The Monster That Challenged the World

Giant slugs terrorize a small town near a US air force base in this 1957 production. Rounded characters, a well-written script and a good titular monster help lift this Gramercy film a cut above the average. 6/10

The Monster That Challenged the World. 1957, USA. Directed by Arnold Laven. Written by Pat Fielder & David Duncan. Starring: Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, Hans Conried, Marjorie Stapp, Barbara Darrow. Produced by Arthur Gardner & Jules Levy. IMDb: 5.7/10. Letterboxd: 3/5. Rotten Tomatoes: 5.5/10. Metacritic: N/A

Three US sailors disappear mysteriously during a parachute training exercise outside an airbase at the Salton Sea lake in California. The newly posted commander Lt. Cmdr. John ‘Twill’ Twillinger (Tim Holt) and the airbase’ leading scientist Dr. Jess Rogers (Hans Conried) set out to investigate with the help of Dr. Tad Johns (Max Showalter) and Lt. Robert “Clem” Clemens (Harlan Wade). At the airmen’s boat they find a strange slimy secretion, which Dr. Rogers takes in for analysis, as well as the body of one of the sailors, shrivelled and drained of all bodily fluids. When preparing to leave, a huge, caterpillar-like monster emerges from the sea and attacks the boat. Twill pokes it in the eye with a boat hook, and it retreats.

That’s the build-up to the 1957 United Artists release The Monster That Challenged the World, directed by Arnold Laven, and produced by his partners Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner at Gramercy Pictures. Generally considered one of the better Big Bug films of the latter part of the 50’s, the film was written by Patricia “Pat” Fielder from a story by David Duncan, and was released as the first feature of a double bill also containing the subject of my last review, the surprisingly good The Vampire, also produced by Gramercy and written by Fielder.

Back on dry land, Twill orders a quarantine, and forbids all swimming at Salton Sea until the mystery of the monster can be solved. That doesn’t stop sonarman Morty (Robert Benevides) and his girlfriend Jody (Barbara Darrow) from taking a late-night swim, with fatal results — to the devastation of Jody’s stern mother (Sarah Selby). A reconnaissance dive claims yet another victim, that of lab assistant George Blake (Dennis McCarthy), leaving behind his pregnant wife Connie (Marjorie Stapp). George’s death brings back painful memories to lab secretary Gail MacKenzie (Audrey Dalton), who lost her own husband a few years back, leaving her to take care of daughter Sandy (Mimi Gibson) on her own. Twill does his best to comfort her, and feelings between the two are awakened.

Meanwhile, the dive has brought back a gigantic egg, which is placed in a tank. In a not-so-subtle moment of foreshadowing, Dr. Jess tells the assembled crew that there is no danger of the egg hatching a monster to wreak havoc on the lab as long as the temperature is kept cool enough, helpfully demonstrating on which knob to turn up the heat. In a piece of exposition along with a home cinema screening of slugs, Jess explains that the monster is in fact a prehistoric mollusc, very closely related to the garden snail. His theory is that the eggs have lain dormant under the Salton Sea for millennia, but that a recent earthquake has moistened the ground in which they lay. This mega mollusc, is, says Jess, probably the same species as the “historically documented Kraken”. This monster, he says, is now challenging the world, as the danger is that it will somehow make its way to the nearby canal system and through that out in the sea. This must be prevented at all cost, and the monsters and the eggs found and destroyed to the last individual.

Of course, despite vigilant patrols guarding the Salton Sea, monsters turn up in the canal system, killing a sceptical canal watchman (Ralph Moody). After some hawing and hewing about a storage room for the local museum that hasn’t been financed by the state, the local archivist (Milton Parsons) reveals that there is an ancient Native American underground aqueduct leading from the Salton Sea to the canal, and Jess concludes this must be where the monsters and their eggs have relocated, and suggests Twill arrange depth bombing of the monsters, which he does, personally. After completing their mission and wiping out all the monsters, Twill and Jess take a leisurly car ride back to the lab. However, at the lab, little Sally thinks the test bunnies look cold, and decides to turn up the heat. Of course, she mistakingly turns up the heat of the tank oin which the monster egg lies, with predictable results. The giant slug attacks Sally, but her mother Gail (Twill’s love interest, remember?) rescues her and locks themselves in a cleaning cupboard, while the slug charges the flimsy door. Hoping against hope that someone will come to their rescue, Gail embraces Sally and tells her to close her eyes while Gail herself is trying to hold back the door. Of course, our hero Twill arrives at the last moment, leading to a rather original showdown, with Twill fending off the monster with a fire extinguisher and a steam hose while the slug trashes the lab, and finally the cavalry arrived to gun it down.

