BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER (1959)

aka THE GIANT BEHEMOTH

This film, like many 50s SF movies, begins with characters in a state of anxiety over the atomic bomb. In this case, a group of scientists in England (led by American Steve Karnes) have discovered that, in areas of the ocean where nuclear weapons testing has occurred, plankton have become radioactive, which, because of their place in the food chain, means that other marine animals are also taking on radioactivity. Meanwhile on the coast of Cornwall, a fisherman, ready to call it a day, sends his grown daughter Jean back to their home to start dinner while he cleans up. Just as she's out of hearing range, the fisherman looks up and, seeing something huge and awful in the sea, starts screaming. When Dad doesn't show up for dinner, and he's not even been lollygagging at the pub, Jean gets handsome fisherman John to help her look for him. They find him back on the beach, dying, his skin badly burned. With his last words, he says he saw a burning from the sea, then says, “…behemoth!” The next day, hundreds of dead fish wash up on the shore, and John unwisely touches a glowing blob of organic material that burns his hand. When dead fish are reported all along the Cornwall coast, Karnes and Prof. Bickford investigate and discover that at least one dead fish tests as being completely radioactive. At sea, Karnes spots what looks like a giant glowing creature but it disappears quickly. A missing steamship is found beached and torn up on the shore, with all passengers missing, and a small village is destroyed one night, with a huge footprint left in the ground. All the evidence leads Karnes and Bickford to assume the creature they're looking for is a dinosaur, somehow revived or reconstituted, and they get the help of an eccentric paleontologist named Sampson, who realizes that his life-long wish o see a living prehistoric animal may be about to come true. Unfortunately, his first sighting, from a helicopter, is also his last as the behemoth (as good a name as any) swats him out of the air to a watery death. The monster, which is not only huge and powerful but also emits strong waves of deadly radioactivity, lumbers toward London and the Thames. Bad news for ships, Londoners, and London Bridge, unless our heroes can figure out a way to kill the beast that won't also spread radioactivity throughout London.

This plays out a lot like a British version of 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, another atom bomb-related sea monster movie. They both have the same director (Eugene Lourie) and both have special effects supervised by legends—Ray Harryhausen for FATHOMS, Willis O'Brien, who worked on the granddaddy of giant monster movies, KING KONG, for BEHEMOTH. This movie, with a lower budget, suffers in comparison, but it's still worth a viewing. The early glimpses of the monster are disappointing, but once he gets his ass above the water, he's fairly impressive. The acting from the leads (the American Gene Evans and the British Andre Morrell) is serviceable, and I rather like the fact that the movie stymies at least one expectation: despite seeming to be setting up Jean and John as a central romantic couple (or Jean as an object of lust for Karnes), they both vanish from the film fairly early on. Jack MacGowran, known for his stage work in the plays of Samuel Beckett, gives a goofy spin to the paleontologist, though like the young couple, he's not around for long. The American title, The Giant Behemoth, is rather silly, like calling it The Huge Gigantic Giant. Fairly fun, on the higher end of atomic era monster movies. [Amazon Streaming]