AG Monday
This week: monster movies of the 50s and 60s!
During the 1950s and 1960s, a combination of big ideas from science fiction, Cold War paranoia, and the sheer coolness of monsters inspired a generation of monster movies. Godzilla was only the start. Thrill at the rampages of giant atomic mutations (ants, birds, spiders, you name it), ready to wipe humanity from the face of the earth! Shiver as alien invaders walk among us! Plunge into the unknown corners of the world, and the mysterious realm of the human mind, to discover – what else? – monsters!
In this episode, we discuss how our younger selves, Tom especially, became monster movie fans. We break down a few examples, both good and bad, and also talk plenty of other movies as well. The verdict: even when they were bad, they were still lots of fun!
We also discuss monster movie fandom, centering around late-night TV hosts and magazines like Famous Monsters Of Filmland.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I’m completely uninterested in monster movies. My main criticism of the Jurassic Park franchise(s), is that they wasted innovative CGI (at the time of the first film) to make a monster movie.
So, I’m curious what you see in them.
A well done film from that era was “The Incredible Shrinking Man”. The monsters? A house cat, a spider.,,things like that mostly. Terrifying things indeed when you’re the size of a mouse or a grain of rice. The story ends on a fatalistic but somehow magically optimistic open-note which is unusual for the genre. Reflects Bradbury’s influence, I suspect.
@dazedandconfused:
In the 90s, the cable channel that showed Babylon 5 also carried old horror movies, mostly B&W, which broadcast after B5. I saw a lot of the promos for them, pretty much one in every commercial break in B5. One was The Incredible Shrinking Man.
That’s pretty much all I know about it.
One thing, though. Judging from those promos, enunciation and diction were a lot better in those days. Far clearer than today.
I’m looking forward to this one working its way up my podcast queue. I can still vividly remember an occasion when I was 8-10 years old and my parents went out on a Saturday morning, leaving my older sisters in charge. They also left us with a bottle of soda pop and a quarter of a large bag of potato chips for each of the four kids. By some miracle I had access to the living room and the TV all by myself and I flicked around the UHF dial until I found “Attack of the Giant Leeches” in all its black and white glory. I don’t know whether I was unaware of just how bad the special effects were or just didn’t care, but I was simultaneously enraptured, horrified and sickened as I watched the whole thing. For months afterward I wanted nothing to do with pop or chips.