SquareTrade © AP6.0The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié. The film's shooting title was Monster from Beneath the Sea.
As a result of an Arctic nuclear test, a fictional carnivorous dinosaur known as the Rhedosaurus
thaws out of the ice and starts making its way down the east coast of
North America. It arrives in New York where it manages to destroy most
of Coney Island before finally being killed.
Cast
Production
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was the first film to feature a
giant monster awakened or brought about by an atomic bomb detonation
and to attack a major city. Due to its financial success at the box
office, it helped spawn the entire genre of "giant monster" films of
the 1950s. Producers Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester got the idea to
combine the growing paranoia about nuclear weapons with the concept of
a giant monster after the successful theatrical re-release of King Kong in 1952. In turn, this craze helped to inspire the Godzilla series.
When the short story of the same title by Ray Bradbury was published in The Saturday Evening Post,
Dietz and Chester were reminded by someone that both works share a
similar theme of a prehistoric sea monster, and a lighthouse being
destroyed. The producers who wished to share Bradbury's reputation and
popularity, bought the right to Bradbury's story and changed the film's
title. The movie was promoted as being "suggested" by a Ray Bradbury
story. Bradbury would eventually change the title of his story to The Fog Horn when it was reprinted.
Creature effects were assigned to Ray Harryhausen,
who had been working with Willis O'Brien, the man who created King
Kong, for years. The monster of the film looked nothing like the Brontosaurus-type creature of the short story. A drawing of the creature was published along with the story in the The Saturday Evening Post.[1] At one point there were plans to have the Rhedosaurus
snort flames, but this idea was dropped before production began due to
budget restrictions. However, the concept was still used in the films
movie poster artwork.
Some early preproduction conceptual sketches of the Rhedosaurus showed that at one point it was to have a shelled head and at another point was to be a beaked Dinosaur creature. [1]
While trying to identify the Rhedosaurus, Professor Tom Nesbitt goes through the dinosaur drawings of Charles R. Knight, a man whom Harryhausen claims as in inspiration. Incidentally, Knight died in 1953, the year Beast was released.
The dinosaur skeleton in the museum sequence is artificial; it was
obtained from storage at RKO Pictures where it had been constructed for
Bringing up Baby (1938).
This movie had a production budget of $210,000. It grossed roughly $5 million dollars at the Box Office. Original prints of Beast were sepia toned.
It has been speculated that J.J. Abrams upcoming film with the unofficial title of "Cloverfield" is a re-envisioned version of the beast but not a remake.
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