An Alternate History of Horror VIII: The Destroyer of Worlds

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @RyanF here

 

[M_Kresal]

Wait, wasn’t this also the title of the previous entry in the series?

 

[Gary Oswald]

Wait, wasn’t this also the title of the previous entry in the series?

Yes, this should be 'An Alternate History of Horror VIII: The Destroyer of Worlds"' I am half asleep, will correct.

 

[M_Kresal]

Yes, this should be 'An Alternate History of Horror VIII: The Destroyer of Worlds"' I am half asleep, will correct.

It’s what I’m here for. And, in an odd bit of synchronicity, I’d just started reading a novel for potential reviewing on the blog connected with the themes of the article!

 

[JesterBL]

This one felt like it needed to be two different articles- the teenage B-movie horror trend and giant monsters.

I do like the speculation about how there could have been an American Godzilla competitor, if only things had gone somewhat differently.

Really enjoying this series overall.

 

[Charles EP M.]

You can see in Godzilla this split of horror and scifi, the first is moody and somber and has dead bodies and Gojira's coming is explicitly compared to the firebombings of WW2 in the Japanese footage. Seven or so years later, his third film is against King Kong and it's an outright comedy, in the fifth he's our hometown hero against an invading alien and there's ghost girls from Mars

 

[Coiler]

While the gorefest that was the 1982 Thing almost certainly wouldn't have been possible in 1951, keeping the original story's gimmick (ie, shapeshifting infesting monster) would definitely have been. Wonder what the cinema butterflies would have been had that been the case with the 1951 Thing?

(By the way, all three Thing movies are beloved by real Antarctic researchers and a constant tradition is to have an annual screening).

 

[RyanF]

It’s what I’m here for. And, in an odd bit of synchronicity, I’d just started reading a novel for potential reviewing on the blog connected with the themes of the article!

Intriguing!

This one felt like it needed to be two different articles- the teenage B-movie horror trend and giant monsters.

A fair point, at some point during writing this did turn from atomic monsters and aliens into all 1950s sci-fi/horror (excluding those from the UK, which will be the subject of a future article). Perhaps if these articles were to later be packaged together this would be better split.

I do like the speculation about how there could have been an American Godzilla competitor, if only things had gone somewhat differently.

Really enjoying this series overall.

Thanks, I've mused before that The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms certainly has all the same ingredients that made Godzilla a phenomenon except for a slew of sequels. I think for the US film there were a few too many cooks involved in development that meant it would have had to do really, really well to warrant a sequel in 1953. It wasn't anyone's particular baby.

You can see in Godzilla this split of horror and scifi, the first is moody and somber and has dead bodies and Gojira's coming is explicitly compared to the firebombings of WW2 in the Japanese footage. Seven or so years later, his third film is against King Kong and it's an outright comedy, in the fifth he's our hometown hero against an invading alien and there's ghost girls from Mars

I think part of that was the audience reaction being overwhelmingly pro-Godzilla despite him being a stand-in for the destruction brought by the War.

While the gorefest that was the 1982 Thing almost certainly wouldn't have been possible in 1951, keeping the original story's gimmick (ie, shapeshifting infesting monster) would definitely have been. Wonder what the cinema butterflies would have been had that been the case with the 1951 Thing?

(By the way, all three Thing movies are beloved by real Antarctic researchers and a constant tradition is to have an annual screening).

I think an immediate consequences is that later films like It Came from Outer Space and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers are maybe thought of as clones of The Thing from Another World. The special effects wouldn't be there to make it an effects driven film, so I can see it being a lot more subtle how they portray the monster. There might still be some effects work probably realised by stop motion, but I can picture these 1950s things being more talkative about their plans for world domination. It might be more explicitly seen as an overt Cold War metaphor.