cult film freak: EUGÉNE LOURIÈ DIRECTS THE BRITISH 'BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER'

Title: BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER Year: 1959 Rating: ****

The British creature-feature BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER is said to be England's answer to the GODZILLA franchise... when in fact it's a reboot of the same director's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS that had actually inspired Japan's now legendary GODZILLA/GOJIRA...

And while nothing touches the Japanese classic, an unpopular opinion is that Eugène Lourié SEA MONSTER (redundantly re-titled THE GIANT BEHEMOTH for America) is actually miles better than its groundbreaking FATHOMS predecessor... which had three scientists chasing an enigmatic sea-beast from the arctic into New York with very little character-development along the way...

From BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER

Here there's an intriguing rudimentary setup of a working-class family out of business because of the dead fish that dried up on their shore... followed by the patriarch's radioactive death, starting the boardroom to laboratory investigation between American and British scientific co-leads Gene Evans, concentrating on the nuclear aspect, and a more cautious André Morell, who doesn't believe Evans until the search gets under way...

An adventurous sea-monster hunt that... despite losing initial victim/siblings John Turner and Leigh Madison... combines subtle hands-on suspense with the KING KONG-inspired stampeding-on-the-big-city (London) attack: where that classic's stop-motion icon Willis H. O'Brien moves his flawed yet effective dinosaur neatly alongside the human characters — in an above-average b-monster-movie, equally utilizing both brains and brawn.