Bert I. Gordon
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Both Julia and the audience suspect she’s being stalked, a circumstance rendered more terrifying on account of “The Spider,” an alleged serial killer stalking and beheading women in Bucharest.
Them! (1954)
Directed by Gordon Douglas
influenced Beginning of the End (1957), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)
Plot
A direct rip-off of Them! (1954) (with locusts replacing ants), this Z-grade atomic-creature flick has everything you would expect in such a film — including an inevitable romance between a beautiful heroine and a handsome hero; laughably simplistic explanations of the science behind the animal mutations; and crowds running from super-imposed images on the screen.
Beginning of the End (Hen’s Tooth) – Bert I Gordon, the kitsch master of nature gone giant cinema, created this bargain basement spectacle of supersized locusts eating their way through Illinois to Chicago as his answer to the atomic ant classic Them!
Its production was a direct outcome of the success of Them![8]…
And after the success of Them! , who else but Burt I. Gordon to make more giant bug movies?
He had no shame when it came to borrowing ideas; this Big Bug movie rips off Them! just as had his Beginning of the End from the year before -- it even has the same writer, George Worthing Yates.
This complete reduction of an initially sympathetic and intelligent character into a snarling, feral “beast” demonstrates the mercenary surrender of the returning produce-writer-director Bert I. Gordon toward sacrificing his initially sympathetic character into a useful substitute for the already used giant soldier ant or octopus (it probably didn’t help employing screenwriter George Worthing Yates who enjoyed a career surge in writing the same damn giant monster movie over and over again, including contributing to the referenced “Them!” and “It Came From Beneath the Sea”, as well as “The Amazing Colossal Man” itself) whose only method of communication is a truly unnerving, gargling roar (kudos to the sound effects technician who braved the proximity of what sounds like Elizabeth Taylor swallowing an all-you-can-eat fried chicken buffet for that invaluable bit of aural bestiality), removing the possibility of the film emerging as anything but a giant-monster-on-the-loose programmer (the sev…
In the context of horror history, in which films such as King Kong, The Spider and The Creature from the Black Lagoon used monsters as stand-ins for black people, Peele’s success feels like a multilayered triumph.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Directed by Michael Bay
influenced by The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)
Themes
What excited me in the mid-sixties, in such movies as “The Amazing Colossal Man” (which is still pretty amazing) and “Earth vs. the Spider,” was the stuff of ordinary life—a man, a bug, a hotel room, a rock song—transformed into something uncanny, monstrous, and dangerously extraordinary.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
influenced by The Magic Sword (1962)
Themes
In years past, all this might have made for a perfectly acceptable Saturday matinee -- something like "The Magic Sword" comes to mind -- but the current requirements of theatrical tentpoles don't allow for such modestly scaled ambitions.
Granted, they're not laughable creations on the order of the insects seen in the '70s shlock flick Empire of the Ants, but they're fake enough to bug all but the most forgiving of Marvel devotees.