The 13 Greatest Horror Films Of The 1950s in '50s Horror and Sci-Fi Forum

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The 13 Greatest Horror Films Of The 1950s

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Bobtheman		#41	[-]
May 12 12 7:08 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Who can forget The Monster of Piedras Blancas? How about The Killer Shrews? There's so many good ones it's hard to come up with a best ten.
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jamesenstein31		#42	[-]
May 12 12 7:30 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	THE MONSTER OF PIERDAS BLANCAS had a pretty neat monster, but I don't think holds up well. I saw it on the tube as a kid, was freaked out by the decapitated head in the cave and thought it was great. Than I saw it later...and it was okay. THE KILLER SHREWS has a VERY silly plot, but is surprisingly tense and well-directed(no...REALLY) and the lead actor(James Best?) was quite good. Would make a pretty good canidate for a remake, if it wasn't all cgi-ed up!
Bobtheman		#43	[-]
May 12 12 7:50 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hoiw about Forbidden Planet, with the Krell?????
Rick		#44	[-]
May 12 12 7:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Agreed that KILLER SHREWS is basically silly and not really what you could accurately call a good movie. But...when I was a kid, seeing monsters almost every Saturday afternoon at my local bijou, no movie had as great an effect on the kid audience. Certainly we saw better movies, and certainly there were shock scenes which got huge reactions, but no movie put us rug rats into such extended panic. Once the thing got going, the screams and yells just didn't stop. Can't exactly tell you why, but it was quite an afternoon.
jamesenstein31		#45	[-]
May 12 12 9:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Bobtheman wrote: Hoiw about Forbidden Planet, with the Krell????? A sci-fi for sure, though the monster was effective.
jamesenstein31		#46	[-]
May 12 12 9:12 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Rick wrote: Agreed that KILLER SHREWS is basically silly and not really what you could accurately call a good movie. But...when I was a kid, seeing monsters almost every Saturday afternoon at my local bijou, no movie had as great an effect on the kid audience. Certainly we saw better movies, and certainly there were shock scenes which got huge reactions, but no movie put us rug rats into such extended panic. Once the thing got going, the screams and yells just didn't stop. Can't exactly tell you why, but it was quite an afternoon. THE KILLER SHREWS is like one of those guilty pleasure types. We know it's not so great, but it is entertaining and surprisingly effective. I'm not surprised that it was fun to see in a theater
steelerstwin		#47	[-]
May 13 12 1:34 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Could never quite get over the goofy-looking dogs with carpet remnants taped to their fur, but to each their own. Seems like "The Killer Shrews" has a big-time cult following. Met James Best at a Northwoods League baseball game several years ago. He was doing a promotional bit with the General Lee from "Hazard" fame. He was celebrating his 80th birthday... it was a sweltering summer night and he could not have been more charming and wonderful.
DonM435		#48	[-]
May 13 12 10:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Gordon McLendon, one of the moving forces behind Shrews had quite a career as a baseball broadcaster. Not usually calling games from the ballpark, but rather "re-creating" them in the radio studio by reading teletype accounts and fleshing them out with sound effects. Rather like "Audio CGI" without a computer!
steelerstwin		#49	[-]
May 13 12 10:37 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Aren't these baseball-horror connections interesting? Speaking of horrors... I am a Twins fan. AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!
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ghoulkid		#50	[-]
May 14 12 4:42 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	jamesenstein31 wrote: Bobtheman wrote: Fiend without a Face, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Queen of Outer Space , Attack of the Crab Monsters are cool For my money, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is the best sci-fi movie ever made! ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS is wonderfully wacky, I mean, telepathic giant crabs?! It's so weird, but pretty well made. I got that last year on that Roger Corman set. QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE...it makea me laugh! FIEND WITHOUT A FACE...unforgettable climax. Day the Earth stood Still is the best sci-fi movie EVER. I totally agree with you. And I've had run-ins with Star Wars fans about that one. Crab Monsters and Fiend are definately unique to say the least,delightfully so.Part of my childhood. Queen of Outer space...well....3 out of 4 ain't bad.
Vampire Squid		#51	[-]
May 14 12 5:36 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hey, new guy here. I stumbled upon this site not too long ago and thought it'd be fun to join. Anyways, in my opinion, I think the best 13 horror films of the 50's have to be... 1. House of Wax 2. The Thing 3. The Crawling Eye 4. Horror of Dracula 5. The Mummy 6. Curse of Frankenstein 7. Fiend Without A Face 8. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 9. The Tingler 10. House on Haunted Hill 11. Curse of the Demon 12. Creature From The Black Lagoon 13. Gojira Yeah, I know that most of these contain a lot of scifi elements, but I added them because they seemed to blend in better with horror movies in my mind than with stuff like Forbidden Planet, Day The Earth Stood Still and the like. I really look forward to talking to you guys more about these movies!