Background & Analysis

The Monster That Challenged the World came out of the collaboration of producers Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven, who sometimes operated under the moniker or Levy-Gardner-Laven, but in this case as Gramercy Pictures. Laven also directed the film. The collaboration had started during WWII, when the three made films for the US Air Force, but they had been struggling to get their company off the ground. As Laven tells Tom Weaver in an interview, their luck began to change when they were able to convince United Artists to let them produce a number of science fiction movies which were really low-budget pictures but the had the feel of medium-budget films. Their first effort was The Monster that Challenged the World.

In fact, the movie was really a medium-budget film, as far as SF movies of the time was concerned. It had a budget of $250,000 and was to be partly shot in Japan. David Duncan, who went on to become a noted SF screenwriter, wrote a script set in Japan, but probably due to budgetary reasons, UA scrapped the plans to go overseas, which meant the movie had to be re-written. In an interview with Weaver, Duncan said he just didn’t get the story off the ground, and UA nixed his new script. This put the producers in a fix, as they could’t afford a new writer. Enter Patricia “Pat” Fielder, a production assistant and script reader, who had writing ambitions of her own. She convinced the producers to let her take a crack at the film, and the result was one of the better Big Bug scripts of the 50’s. So happy was the company with her work, that they let Fielder write all of the four SF/horror movies that Gramercy made for UA in 1957 and 1958.

Fielder says in an interview with Weaver that the idea for the film was based on an article the production team had read in LIFE magazine, about scientists who had been able to reconstitute shrimp eggs that had been lying dormant in a desert lake bed for millions of years. Fielder probably misremembers after all these years, because such a feat has likely not been accomplished by other scientists than those appearing in Jurassic Park. However, the production team had probably read an article about so-called desert shrimp, whose eggs can lay dormant for potentially several decades before an unusually rainy period fills a dried-up desert lake bed.

The Monster That Challenged the World is also heavily influenced by the “original” giant bug film Them! (1954, review), and hits many similar beats, however, it remains original enough as not to seem like a ripoff. One of the reasons is probably that the movie was influenced by its setting. It was partly filmed at the actual Salton Sea and the nearby US air base. Pat Fielder worked as a production assistant on the movie and participated in location scouting, and says she went back to the script and worked in the locations once she had visited the area — for example, she doesn’t remember if there was actually an air base in the original script, but as there was one at Salton Sea, they took advantage of it. The scenes at the beach were filmed by the sea outside Los Angeles, and the indoor shots were made in a studio. Refreshingly, there are not shots from the Bronson Canyon.

In an interview with Tom Weaver, Arnold Laven said: “We learned from earlier pictures that we did, that the richest, most visual, most effective sequences, production-wise, were those that we shot outdoors, where even a low-budget film is in a sense on an equal standing with even the most high-budgeted pictures.” The movie really benefits from its extensive location shooting — from the boat rides to the dock areas and the canals. Another thing it benefits from is its titular monster. Granted, there is some unintentional hilarity when Dr. Rogers shows his film of garden snails and states that they “very closely” resembles the monster — which they do not in the slightest do. The monster has also been called a caterpillar in some reviews, because that is what it mostly looks like, even if the team was perhaps going for a tardigrade look. Instead of using miniatures or superimposed real critters á la Bert I. Gordon, the production team opted for a full-size, animated puppet controlled by hydraulics and operated by three people. While its range of movements are somewhat limited and look a bit hydraulic in nature, it is a surprisingly effective monster, partly because it was designed to be able to take a beating, so the actors can really interact with it. This is evident especially in the final scene, where the filmmakers go all out and has it completely trash the lab, and when Tim Holt attacks it with the steam hose, he is really dousing it with hot steam. The scene in which Audrey Dalton and Mimi Gibson take refuge in the cleaning closet, and the monster’s mandibles crash through the door trying to get at them is really effective, and is a culmination of Augie Lohman’s creature effects, Fielder’s writing and Laven’s direction.

