The Giant Behemoth [Behemoth the Sea Monster] *** (1959, Gene Evans, André Morell, Leigh Madison, John Turner, Jack MacGowran, Maurice Kaufmann) – Classic Movie Review 2901

Eugène Lourié’s 1959 British sci-fi horror film The Giant Behemoth is entertaining, charming and fun. The legendary Willis H O’Brien designs and directs the enjoyably dated stop-motion animation scenes, as a giant marine monster menaces London.

‘SEE the Beast that shakes the Earth! LIVE in a world gone mad! WATCH the chaos of a smashed civilization! FLEE from the mightiest fright on the screen! NOTHING so Big as Behemoth!’

Ah, yes, ‘brace yourself for a shock’. Director Eugène Lourié’s 1959 British-American science fiction action horror film creature feature The Giant Behemoth about a giant marine dinosaur – the biggest thing since creation, 200 feet of living burning horror – is a briskly handled, fairly tense and even reasonably scary sea-monster-on-the-loose movie, with decent acting and memorable, if wildly dated old-style monster shots.

Eugène Lourié and Daniel James’s screenplay is all about a radioactive brontosaurus created through the typical menace in 50s films – nuclear radiation – and unleashed in an isolated Cornish fishing village. A fisherman is killed on the beach, his dying word is ‘behemoth’ and thousands of dead fish are washed ashore.

Visiting American scientist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) and British scientific society’s leader Professor James Bickford (André Morell) travel to Cornwall to investigate the fisherman’s death. Now back in London, the scientists find samples of the dead fish contain large amounts of radioactive contamination. 

Marine atomic tests have caused changes in the ocean’s eco-system, resulting in dangerous blobs of radiation and the resurrection of the dormant dinosaur. The behemoth is some kind of large marine animal that has mutated after contamination by the nuclear testing, and is slowly dying, saturated by radiation.

After an attack on a farm near the coast in Essex, the behemoth soon menaces London, where it surfaces in the Thames, gets crowds of Cockneys on the run (the advertised cast of thousands), sets Cockneys on fire, overturns and tramples on cars, capsizes the Woolwich Ferry. plummets through London Bridge  and understandably threatens the House of Commons, but doesn’t trample on it unfortunately.

The legendary Willis H O’Brien (the genius behind the 1933 King Kong) had a hand in the movie, designing and directing the very good for their era stop-motion animation scenes, and the effects are generally fairly strong for a film of its 50s period and lowish-budget type. Of course it is a film of its time, and considerable allowances have to be made for its venerable age and low budget ($750,000), though its antique, low-rent quality is part of its appeal and entertainment value, and it is easy to look on the old-style animation very fondly. They must have thought that a shot of the monster smashing a model car was so great that they repeat it three times, and and we see it repeatedly passing the same building.

The live action scenes were filmed entirely in Britain, while Willis O’Brien’s special effects scenes were mainly shot in a Los Angeles studio, where they were optically integrated with the live-action footage.

O’Brien completed a significant amount of the stop-motion animation on a table in animator colleague Pete Peterson’s garage. The behemoth puppet is now owned by visual effects pioneer Dennis Muren.

Gene Evans is an accepatbly powerful presence in the star part, playing the obligatory American scientist, the marine biologist Steve Karnes, who luckily has a handy radium-tipped torpedo for dealing with behemoths. An embarrassed looking André Morell co-stars as the grave and authoritative Professor James Bickford, head of a British scientific society, whose first concrete suggestion when Behemoth threatens London is ‘Yes, first, block off the Thames’. Morell adds some needed gravitas to the movie, with his Blitz spirit English air of calm in crisis. All will be well, even if we’ve got a pesky Behemoth threatening us. Leigh Madison and John Turner as Cornish locals, Jack MacGowran as the crazy palaeontologist and Maurice Kaufmann as the mini-submarine officer in London all have promising roles, but too quickly disappear from view.

Also in the cast are Henry Vidon, Leonard Sachs, Neal Arden, Derren Nesbitt, Lloyd Lamble, Neil Hallett, Howard Lang and Georgina Ward.

The story is by Robert Abel and Allen Adler. There is a question mark over whether Douglas Hickox is co-director or it was solely directed from start to finish by Eugene Lourié. US prints do not have Hickox sharing the directing credit or list Sachs. The UK version’s credits leave off the entire vital special effects crew.

Allied Artists’ uncut US version runs 80 minutes, while the UK theatrical version runs 72 minutes called Behemoth the Sea Monster. Scenes were probably cut by the British distributor Eros Films to make the movie more dynamic and thrilling, but some interesting monster shots also were lost. 

The helicopters used are a US H-5 Dragonfly helicopter and a H-19 with RAF markings.

The word behemoth comes from the Hebrew word for beast.

The cast are Gene Evans as Steve Karnes, André Morell as Professor James Bickford, John Turner as John, Leigh Madison as Jean Trevethan, Jack MacGowran as palaeontologist Dr Sampson, Maurice Kaufmann as the mini-submarine officer, Henri Vidon as Thomas Trevethan, Leonard Sachs as scientist, Julian Somers as Rear Admiral Summers, Neal Arden, Derren Nesbitt, Lloyd Lamble, Neil Hallett, Howard Lang and Georgina Ward.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,901

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