cinema history class: the black scorpion

Session: Monsters International -- Big! Hairy! Scaly! Scary!, Week 3
Movie: The Black Scorpion (1957)
Directed by Edward Ludwig

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
An earthquake strikes Mexico, triggering the birth of a volcano and giant prehistoric scorpions. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

We're in an age where so much is done through CGI -- and in which CGI is steadily improving. Most of what we've seen in class is pre-CGI and is therefore somewhat cheesy. I don't recall seeing much stop-motion animation to date. But this was awesome. Not in a "wow! this looks so real!" sense. It was more that it was really creepy and disturbing -- as if, despite not looking real, it triggered some visceral fear. That actually jibes with what Blair has told me -- that no matter how real some CGI looks to the conscious mind, there's some way that, subconsciously, we dismiss it.

As if to drive it all home, I recently saw A Quiet Place Part II with Asher. It features state-of-the-art CGI monsters that look real. But, in the theater, they just didn't get to me the way the scorpions (and other baddies) in Black Scorpion did. The shame is that they ran out of money in production, and had to resort to painting the scorpions into cels in some scenes.

I was puzzled by all the drool -- those scorpions really salivate a lot. But that helped to give them character and make them much more scary.

There was a point in the film that I thought it was ending. And I was kind of frustrated with that, thinking that they hadn't wrapped things up properly. Fortunately, that phantom ending (as I call it) only marked a transition to the real climactic scenes. These, including the railroad crash and the final battle in the stadium were superb. 

Ratings

Me: 9.8

Bob: 9.7

Dave: 9.6
Joe: 10