Saturday, November 05, 2005

Jeff Rovin's The Encyclopedia of Monsters

Some factoids I picked up:

The movie The Beast from 20,000 Fanthoms was not based on the Ray Bradbury story by the same name (as is widely reported). Originally the movie was called Monster from the Sea but someone noticed a similarity between Bradbury's story and the movie before they began shooting (both monsters are prehistoric throw-backs from the days of the dinosaurs and both arrive at lighthouses). The monster in the movie was designed to look like the illustrations from the story but nothing else was changed in the working script. Bradbury changed the name of his story when it was reprinted.

Writer Edmond Hamilton brought up the issue of global warming in 1940 in his story "Liline, the Moon Girl," published in Amazing Stories but presented it as entirely positive.

William O. Douglas Jr., son of Supreme Court Justice, was a B-movie actor and appeared in the Outer Limits episode "The Galaxy Being" in 1963.

Some of the featured films included:

Cy Roth's Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956)
Dan Milner's The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues (1956) (sea monster from 10,000 leagues down; 10,000 leagues equals 30,000 miles--the earth's diameter is only about 8,000 miles)
Dan Milner's Tabanga (1957) Movie about a killer, man-eating tree
Tom Graeff's Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)
Ray Kellogg's The Giant Gila Monster (1959) and The Killer Shrews (also 1959)
Bernard L. Kowalski's The Giant Leeches (1959)
Joseph Green's The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1962)
Jack Woods' Equinox (released on video as The Beast) (1971) Cameo by Fritz Leiber.
William F. Claxton's Night of the Lepus (1972)
Douglas Cheek's C.H.U.D. (1984)
Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (1986) featuring the canine that gave the name to Evil Dog magazine.

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