Ah yes, nothing like a good old 50's B movie to put you in a good mood. I am actually a big fan of monster movies, the majority of the time they are a lot of fun to watch, but of course there are monster movies that will suck the hard one such as "Lockjaw", but this movie is actually quite fun to watch, of course there are some flaws but we will get to them as we go, but first, lets look at the positives.
The acting is actually okay for this kind of movie, the majority of the time the actors and actresses give a performace that is somewhat believable and fun to watch, one thing I will always say about actors from the 30's to the 50's is that they were far more carismatic than the actors of today. However there is a little bit of over acting in one or two places, however it is nothing major but it is worth mentioning.
The Characters are all likeable and easy to latch onto, you can easily latch on to the main characters determination to prove the existence of the monster he saw in the north poll and you can also see how the relationship between him and the female protagonist developes in their search for the monster.
The dialogue for the most part is also okay, wheather its one character explaining why another character is insane or another characters excitment over the discovery of a lifetime, for the most part the dialogue is alright, but of course some the dialogue can be kind of chessy, which is kind of expected from a movie like this from the 50's.
However what steals the show is the stop motion special effect by Ray Harryhausen, the monsters movements are nice and smooth and sometimes it actually looks like there is a monster on camera, now adays all those monster effects would be done with CGI and it wouldn't look like it is actually in front of the camera, but back then they didn't have that so they had to use all these other techniques which in all honest are far better.
There is a lot of stock footage used throughout the movie which doesn't really help the movie all that much, when it cuts to stock footage it is so obvious, mainly because the film grain just does not match what so ever and sometimes the background doesn't even match. There is a pecie of stock footage of a shark and an octopus fighting and it is obviously stock footage, not to mention it has nothing to do with the monster or anything to do with the movie and sometimes you can see the the octopuss pressing against glass, clearly indicating that it was in a tank of some sort.
I will say that in the 50's, stock footage was common so this is not too big of a deal but I still feel that it is still worth mentioning.
There are also two minor continuity errors, both of which occur in the same scene, so once again not a big deal but still worth mentioning. Bassically our main character is holding a newspaper, in one shot he has in folded and then in the next shot it's unfolded. There is also a shot when the newspaper is folded and then in the next shot it's folded even more, it's flat out obvious.
Also, when the main character decides how to kill the monster, he just brings it up at complete random, he doesn't really explain it, he doesn't he really have to convince anyone about the method nor was his method even referenced at any other point in the movie, he mentions it and then we cut to the next scene where they are trying to use the method to kill the monster. I will say that the method that they use is quite clever i just don't think it got a lot of exposition.
Now by no means do I not like this movie, the characters are cool, the acting is good, the music is nice and the special effects are awesome, but of course being a 50's B movie there were bound to be some flaws, but it has all the cliche's and cheese that it needs
***/*****
Good fun and a good example of the genre i would say, worth a look.
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