THE GIANT BEHEMOTH [1959]

 YOU KNOW HOW EVERYONE ALWAYS CLAMOURS ABOUT WANTING SOMETHING NEW AND DIFFERENT; AND THEN WHEN YOU GIVE IT TO THEM, THEY COMPLAIN THAT IT'S NOT LIKE THAT OTHER THING THEY LIKED.

  I think this is the problem with THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, Eugène Lourié's second film in his "Dinosaur on the rampage" trilogy which began with THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) and ended with GORGO (1961).  BEAST, of course, is a fantastic movie with superb Ray Harryhausen stop-motion effects where an atomic explosion wakes up a huge dinosaur that goes on a rampage and stomps New York City.  This is an absolutely great film.  However, in all truthfulness, it's basically a GODZILLA rip-off, isn't it.  Now, that's not a bad thing.  But truth be told, that's what it is; albeit replacing a guy in a monster suit with superb Harryhausen animation.  And Eugène Lourié did a bang-up job directing this seminal 50's monster movie.  Tasked with helming another movie in the same (jugular) vein (sorry, I channeled Forry there), as well as co-writing it with practically no budget, Lourié has two choices here:  either try to do something different than BEAST or carbon copy that sucker straight to the box office.  Oddly, most people seem to think he took the carbon copy route when actually that's not what he did at all.  BEHEMOTH, while still retaining those Godzilla tropes as well as a superficial resemblance to BEAST, instead tries to go a different direction with a mysterious plot filled with eerie question marks that make the first half of the movie play more like a Quatermass flick than a giant monster on the rampage movie.  And this, I think, is what makes most people expecting a dinosaur movie gives THE GIANT BEHEMOTH low marks.  Because, as a Quatermass eerie mystery, BEHEMOTH works phenomenally well and I actually love the film up until the dinosaur first appears.  I know this will be a radical viewpoint but that's how the film actually plays.  The erroneous view that, until the Behemoth appears, the film is a boring slog of talky exposition and that is simply not true.  In fact, the first half of the film is the best featuring an engaging mystery photographed with moody chiaroscuro lighting by ace DP Ken Hodges and anchored by those two terrific actors Gene Evans (Samuel Fuller's masterpiece THE STEEL HELMET) and Andre Morell (Hammer's PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, etc.).

The film opens with a great, creepy set-up of fisherman Mr. Trevethan (Henri Videon) and his daughter Jean (Leigh Madison) bringing their catch to shore on the Cornwall coast.  Jean takes a fish up to their house to start preparing dinner while her father prepares to take the rest of his catch to town for the selling.  He never gets there.  He looks out to sea with a look of astonished terror and a bright light hits his face.  A beautifully constructed scene.  Jean, of course, waits for her father to return to no avail and heads into town to look for him.  A search party discovers the old man near death on the beach with strange burn marks on his face.  Before he dies, Trevethan mutters something about the biblical 'behemoth'.  Next morning, hundreds of dead fish wash up on the beach.  U.S. biologist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) teams up with the British government's Prof. James Bickford (Andre Morrell) to investigate what killed the fisherman and all those fish.  A nice, quirky turn by Jack MacGowran ("Do you know what she DID?!?!?!!!!!") as dotty paleontologist Dr. Sampson is on display for too short a time but very welcome.  Leigh Madison also sadly disappears from the film after these opening scenes and it's a shame she wasn't kept around for the whole picture.  The trouble is eventually discovered to be an awakened dinosaur that shoots radioactive fire-blasts from his mouth.  Godzilla, anyone??? 

