Rating: 
Summary: BEST OF GIANT BUG MOVIES FROM 1950S
Review: FROM THE OPENING CREDITS "MTCTW" EMBODIES ALL THE ELEMENTS THAT MAKE IT THE PREMIER GIANT SNAIL MOVIE OF THE 1950S. IT WAS SHOCKING IN IT'S TIME AND CAUSED MANY A DAMP MOVIE SEAT WHEN THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF THE DRAINED SKULL APPEARS ON THE SCREEN. GOOD SPECIAL EFFECTS, SOUND ACTING AND ATMOSPHERIC DIRECTION ELEVATE THIS MOVIE ABOVE THE LOW BUDGET REST.
Rating: 
Summary: Mammoth Mutant Mollusk Monsters Maul Mankind!
Review: Gigantic prehistoric snails w/ huge piercing mouthparts are unleashed upon us, after an earthquake cracks open the tons of rock they're buried under! These monstrous mollusks begin killing humans right away turning boaters, swimmers, and beachcombers into tasty snacks. A nest of eggs is found and the war is on! We use depth-charges to eradicate the creatures. Alas, one egg has been saved by those pesky scientist-types, and kept in a tank in their lab that MUST be kept above 38°F. Of course, a little kid just happens to turn up the thermostat, causing the beast to grow into adulthood! Now the fun really begins! TMTCTW is an excellent sci-fi grabber w/ decent monster FX and plot. Well worth owning...
Rating: 
Summary: no real challenge to the world
Review: good monster movie for 30 mins, very good even, but after that the plot dissappears and we have to endure the romance between tim holt (way past his prime, no matter how many times the other members of the cast try and assure us otherwise) and some starlet...And really the monster doesn't challenge the world like a harryhausen one usually does, it doesn't attack a city or anything... film is in desperate need of such a climax and some editing of the padding in the middle. good midnight movies fare
Rating:
Summary: You had to be there.....
Review: I first saw this movie on TV, late one night when I was working in Mexico and living in the southern California town of El Centro. Yep, right smack dab in the center of where the Monster decided to challenge the world! I started looking at the local canals a lot more closely at night! The DVD version has crisp video....much nicer than the VHS version. It was a MUST HAVE for my collection.
Okay, the flick is a little on the lame side....but it's still one of the most fun of the genre. Those mighty mollusks are simply too funny for words. And our hero is so busy chasing women, he almost lets the Imperial Valley and all of Baja Norte fall into the evil mollusk mandibles (do mollusks have mandibles?).
Absolutely essential viewing if you've ever lived in Baja or the Imperial Valley, or even in Southern California. And essential if you are at all into the B monster flicks of AIP and the like.
And it makes the Salton Sea look so very large! It is also fun to see the place as it looked in the late 50's. Jack Stinson
Rating:
Summary: Fun
Review: I loved watching sci-fi/horror movies as a child, and this is one that I remember fondly. Great fun to watch with my own kids now.
Rating:
Summary: Instant Terror...Just Add Water
Review: I really wanted to give this movie four stars, but a few things got in the way, which I will go into later. The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), wow, that's a mouthful, is actually a smidge better than lots of other films of this type produced around the mid to late 50's.
The film stars Tim Holt as Lt. Cmdr. John 'Twill' Twillinger. I best remember Holt from the Humphrey Bogart classic Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) but he's been in a ton of other films including My Darling Clementine (1946) and Swiss Family Robinson (1940) to name a couple. The movie also stars Audrey Dalton as Gail MacKenzie and Hans Conried as Dr. Jess Rogers. If you don't recognize Conried's face, you may recognize his voice, as he did voices for various cartoon shows like Woody Woodpecker, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Tom & Jerry, Dudley Do-Right, and narration on the Dr. Suess classic, Horton Hears a Who! (1970).
