Rating: 
Summary: Exciting creature feature that holds the interest
Review: "The Black Scorpion" came quite late in the run of 1950's monsters on the loose features yet I feel it is one of the very best. It has as its premise an erupting volcano in Mexico that opens up deep underground caverns releasing incredible over sized prehistoric Scorpions out onto the surface in a rural area not far from Mexico City. Often dismissed as an off shoot of the classic "Them", this film certainly has rampaging scorpions in place of ants but it contains a fairly exciting story that keeps your interest through the entire running time. One thing that I find of interest here is the use of the Mexican locale for the setting of the story and the onlocation photography really enhances the look and eerie feel of the production. The main point of interest in this film is of course the wonderful recreations of the savage giant scorpions which are the masterwork of special effects and stop-motion genius Willis O'Brien whose main claim to fame is of course the masterful work that he did on the classic "King Kong". One of his last major efforts as an animator, in this film he really excelled himself with the superb and very frightening creatures he created. He created not only a whole cavern of fighting scorpions but a spider and killer worms adding to the horror of the piece. The effect of having the scorpions actually dripping a slimy substance from their mouths as they move really adds an extra revolting element to their composition. The overall animation used here is excellent. The grand finale where the King Scorpion attacks Mexico City is one of the very best of the monster attacks on a metropolitan area filmed in this period. The final scene within the sports stadium with the giant scorpion fighting off helicopters and tanks is probably one of the most famous finales from a film of this type from the 1950's. Placed beside these spectacular effects the lead actors have their work cut out for them. Richard Denning as geologist Hank Scot and Mara Corday as local land owner Teresa Alverez are the two leads and both being capable actors, make the most of the material they are given. Mara Corday , a veteran of many 1950's horror films like the classic "Tarantula" and the cult favourite "The Giant Claw" was always a most capable actress and she takes on a much more major role than most women where ever given in these films. "The Black Scorpion" has many exciting moments, the scenes deep in the cavern where the nest of scorpions is hiding and where the exploration team goes to destroy them, the frightening attack on the train and on Mara Corday's property and of course the action that takes place once the giant scorpion moves on to Mexico City are some of the highlights that keep the plot at a boil. What constantly amazes me is the great effects that were often created on a very small budget in these films. The scorpion created here is right up there with the "King Kong" monster, the ants from "Them" and the spider from "Tarantula" in excellence of execution. For fans of 1950's sci fi the last great effort in this genre "The Black Scorpion" is great entertainment and while it might not have the literate quality of the classic "Them", it is still definately worth including in your classic monster movie colection. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Strange goings-on in Mexico City! Calling Willis O'Brien!
Review: "The Black Scorpion" is a prime example of a how a big bug film can be made on a low budget and still retain the big-studio gloss. From those fun folks at Warners, who's history of big stars and big films at the time was renowned, this story is set in the Mexican desert outside Mexico City. An unhealthy dose of atomic radiation has mutated a horde of black scorpions to giant-size proportions and set them on a path of destruction toward the heart of Mexico City. Bringing the scorpions to life is the stop-motion animation of the legendary Willis O' Brien. O'Brien is best-known for his work animating that hairy guy Kong in the 1933 classic "King Kong". As the 1950's rolled around, O'Brien had started to ride a bit on his past success with films like "Kong" and "Son of Kong", and his output was a bit spotty. His "Beast of Hollow Mountain", done a year prior to "Black Scorpion", featured some of O'Brien's most sub-standard effects work. It resembles the clay-mation process of the 60's more so than stop-motion work. But in "Scorpion", he is back in fine form. A great more detail has been given to the creature models and they actually feel real on screen. It gives the film a tension that other 50's "big bug" efforts lacked.
Ably supporting O'Brien is a cast of 50's stalwarts, including Richard Denning as the iron-jawed hero, Mara Corday as the pretty heroine, and Carlos Rivas as Denning's friend and right-hand man. Even 50's favorite Nestor Paiva (the boat captain in "Creature From the Black Lagoon") pops up to remind us of the camp value of the film.