A monster, however, is only ever as scary as the impact it has on its victims. This was what Ishiro Honda understood so well when he made the original Gojira (1954, review). The Monster That Challenged the World is no Gojira, but Fielder grasps that in order to have an impact with the audience, the deaths on screen must be given some emotional weight, and we must care about what happens to the characters. Throughout her four SF/horror films for Gramercy, Fielder wrote characters that seemed like they could exist in the real world, and often gave them believable backstories. The women, in particular, were often well written. It does feel like Fielder was still on a learning curve with The Monster That Challenged the World, which is not, in my opinion, as well written as her follow-up, The Vampire (1957, review). But already here, we get characters that feel worlds apart from the usual low-budget SF tropes of the 50’s. Connie Blake (Marjorie Stapp), who loses her husband, is pregnant, and I can’t remember seeing a pregnant woman as one of the principal characters in an SF movie of the 50’s. Her grief is something which the other characters relate and react to, more than just “have a glass of water”. Her grief is mirrored in that of the leading lady Gail McKenzie’s (Audrey Dalton), who has flashbacks of losing her husband in the war. Granted, Twill’s attempts at consoling her are rather clunky, but I like to think that’s because his character is supposed to be rather clunky.

The character of Gail – as the leading lady – is also unusual, as she is a widow with a daughter. In general, the ingenues of these kind of films were implied virgins. The daughter also isn’t just there as the token annoying child actor, but to add emotional punch to the climax of the movie. Fielder carefully makes sure to include enough cute moments (a ladybug is involved) for us to care about the child. This comes back to punch us in the scene in which Gail and her daughter are trapped with the monster coming through the door. When Gail cradles Sandy in her arms and tells her to “close your eyes and don’t open them for a while”, the terror becomes tangible. Gail is really expecting them to die. One imagines either David Duncan or Fielder had seen Gojira, as the scene resembles that of a woman comforting her children, as she realises they are seconds away from being killed by the radioactive dinosaur. Even when Tim Holt rushes in to save them, he doesn’t look like the square-jawed hero riding in to save the day — he looks terrified, which further helps sell the menace of the monster. Good direction here from Laven, and a great performance from Holt.

In an interview with Tom Weaver, Fielder comments on the fact that many of her characters seemed like ordinary people, often with families and a life outside the plot of the movie: “horror in juxtaposition with family is always interesting. Weird people have weird experiences, but when real people have weird experiences, then I think you have a true drama.” Weaver also talks to Fielder about the fact that many of her female leads were working women, often as secretaries or in other middle- or working class professions. Often they are portrayed as capable, balanced and independent, with complex personalities and emotions, or at least as complex as the B-movie framework allows. Fielder says she drew on a lot of her own experiences when writing female characters. She worked as, basically, a secretary, at Gramercy before being “promoted” to screenwriter, and strived to bring real-life women on screen, even in horror and science fiction movies, women with ambitions and lives of their own.

I like the fact that The Monster That Challenged the World doesn’t reek of cold war paranoia or gung-ho military patriotism. The fact that the whole thing takes place on a military seems more a coincindence than a message. This isn’t a film about the US military defeating a sinister invader, but about people coming together to battle a threat to their lives. Sure, you can make interpretations about the molluscs representing invading communists, but this really isn’t that kind of a movie. It’s a monster movie and not a political allegory — even a subconscious one, I should say. Also, it’s not a science vs. the military thing. Dr. Rogers, superbly played by veteran character actor Hans Conried, is a balanced, serious and respected authority, who doesn’t want to “study” the thing “in the name of science”, is just as intent as destroying it as everybody else.

