Direction: Gilbert Gunn
Screenplay: Paul Ryder
Music: Robert Sharples
Producer: George Maynard
Tell your friends, “He’s mad – mad I tell you!” But be that as it may, I actually
waited twenty-seven years to see this movie! Ever since I read a
terse (and unkind) review of the film in Castle of Frankenstein #8 (1966
issue), I’ve wanted to behold this tale of giant radioactive insects on the
loose in England.
During the sixties, it didn’t help when I noticed via out-of-town newspapers that Cosmic
Monster was showing on TV stations hundreds of miles away. “Why can’t it
come on one of our local stations?” I fumed inside. (I also
fumed outside, but that’s another story.)
Time passed (doesn’t it always?), and though I shoved the desire to see Cosmic
Monster to the nether regions of my cranial cinemahouse, I knew I would
watch it if ever given the chance. Well, that chance came when I purchased the
movie as a used video off ebay in 2003. (Yes, I could have bought it years
earlier, but paying over fifteen bucks for a sight-unseen film that might barf
cactus teeth is not my cup of creature feature frugality.)
Now that I have finally beheld 1958’s Cosmic Monster in my fortysomething
years, what can I say? Well, for one thing, it’s Great Britain’s
only bona fide Big Bug flick. In addition, despite the usual critical brickbats
hurled at it, Cosmic Monster is a fairly enjoyable (albeit severely
budget-strapped) story of an English scientist whose experiments smack a hole
in the ionosphere; this causes a small portion of England to be inundated with
cosmic rays that bloat the local bugs to Real Big Proportions. Fortunately, the
enigmatic Mr. Smith, a superior but friendly alien monitoring the scientist’s
ill-conceived activities, saves the day.
While the effects are almost all rear-screen projections, and though you almost never
see humans and bugs in the same scenes, the film nevertheless achieves a minor
frisson at times. Three best scenes:
- the heroine caught in a giant spider’s web while the spider
subdues a colossal cockroach in the background;
- a giant ant literally munching on a soldier’s face (quite graphic
for a fifties flick!);
- and a teacher trapped inside a small schoolhouse while the big
bugs outside try to break in.
Now I couldn’t and wouldn’t proclaim that Cosmic
Monster is an underrated classic – it isn’t. It’s not even a minor
classic, nor a sub-minor near-classic. But it is a mildly diverting, albeit low-rent
example of fifties sci-fi/horror from the land of Big Ben and Piccadilly Circus.
Now if only I could find a copy of The Earth Dies Screaming . . .
