I Don't Know If This Will Work -
Your humble scribe has had to abandon his original post, as the cursor has picked up a format and makes a mess of the whole post whilst working on it.
A cautious aside. It seems to be working - but getting this far has taken nearly an hour, and now I have to copy the body of text I previously created. If I copy it in then it replicates the error.
So! Let the madness and badness begin. Not sadness, that would be inappropriate.
NO!
I did not make a spelling mistake. You ought to know better than that - Conrad being a spelling martinet of the very worst/best type. I refer, of course, to that Eighties icon Karel Fialka, he of the hit "The Eyes Have It" (instead of the grammatically correct "The Ayes Have It").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlWY6NqxiEA
What can I say? It sounds archetypically Eighties. If we can winkle Art out of his isolation tank -
Conrad is not sure what the eyes actually have, apart from aqueous humour, which is rather watery stuff for a pun.*
Anyway, none of that has anything to do with Fifties sci-fi monster movies.
Here an aside. Apparently the humourless granite slabs who administer the world of science fiction dislike the term "sci-fi" because it undermines their aspirations to become Proper Writing Like What It Is Wroted. This is unfortunate for them, because now Conrad knows their secret weakness.
Back on track, or as much as we ever manage that feat here. Eyes! And yes, we are back to the - well, I can't call them "Buggers" in this instance, as we shall also be mentioning crustaceans today. However, back to Fifties critters writ large. Specifically "Tarantula", "Them", "The Black Scorpion", and - the piece de resistance! - "Attack of the Crab Monsters". Classics, every one of them.** Art?
This lack of correct entomological content has been noted in film criticism, which Conrad considers a bit odd. After all, if you can suspend disbelief enough to accept a spider one hundred feet high, what's a pair of eyes? Okay, Art?
Why the difference? Perhaps because giving these horrid creepy-crawlies human eyes helps project emotions - hatred, anger, raw seething hatred that humans have jam and they don't, that sort of thing. Mind you, the ants in the film proper do have more realistic eyes - again, stretching "realistic" when it applies to a nine-foot ant. Okay, next up. Art?
This unpleasant little enormous rascal is the titular scorpion of the film's title, and you can see his/her/it's ghastly little pop-eyes, which once again are not found in real scorpions. Nor do real scorpions drool at the mouth and make squealing roars like a lion undergoing castration with blunt scissors. But hey, what does your humble scribe know about mega-arachnidae from prehistory? Right, Art?
These are from "Attack of the Crab Monsters", a minor opus from the Roger Corman stable, and once again we see a verrrry human optic in the upper photo. The lower photo shows one of the - er - terrifying crab monsters in action, and here the eyes are plainly ludicrous. One can understand Ol' Roj wanting to gift them with some defining characteristic, as real crabs have very little in the way of personality, but he got it wrong here. Still, at only an hour long the film can hardly be said to outstay it's welcome. I may come back to it in future; we've had enough of it in the meantime.
There will now be a pause as your modest artisan heads to the kitchen to get something to eat. Later!
This Is How It Should Be Done
Not a phrase I ever thought I would ever type about this film ... Despite the studio presenting the titular beast of "The Deadly Mantis" as being positively pyrophiliac, they do get it's eyes correct. Art?
Conrad supposes this is because they resort to using an actual mantis on a scale model of the Washington Memorial, and it would clash, rather, if the mantis model was portrayed with boss-eyed malevolence. Or, they could just have pasted same onto the real thing, because Hey! it was the Fifties and you could get away with that sort of thing then.
Hmmm. We have been rather harping on a theme here, haven't we? Okay, tomorrow a return to tanks, atom bombs and Zombies!**
* But correct in terms of histology
** This may be a teensy little lie.
A cautious aside. It seems to be working - but getting this far has taken nearly an hour, and now I have to copy the body of text I previously created. If I copy it in then it replicates the error.
So! Let the madness and badness begin. Not sadness, that would be inappropriate.
NO!
I did not make a spelling mistake. You ought to know better than that - Conrad being a spelling martinet of the very worst/best type. I refer, of course, to that Eighties icon Karel Fialka, he of the hit "The Eyes Have It" (instead of the grammatically correct "The Ayes Have It").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlWY6NqxiEA
What can I say? It sounds archetypically Eighties. If we can winkle Art out of his isolation tank -
 |
| Pretty much as expected |
Anyway, none of that has anything to do with Fifties sci-fi monster movies.
Here an aside. Apparently the humourless granite slabs who administer the world of science fiction dislike the term "sci-fi" because it undermines their aspirations to become Proper Writing Like What It Is Wroted. This is unfortunate for them, because now Conrad knows their secret weakness.
Back on track, or as much as we ever manage that feat here. Eyes! And yes, we are back to the - well, I can't call them "Buggers" in this instance, as we shall also be mentioning crustaceans today. However, back to Fifties critters writ large. Specifically "Tarantula", "Them", "The Black Scorpion", and - the piece de resistance! - "Attack of the Crab Monsters". Classics, every one of them.** Art?
 |
| No compound eyes! |
 |
| Human eyes! (How they humanise) |
 |
| Er - yes. I mean NO! |
These are from "Attack of the Crab Monsters", a minor opus from the Roger Corman stable, and once again we see a verrrry human optic in the upper photo. The lower photo shows one of the - er - terrifying crab monsters in action, and here the eyes are plainly ludicrous. One can understand Ol' Roj wanting to gift them with some defining characteristic, as real crabs have very little in the way of personality, but he got it wrong here. Still, at only an hour long the film can hardly be said to outstay it's welcome. I may come back to it in future; we've had enough of it in the meantime.
There will now be a pause as your modest artisan heads to the kitchen to get something to eat. Later!
This Is How It Should Be Done
Not a phrase I ever thought I would ever type about this film ... Despite the studio presenting the titular beast of "The Deadly Mantis" as being positively pyrophiliac, they do get it's eyes correct. Art?
 |
| There you go |
Hmmm. We have been rather harping on a theme here, haven't we? Okay, tomorrow a return to tanks, atom bombs and Zombies!**
* But correct in terms of histology
** This may be a teensy little lie.
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