All things considered, however, this is a 50’s Big Bug movie, and it rather slavishly follows the expected plot conventions. Mysterious deaths occur, our heroes investigate and research the menace, and once it is identified try to devise a plan to get rid of it. As with almost all the movies of its ilk, The Monster That Challenged the World suffers from a dip in interest in the mid-section, as there is little plot advancement to speak of between the identification of the menace and the final showdown. The characters here, while better than usual, aren’t fleshed out enough for this to become an engaging inter-personal drama, nor are there any subplots for Arnold Laven to latch on to in the interim space. An attempt at adding tension to the depth-bombing of the eggs by having one of the divers struggle with a jammed grenade pin just feels contrived, and in the end, the menace to the world is dealt with in a largely undramatic fashion, leaving only the one monster back in the lab. Contrived is also the plot twist that allows the egg in the lab tank to hatch: Sandy heating up the water in order to warm the test bunnies. As critic Robin Bailes points out at Dark Corners: if they keep a Monster That Challenges the World in their lab, one would assume it would be guarded. After all, this is a military air base — surely they would have enough personnel to prevent little girls from tampering with the thermostat — not to mention all the other important science stuff in a military research facility.

The film’s voice-over opening feels like something out of a W. Lee Wilder movie, a stark contrast to the superb credit sequence in The Vampire. In general, the second-billed film is better scripted than the first-billed The Monster That Challenged the World. Partly this may caused by Fielder working from another writer’s story, while she wrote the script for The Vampire from scratch. But one should also remember that this was her first movie script. While the characters are fresh departures from the stereotypical inhabitants of 50’s SF movies, there are a few too many of them, fighting for attention. While Twill is a clear-cut central character, he remains oddly underdeveloped. He doesn’t really have a character arc, and his personal story is more defined by the change in how his colleagues perceive him as the story develops. While this isn’t a fully satisfactory character arc, it is considerably more than we are treated to in most similar films.

The acting in The Monster That Challenged the World is, like in The Vampire, very good. As per usual, L-G-L/Gramercy employed talented character actors, many with a solid stage training — the exception being cowboy star Tim Holt. Holt was an underrated actor who got completely stuck in his western typecasting by RKO, but who turned out powerful dramatic performances in the very, very few chances he had of doing other kinds of work — as exemplified by his appearances in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948). Holt delivers a nuanced performance in the lead, and the fact that he came out of retirement for this role shows how badly he must have yearned to get out of the cowboy hat during his active career. The fact that he has put on some weight during his retirement just adds to the charm and realism.

Hans Conried was a respected stage actor who got stuck in comedic bit-parts and animated voice work in Hollywood, and also seems to relish his chance to do a rare, large serious role. As a thanks he turns in one of the best egghead performances of the 50’s as the thoughtful, caring scientist. Audrey Dalton and Marjorie Stapp both deliver fine performances as the two most prominently featured women in the film, both seasoned actresses with lots of talent, unlike many of the leading ladies of these kind of films, who were often cast more for their looks than for their acting abilities. Gorgeous Barbara Darrow has a small but very memorable role as the rebellious daughter who becomes the first civilian casualty of the monster. A shout-out should also go to Sarah Selby, who plays her stern but caring mother in an uncredited but effective bit-part. Writing and directing children is a talent not possessed by all writers and directors, and if Mimi Gibson comes off as annoying, it is probably not her fault. But darn, she is cute. Also worthy of mention are the breakout characters of the canal lock watchman who gets eaten by the slug, played by prolific bit-part player Ralph Moody, and the annoying museum intendent, played by the always memorable Milton Parsons, both proving the old adage that there are no small parts, only small actors.

The Monster That Challenged the World is a better-than-average late 50’s monster movie. While the script follows the basic tropes of the subgenre, many of which can be traced back to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953, review) and Them! (1954, review), it can lay claim to at least a smidgeon of originality, and boasts a script that feels like somebody actually made an effort to write an interesting, rather than just a profitable, script. Arnold Laven’s direction is competent, and he excels especially in action sequences. The monster itself, while hardly impressive by today’s standards, is an unusually well realised B-movie monster, and competes with the giant ants in Them! and the spider in Tarantula (1955, review) for the title of best 50’s giant movie bug. Oscar winner Heinz Roemheld’s dramatic score sometimes threatens to become slightly purple, but in general adds a good deal of tension and panache to the movie.

