Now, let me tell you I could be a little biased here with my scoring. For this film lit the light of remembrance and melancholy within me. As it took me back to my childhood. There was a time when the good old BBC would play these movies on a Saturday afternoon: On BBC2 while BBC1 had Grandstand. I remember watching these Sci-Fi monster flicks with my Nan on cold and wet winter days, usually in front of a warm gas fire. Those were good days. So, I thank the makers of the film for giving me this memory.What you have is a pretty bog-standard tale of nuclear radiation mutation... as was par for the course in the fifties. Here though, not only does it mutate a creature to an enormous size, but apparently resurrects a long-dead dinosaur. This then goes on the rampage through London. Though what makes this a little better than the average film in this genre is the extra details. We don't start in London but in a little fishing village in Cornwall where strange things have been occurring; a man being burned with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns, shoals of dead fish washing up on the beach, and strange lights under the surface of the sea. This pulls the viewer in with the mystery. There's also the brilliant usage of the radiation because if you get too close to the creature then you burn. When we arrive at the rampage, the director uses parts of London not fully rebuilt after the war to create an atmosphere that works well. Also, the large amount of extra's running from the monster is just right - not one or two people, but a hole streets worth of men and women.The director is very good at his work. He sets the pace of this film perfectly. There's a small crescendo at the beginning when Marine Biologist Steve Karnes' is warning the government about the possible side effects of radiation on the oceans and their populace. Then drops to a steadier pace with the mysterious happenings. Building up slowly to the rampage at the climax. Spot on perfect.The special effects, for their time, are not quite as good as others. However, they are passable. It's nice the puppeteer changed out to a fully automated Behemoth for the later scenes as the fixed mouth version that attacked the ferry looked a little silly. I have to admit I really loved the part where the Behemoth walks through the dockyards. The part where he wrecks one crane by tearing it apart with his teeth and the other by simply walking through it is one of the better stop animation sequences I've seen. I liked the fact the director filmed it from the position of the pavement, which had the effect of giving size to the creature.This was a very enjoyable flick, to say the least. The story and the filming were solid as too was the acting. Everybody put their skills into making this a very watchable movie. Not remembering the movie fully, I thought that the two main characters in the fishing village section Jean (Madison) and John (Turner) would be in the whole show, their acting is that good. However, when we leave the village we never see them again.If you've never caught a '50's sci-fi monster flick then this one would be a nice place to start. And if you are a fan of the genre, then find a copy and watch this once more, it's worth it.