This film has been unfairly criticized for its similar plot-line to the earlier Warners effort "Them". Frankly, "Them" set the tone for a lot of 50's "big bug" films. Unlike many of the others "Black Scorpion" holds its own against its 1954 cinema brother. As directed by Edward Ludwig, the film achieves a grittier feel than "Them". You can almost feel the hot, arid desert where the action takes place. And the scorpion attack scenes drip with tension.
The film does suffer from the occasional bit of banal dialogue, but then, so did a dozen other sci-fi and horror flicks in that decade alone! it seems that a pre-requisite of the time was to not do the script until the plane ride to the set the day before shooting begins! But this is a minor sting (pun intended) against a fine genre effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Warner finally delivers with terrific Black Scorpion DVD
Review: After disappointing DVD releases, virtually barren of extras, of some of the finest SF/horror films in their catalog (Them, Thing from Another World, Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula), Warner Video finally redeems themselves somewhat with this excellent package (and concurrent releases of Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Valley of Gwangi). While the extras are not exactly generous, they're of great interest to B-movie and stop-motion animation fans.
I have to place Black Scorpion in my top three Big Bug movies, along with Tarantula and Beginning of the End. Fans of Them will probably consider this heresy, but frankly, as fine a film as Them is overall, those big head-nodder ant props just never engendered much suspension of disbelief, let alone horror, in me, even as a kid. In contrast, Black Scorpion inverts the situation, with a pedestrian B-movie scenario framing some of the creepiest, scariest, and convincing Big Bug special effects footage of the era. A volcano in Mexico releases a horde of giant scorpions that roam the countryside, destroying and killing, grabbing people with their pincers and jabbing them with their stinger tails. Several beautifully animated stop-motion set pieces are featured, including the sequence in which the scientists descend into the volcano crater to explore the scorpions' underground lair and encounter cool and creepy wormlike and spiderlike creatures; the scene of the scorpions destroying a train and feasting on the screaming passengers, then battling a supergiant "king" scorpion; and the king scorpion's last stand inside a sports stadium, where it scoops up military vehicles like marbles and plucks helicopters out of the sky, slamming them to the ground, while the military bombards it mercilessly. Black Scorpion was the last monster epic supervised by Willis O'Brien, the legendary stop-motion pioneer (The Lost World, King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, etc.), though the hands-on animation was done primarily by Pete Peterson, who proves himself a close second if not equal to Ray Harryhausen in terms of technical skill. His scorpions, in contrast to most other 1950s movie monsters, are realistic, quick-moving, bloodthirsty, and relentless. Unfortunately, someone had the really bad idea to keep cutting to inserts of a laughable, drooling, life-size scorpion head prop that distracts from and somewhat undermines the otherwise stunning stop-motion animation of the scorpions and other bugs. The "black" scorpion of the title is occasionally shown as an empty black matte silhouette, apparently because they ran out of money, and the special effects scenes also suffer at times from from matting and process work with poorly matched contrast. But when the scorpions are darting around, killing with their spiked tails, there are few 1950s SF creatures that can equal them for pure repulsive horror. The human leads are familiar B-movie stalwarts Richard Denning (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Target Earth, Day the World Ended, etc.), playboy model Mara Corday (Tarantula, The Giant Claw), and Carlos Rivas (Beast of Hollow Mountain). Director Edward Ludwig had previously directed mostly B-westerns and exotica such as Smuggler's Island and Jivaro, and must have seemed like a logical choice to the producers of this monster flick set in the Mexican desert. The story is pretty generic, but moves along reasonably well, and it's really just an excuse for the monster sequences anyway, so pop some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy.
