User Reviews

I enjoyed Cosmic Monsters on DVD recently, and Forrest Tucker has never disappointed in such films (The Crawling Eye; Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas). It has those British science aspects that I really, really like in black & white films from the 1950's (Professor Quatermass comes to mind). The science of the plot is believable to a point, and the UFO Planet X elements work for me. Special effects are limited, and I did not care for the insects near the end, nor was I impressed with the numerous scenes of soldiers shooting bugs. However, the titular "spider in the web" scene is quite effective. Simplistic, well-paced, and enjoyable. Two points off for special effects & ending.

This British film is set at a lab where some weird experiments on magnetism are being conducted. Unknown to the researchers, these experiments are releasing radiation and it's making huge and very hungry bugs--bugs that suddenly have developed a taste for humans! Can it be stopped in time? And, whose idea was it to have Forrest Tucker play the romantic lead (something scarier than the bugs, actually)? And what about this invader from Planet X?

There have been a ton of films like this before and after, as giant bugs caused by radiation is a VERY common theme during this era. In fact, giant ANYTHING was a typical theme. The difference is that this version has particularly bad special effects. Most of the bugs are just closeup shots of tiny bugs and they are clumsily inserted into the shots. A few times they are a bit cool (such as the one eating the guy's face), but for the most part they are pretty limp. In addition, the film gets low marks for choppy edits and sexism. The sexism occurs early in the film. When a professor gets a female assistant, all the guys complain about how stupid women are! And, when she arrives and is relatively hot (at least in 50s British cinema standards), they all quickly change their tune and the staff take turns trying to seduce her. Ultimately she chooses Tucker--showing that the pickins' were indeed slim! The only interesting element was the alien coming to help out as well as the insane professor--I sure didn't see that coming! Not terrible but not one of the better examples of the giant radioactive bug genre.

I saw this under the title "The Cosmic Monsters". Silly movie about a scientist named Dr. Laird (Alec Mango), his assistant Gil Graham (Forrest Tucker) and obligatory love interest Michele Dupont (Gaby Andre) developing a machine that makes metal bend...or something like that (I was too bored to pay attention). Because of this machine they unwittingly open a hole in the ionosphere covering the Earth that lets in rays that turn humans into maniacs and makes small animals larger.

Very dull with virtually nothing happening until the final 20 minutes when the animals attack. All talk, talk, talk full of boring science dialogue and pretty bad acting too. The special effects are terrible too--the scenes with the large insects are laughably fake. One purportedly gruesome scene--an insect biting off some of the face of a dead soldier--doesn't work at all because the soldier is so obviously a dummy! Boring, by the numbers, low budget sci-fi movie. You can safely skip this one.

I caught this early today on Turner Classics as "The Cosmic Monsters" and hung around for the next feature, "Queen of Outer Space". On a relative basis, the Zsa Zsa flick is better, but seriously, that's not saying a whole lot. However this one has all the great and goofy pseudo-science I love to hear in sci-fi and horror flicks of the era, like Dr. Laird's (Alec Mango) method of altering the molecular structure of metals and alloys by experimenting with magnetic fields. The spin-off here is that his experiments create a hole in the ionosphere, thereby allowing dangerous cosmic rays to penetrate Earth's atmosphere and mutate living things. Guess what - they look just like giant size close-ups of crickets, frogs, and assorted insects! They even threw a lizard into one scene that actually looked fairly normal size, not at all like the creature in 1959's "The Giant Gila Monster".

As predictable as the whole thing was, the film suffered somewhat from abrupt scene changes that distracted from the flow of the story. Like the creepy old guy in the woods who popped up every now and then. I guess the picture was setting us up for his eventual exposure to the cosmic rays, but then why didn't they affect any other humans? Just wondering.

The picture offers a character similar to that of Michael Rennie's Klaatu from 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still", that of Smith (Martin Benson) who carries a warning from outer space to the inhabitants of Earth who are unknowingly posing a threat to the universe by virtue of Laird's experiments. The comparison ends pretty much right there however, with Smith allowed to signal his outer space fleet to wipe out the professor's scientific gizmo along with his cabin. I guess these aliens weren't bothered by things like a Prime Directive. It really didn't bother me either.

Just when I thought I'd seen all of the atomic age science fiction, along comes this one, a laughable exercise in moronic attempts at giving the drive-in crowd some quick thrills between make out sessions. For viewers of it now, it's painfully boring for 3/4 of the film and when the cosmic monsters do appear, they are filmed with such dark close-ups that it becomes a frenzied attempt to make a last minute point.

