Watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms on Amazon. I’ve been on an atomic monster binge lately and finished The Monster that Challenged the World last week. Very generally, the earlier efforts in this genre are much better than the later ones. 20,000 Fathoms, made in 1953, has some wobbly science and poor geography but it features a good cast and some excellent rampaging dinosaur action by Ray Harryhausen.

Though made in 1957, by which time exploitative cheapies were taking over the market, The Monster that Challenged the World also holds up pretty well. I almost didn’t go ahead with it because of its silly misrepresentations of the Salton Sea, where the action takes place. At one point, for example, events are said to be happening at a depth of 350 feet. The Salton Sea is 43 feet deep at its maximum today and has not been more than 60 feet deep at any point in its history. The film also shows moderate surf along the shoreline, which you don’t have on a 6 mile wide lake 200 miles inland. Still, I persisted and it turned out to be pretty good, with Tim Holt in a rare non-western appearance and some fine work by Irish actress Audrey Dalton (who is still with us btw).
The monster is especially good, with a very scary full size critter confronting the humans without photo tricks or miniatures.