Here, I think, is where the letdown occurs because up till then, this is a cracking, eerie, Quatermassian-type movie and the introduction of the dinosaur is the real mistake.  Unfortunately, the film is called THE GIANT BEHEMOTH so we're all expecting a giant dinosaur before the film even starts due to the film's name, the movie poster and the movie trailers we've seen before actually walking into the theatre (in 1959) to watch the damn thing.  I'm sure the studio wanted a giant dinosaur on the rampage flick but that's not really what Lourié gave them; at least, not fully.   Lourié provided a dinosaur stomping London movie but he added different and (for dinosaur movies) fresh ideas for the film before the monster finally appears.  And this is where we get to the "everybody clamours for something different but when they get it, they don't like it" syndrome.  This is not a carbon copy of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and that's why fans don't like it even to this day.  I think this would've been a fantastic film if there was no 'giant behemoth' dinosaur at all and it was instead more like a Quatermass movie (which is how the damn thing plays for the better part of an hour).  This is not a Hammer production so the Professor was no a possibility but a Quatermass-like movie is not copyrighted and is very possible.  I mean, Hammer itself did a cracking one called X THE UNKNOWN with no Prof. Quatermass in it.  So Eugène Lourié, if I think given his druthers (and I have no way of knowing this) would probably have liked to make his movie without a dinosaur in it (especially given the terribly low budget the studio was providing him).  The strange deaths could've been caused by some other type of monster or natural/unnatural phenomenon such as the aforementioned X THE UNKNOWN or QUATERMASS 2: ENEMY FROM SPACE etc.  

Stop-motion maestro Willis O'Brien (among a handful of other special effects guys NOT including Ray Harryhausen) provide the perhaps not-so-special effects for BEHEMOTH and the threadbare budget shows -- particularly around the one hour 2 minute mark where we see the Behemoth's feet striding along a London street and the back of the monster's heel (where it's Achilles tendon would be) is completely split!  O'Brien, the father of KING KONG, was at the fag-end of his career, of course, and the dearth of budget did him no favours either.  Things were so bad that the first scene where we see the Behemoth (unless you were in England when that scene was cut out completely!?!?!!) attack the ferry is not stop-motion at all.  The Behemoth was so damaged by the neophyte SPX crew by the time it was filmed that the Behemoth model was actually broken and worked like a toy on a pole without even a working mouth!!!  So at no point was this going to be a classic; it was probably simply put out to scape up some ticket sales with the least expenditure on the studio's part.  So, the fact that the film is, in fact, as enjoyable as it is (and it IS) is all gravy.  

Now, I am not really a fan of "dinosaur" movies that much because I think they're rather uninteresting and all pretty much the same.  I never watched THE GIANT BEHEMOTH for decades because it didn't look like anything but a Godzilla rip-off and it's bad reputation didn't make me anxious to waste an hour and a half on it.  So I went into this movie expecting it to be a dull slog and. . . . truthfully I finally screened it because, after all this time, I guess I figured this horror fan should probably see it.  Imagine my surprise when it wasn't at all.  And by the time we first see the monster, I was actually OK with it being a dinosaur now because the lead-up had been so good to its reveal that even the inevitable let down of Behemoth being a giant dinosaur with not-so-great SFX was forgiven by this particular viewer.  Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination and generally considered the least of  Eugène Lourié's trilogy but still THE GIANT BEHEMOTH is one I'd gladly watch again!  In fact, I'd probably rather watch THIS again than GORGO.  GORGO has the better monster and the better SFX but I think it's duller than BEHEMOTH . . . . oh, and it has that annoying 'cute kid' angle.  The Lord preserve us from precocious children in movies!  BEHEMOTH's beautiful B&W photography is loads better than the washed out and pallid colour of GORGO.  Oh, and I hate circuses.  So knock a half-point off for the circus angle.  The cast of BEHEMOTH -- Gene Evans, Andre Morell, Leigh Madison, Jack MacGowran - - all terrific on screen.  And the cast of GORGO?  Nobody, really.  Plus GORGO has seemingly endless file footage of battleships, jet planes and submarines -- some of which is repeated more than once.  Yawn.  So yeah . . . . I'd rather watch THE GIANT BEHEMOTH.  Just sayin'.

ADDENDUM:  After watching the Ballyhoo documentary on the making of GORGO, it was revealed to Ye Olde Cerptser that indeed my instincts were correct.  THE GIANT BEHEMOTH was originally supposed to be about a strange blob-like creature that caused the burns and radiation poisoning of people and fish.  The studio Allied Artists then balked that they wanted a monster like the one that was in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS which caused the final third of the film to become the 'dinosaur stomping London' movie.  It's nice to know my instincts were right.