The Strange World of Planet X

I have been a collector of the British cinema of the 1930's to the mid 60's for some years. One of my principle interests is in the backgrounds and 'business' behind the main story.

Science fiction films were difficult to produce at the time in Britain, as the budgets were low, even in comparison to US 'B' movies , and yet to earn export dollars they had to be pleasing to an American audience.

Fortunately for we viewers this film has avoided falling in to the trap of using wobbly scenery to subsidise special effects The setting for the story is an attractive but unremarkable village on the south coast conveniently close by train and coach to London.

There is the village pub, the police station, the school, Brierley woods and the discreet research centre.

These all provide authentic backdrops for the well constructed and well developed plot.

I suspect that the giant insect incident with its macro-photography and army documentary splices was 'shoe-horned' into the plot to make the film more saleable in the US.

The science of the fiction is not only of the same style as perhaps John Wyndham or Quatermass, but also Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, its presentation laid out as stage play and a novel.

Watch this film with enjoyment, particularly if you can appreciate the difference in rank between a Hillman and a Singer car driver..!!!

Of all the giant insects flicks of the 1950s, this is probably the worst. But as a low-budget sci-fi flick with a modest mystery, it's not so bad. First, the good news: Forrest Tucker and others are conducting magnetic experiments, which leads to a problem: the experiments allow cosmic rays to bombard the land, resulting in giant insects, reptiles and spiders. And they're all very hungry. A strange individual (Michael Benson) shows up to help. He's from another planet, naturally. Now for the bad news: the giant insects and reptiles and whatnot are simply regular creepy crawlies poorly enlarged through the camera lens. The one exception is a spider that tries to eat the obligatory helpless heroine (Gaby Andre). There's a bit of gore, but not enough to keep the kiddies away. Tucker is solid, as always, and Benson is oddly believable as the friendly alien. It has been suggested his performance was based on Michael Rennie's alien visitor in "The Day The Earth Stood Still."

I saw this movie once - over 40 years ago - and I still remember it very well. Even as a kid, very few movie really scared me, but this one did. The resident mad scientist does something that let in lots of bad cosmic rays and the local insects become giants. The school is a one room affair set in the middle of a forest. The giant insects attack the school trapping the teacher & the kids. Most horror movie monsters looked hokey - but the monsters in this were extreme close-ups of real insects. It wasn't until Alien that I saw a movie monster as scary as those giant bugs.

Enjoyable sci-fi nostalgia with a British twist as a mad scientist in England first blows out the TV in the village pub, then inadvertently creates giant insects. The cliche-packed script never fails to amuse and the primitive special effects are a joy to behold.

Forrest Tucker mostly retains his dignity while stealing the heart of the French lady scientist, but the unconvincing romance doesn't interfere with the main order of business: lots of screaming females falling unconvincingly to the ground at the sight of a beetle or centipede crudely magnified to Godzilla-like proportions.

Bring popcorn and low expectations!

As a very young lad in the late 50's with an older sister who had a car, I spent many a Saturday with her and her friends at the local movie theater watching the latest horror movies.She says this was my choice because I did'nt like Westerns. Well I can't remember that but I do vaguely remember a certain double feature that scared the hell out of me. When I got home I did not want to go to bed(our house was in the country with woods all around). I thought the real frogs,crickets, and other bugs I heard outside were giant insects coming to get me. Since that night some 45 years ago I have seen countless 50's SF and horror movies hoping to find out what those 2 movies were. Many were similar and some had similar names ie."Thing From Another World", "Monster That Challenged The World"(I also saw it when I was a little older but it did not scare me quite as much),"X The Unknown","The Beginning Of The End" etc. but none were exactly "right".I began to think these movies did not exist or had gotten lost so I just gave up ever finding them, especially since no tv station we get ever shows any old SF or horror movies anymore.Since I had no idea of their titles(if they did exist) or actors in them , I logged on to the imdb and starting reading reviews of some of the movies and BINGO!!!There they both were. I could not believe it.Thanks to the great descriptions by your reviewers I finally found them. Needless to say they have both been ordered. The scariest to me was "The Strange World of Planet X", probably called "Cosmic Monsters" or "Crawling Terror". I can't give a a decent review of either movie because it has been 40+ years. By the way the other goodie was "The Trellenberg Terror" aka "The Crawling Eye" or "The Creature From Another World" . Now my life will be even more complete (ha ha) when someone comes out with a DVD or VHS of "Caltiki ,The Immortal Monster".I did catch it on tv as an "adult" of about 14 years of age but have not seen it since.