Initially seen with a goatee that makes him look like Bela Lugosi in "White Zombie", Martin Benson reveals himself as a citizen of a civilized planet who, like many other movie aliens, has come to Earth to warn us about our actions in the age of atomic power. It seems that the ozone layer has been punched through and this causes normal insects to increase in size and search out food among the much-smaller humans. For about 10 minutes, we see these close-ups, and they are so badly done, it's just not worth the wait to get to this point.

Poor Forrest Tucker had a better time falling off the Alps in "Auntie Mame" the same year than he does here, working with Alec Mango and Gaby André on various scientific experiments that not only open up the ozone layer but destroy TV reception as well. It's simply just pretentious stupidity all along with poor special effects that will have you shaking your head if you don't fall asleep before hand.

Well, it's all a bit strange. Here's an old British low-budget (wheren't they all?) science-fiction thriller, and all the commentators are American.

That won't do.

I saw this little treasure as a kid at the local flea-pit. It had an A-rating, meaning that a child could see it if accompanied by an adult. I think it perhaps should have been an X-rating. It certainly scared the pants off me.

In Britain, it was actually screened as simply 'The Strange World'. The 'Planet X' bit was omitted until it appeared on television some years later.

Stray radiation has been up to no good (ain't it always the case). We are warned by some know-it-all that it will have the effect of 'making things smaller. Or very much bigger'. Oh-dear. The worst effects appear to be concentrated around a little corner of England called 'Brierley Wood'. Some things seem to have got bigger big-time. We're talking insects here. There are no giant bunnies or anything else monster-cute.

Unpleasant deaths begin happening to solitary people, especially after dark. 'It isn't very good in the deep, dark wood, in the middle of the night, when there isn't any light' - Enid Blyton. This is no time for nocturnal mushroom pickers.

We humans are helped by a friendly alien who has turned up to warn us about our meddling - alas, too late. Well, almost.

Eventually a company of soldiers are dispatched to sweep the wood and a battle takes place between over-grown bugs and the army, a bit like the earlier movie 'Them'. Humans come out on top, but there are some grisly killings.

Evidently made with a budget about equal to today's family shopping-bill, special-effects are almost non-existent. Ordinary insects are filmed in huge Attenborough-like close-up. But the plot is well paced, there is some decent acting, and an adequate script. Skillful lighting and location create suitably spooky ambiance.

We made a few nice little black-and-white scarers back in the good old days. Fans should check-out the original and best 'Village Of The Damned', based on John Wyndam's 'Midwich Cuckoos'.

Experiments with magnetism in a laboratory in south England causes a rupture in the ionosphere that leads to people going insane and insects growing large. The film starts slowly but builds up to a action packed ending. There is a lot of talk before the army starts taking out the over developed bugs and various characters are menaced. At one point a teacher is trapped in a school by some giant insects and it is quite creepy. Not a classic but well made on it's small budget.

Forrest Tucker and Gaby André (dubbed into English) as the main leads are bland but Alec Mango as Dr. Laird and Martin Benson as the mysterious Mr. Smith are good. The great Dandy Nichols makes a couple of comic appearances in a pub. Also in the cast are the reliable Hugh Latimer, Geoffrey Chater, Peter Copley and Howard Pays.

It has the plot point of the male scientists not wanting to have a female scientist forced on their team, which is so old a trope that it has whiskers. Of course the female turns out to be capable and attractive (and French!) and the men soon melt.

THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X is a low budget, low fi slice of British science fiction that came out at the tail-end of the 1950s. Clearly unable to reproduce the kind of destructive action of the typical American sci-fi flick from the era, this one goes for the talky approach throughout, which makes it somewhat stodgy to sit through. However, it's not all bad.

The cast give fairly brisk and efficient turns in this production. They're headlined by Forrest Tucker (THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN), making quite a name for himself in the sci-fi genre during this era, and enlivened by the lovely Gaby Andre as the female scientist (cue the usual sexist attitudes upon her arrival). The supporting cast includes the familiar faces of Martin Benson, Hugh Latimer, and Dandy Nichols (TILL DEATH US DO PART).