The film opens on the Salton Sea, a lake that occupies a desert basin in southern California. A military base, located near the body of water, regularly performs parachute testing, with the jumpers landing in the sea. After a recent tremor, a routine pickup from the waters turns into a horrific nightmare, with three men dead, two drained of all their fluids, and one scared to death. An investigation turns up more questions than it answers. A diving expedition reveals a new cavern has opened at the bottom of the lakebed, and some curious egg-like sacs are present. The expedition also reveals a large, monstrous creature with large, sharp pinchers that proceeds to gobble on one of the divers. The men on the boat come into contact with the beast, poking it in the eye with a big stick. Dr. Rogers puts forth the theory, based on the evidence collected, that these are prehistoric mollusks that had been dormant for many years, and have been revived due to the tremor and traces of radioactive materials in the waters due to atomic testing (At least the creatures size wasn't solely attributed to atomic 'embiggening' as was common with films of this type at the time). Anyway, thus begins the chase to hunt down all the creatures, as there are more than one, and with the distinct possibility that these creatures may navigate their way into a series of channel locks and end up in open waters causes the military to hasten their efforts to track down the human fluid draining monsters. The fear is that due to the size and appetite of the creatures, and their capacity and efficiency for reproduction, they would deplete the oceans rather quickly and move onto land for human sustenance.
As I said before, I enjoyed the film, but there were a few flaws. One being when Dr. Rogers, keeping one of the eggs in a temperature controlled tank in a fairly unsecured and unguarded area tells everyone that the egg won't hatch as long as the easily accessible temperature dial isn't changed from its' setting. Well guess what? Someone fiddles with it, and the egg hatches. I mean, given how much Dr. Rogers went out of his way to tell us how important it was that this dial remain where it was, one couldn't help but wonder not if but when it was going to be changed, as such a clunky piece of exposition rarely is for naught in films like this. Also, I thought Tim Holt's portrayal of his character made him look like a real brown noser jerk. I'm sure it was written that way, and a softer side was shown at times, but it was still off putting and really didn't endear the character to me much. I will say the creatures looked really spectacular, especially the scene where the egg hatches in the laboratory and the monster terrorizes a couple of people. Imagine a giant, slobbery, snail-like monster, voracious for your fluids and you get the picture. The shells the creatures used for homes also looked very good and realistic. The creatures did have a good amount of screen time, allowing for the viewer to get a good look at them, which wasn't always the case in movies like this, especially cheaper ones, limiting the screen time due to costs.
The print used here was okay, but did show a number of signs of wear and tear, with speckling and a few scenes with vertical lines on the print. Also, the film has been modified to full screen format, which I try to avoid, if possible. Given the quality of the film and lack of any special features (I would have loved a featurette on the creatures), I would be hard pressed to give this the 3½ to 4 stars it deserves. All in all, a really good movie with a sub par release, and one that reinforces the necessity to obey the `no swimming' signs when posted as you never know if the reasoning is because of high E Coli counts or prehistoric mollusks intent on draining your precious bodily fluids through your neck. You've been warned.
Cookieman108
Rating:
Summary: Instant Terror...Just Add Water
Review: I really wanted to give this movie four stars, but a few things got in the way, which I will go into later. The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), wow, that's a mouthful, is actually a smidge better than lots of other films of this type produced around the mid to late 50's. The film stars Tim Holt as Lt. Cmdr. John 'Twill' Twillinger. I best remember Holt from the Humphrey Bogart classic Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) but he's been in a ton of other films including My Darling Clementine (1946) and Swiss Family Robinson (1940) to name a couple. The movie also stars Audrey Dalton as Gail MacKenzie and Hans Conried as Dr. Jess Rogers. If you don't recognize Conried's face, you may recognize his voice, as he did voices for various cartoon shows like Woody Woodpecker, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Tom & Jerry, Dudley Do-Right, and narration on the Dr. Suess classic, Horton Hears a Who! (1970). The film opens on the Salton Sea, a lake that occupies a desert basin in southern California. A military base, located near the body of water, regularly performs parachute testing, with the jumpers landing in the sea. After a recent tremor, a routine pickup from the waters turns into a horrific nightmare, with three men dead, two drained of all their fluids, and one scared to death. An investigation turns up more questions than it answers. A diving expedition reveals a new cavern has opened at the bottom of the lakebed, and some curious egg-like sacs are present. The expedition also reveals a large, monstrous creature with large, sharp pinchers that proceeds to gobble on one of the divers. The men on the boat come into contact with the beast, poking it in the eye with a big stick. Dr. Rogers puts forth the