It had been many decades since I last saw "The Giant Behemoth." When I was a kid, I had always grown restless with the film, largely because director/co-screenwriter Eugene Lourie withholds a good, establishing glimpse of the titular creature until the picture is almost 2/3 over; an interminable amount of time for an impatient youth who just wants to see a freakin' monster. As I plopped the DVD in recently, my one thought was, would I be as restless as an adult? "Behemoth," of course, was the second in Lourie's loose dinosaur trilogy. In the first film, 1953's classic, superb, artful and trendsetting "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms," Lourie, with the assistance of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, and working from a short story by Ray Bradbury, had given to the world the template for all thawed-out-dinosaur flicks to come, including the following year's "Gojira." Fans would have to wait until 1959 for Lourie's "Behemoth" follow-up, and then until 1961 for his much-loved baby boomer favorite, "Gorgo." "Beast From..." has been one of this viewer's very favorite films since elementary school; the greatest dinosaur movie ever made, for my money. And so, again, the question: How would "The Giant Behemoth" strike me as an adult, all these many years later?The film follows much the same story line as had been laid down by "Beast" six years earlier. Due to the effects of hydrogen bomb testing, a nasty, prehistoric monstrosity is released (in "Beast," the "rhedosaurus" is merely thawed out from its hibernation; here, the paleosaurus, an actual extinct animal as opposed to the fictitious rhedosaurus, is awoken and imbued with radioactivity, a la Gojira itself). As in "Beast," the creature initially wreaks havoc amongst coastal communities (primarily the south coast of England, here, as opposed to the Beast's Canadian maritime scourge), and an American scientist investigates. Thus, Steve Karnes (wonderfully played by Gene Evans), who had coincidentally just been giving a lecture on the possibilities of radiation-induced mutations, and the head of a British scientific society, Prof. Bickford (Andre Morell), go to the Cornish village of Looe, where a fisherman had recently been burnt to death by...something, and where thousands of dead fish had washed ashore. And as in "Beast," before long, the prehistoric menace goes on a rampage through a major city (New York in the earlier film; London, as in "Gorgo," in the latter), before our heroes dispose of the marauder by shooting a radioactive missile into it.Good as it is, "The Giant Behemoth," sadly, comes up short in every single department, as compared to the 1953 film. In "Beast," we are treated to the awesome spectacle of the monster, amidst a North Pole blizzard, within the film's first 10 minutes (I always loved that fact as a little kid, and still do); "Behemoth" makes the viewer wait 50 full minutes. "Beast" had given us such marvelous buildup scenes as the rhedosaurus' attack on a fishing trawler, on a lighthouse (beautifully done in nighttime silhouette) and on a bathysphere, whereas "Behemoth" only gives us the sight of several innocents being slain by concentric rings of electrically discharged radiation. The creature that Harryhausen devised for "Beast" is one of his greatest creations; it moves gracefully, seems truly alive, has a personality, and is absolutely terrifying when it looks into the camera. On the other hand, the paleosaurus here, when not being brought to life by a puppet, is a fairly clunky stop-motion creation, despite being the work of King Kong creator Willis O'Brien and a quartet of others. It does not move realistically or gracefully, and is hardly convincing. Wisely, Lourie often keeps his camera in close-up on the Behemoth's snarling mug, a mug that admittedly can engender chills when it also looks straight into the camera. And whereas the Beast's rampage through downtown Manhattan is one of the most exciting sequences in sci-fi history, the Behemoth's carries a distinct aura of deja vu, with too much emphasis on the fleeing populace and not enough on the monster itself. Oh...and the climax of "Beast," the thrilling, flaming cataclysm at the roller coaster, is as awe inspiring as can be (especially when seen on the big screen); the climax of "Behemoth" is nowhere near as spectacular, a bubbling underwater affair in which our monster cannot even be clearly seen. As I said, "Beast" kicks prehistoric butt on "Behemoth" in every single department; it is a genuine work of inspired cinematic art, as opposed to just being an enjoyable monster movie.Still, "Behemoth" does have its selling points. The early sequences in the Cornwall fishing village are very atmospheric, and there is a refreshing lack of a romantic subplot to distract the viewer and our hero. As in "Beast," a nighttime attack sequence, done in silhouette, works marvelously. Here, the Behemoth destroys a trio of electrical towers as it advances right into Lourie's camera. For once, the creature is genuinely intimidating and scary. And if you are wondering whether or not the adult me felt restless during the film's first 50 minutes, as I had as a kid, I will admit that I was not; at least, not overly much. The film IS intelligent and well acted by all, and Evans is immensely likable. Perhaps I would have been more inclined to be generous had I not seen "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" before, and many dozens of times since I was 5 years old. As it is, "The Giant Behemoth" strikes me as being merely fun stuff, and surely outclassed by its older brother....

Interesting in an historical sense because of Willis O'Brien and Eugene Lourie, both contributors to the "monster on the loose" genre that is with us to this day.That said, both of those artist best work can be found elsewhere. This low budget restraint is not worthy of their talent but they did complete it and did the best they could with the limited time and resources.The movie is quite professional looking and really is a lot better because of those involved in spite of its restrictions. The formula for the genre is by the numbers but executed with some suspense and realism. It has an effectively ominous musical score and when TGB arrives it has a nasty look and disposition.The ending of the atomic anomaly (or is it an anomaly?) is rather rushed and anti-climatic, but so is the life of the aforementioned format that would come to a halt in the following year with Gorgo (1960) also directed by Lourie.

The redundantly titled The Giant Behemoth (originally titled Behemoth, the Sea Monster) is a sub-par sci-fi potboiler from director Eugene Lourie and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien. It's loaded to the gills with padding, padding and more padding, and what stop-motion animation footage was done by O'Brien and his team is looped quite a bit during the Paleosaurus' initial London rampage. That said, for what it is, it isn't bad.Once one accepts that it's a B-movie it can be enjoyed. There's s'more stop-motion goodness to be had after the London walkabout, involving the Paleosaurus destroying some powerlines and then picking up a car with some people inside and tossing it into the Thames.Several scenes in the film pay homage to both Lourie's and O'Brien's earlier films. The Paleosaurus picking the car up is a nod to Beast from 20,000 Fathoms apparently, while the dinosaur causing a bridge to collapse with its weight, dumping itself unintentionally into the Thames, is a throwback to O'Brien's original 1925 special effects masterpiece, The Lost World. I also love that almost all of the screams used in the film are recycled from 1933's King Kong!