The Giant Behemoth (1959)

Sadly Over-hyped

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Atomic Testing creates a monster. Perhaps an overused premise for science fiction, but Giant Behemoth does a very credible job in exploiting this premise. The film does a much better job in detailing the scientific investigation that methodically uncovers the nature of the beast than most films - past or present.The characters are likable and believable.The acting ranges from competent to very good.This is a well-directed, well acted film.Assuming you buy into the ability of radiation to create monsters, the plot line is quite credible.The special effects and the monster are decent for 1959, but vastly inferior to what we get today.Still it is a much better film than most modern sci-fi films.

"The Giant Behemoth" covers much the same ground as 1953's "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" but with considerably less success. There are a few good moments of stop-action monster rampage, reflecting Willis O'Brien's participation but most of the movie is stock footage or shots of people yelling and pointing (but few good shots of what they are yelling about or pointing at). In addition to being some kind of pointy-toothed apatosaur, the titular beast seems to be able to radiate lethal radioactivity at will (perhaps a sign of contemporary atomic paranoia). At one point this pulsing death ray incinerates a group of soldiers in a clumsily done transition from live actors to what appears to be a charcoal drawing of corpses. The radiation also seems to be able to buffet a submarine, which makes even less sense. The movie plods along the usual trajectory from disbelief to realization to determining the obligatory Achilles heel (like "Reptilicus", the Behemoth is protected from simply being bombed to hell and back by a convenient plot device (the aforementioned 'radiation')). Watchable by the monster-movie fraternity but far from one of the better examples of the canon.

Eugene Lourie directed this largely redundant film about radiated blobs that kill some seacoast villagers being the harbingers of doom, as atomic tests have resulted in the revival of a large radiated aquatic dinosaur that attacks London. Can a group of scientists(led by Gene Evans and Andre Morrell) stop this creature before it is too late? Good acting and reasonably effective F/X can't save this highly derivative yarn that doesn't have any originality at all; even the director had done this before(and much better) in "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms". Not terrible at all, just been done better before. About an hour in, look for an iconic British Public Call Box to make an appearance...

The redundantly titled The Giant Behemoth (originally titled Behemoth, the Sea Monster) is a sub-par sci-fi potboiler from director Eugene Lourie and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien. It's loaded to the gills with padding, padding and more padding, and what stop-motion animation footage was done by O'Brien and his team is looped quite a bit during the Paleosaurus' initial London rampage. That said, for what it is, it isn't bad.Once one accepts that it's a B-movie it can be enjoyed. There's s'more stop-motion goodness to be had after the London walkabout, involving the Paleosaurus destroying some powerlines and then picking up a car with some people inside and tossing it into the Thames.Several scenes in the film pay homage to both Lourie's and O'Brien's earlier films. The Paleosaurus picking the car up is a nod to Beast from 20,000 Fathoms apparently, while the dinosaur causing a bridge to collapse with its weight, dumping itself unintentionally into the Thames, is a throwback to O'Brien's original 1925 special effects masterpiece, The Lost World. I also love that almost all of the screams used in the film are recycled from 1933's King Kong!