There's a heck of a lot of gobbledegook to sit through here, plus vague plot similarities to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (which, of course, inspired so many alien films which were to come after it). However, things start to pick up around the halfway mark, with some traditional monster action to enjoy as various bugs and creatures in the woods are blown up to giant size. In addition, there's a surprisingly gory face-eating scene which must have repulsed audiences at the time. THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X is no masterpiece, but as a cheap potboiler it passes the time well enough.

This film was a British attempt to get into the 1950s craze of "giant monster" sci-fi thriller movies, and ends up being a bizarre hybrid of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", "Tarantula" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Unfortunately, this film takes far too long to get to the point and an opening 45 minutes of tedious talk and precious little action is likely to make viewers give up on it.

A film can easily get away with being short on action if there are other elements in place to maintain the viewer's interest, but this one is horribly lacking, with the most lacklustre dialogue and direction, ham-fisted plotting and truly dreadful, one-dimensional characterisations. The romance between Forrest Tucker's 'hero' (who actually doesn't do very much throughout the film) and Gaby André's token female scientist who is brought in to assist him (with some overtly sexist reactions, even by the standards of the time) is forced through with no natural or credible development. Some characters are completely superfluous and others could do with more screen time to flesh them out. For instance some of the female characters appear to be included just so that they can put under threat, but the sense of menace against them is considerably diluted in every case when the viewer has had no time to warm to the character in the first place.

A sense of menace is ill-served by the direction also. Dramatic events just happen without any build-up of suspense, such as when the woman is attacked at the bus-stop: we don't see her being watched, we don't see mysterious feet creeping towards her, we don't see her growing sense of unease as she begins to feel that something is wrong... And then when she is set upon, she's saved almost instantaneously (by a man arriving in a car who has somehow weighed the whole situation up before he's even close enough to see what is happening).

The shots in scenes where characters are interacting are, almost without exception, composed with very little imagination, and too often actors are static, standing there with their bodies facing the camera straight on with both arms hanging straight down by their sides as though they have been placed there like mannequins.

The plot lacks proper thrust and although there's a lot of debate about the merits of the scientific experiments going on at the research centre, in the first half of the film there's no foreshadowing of the startling effects they will have on wildlife, with the only things to worry about seeming to be that they make strips of metal become flexible, briefcases fly across rooms and television sets in the local pub explode. Resultingly the viewer is left wondering where the film is possibly heading, but not in the sense that one is compelled to see what happens next.

Of course what ultimately happens is that the experiments cause the area to be exposed to cosmic rays, which naturally enough cause all of the insects to grow to giant proportions... Not just doubled in size or anything, but conveniently large enough to be bigger than humans. At least at that point the film becomes more interesting, albeit rather nonsensical. At times the effects of the magnetic field generated by the laboratory are described as covering 80 miles, and yet the threat from the cosmic rays appear to be neatly confined to just a small area of woodland and this is where the giant insects appear, causing no damage to the vegetation yet vigorously pursuing any woman they see. André foolishly gets herself tangled up in the web of a giant spider, but luckily Tucker, being a macho man, can simply tear it off her to set her free. And then a lot of soldiers turn up and start shooting at the insects.

This film, wisely perhaps given some unconvincing equivalents such as those in "The Monster From Green Hell", opts to use footage of real insects in extreme close up to achieve the illusion of its giant mutants, images which must have been unsettlingly effective when seen on the big screen. They move quickly and naturally, avoiding all the pitfalls of lumbering props, but regrettably the integration of these cutaway shots is seldom satisfactory as the different lighting levels and frequent view of soldiers shooting at something off-screen highlight that these are just film inserts rather than give any sense that the insects are really present in the same scene. To be fair, though, there is an unexpectedly graphic shot of a dead soldier having his face chewed away by one of the bugs.

Martin Benson plays "Smith", the requisite alien visitor concerned about man's tampering with forces he does not fully understand, and delivers a pleasing performance of calm assurance given the constraints. Too much about Smith's involvement with events seems fortuitous, and it is his character who delivers most of the solutions which perhaps doesn't say much for mankind's chances. His eventual departure in his flying saucer is the final act of cheapness in this film, as we neither see him entering his craft nor see it taking off, instead only getting a glimpse of a rather hilarious cutaway shot of the other characters raising their heads as though they are watching the ascent of a spacecraft.

I did like the twist about the real identity of the titular Planet X, but there's precious little to like overall in this piece. Its final third is a bit of silly but escapist hokum, but the opening two-thirds are utterly dull, and there's no harsher judgement to place on a film than it being dull!