black scorpion

THE FLICK: Willis O’Brien is the cinematic equivalent of a one-hit-wonder. There’s no denying “King Kong” is a milestone in movie history. Even the stop-motion animator’s silent warm-up, “The Lost World,” pushed the art of filmmaking into a fantastic new direction. But O’Brien’s career seemed to topple with Kong’s long fall off the Empire State Building. “The Black Scorpion” (1957) is one of his latter efforts and is hampered by a low budget, hammy acting, and all the contrived set-ups of the giant bug genre. That being said, there’s still a lot to enjoy once the talking stops and O’Brien’s title character starts tearing up the screen. After being awakened by a volcano, a swarm of prehistoric scorpions descend on Mexican peasants, eating livestock and disturbing the peace. Luckily, a Norte Americano scientist and his Mexican sidekick volunteer to meet the big bugs on their own turf, at the bottom of a bottomless cavern that serves as a “lost world” of its own. The plan fails and eventually the head scorpion makes his way to Mexico City. O’Brien’s stop-motion expertise is still evident. His creatures move with a violent senses of menace that even his protégé and one-time assistant, Ray Harryhausen, can’t match. But many of the sequences are looped and rushed, stealing away some of the magic that it’s clear O’Brien was trying to put in. “The Black Scorpion” comes off as a down and dirty B-movie, but not a particularly memorable one. THE FEATURES: Here’s a case where the extras make the movie worth a purchase even if the movie isn’t top notch. Besides a brief conversation with Ray Harryhausen about his working relationship with O’Brien, the disc includes sequence from Irwin Allen’s 1956 “The Animal World” that the animators collaborated on. This 10-minute “Pre-Historic” segment stages several dino fights and ends with a destructive volcano explosion of its own. Also look for some never-before-seen test footage from O’Brien’s assistant made with leftover models and props - “The Las Vegas Monster” and “The Beetlemen.” Plus trailers for other monster films. FINAL SCORE: “The Black Scorpion” is a campy time waster with some particularly well-researched and much appreciated bonus features.