TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING (1958)

TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING (1958)

Tagline: None.

(Horror, Drama, Archeology) [G]

Note: This movie doesn’t appear to even have been given a “passed” designation. I am not sure this is anything worse than we’d see in any Godzilla movie, so I am slapping a G on it just for reference. This movie was also cut into a longer version called CURSE OF BIGFOOT released in 1978. For the purposes of his review, however, I am just looking at the original which never mentions bigfoot but treats the creature more like a mummy which it also does not look like. 

Well, that’s my theory, I could very easily be wrong…

In this one, some archaeology students go with their teacher into the desert near Ivanpah, CA. They decide to try and pry something out of the ground and vapor escapes revealing a cave. Inside the cave, the students find what is basically a seemingly dead part man part beast creature. Of course, they totally hang on to the creature to study it. 

First off, this movie is extremely low-budget. The creature design appears to have actually been done with some paper Mache and looks pretty freakin terrible. Some of the actors were actually unpaid aspiring actors and actresses from Upland High School. This film was shot near upland and Alta Loma, CA so there are actually some shots of orange groves in the area. 

I guess when this thing came out it was a bit too short to get a full theater treatment, so it only came out on 1 theater in California in 1958. Getting back to the monster design, this mask like a lot of other 50’s designs didn’t even allow the eyes to move. There are some very very bad monster designs that came out in the ’50s but this thing has to be in the top 10 worst. If you are going to go through the trouble of making a hand-crafted mask for a bigfoot-like creature, you at least want the eyes to move. Apparently back then no one really cared about that design because you can tell watching this thing that everyone involved not only wanted to be involved but had a blast doing it. 

Acting-wise this movie is actually on par with a lot of 50’s sci-fi. In some cases even better. Dave Flocker is solid in this as an actor and was the director as well.  Jan Swihart is good as Sharon and the Sheriff is also pretty decent in this, but I was unable to find out who played that role. The debunked evolution dialog is really dated at this point, but it’s good for some laughs these days. I will say at least the dialog explains why the blood from the creature looks more like chocolate syrup than blood. 

Overall I wish we had gotten more of the actual monster, or “thing” in this movie. When he does show up it's actually kind of cool and there is an attack scene in this I wish they had shot more of. As obscure as this movie is, it’s very easy to find on streaming services and in internet archives these days. The cheese level is high and the movie does drag for quite a bit of its running time, but it didn’t fail to stay interesting. The movie also doesn’t overpromise with a fantastic tagline that tells you that you are about to see the scariest thing imaginable etc. 

I give this one a 4 out of 7 just for the acting and score alone. It’s far from the worst 50’s sci-fi flick even with that wonky creature design. I would watch it again.

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