THE CRAWLING EYE (1958)

THE CRAWLING EYE (1958)

Tagline: The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing horror on a screaming world!

(Horror, Sci-Fi, A Giant Eyeball) [PG-13]

Note – This movie was just given an “approved” by theaters when it came out. I think if it had been given an MPAA rating it would have been a PG-13. This movie was also called “THE TROLLENBERG TERROR”.

Yeah. I'm gonna throw a bomb at that one. You watch on the screen, see what happens.

In this one-two sisters who are known as mind readers or psychics end up having visions and nightmares while at a ski resort near Trollenberg, Germany. They seem to have some insight as to what’s coming for visitors to the resort. Sure enough, the resort is being terrorized by a giant eyeball with tentacles that hides itself in fog and has a habit of decapitating whoever runs into it. 

First off the acting in this movie is very stiff from every male that appears on the screen. We actually get a lot of fantastic acting in 1950’s sci-fi and horror so to have this one be so low quality is a bit of a downer. Anne Pilgrim, one of the psychic sisters in the movie is aptly played by Janet Munro. So she was definitely a bright spot here and was given the role that had the most emotional range. I also liked Jennifer Jayne who is solid in this and plays Sarah Pilgrim kind of acting as the stabilizing sister between the two. Forrest Tucker is pretty well known and had roles in over 148 movies and TV shows, but like I said earlier, this one is just effort out of him was just very bland. 

It’s pretty crazy how much this movie impacted modern horror. This movie inspired John Carpenters THE FOG and actually makes a cameo in Stephen King’s novel IT. I have often said that the very word “eyeball” for me is one of the craziest words in the English language. I don’t know why, it just always cracks me up. So seeing there was a movie out there called “THE CRAWLING EYE” was definitely going to get my attention at some point. Unfortunately, it’s got plenty of issues.

This movie is victimized by its overuse of mat paintings that just feel out of place, and a bizarre collection of good effects mixed in with terrible ones. Outside of the incidents between the humans in the movie, the slow burn in this movie is really a rough ride riddled with speculation about the strange cloud on the mountain and dialog with just not much happening. I guess they even decided to shorten the American version of this movie because it takes so damn long for anything to happen. I would have loved to see at least 2 or 3 scenes with the tentacles of the eye creatures way earlier in the storyline. 

I did like the score for the film and we don’t get a ton of screeching violin or overdone dramatics. This movie also definitely has more of a horror element to it than sci-fi. The design for the eyeball creatures was just out of control rad and scary looking so this flick is definitely not without its good points. 

The plot for this thing is something like what would end up in DARK 30, about as nutty as it gets and I love that, but in spite of a pretty cool ending sequence with giant eyeballs and all, this movie is just a 4 out of 7 for me. Reading that title, I went into this review expecting to give it a 7 out of  7.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF TEMPEAN FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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