With monster movies being produced en mass back in the 50's, it took something really special to stand out from the crowd. "The Black Scorpion" was Warner Bros. follow up to "Them!," the quintessential giant bug movie of all time. While certainly enjoyable, this is a low-budget foray into the genre with only a few memorable sequences.
A string of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes near a small town in Mexico opens up a huge hole in the Earth's crust. Unexplainable accidents begin piling up until the culprit is found chomping away on workers fixing a telephone line: Giant scorpions. Undisturbed for thousands of years, these beasts are now free to roam the surface, killing anything that gets in their way. Geologist Hank Scott (Richard Denning) and the armed forces are the worlds only hope to put an end to this menace.
"The Black Scorpion" was Willis O'Brien's (King Kong) next to last film. He shared the effects duties with Pete Peterson, as he would in his final film, "The Giant Behemoth." When shown using standard stop-motion techniques, the title beasts are menacing. For whatever reason, the special effects pioneer chose to create a full sized mock-up of the face and claw for close ups. When the first on screen attack occurs using this prop, most people will likely burst into a fit of laughter. The drooling, immobile face looks nothing like the stop-motion model and it really serves no purpose. Some other effects, like the matte shots used when the creatures enter the heart of city, also fail miserably.
Otherwise, the effects work is great, on par if not better than a lot of other sci-fi films of the era. The final battle inside a stadium is just awesome, the train attack unforgettable, and the descent into the lair features even more monsters. This is also a surprisingly violent movie for its time, with countless people being stung and chomped on throughout the running time. Genre veteran Richard Denning ("Creature >From the Black Lagoon") goes through the paces here along with Mara Corday (who also worked in the genre previously, starring in the hilariously bad "Giant Claw"), doing what they needed to do and nothing else. This is one for genre fans only. (*** out of *****)
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