The Trollenberg Terror

I happen to think this is one of the more enjoyable films I have seen that was made in the 1950's. Deep down it is typical 50's "mutated monster" fare but it really is so much more. A strange mist overtakes an Alpine village and turns out to be a decapitating giant eyeball. It sounds pretty hokey I know and the special effects are poor but it was the 1950's afterall and there is a fair amount of blood that is featured which was a surprise to me. When the two hikers are found dead you can see their bloody, mangled faces. And in one decapitation scene you can see the blood flying. The performances are fine in this one including a robust performance from the great Forrest Tucker. Plenty of atmosphere in this one also. All in all I would highly recommend this one. It's a lot of harmless fun and when not taken seriously, as it seems to have been by some of the reviewers here, it is a highly enjoyable film.

I have a huge and very soft spot for 1950s sci-fi films with freakish aliens and/or monsters. Be forewarned - my view of this film is definitely colored by my unhealthy interest in these films.

This is a true archetypal classic of the genre.

*** Weird psychic sisters, *** alien mystery clouds, *** giant creeping cyclopes with tentacles, *** secret government agencies investigating the paranormal, *** possession, *** zombies, ***

Forest Tucker(!)

• it's all here.

This is a very entertaining low-fi, low-brow, B/W monster movie. I am convinced that the writers were asked to include every element of contemporary supernatural, sci fi and imaginative fiction stories and, kudos to them - they pulled it off! Stephen King's Dreamcatcher owes a huge debt to this beauty. If you think about it, Dreamcatcher is almost a rewrite of this film, with aliens that are just a little less ridiculous and a different narrative. And the biggest surprise of all - Forest Tucker can act! His F Troop character was not the only personality in his repertoire!

Remarkably, the absurdity of the plot is not used as an excuse for exceedingly bad special effects.

This is a little gem of a 50s pulp film. It's goofy as hell, fun, well executed, and well worth a sleepless night. Far more entertaining that the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and many others.

A mysterious radioactive cloud hovers on the side of the Trollenberg mountain but no cloud should be at that altitude. In an observatory atop the mountain scientists monitor the behavior of the cloud. Forrest Tucker, who has seen such a cloud before, arrives to investigate. When townspeople start disappearing the cloud appears suspect.

This movie isn't that bad but the monster creatures are so poorly done, they are truly cheesy and the ending reminds me of when I was a boy and used to light plastic army men on fire in the backyard and watch them melt. Just film that and you have the special effects for this film.

The opening scene certainly grabs your attention. There is some nice photography of the Swiss Alps. The acting is fine. Janet Munro is an eye full as the extremely cute psychic who gets manipulated by the monsters.

Crawling Eyes/Trollenberg Terror is a British horror film of the 50's like Day of the Triffids and the Quatermass films.

Not every monster to come out of the fifties was a guy in a rubber suit or a double exposed giant something-or-other. This effective British thriller offers one of the most original monsters ever. The creatures are aliens looking to colonise our planet but first they have to lower the temperature and eliminate one small obstacle . . .us! The cyclopean, tentacled terrors are prone to tearing off the heads of their victims but they possess the technology to kill certain Earth people and bring them back from the dead to do their bidding. Interestingly, the creatures brain waves are easily intercepted by anyone with even latent psychic abilities. This makes Janet Munro our required damsel-in-distress from not only the monsters but from the man (Andrew Faulds) they reanimate to get rid of her. Luckily this movie has two heroes, rough hewn Forrest Tucker (to make the movie appealing to American audiences) and British Lawrence Payne (later to star in Hammer's VAMPIRE CIRCUS). Okay I have a question. Midway through the film we see 2 mountain climbers, Brett and Dewhurst, halfway up the mountain where the aliens are. They take shelter in a small cabin. During the night Brett hears the aliens telepathic call and wanders up the mountain alone. Later Dewhurst gets up to look for him and (I guess) sees one of the aliens coming toward the cabin. He quickly bolts the door but then turns around and screams. Later a search party has to break down the front door and they find Dewhurst dead with his head torn off. WHAT THE HECK GOT HIM? The cabin is intact, not even a window broken, so how in the world did the alien monster kill him? And how does Dewhurst's head get inside the knapsack of Brett who is miles away? No, it isn't Brett who kills him because he could not have gotten into the cabin either. It is indeed a scary moment but very implausible if you stop to think about it. The rest of the movie is very good and quite memorable. Way back in 1957 it played on a double bill with THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X (a/k/a COSMIC MONSTERS) in America. That was a bit before my time and now I am kind of sorry I missed the era of the drive-in. Thank goodness for home video.

When I was very young, I viewed Quentin Lawrence's "The Trollenberg Terror" and Irving Pichel's "The Most Dangerous Game" quite often on late night TV. In retrospect, they are very hokey, but at such an impressionable age, these two films scared my sister and me a great deal. In fact, I think they marked us for life.

"The Trollenberg Terror," more often referred to as "The Crawling Eye" -- I love that name -- is about two psychic sisters in a remote ski resort who are terrorized by a giant, tentacled eye which uses the fog to hide its movements. The film climaxes with a King Kong-like finale involving the United Nations and an aerial battle with phosphorous bombs.

What more could you ask for in a cinematic experience? :) ... Except perhaps some better special effects. :p