Many modern critics make it sound as if the 50’s was a swamp of giant bug movies, and that the field was over-saturated by the time The Monster That Challenged the World came out. But one of the things that has surprised me, as I have watched all the 50’s SF movies in chronological order is the surprisingly small number of big bug films made prior to 1957. In fact, only four real giant bug films were released before this one: Them (1954), Tarantula (1955), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957, review) and The Deadly Mantis (1957, review). Three out of four were made by major studios. Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters is so wildly different from the formulaic big bug movie that it almost doesn’t even count as a big bug film. And sure, big bugs did show up in other films as well, but more as a shock effect than as the premise of the film. That’s not to say that The Monster That Challenged the World doesn’t follow a well-beaten path, but the idea that making a big bug film in 1957 amounted to beating a dead horse is historically just plain wrong. 1957 was the heyday of the big bug film.

Reception & Legacy

The Monster That Challenged the World opened to fair-to-good reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it “admirably simple” and “so dovetailed by actual marine biology and therefore so real that it is nearly incredible”. Critic C.S. praised the pace of Arnold Laven’s direction and the script, which the reviewer thought was “antiseptically free of clichés”, as well as the “excellent” cast, “even down to the bit players – not a usual thing in American B movies”. Marion Aitchison at the Miami Herald called the monster “one of the most fearsome in the current science fiction run”. ‘

Harrison’s Reports called the film a “fair enough picture of its kind”, although the critic thought it was overlong and “difficult […] to take […] seriously”. J.R. at the Motion Picture Daily called it a “better-than-average attraction” which has “the advantage of a good script and direction”. The Motion Picture Exhibitor said: “Menacing monsters do their part in this good science fiction story […]. The pace is well maintained and interest is kept alive. There is always something happening and fine direction, production and special effects should make it believable.” Holl at Variety noted it is a “standard and familiar science fiction-monster entry”, although “well made”. The critic continued: “Arnold Laven squeezes as much tension as possible out of the […] screenplay. Technical contributions are good.”

Today The Monster That Challenged the World has a reputation as one of the better low-budget science fiction films of the back half of the 50’s. It has a 5.7/10 audience rating on IMDb and a 3.0/5 rating on Letterboxd. The movie has a 5.5/10 critic consesus on Rotten Tomatoes. AllMovie gives it 3/5 stars, with Paul Gaita calling it “one of the more suspenseful entries in the ‘big bug’ subgenre of ’50s science fiction”, sporting “a degree of gravity and logic […] that’s usually missing from most B monster movies”. TV Guide writes: “Fine special effects help this film along by adding an atmosphere of impending danger”.

The movie isn’t beloved by all among the latter-day online critics. Richard Scheib at Moria didn’t like the companion piece The Vampire, and he doesn’t like The Monster That Challenged the World. In his 2/5 star review, he writes: “By now, other atomic monster movies had started exhausting most of the giant-sized possibilities offered by the animal and insect kingdom and the film’s idea of a giant mollusc seems rather insipid. […] The Monster That Challenged the World seems a run-of-the-mill variant on the 1950s atomic monster movie.” On the other hand, it is liked by Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant, calling it “one of the best of ’57 despite being as generic a monster show as could be imagined. It persists as a favorite because it’s pitched at a relatable human level, and because the players all perform in earnest, taking the show seriously.” Dave Sindelar at Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings also thinks “it holds up extraordinarily well” thanks to “unusually well drawn” characters. Mark Cole at Rivets on the Poster places himself in the diplomatic middle, writing: “Despite its flaws […] this is a thoroughly enjoyable monster outing: the monster is fairly convincing; the script is reasonably good; the film is technically polished; and the story doesn’t get in the way of the monster action we watch these things for”.

Cast & Crew

Pat Fielder was probably the first American woman to specialise in science fiction scripts for the movies, even if she was not the first woman in Hollywood to dabble in the field. According to an interview with Tom Weaver, she was not inherently an SF fan, but had seen a few movies over the years, and caught up with a few of the more famous ones as she started writing the script for The Monster That Challenged the World (1957). She says she was very interested in science, and tried to read up on the science of her scripts as best she could.

