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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) in Movies

May 31, 2018 (Updated May 31, 2018)

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

1953 | Classics, Horror, Sci-Fi

7.0

(4 Ratings)

Movie Rating

American A-bomb test has unexpected consequences when the blast defrosts a frozen, wholly fictional dinosaur; the creature swims off to devastate the nearest city for no particularly well-explained reason. A decent monster movie with a surprisingly gritty tone (by the standards of the genre, anyway); in terms of cultural impact, utterly eclipsed by an unofficial Japanese remake which came out the following year and has had 31 sequels to date.

There are various quirky and tropey bits that will raise a smile for the seasoned viewer of this sort of thing (e.g. the moment when the sweet old supporting character postpones their first holiday in thirty years in order to look for the monster: they might as well have him followed around by a robed man with a scythe), but on the whole it passes the time well enough. There is a sense in which most of the film is just filling time until the climax, when the Rhedosaurus runs amok in the streets of New York, but it does so fairly engagingly; also manages to find a half-decent explanation as to why they don't just bomb the monster to death (Devlin and Emmerich, please take note). Wheeled on for monster-extermination duties is a young Lee van Cleef, who seems slightly annoyed to be appearing in this kind of film. Great fun to watch when you're about seven; stands up pretty well for older viewers, too.

Kudos

David McK (3372 KP) rated The Last Hero (Discworld, #27; Rincewind #7) in Books

Jan 28, 2019

<i>Fable (noun): a story about supernatural or extraordinary persons or incidents; legend: the fables of gods and heroes.

[from http://dictionary.reference.com]</i>;

This short story by Terry Pratchett ticks all those boxes with the blurb on my edition reading:

"He's been a legend in his own lifetime.

He can remember the great days of high adventure.

He can remember when a hero didn't have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilisation.

He can remember when people didn't tell you off for killing dragons.

But he can't alwyas remember, these days, where he put his teeth ...

He's not really happy about that bit.

.... He's going to climb the highest mountain in the Discworld and meet his gods. He doesn't like the way they let men grow old and die ... "

What ensues is, by the standards of Discworld novels, perhaps a return to the earlier novels that featured the gods (and Cohen the Barbarian) more prominently than the more recent. Also involved prominently in this story are the Wiz(z)ard Rincewind, Captain Carrot and Leonard of Quirm, with that latter character given more of a role than in the few previous he has been in (excepting, maybe, Jingo).

This is also unusual in that it is an illustrated story: whereas I've always found illustrations to be inferior to imagination when it comes to visualising events and characters, it does add an extra layer to this story - particularly where it concerns Leonard's creations.