Warner's DVD finally gives fans and collectors reason for praise rather than griping. The movie, presented in full frame, looks simply fabulous, with terrific black level, contrast, grayscale, detail, and sharpness. There is some nearly unavoidable very light speckling and spotting, but overall the print is stunning. (Others have speculated that this film was meant to be matted to 1.85:1, but that doesn't appear to be the case to me.) The extras (!!) include trailers (Black Scorpion, Gwangi, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and Clash of the Titans); a three-minute featurette with Ray Harryhausen (talking about seeing King Kong as a child, meeting Willis O'Brien, and working with him on Mighty Joe Young) that's interesting and informative as far as it goes but much too brief; and the long-sought (by animation fans) and little-seen 10-minute dinosaur sequence from Irwin Allen's Animal World, apparently presented here for no other reason than Warner's had it and felt (uncharacteristically) like throwing us a bone. And last, but for me the jewels of the set, are two short (4:00 and :40) animation tests by Pete Peterson for proposed or aborted projects. The first is called The Las Vegas Monster and features a cool outsized astro-mutated baboon demolishing a house and tangling with a truck left over from Mighty Joe Young. The second, Beetlemen, is a clip of an army of walking insectoid creatures that's unfortunately in very poor condition and tantalizingly brief but still amazing and effortlessly beautiful. A comparison of Peterson's animation in these tests and The Black Scorpion with the Animal World footage (and more so Harryhausen's later films) demonstrates that while Peterson was close to Ray on a technical level, Harryhausen's creations project a "life" and "personality" that is noticeably absent in Peterson's otherwise impressive work. It really reinforces for me the true artistry of Ray Harryhausen's achievements (no slight to Peterson intended). I'm amazed that Warner bothered to include these rare tests (lost for years and discovered in a trunk) given their past track record. The only thing to complain about here are the cheap snap-case covers that Warner is still packaging their DVDs in, giving them a second-class, low-budget appearance, and leaving them more susceptible to dust, etc. But that minor grievance aside, this is a really fine release (especially for Warner Video) and needs to be in the collection of every 1950s SF or stop-motion animation fan.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie!
Review: Ecellent special effects for the time period in which it was made
Rating: 
Summary: Action-packed Creature Feature.
Review: Giant prehistoric scorpions are trapped in volcanic rock in suspended animation back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Recent violent volcanic upheavals in a remote area of rural Mexico unleash this menace on an unsuspecting world. This is an entertaining, albeit derivative, sci-fi/monster flick from the "big bug" school of the the 1950's. As others have commented, it is a thinly disquised clone of "Them" that replaces mutant ants with prehistoric scorpions. This reviewer doesn't feel it's necessary to be entangled in a "creative purity" debate. If one rejected all the old monster movies that are lacking in original ideas and plots, it would leave a very small population. This film offers good stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien (of "King Kong" fame). After a slow start, the action takes off when the giant creatures swarm over the countryside. Things get really tense when two geologists (Richard Denning and Carlos Rivas) find the scorpions' nest in a deep cave-like fissure. They get the bright idea to descend into the fissure to determine the creatures' vulnerabilities. I mean, who else should study the habits of monstrous scorpions than a couple of rock gazing geologists? Beside the resident hordes of giant scorpions fighting among themselves and ruled by a huge black scorpion (hence, the movie's title) there are thirty-foot prehistoric worms (with claws, no less) and a giant spider. The fissure is dynamited into oblivion, but some of the scorpions escape. In another terrifying segment, the scorpions swarm over a crowded passenger train as it hurtles through the desert night. The blood bath so inflames the monstrous creatures that they turn on each other. The black scorpion prevails, heads for Mexico City, and typical monster-movie hysteria and mayhem ensues. One problem with this film is the dark-tones of the B&W photography combined with the dark tinted special effects. The black scorpion that rules the arachnid hordes is occasionally reduced to a shadow moving across the screen. People who viewed this movie at drive-ins back in the '50s had trouble seeing all the action because of the dark photography against the night sky. The climactic battle scene has enough tanks, rockets, and explosions to satisfy the savage beast in most blood-thirsty viewers. Among classic sci-fi/monster flicks, this film is a second-stringer. For old-fashioned "Saturday afternoon at the movies" fun, it serves the purpose very well. Enjoy the nonsense, and don't worry about that thing crawling up your leg. ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Very solid if unspectacular monster flick
Review: Giant scorpions go on the rampage in one of only three Sci-Fi films made in Mexico. Something south of the border has a good effect on these flicks. Like its companions, the Valley of Gwangi and the Beast from Hollow Mountain, the Black Scorpion takes a plot that could have been just plain silly and makes a shuddery success of it. Even the cast seems comfortable with the script, unlike much of the cardboard acting so prevalent in early Sci-Fi. The special effects are weak, but the action sequences are well-staged and believable. Not a classic, but well worth watching.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic!