Born in Pasadena, California, in 1929 as Patricia Penny, she studied theatre arts at UCLA, before getting signed on as a typist and all-round assistant at Gramercy, for the movie Vice Squad in 1952. To Weaver, Fielder says Gramercy closed shop for a while after that, and she worked a couple of years in a “secretarial capacity” for other companies, before getting called in again by Gramercy’s three producers, Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven, for the production of The Monster That Challenged the World: “I told them I wanted to be more than a mere secretary, and had ambitions to be involved in production and to write one day”. Said and done, Fielder became a production assistant, and after David Duncan’s script for the film failed to impress the producers, she became a screenwriter, both for the film in question, and its companion piece, The Vampire (1957). The producers were impressed enough with Fielder’s work on the two first films, that they asked her to write two more SF/horror films, which were also distributed by United Artists in 1958, The Flame Barrier, which is generally considered the worst of the four, and The Return of Dracula, conversely considered the best. Fielder tells Weaver she enjoyed working at Gramercy, later Levy-Gardner-Laven, or L-G-L, immensely. Levy and Gardner had a background in writing and script supervision, and would help her out when she was stuck. She describes L-G-L as a family affair, with a tight-knit team where everyone collaborated and chipped in. As stated, she also worked as a production assistant on all four movies. Fielder also became a promoter of the movies, as United Artists found an exploitation angle in the fact that a pretty, young woman had written these grisly stories.

After her four films for Gramercy, Fielder embarked on a successful career as TV writer, but returned to the then re-christened L-G-L in 1962, writing Geronimo, for which she is best remembered outside of her horror/SF films. She never became a staff writer on any particular series, but wrote several episodes of the L-G-L-produced The Rifleman (1959-1962) and Baretta (1972). A well-regarded writer for hire, she contributed to a large number of popular TV shows, including such “girl power” shows as Police Woman and Charlie’s Angels. Her last assignment was as a writer/producer for the SF mini series Goliath Awaits in 1981.

Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven first met while serving with the First Motion Picture Unit of the US Air Force during WWII. The trio got along well and decided to form a production company when they got discharged. Laven and Levy were barely in their 20s, while Gardner, 12 years their senior, had began his movie career as a child actor as early as 1929, and had worked as an assistant director in the early 40’s. However, after the war all three made their way independently in Hollywood, Gardner as an occasional actor and production assistant, Levy and Laven as script supervisors. Finally, in 1951, Gramercy Pictures/L-G-L saw the light of day. After a bit of a rocky start, the company hit its stride with its four horror/SF films made for United Artists. Under the moniker Levy-Gardner-Levy, the three friends produced four TV shows and around two dozen films between 1952 and 1982. Best known are perhaps the hit series The Rifleman (1958-1963) and The Big Valley (1965-1969), and the films Geronimo (1962), the roller derby movie Kansas City Bomber (1972), starring Raquel Welch, the John Wayne neo-noir McQ (1974), the Burt Reynolds vehicles White Lightning (1973) and Gator (1976) and the action comedy Safari 3000 (1982), starring David Carradine, Stockard Channing and Christopher Lee. However, the three also worked on a number of other projects, sometimes together, sometimes on their own. For example, Gardner & Levy produced the John Wayne movie Brannigan (1975) and Jules Levy produced, alongside Mort Engelbert, the hugely popular Smokey and the Bandit (1977). Laven, on his part, struck out as a director, and directed a good number of B movies, but got his largest successes directing for the small screen, shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Mannix, Ironside, Planet of the Apes, The Six Million Dollar man, Hill Street Blues and The A-Team.

The star name of The Monster That Challenged the World is Tim Holt. The son of movie star Jack Holt and brother to actress Jennifer Holt, Tim Holt appeared in a few films as a child actor in the 20’s, but entered Hollywood proper in the late 30’s, and quickly established himself as a leading man of RKO B-westerns. With his baby face and dimpled smile, he was cast as good-natured riders of the plains, a sort of hero to awaken the motherly instincts of the heroines. Many were therefore surprised when Orson Welles cast him as the mean-spirited George Minafer in the period drama The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942. While his performance in the film boosted his fame, it didn’t necessarily lead to better parts, as RKO figured him too valuable as a western star to give him the opportunity to try his wings in other projects. His career was interrupted by WWII, but he returned to RKO and the saddle in 1946.