theory, based on the evidence collected, that these are prehistoric mollusks that had been dormant for many years, and have been revived due to the tremor and traces of radioactive materials in the waters due to atomic testing. (At least the creatures size wasn't solely attributed to atomic 'embiggening' as was common with films of this type at the time) Anyway, thus begins the chase to hunt down all the creatures, as there are more than one, and with the distinct possibility that these creatures may navigate their way into a series of channel locks and end up in open waters causes the military to hasten their efforts to track down the human fluid draining monsters. The fear is that due to the size and appetite of the creatures, and their capacity and efficiency for reproduction, they would deplete the oceans rather quickly and move onto land for human sustenance. As I said before, I enjoyed the film, but there were a few flaws. One being when Dr. Rogers, keeping one of the eggs in a temperature controlled tank in a fairly unsecured and unguarded area tells everyone that the egg won't hatch as long as the easily accessible temperature dial isn't changed from its' setting. Well guess what? Someone fiddles with it, and the egg hatches. I mean, given how much Dr. Rogers went out of his way to tell us how important it was that this dial remain where it was, one couldn't help but wonder not if but when it was going to be changed, as such a clunky piece of exposition rarely is for naught in films like this. Also, I thought Tim Holt's portrayal of his character made him look like a real brown noser jerk. I'm sure it was written that way, and a softer side was shown at times, but it was still off putting and really didn't endear the character to me much. I will say the creatures looked really spectacular, especially the scene where the egg hatches in the laboratory and the monster terrorizes a couple of people. Imagine a giant, slobbery, snail-like monster, voracious for your fluids and you get the picture. The shells the creatures used for homes also looked very good and realistic. The creatures did have a good amount of screen time, allowing for the viewer to get a good look at them, which wasn't always the case in movies like this, especially cheaper ones, limiting the screen time due to costs. The print used here was okay, but did show a number of signs of wear and tear, with speckling and a few scenes with vertical lines on the print. Also, the film has been modified to full screen format, which I try to avoid, if possible. Given the quality of the film and lack of any special features (I would have loved a featurette on the creatures), I would be hard pressed to give this the 3½ to 4 stars it deserves. All in all, a really good movie with a sub par release, and one that reinforces the necessity to obey the 'no swimming' signs when posted as you never know if the reasoning is because of high E Coli counts or prehistoric mollusks intent on draining your precious bodily fluids through your neck. You've been warned. Cookieman108
Rating:
Summary: The mandibles of death.
Review: In the atomic age '50s, there were giant ants, prehistoric scorpions, one or two giant spiders, an over-sized preying mantis, and at least one giant octopus. Not to mention various radioactive dinosaurs and invaders from space. Now it's time to trot out giant mollusks. The usual elements are present in this B movie: hideous giant creatures, grimly determined heroes, innocent victims, mysterious deaths, suspense, and pseudo-scientific explanations. The pace of the story is herky-jerky. Sudden bursts of action are followed by dull analysis and investigation. Some of the action takes place under water. The special effects are okay, if nothing special. Giant snails are a little, er, sluggish, regardless. Sometime Western actor Tim Holt is a strictly business Navy officer until he meets Audrey Dalton working at Hans Conried's lab. We conclude that Uncle Tonoose was a scientific egghead before "The Danny Thomas Show." Dalton's little girl can't leave the lab equipment settings alone, and that leads to more terror. It seems there is a giant mollusk egg preserved in a tank of temperature controlled water. The DVD edition includes Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio. The movie is in glorious B&W. The full screen DVD image is sharp and clear, if a little dark toned in places. Optional Spanish and French subtitles are available. This flick is not a classic, but it's worth a look. ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Escargot to Die For!
Review: Overall, a very good 50's radiation-mutation genre flick, with very solid creature effects, considering the the technology at the time. Some genuine scares, shocks, and moments of suspense redeem the film from its slower segments. If you are a fan of the MGM Midnite Movies on DVD, consider this a worthwhile addition to your collection.
Rating:
Summary: Above-average giant bug film
Review: The Monster that Challenged the World (1957), directed by Arnold Laven and starring Tim Holt and Audrey Dalton, is an above-average grade-B film about giant, mutated mollusks from the bottom of the Salton Sea. The action takes place in the vicinity of a naval base, commanded by Tim Holt, with Dalton his obligatory love interest. The creatures, mutated as a result of radioactivity from atomic testing and freed after millions of years thanks to earthquake activity, drain the body fluids out of their victims. Yuk. Above-average special effects, interesting story, and convincing acting combine to make this film one of the best of its type. Highly recommended to fans of the genre.
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