The Black Scorpion
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 88 m, 1957
Directed by Edward Ludwig. Stars Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, et al.

It’s not the strident musical scores or the austere, impassive camera work or the sexless romantic subplots that draw us to those silly giant bug movies from the 1950s—it’s the special effects. I can’t imagine why else you’d want to sit through something like The Black Scorpion. Edward Ludwig’s direction is nondescript: he makes sure the action is sufficiently framed and that the actors hit their marks, but he’s too hurried to bother with any arty trimmings. The script by Robert Blees and David Duncan (from a story by Paul Yawitz) is even less impressive: its sole function is to string together scenes of the titular beasties wreaking havoc. But Willis O’Brien’s inimitable style of stop-motion model animation is what gets us to stick out the movie’s less inspired parts.  

A volcano erupts somewhere in Mexico, releasing an army of king-sized scorpions. The bloodthirsty critters terrorize the countryside, destroying police cars and orphaning children. An American geologist, Dr. Hank Scott (Richard Denning of Creature from the Black Lagoon), and a Mexican geology instructor, Dr. Arturo Ramos (Carlos Rivas), have cajones so big that they agree to be lowered into the scorpions’ nest to snap some photos and ascertain the feasibility of a plan to off the beasts by filling their subterranean crib with a poisonous gas. At the base of this yawning lair we’re treated to some of the tricks Obie came up with for the legendary scrapped spider pit sequence in King Kong. So not only does The Black Scorpion give us lots of giant scorpions, but we also get an equally big trapdoor spider and some sort of worm-like thingy. The script borrows heavily from Them!, save an explanation of how these creatures came to be. It was de rigueur in these post-war fright flicks to fault atomic radiation exposure for the appearance of this or that murderous mutant, but The Black Scorpion keeps the origin of its leading monster somewhat ambiguous. (One learned fellow mumbles something about the creatures being affiliated with a subspecies long thought extinct. Hey, it works for me.)  

Alas, things turn to shit in the cave for our adventurers, and they’re forced to give up their barrels of gas during a run-in with one of the scorpions. Eventually, Scott and his posse of chin-stroking propellerheads dynamite the nest shut, but it only displaces the scorpions as they use their intricate underground network of tunnels to access other parts of Mexico to terrorize. One of the highlights of the arachnids’ crime spree is a late night attack on a train, which results in hundreds of people being sent to the pearly gates. There’s one exceptionally large scorpion (I suppose it’s the one referenced in the film’s title) that not only takes delight in gutting travelers of the night, but also putting his own brethren to death as well. (Many of the effects here fall a bit on the gory side, at least for 1957.) The stop motion scorpions are fun to watch, but whenever the movie cuts to close-ups of their faces (their mouths emitting more drool than all the scummy and villainous merrymakers in Jabba’s palace could ever hope to), the effect is trashed. The mock-ups of their mugs look, I dunno, Muppety, and they don’t match to the animated work at all. But I suppose life’s too short to sweat the small stuff.  

November 20, 2007

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.