He did get a chance to do something different when John Huston cast him opposite Humphrey Bogart in the Warner Bros. adventure film The Treasure of Sierra Madre in 1948. But Holt was only on loan to Warner, and then it was again back to the old westerns at RKO. In 1952 he called it quits and moved to Oklahoma, the home of his third and final wife, where he bought a ranch and worked in a number of professions. It was a bit of a coup when Gramercy convinced Holt to exit his retirement to star in The Monster That Challenged the World. Holt came out of retirement twice more, in 1965 and 1971, first to make the SF movie The Yesterday Machine and later for a crime drama directed by western specialist Spencer Gordon Bennett.

Audrey Dalton was born in 1934 in Ireland, daughter of war hero-turned film producer Emmet Dalton, and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, appearing on stage before being lured to Hollywood by Paramount in 1952 for a role in the Technicolor comedy The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953). Taking a break due to pregnancy in 1953, she returned to the screen as a freelancer in 1954 with a couple of decent major studio roles, but soon found herself primarily working for such outfits as Robert Lippert’s Fox subsidiary Regal Films, appearing in mostly B pictures. However, in the 60’s she focused more on television, where she carved out a decent career as a guest star, while returning to the big screen from time to time. She retired from acting in 1967, but made a brief return for a few guest spots in Police Woman in the 70’s.

American stage, film, radio and TV actor and comedian Hans Conried is generally known today as a criminally underrated dramatic actor. Born in 1917, he studied acting at Columbia University in New York and played major classical roles on stage before moving to California, where he joined Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre and made his radio debut in 1937. He became known in the industry for his ability to flawlessly mimic countless accents and inflections, and create memorable characters from all walks of life. This versatility led to Conried getting signed by MGM in 1938, and went on to appear in mostly memorable bit-parts. His appearance in Blondie’s Blessed Event (1942) established the Shakespearean as a comedic actor, a reputation that followed him throughout his career, and along with his celebrated voice talents, pegholed him as a comedic bit-part player and voice artist, not seldom in children’s movies and TV shows. The costly Dr. Seuss-produced children’s Technicolor fantasy film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) saw Conried in a once-in-a-lifetime lead as the titular villain, a domineering piano teacher in a fantasy world. Had the film been the success that Columbia hoped ity would be, it might have been a game-changer for Conried. Alas, the movie was deemed way too artsy for a children’s movie by critics and audiences at the time, and bombed at the box office.

However, the same year The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T went down like a lead zeppelin, Conried scored one of his biggest hits as both the voice and physical moderl for Hook and Mr. Darling in the Disney classic Peter Pan (1953), staking out a hugely successful career for him as a coice artist in animated films a series. He did classic work on Disney’s TV shows, as well as Jay Ward’s cartoons The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (as Snidely Whiplash) and Hoppety Hooper and the Walter Lantz production The Woody Woodpecker Show (as Wally the Walrus). He also became a regular fixture on TV, best known perhaps for his recurring role as Uncle Tonoose on Make Room for Daddy (1955-1964), for his heroic stint on Disney’s mini series Davy Crockett (1954) and for his two memorable appearances on I Love Lucy. He also appeared on such hit shows as Lost in Space, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, The Monkees, Kolchak, The Love Boat, Hogan’s Heroes, Maverick and Fantasy Island. Beside his career in film and TV, he continued to appear in radio and on stage.

Conried played a rare lead in Arch Oboler’s sadly miscalculated Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore adaptation The Twonky (1954, review), a rare serious role in The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) and a small supporting role in the SF family comedy The Cat from Outer Space (1978). He also had the distinction on voicing The Red Skull on all 24 episodes of the animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1986).

