"The Black Scorpion" and Digging for Gold

Like miners for tiny nuggets of gold sifting through buckets of dirt, fans of special effects monsters patiently endure tedious acting, inane plotting, wooden dialogue, and laughably awkward "romantic" subplots to be rewarded by those precious minutes of f/x glory. So it is with The Black Scorpion(1957), a second-rate monster flick with some wonderful stop-motion animation.


A hand-picked smorgasbord of every other monster flick cliche, The Black Scorpion's plot involves an earthquake in Mexico that releases giant scorpions from their stasis deep within the bowels of the Earth. Stalwart actor Richard Denning plays geologist Hank Scott who, assisted by Ramos (Carlos Rivas), investigates the buggy goings on, while boringly romancing hot ranch owner Teresa Alvarez (Mara Corday, also menaced by monsters in Tarantula and The Giant Claw, the latter a giant bird resembling a tatty pinata). The lids may begin to leaden, but don't worry film fans, your patience will be rewarded once the scorpions first appear to sting to death a telephone lineman in one of several eerie stop-motion animation effects sequences.

Scary and impressive, the stop-motion effects were created by effects pioneer Willis O'Brien and his technician Pete Peterson. A sequence with three scorpions attacking a train, plucking hapless passengers from the wreck and stinging them to death, is impressively animated and atmospherically shot. Another sequence where our two heroes descend a massive fissure in the earth and encounter scorpions, a worm-creature, and a giant spider is also beautifully done, and somewhat reminiscent of O'Brien's scrapped spider valley sequence from King Kong (1933). The f/x scenes by O'Brien and Peterson are islands of goodness in a sea of crap.

Unfortunately, true to '50s monster flick tradition, The Black Scorpion also features a cut-price puppet of the giant scorpion in close up, complete with drool dribbling out of its arachnid mouth, as often as possible in the f/x sequences. Sure it looks like crap, but hey, it's a lot cheaper than stop-motion animation.

Found by this author for a mere $6.49 (Cdn) at A and B Sound, the DVD of The Black Scorpion is a no-brainer of a purchase for monster fans. What sweetens the pot is some fascinating extras--some f/x test footage from Pete Peterson; the complete dinosaur sequence from Irwin Allen's The Animal World, animated by O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen; and an interview with Ray Harryhausen.