Review: I am a fan of monster movies from the 50s and 60s than I am of the monster movies of today. The reason for that is because B&W movies just seem to capture the horrors better and stop-motion animation just seemed to be fun to look at. Plus with stop-motion animation being cheaper (but more time consuming), more and more monster movies were made possible.
The Black Scorpion has always been one of my favorites. Why I don't know. But, in my opinion, it is one of the very few giant bug movies that actually looks good and doesn't have really bad acting. Willis O'Brian had some pretty good looking effects in this one. Although there were some scenes which they used a blackened cartoon scorpion and on the close-ups of it, you could see the matting. Also there is some stock footage that is in this film. Don't worry, it's only stock footage from this film that repeats now an then when the Black Scorpion attacks. That in itself gets somewhat annoying and because some scenes don't fit right. Like when the Black Scorpion attacked two smaller ones after they had attacked the train, a close-up of the Black Scorpion killing the other two was stock footage used in the cave scene just minutes earlier in the film.
All in all, a classic B movies that really isn't as goofy and bland as some of the other monster movies in the 50s and 60s. I would suggest picking this one up if you are a fan of the genre.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic!
Review: I am a fan of monster movies from the 50s and 60s than I am of the monster movies of today. The reason for that is because B&W movies just seem to capture the horrors better and stop-motion animation just seemed to be fun to look at. Plus with stop-motion animation being cheaper (but more time consuming), more and more monster movies were made possible.
The Black Scorpion has always been one of my favorites. Why I don't know. But, in my opinion, it is one of the very few giant bug movies that actually looks good and doesn't have really bad acting. Willis O'Brian had some pretty good looking effects in this one. Although there were some scenes which they used a blackened cartoon scorpion and on the close-ups of it, you could see the matting. Also there is some stock footage that is in this film. Don't worry, it's only stock footage from this film that repeats now an then when the Black Scorpion attacks. That in itself gets somewhat annoying and because some scenes don't fit right. Like when the Black Scorpion attacked two smaller ones after they had attacked the train, a close-up of the Black Scorpion killing the other two was stock footage used in the cave scene just minutes earlier in the film.
All in all, a classic B movies that really isn't as goofy and bland as some of the other monster movies in the 50s and 60s. I would suggest picking this one up if you are a fan of the genre.
Rating:
Summary: Good fun movie
Review: I am a fan of this movie. For horror movie made in the 50's the special effects are very good. The story is of 2 scientists, Richard Denning is one, that go to Mexico to do research after an earthquake. They encouter several bizarre deaths along the way and soon discover that the earthquake has unleashed giant scorpions that are attacking and killing the local villagers. Mara Corday, one of my favorite 50's B movie horror queens, is around to supply beauty and a love interest for Denning. The story is surprisingly entertaining and again the effects good for the time. I recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of the horror movies of the 1950's.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest monster movies!!!!
Review: I bought this dvd today, and is amazing.
The stop-motion animation is very good, and the story is pretty good too, (maybe a little naif, but ok).
I remember I saw this movie on tv when I was a child, and it was a BIG surprise to find this dvd.
Don't waste time buddys, get this DVD, an amazing 50's movies sample!!!
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