Marjorie Stapp’s family moved from Arkansas to California when she was a teenager in the mid-30s’, and from a young age she was determined to become a movie actress. Honing her skills on the stage, on which she continued to appear during much of her career, she was signed to Fox in the mid-40’s, but never actually appeared in a movie for the company. Instead she made her uncredited debut in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Kid from Brooklyn in 1946, on loan to RKO. She received her first and only shot at a leading lady role in Columbia’s “Durango Kid” movie The Blazing Trail in 1949, but otherwise soldiered on during the 40’s and 50’s primarily in small supporting roles or bit parts in B-movies. Despite encouragement from the likes of Fritz Lang (she had a small role in his 1953 film The Blue Gardenia), Stapp’s movie career never advanced beyond secondary roles in low-budget fare like The Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949) and Sword of Venus (1953). Toward the late 50’s and early 60’s she was more often seen on TV than on the big screen and in the late 60’s even her TV credits became sporadic, before she called it quits in 1969. She did do a comeback of sorts in the late 80’s with a few guest spots in TV shows and in a couple of TV movies. Stapp’s talents would have deserved a better career, but even in low-budget SF fare she was relegated to bit-parts – sometimes very memorable such, like as the no-nonsense radio engineer in Port Sinister (1953, review). She also appeared as “hysterical young woman” in Indestructible Man (1956, review), uncredited in The Werewolf (1956, review), as a nurse in Kronos (1957, review), and in one of her best roles as Connie Blake in The Monster That Challenged the World (1957).

Barbara Darrow has a small but very memorable role as the first victim of the monster in The Monster That Challenged the World – and is even featured on the poster as the girl in a bathing suit getting carried off by the slug. Darrow was born into a showbiz family, her mother and uncle were actors and her dad a movie landscape artist. Her sister Madelyn was an occasional actress and model – best known for being the face of Rheingold beer. Barbara’s son later became the president of Columbia Tristar Television and produced Two and a Half Men. Her husband became founding president of Viacom. Darrow’s film career was somewhat similar to that of Marjorie Stapp’s. A talented actress who never really got a break, she appeared in around half a dozen B-movies in the 50’s, perhaps best known for replacing Marla English at the last minute opposite Spencer Tracy in The Mountain (1956), and for appearing in The Monster That Challenged the World and as one of the friendly Venusian beauties in the Zsa Zsa Gabor vehicle Queen of Outer Space (1958).

At only 18 months old in 1950, Mimi Gibson was already a hard-working child model, and the next year made her film debut. Spurred on by her single mother, she appeared in over 30 movies and 200 TV episodes between 1951 and 1962, earning the equivalent of a million dollars from her trade, which supported both her mother and her agent. When she turned 18, she discovered that her mother had used up all of her money. She later went into real estate, and became an activist for the rights of child actors.

Other roles are cast by reliable supporting actors, such as Max Showalter, who had one of his rare leading roles as “Lt. Dick Chasen” opposite Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Indestructible Man (1956). Gordon Jones is something of a superhero royalty, having played the original Green Hornet in the influential 1940 serial (review). Jody McCrea, son of famed actor Joel McCrea, is best known for portraying the surfer dude Deadhead/Bonehead in a string of “Beach Party” films in the mid-60’s. He also appeared in the SF comedy Pajama Party in 1964.

In 1943 William Forest played the titular vigilante in another popular serial, The Masked Marvel. “Mildly popular” child actor Charles Herbert is perhaps best known for starring in William Castle’s horror comedy 13 Ghosts (1960) and alongside Mimi Gibson, Cary Grant and Sophia Loren in Houseboat (1958), as well as as the son Philippe in The Fly (1958). He also had a featured role in the SF movie The Colossus of New York (1958).

Special effects creator Augie Lohman worked on Lost Continent (1951, review) and The Maze (1953, review‘), and went on to create effects for Barbarella (1968) and Soylent Green (1973). Special effects designer Ted Haworth went on to win an Oscar for best art direction in 1958 for Sayonara, and was nominated for another five, including for Some Like It Hot. He was production designer/art director on Flight to Mars (1951, review), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, review), The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), Seconds (1966) and *batteries not included (1987).

Janne Wass

The Monster That Challenged the World. 1957, USA. Directed by Arnold Laven. Written by Pat Fielder & David Duncan. Starring: Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, Hans Conried, Marjorie Stapp, Barbara Darrow, Max Showalter, Mimi Gibson, Harlan Wade, Gordon Jones, Jody McCrea, Wallace Earl Laven, Ralph Moody, Sarah Selby, Milton Parsons. Music: Heinz Roemheld. Cinematography: Lester White. Editing: John Faure. Art direction: James Vance. Makeup: Abe Habermann. Special effects: Ted Haworth, Augie Lohman, Robert Crandall. Produced by Arthur Gardner & Jules Levy for Gramercy & United Artists.