the monster that challenged the world

The Monster that Challenged the World (1957) ended up being more 'guilty' than 'pleasure.' Thankfully it was shrewdly edited down to just under an hour and a half, but it is still only worth watching for the 45 minutes in which the giant sea snail is chasing or eating people. In fact, the sea snail was a fairly impressive creature effect for the time. I was fairly engaged during the diving scene halfway through the picture in which the creature just sits in a cave waiting to pounce on the divers.

The real laugh here is Tim Holt who, God bless him, looks like he just finished a three year vacation at Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe I'm just more used to seeing talentless beefcake as the leads in B-sci-fi, but somehow a bloated and waddling Tim Holt didn't strike me as the most likely creature in the film to find its way into Audrey Dalton's pants. After a brief stint in the 40's as an A-list supporting actor (Magnificent Ambersons, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, My Darling Clementine) it seems that Holt took a five year hiatus, only to reappear in this film and only a handful of others until his death in 1973. I shouldn't snark a guy who won a purple heart in WWII, but I couldn't help but see his eyes bulge at the prospect of cooking and eating the giant sea monster egg... perhaps with bacon.

For Holt it seems that the transition from B-Western to B-Sci-fi was a natural one. Westerns were waning by 1957 and cheap sci-fi was all the rage. The difference is that a cheap western doesn't elicit the giggles the way a cheap sci-fi flick does. No one goes downtown at midnight to throw popcorn at the screen at B-Westerns. So Tim, I throw this buttered popcorn in your honor. God knows you'd have loved to eat it.