying.

Then something strange appears on the radar screen – a foreign object that disappears quickly and is brushed aside just as fast.

A team led by professor and physicist Tom Nesbitt (played by Paul Christian) and George Ritchie (Ross Elliott) goes out to check an observation point. A blizzard moves in fast and cuts the trip short, but not before George see the terror that Operation Experiment has uncovered – a 200-foot-long dinosaur – and falls into a crevice a few feet deep. Tom arrives to help and sees the dino before he’s injured by an avalanche that kills George.

From here, Tom will be the familiar character no one believes.

Not the people at the base who hear him mutter “the monster, the monster.”

Not the psychiatrist in the big city who tells him his visions are from the shock of seeing a friend die.

Not even his friend Col. John Evans (Kenneth Tobey) who was with him as part of “Operation Experiment” but says his investigation into the “monster” didn’t yield even a footprint.

That’s a lot of people who don’t believe Tom and he’s almost ready to give up until he learns a ship has been attacked by a giant creature.

He visits famed paleontologist Dr. Thurgood Elson (played by wonderful character actor Cecil Kellaway) for help, but even the kind doctor can’t believe a 100-million-year-old dinosaur is alive.

Tom even uses the doctor’s own theories about the Mesozoic age turning to ice to ask him: “Couldn’t an animal have been caught in the ice and the bomb heat melted it?”

No, the good doctor still can’t buy it.

But his smart assistant Lee Ryan (Paula Raymond), who is familiar with Tom’s work, thinks he could be on to something. A second account of a sea monster finds Tom and Lee researching the possibilities over crustless sandwiches and coffee in dainty cups in her apartment as they peruse dinosaur pictures. (It is such an idyllic scene.)

Finally Tom spots the monster of his nightmares in one of the drawings and once it is corroborated by a survivor of a boat attack, he is finally believed.

The hunt is on.

Tracking the sightings, Dr. Elson believes the creature is heading to the Hudson River, the area where the only Rhedosaurus fossils had been found. He goes down in a small undersea “bell” to find evidence of the creature which he (sadly) does, marveling “It’s tremendous” when he sees it.

On land, the army is no match for the beast. Bullets can’t penetrate the thick scales on its body and they can’t allow its contaminated blood to get into the atmosphere. Good thing Professor Tom has a plan. All he needs are radioactive isotopes and a roller coaster to carry us along to the end of this beastly ride.

THE BRADBURY CONNECTION

Today, we know The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms as a film.

But in 1951, that was the title for a short story published in the Saturday Evening Post by master science-fiction author Ray Bradbury. It’s a sad, forlorn story of a prehistoric sea creature, the last of its kind, that takes an arduous, months-long journey toward a sound in hopes of finding a similar creature. Instead, it’s the fog horn of a lighthouse and the creature physically unleashes its pain.

Soon after, Bradbury was asked to look over a script for a movie his friend Ray Harryhausen was working on that was called Monster from Beneath the Sea. Bradbury immediately noticed a similar scene between the two of a sea beast destroying a lighthouse. The studio bought the rights to his story and changed the title of the film. Bradbury’s original short story would be republished under the name of The Fog Horn.

The movie’s trailer acknowledges this relationship as it touts “The importance and impact of the Saturday Evening Post thriller.”

TRIVIA

There is much fun trivia about this film.

* If that impressive dinosaur skeleton at the university looks familiar, there’s a reason: Those fake dinosaur bones were originally used in the comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) and were brought out of storage for the new role.

Also repurposed: Avalanche footage from She (1935) was used in the opening sequences.

* The dinosaur drawings that Tom and Lee look over in her apartment are by Charles R. Knight, a paleoartist known for his work on dinosaurs and an inspiration to Harryhausen.

* The film has two connections to the great classic horror film, The Thing (1951): the use of its arctic station set and Kenneth Tobey, who starred in both movies.

* A youthful Lee Van Cleef plays Corp. Stone, the sharpshooter who helps Tom fire a radioactive isotope at the beast.

* The trailer features actress Vera Miles who does not appear in the film, but warns us “Who knows what waits for us in nature’s no man’s land.”

– Toni Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.

Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and now leads the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.