DonM435		#52	[-]
May 14 12 8:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	steelerstwin wrote: Aren't these baseball-horror connections interesting? Speaking of horrors... I am a Twins fan. AAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH! McLendon claims to haved invented the re-creation. He found that he could lease the teletype line for a fraction what it would cost to send a broadcaster to a ballpark in another city. Ronald Reagan got his start as a broadcaster by doing re-created games, with the recorded crowd noises and a few sound effects. They were still doing that in the 1960s. (Not Reagan: he'd moved on to bigger things.) I remember that when the White Sox game would get rained out or when they weren't scheduled, WCFL in Chicago would air another American League game, maybe the Yankees at Detroit. I never suspected that the announcer wasn't really there. Until one day I was watching a Cubs game on TV while listening to a game on radio (yeah, I did that), and Jack Brickhouse, the TV announcer said that Norm Cash had just homered for the Tigers. No he hadn't, said I, it's still scoreless in Detroit. Only then did Red Rush, the second-tier radio guy describe the Cash homer as if he was just seeing it. Then I knew that I'd been had!
jamesenstein31		#53	[-]
May 14 12 8:05 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Vampire Squid wrote: Hey, new guy here. I stumbled upon this site not too long ago and thought it'd be fun to join. Anyways, in my opinion, I think the best 13 horror films of the 50's have to be... 1. House of Wax 2. The Thing 3. The Crawling Eye 4. Horror of Dracula 5. The Mummy 6. Curse of Frankenstein 7. Fiend Without A Face 8. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 9. The Tingler 10. House on Haunted Hill 11. Curse of the Demon 12. Creature From The Black Lagoon 13. Gojira Yeah, I know that most of these contain a lot of scifi elements, but I added them because they seemed to blend in better with horror movies in my mind than with stuff like Forbidden Planet, Day The Earth Stood Still and the like. I really look forward to talking to you guys more about these movies! Nice to meet you and nice list! I forgot about THE CRAWLING EYE. Despite the premise, that's a fairly effective chiller and the monsters are really out there! O_o
jamesenstein31		#54	[-]
May 14 12 8:06 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	ghoulkid wrote: jamesenstein31 wrote: Bobtheman wrote: Fiend without a Face, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Queen of Outer Space , Attack of the Crab Monsters are cool For my money, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is the best sci-fi movie ever made! ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS is wonderfully wacky, I mean, telepathic giant crabs?! It's so weird, but pretty well made. I got that last year on that Roger Corman set. QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE...it makea me laugh! FIEND WITHOUT A FACE...unforgettable climax. Day the Earth stood Still is the best sci-fi movie EVER. I totally agree with you. And I've had run-ins with Star Wars fans about that one. Crab Monsters and Fiend are definately unique to say the least,delightfully so.Part of my childhood. Queen of Outer space...well....3 out of 4 ain't bad. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is one of the best movies in any genre. How many sci-fi movies are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? That one is just timeless.
Vampire Squid		#55	[-]
May 15 12 12:02 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for the welcome jamesenstein! And yeah, I really think the Crawling Eye/Trollenberg Terror is really underrated. I remember renting it expecting a cheesy little monster movie and was wonderfully surprised when it turned out to be a well-written and eerie flick. Also, if we're going to lump scifi and fantasy onto these lists, Day The Earth Stood Still, It Came From Outer Space, Incredible Shrinking Man, War of the Worlds, 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Forbidden Planet should be somewhere on those lists.
steelerstwin		#56	[-]
May 15 12 1:47 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Reagan did "recreate" games for WHO-radio in Des Moines back in the day. I myself have a radio background and know about all sorts of tricks the industry plays... like having on "psychics" that we all know are totally fake but are good for the ad budget (man, the conversations we had off air... you have no idea how much these charlatans laugh their way to the bank), or having a "canned" interview with gaps so the local announcer can insert his insightful questions from a pre-written script. Imagine my horror when I first discovered that "Casey's Top 40" was actually a series of LP's (yeah, I'm that old) that the announcer had to CAREFULLY put on the turntables in the EXACT right order to keep the countdown going properly. You couldn't go from album one/side one to album two side two or the countdown would go from #34 to #22 in a hurry! And of course, each side of the album could never be the same hour because, if the sales staff didn't sell the show completely out, there would be no time to flip the album to the other side... you just seemlessly fade from one to the next and the audience never knew it wasn't live! This is why I love horror/sci-fi... monsters are just so much more honest!
Rick		#57	[-]
May 15 12 12:17 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I was able to hear a couple of re-created games at the end of the '63 season. The Cardinals were nipping at the Dodgers' heels as the season came to a close and there was a lot of interest in my home area. The Louisville area's baseball fans were pretty evenly split in their devotions between St. Louis and Cincinnati. We got the Cincinnati games on local radio (and the White Sox, too, oddly), but not the Cards. So one of the local stations broadcast the last two or three games of the season in that re-created manner. I wasn't that interested in the Cards, but I understood that the method of broadcast was kind of a throwback so I listened in. I don't think I would have caught on to the trick if I hadn't already known. I don't remember who the guy calling the game was, but he must have had experience at it, 'cause it was pretty seamless. By the way, the secondary interest in those games, besides the pennant race, was that they were the last games in the great career of Stan Musial.
DonM435		#58	[-]
May 16 12 12:54 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Reagan used to tell a story of how he had been re-creating a game when the teletype broke down. He had to keep his live audience attuned by having the current batter hitting endless foul balls, while waiting for the repair crew to do their stuff. He was afraid of setting some all-time record for foul balls. When the machine finally came back to life, it stated that the batter had popped out on the first pitch. If you'd listened to enough of these games, you could catch on. In the endless drone of pre-recorded crowd hub-bub, there were always a few bigmouthed fans shouting their particular nonsense phrase (e.g., "Hey batta', yeah, he's a bum!" and the occasional shrieking lady fan), and you got to anticipate hearing it over and over. I think that some of them would rap their pencil on the microphone to indicate the crack of the bat.
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The 13 Greatest Horror Films Of The 1950s