| The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms | |
|---|---|
DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Eugène Lourié |
| Produced by | Jack Dietz Hal E. Chester |
| Written by | Fred Freiberger Eugène Lourié Louis Morheim Robert Smith Ray Bradbury (story) |
| Starring | Paul Christian Paula Raymond Cecil Kellaway Kenneth Tobey |
| Music by | David Buttolph |
| Cinematography | Jack Russell |
| Editing by | Bernard W. Burton |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | June 13, 1953 |
| Running time | 80 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English French |
| Budget | $210,000 |
| Box office | $5,000,000 |
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a Rhedosaurus, that begins to wreak havoc in New York City. It was one of the first monster movies that helped inspire the following generation of creature features, coining it with the atomic age.[1][2]
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Far north of the Arctic Circle, a nuclear bomb test, dubbed Operation Experiment, is conducted. Prophetically, right after the blast, physicist Thomas Nesbitt muses, "What the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests will be, only time will tell." Sure enough, the explosion awakens a 10 meter tall, 30 meter long fictional carnivorous diapsid known as the Rhedosaurus, thawing it out of the ice where it had been hibernating for 100 million years.
The Beast starts making its way down the east coast of North America, sinking a fishing ketch off the Grand Banks, destroying another near Marquette, Canada, wrecking a lighthouse in Maine, and crushing buildings in Massachusetts. The Beast eventually comes ashore in Manhattan, and after tearing through power-lines attacks the city. The Beast's rampage causes the death of 180 people, injures 1,500 and does $300 million worth of damage.
Arriving on the scene, the military troops of Col. Jack Evans blast a bazooka hole in the Beast's throat and drive it back into the sea. Unfortunately, it bleeds all over the streets, unleashing a "horrible, virulent" prehistoric germ, which begins to contaminate the populace, causing even more fatalities. The germ precludes blowing the Beast up or burning it, lest the contagion spread. Thus it is decided to shoot a radioactive isotope into the Beast's neck wound with hopes of burning the Rhedosaurus up from the inside, killing it.
When the Beast comes ashore and attacks the Coney Island amusement park, military sharpshooter Corporal Stone takes the potent radioactive isotope launcher,(it is the only one of its kind outside of Oak Ridge so he can't miss), and climbs onboard a rollercoaster. Riding the coaster to the top of the tracks so he can get to eye-level with the Rhedosaurus, he fires the isotope into the Beast's wound. The Beast lets out a horrible scream and crashes to the ground dead, with the surrounding park ablaze.
The film's titular Beast, the "Rhedosaurus", is the main antagonist of the film. Though often called a dinosaur, the Rhedosaurus has several differences from any true dinosaur species. For one, he has semi-sprawling limbs, a feature no dinosaur possessed; second, he was portrayed as a quadrupedal predator, also unlike any true theropods. He also features an undinosaurian skull, lizard-like spines, a forked tongue and dragging tail. It has been suggested that the "Rh" in the creature's name are Ray Harryhausen's initials.
A Dinosaur, whose appearance was based on that of the "Rhedosaurus", appeared in the 1978 film Planet of Dinosaurs where it was killed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Before this, another Dinosaur similar in appearance was featured in the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.
This movie had a production budget of $210,000.[3] It grossed over $5 million dollars at the Box Office.[4] Original prints of Beast were sepia toned.
When the short story The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury was published in The Saturday Evening Post, Dietz and Chester were negotiating with Bradbury to write the screenplay when he reminded them that both works shared a similar theme of a prehistoric sea monster, and a lighthouse being destroyed. The producers who wished to share Bradbury's reputation and popularity, bought the rights to his story and changed the film's title. The film was promoted as being "suggested" by a Ray Bradbury story and Bradbury credited as a writer.
The original music score was composed by Michel Michelet, but when Warner Brothers purchased the film they had a new score written by David Buttolph. Ray Harryhausen had been hoping that his film music hero Max Steiner would be able to write the music for the picture, as Steiner had written the landmark score for King Kong, and Steiner was under contract with Warner Brothers at the time. Unfortunately for Ray, Steiner had too many commitments to allow him to do the film, but fortunately for film music fans, Buttolph composed one of his most memorable and powerful scores, setting much of the tone for giant monster music of the 1950s.
Some early pre-production conceptual sketches of the Beast showed that at one point it was to have a shelled head and at another point was to have a beak.[5] Creature effects were assigned to Ray Harryhausen, who had been working with Willis O'Brien, the man who created King Kong, for years. The monster of the film looks nothing like the Brontosaurus-type creature of the short story. The creature in the film is instead some kind of prehistoric predator. A drawing of the creature was published along with the story in The Saturday Evening Post.[6] At one point there were plans to have the Beast snort flames, but this idea was dropped before production began due to budget restrictions. However, the concept was still used in the films movie poster artwork.
In a scene attempting to identify the Rhedosaurus, character Professor Tom Nesbitt riffles through dinosaur drawings of Charles R. Knight, a man whom Harryhausen claims as an inspiration. Incidentally, Knight died in 1953, the year Beast was released.
The dinosaur skeleton in the museum sequence is artificial; it was obtained from storage at RKO Pictures where it had been constructed for Bringing up Baby (1938).
The climactic roller coaster live action scenes were filmed on location at The Pike in Long Beach, California and featured The Cyclone Racer entrance ramp, ticket booth, loading platform and views of the structure from the beach. Split-matte in-camera special effects by Harryhausen effectively combined the live action of the actors and coaster background footage from The Pike parking lot with the stop-motion of the Beast destroying a model of the coaster.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first live action film to feature a giant monster awakened or brought about by an atomic bomb detonation to attack a major city. Due to its financial success, it helped spawn the genre of giant monster films of the 1950s. Producers Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester got the idea to combine the growing paranoia about nuclear weapons with the concept of a giant monster after a successful theatrical re-release of King Kong. In turn, this craze included Them! the following year about giant ants, the Godzilla series from Japan that has spawned movies from 1954 into the present day,[1][2] Behemoth, the Sea Monster (UK 1959, US release entitled The Giant Behemoth) and Gorgo (UK 1961).
The film is mentioned in a conversation between Para-Medic and Naked Snake in the popular stealth action game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
In the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, which also involves a monster terrorizing New York City, takes a frame from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms along with other frames from King Kong and Them!, also classic monster movies hidden during technical interferences with the hand held camera used throughout the film.[7]
The film was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.[8]