|
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," a Weddell Sea volcano loosens a North Pole glacier and awakens the titular behemoth within. A brisk documentary on radar technology sets up the link to Nyby's The Thing from Another World, the only clue at the wrecked Arctic outpost is an oversized spur that turns out to be a mysterious chunk of exoskeleton. The Air Force colonel (Craig Stevens) is nonplussed, the paleontologist (William Hopper) has an inkling. "You mean this cute little bug?" points the museum magazine editor (Alix Talton) to a praying mantis photograph, none "more deadly or voracious" in the kingdom of the living. The mega-insect is first seen bearing down on a cornered Inuit, the mandatory King Kong moment has its inverted-triangle noggin peering through a window at the shrieking heroine. ("I'm trying to figure out how big this thing is," snaps the professor while the papier-mâché puppet skulks around a maquette.) Its buzzing is "much like that of a squadron of heavy bombers," thus Nathan Juran's dry farrago of sci-fi and war tropes, complete with the inhuman invader climbing the Washington Monument. A passenger steps out of a bus in the middle of a foggy road, the feint is on Val Lewton until the gargantuan creepy-crawly materializes to spear the vehicle with its pincers. Douglas' Them! is brought to bear on the climax in the Manhattan Tunnel, where men in hazmat suits wield flashlights and flamethrowers in pursuit of a creature apparently not as uncanny as the sight of a professional lady in a far-off military base. ("A female woman," gasps a stupefied soldier at the visitor. "I thought they stopped making 'em!") With Donald Randolph, Pat Conway, Florenz Ames, and Paul Smith. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |