1958 ‘The Trollenberg Terror’ Directed by Quentin Lawrence
An American investigator for the U.N., a German scientist and a British reporter join forces to investigate a series of disappearances and mutilation-deaths confined to a Swiss Alp and involving a thick, mobile cloud, a telepathic girl, an animate dead man, and tentacled, cyclopean beings from another planet.
Mysteriet Trollenberg, I mostri delle rocce atomiche, Creature from Another World
Monsters, aliens, sci-fi and the apocalypse Horror, the undead and monster classics monster, creature, dinosaurs, scientist or beast creature, aliens, monster, sci-fi or scary earth, sci-fi, space, spaceship or mankind horror, scientist, monster, doctor or experiment zombies, undead, horror, gory or flesh Show All…
The Crawling Eye (AKA The Trollenberg Terror) is, uh, kinda great? Before the aliens show up and the effects make it silly to modern eyes, it's pleasingly low key, and embraces an attitude toward the universe that's reassuringly open-minded: not only is there no question that powerful aliens might exist, but there's also no suggestion that they're targeting Earth in particular — at one point, a scientist specifically rejects that idea, reminding his listener that the universe is big, and there are probably aliens wandering around on a lot of planets.
In keeping with the sanguine attitude everyone in authority has toward everything, our hero, Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), seems to have a resting heart rate of about 40 bpm.…
There's a rash of decapitated mountain climbers on a remote European range and a crack journalist is on the case. And a geologist. And a psychic. And various government officials. Eventually there are zombie attacks and giant radioactive eyeballs with tentacles in the mix too. This movie kinda goes for it.
The movie's actually a little slower going than all of that would suggest, but it's a good deal of fun on the whole. If nothing else, stay tuned for one of the most endearingly awful miniature effects ever committed to film.
This one is a 1950's science fiction horror flick based off a BBC series. It was a pleasant surprise.
I am glad that I did not see any posters or see the American name for the movie as that allowed the tension to be more genuine.
There is a small Swiss town at the base of a mountain where climbers are disappearing. Plus, a strange cloud is hovering on the mountain. The two are obviously connected but how? Well, the posters and the American name for the movie give it away leaving many viewers uninpressed.
I was quite surprised to see decapitations in this movie from the fifties. They weren't graphic but none the less were still there.
There was…
Tentacles wrapped in clouds. Along with being an inspiration for Carpenter’s The Fog, an appearance in IT puts this pretty high on The Mist’s DNA. The atmosphere is thick, with more beheaded mountaineers, psychic damsels in distress, and zombies then you can shake an ice axe at. The final film from Southall Studios takes a similar approach to Hammer's Quatermass success, with Jimmy Sangster adapting a property that started as a television miniseries (ITV's six episode The Trollenberg Terror is now considered lost). The condensed format features a large cast jockeying to get their lines in, and subplots that are never fully realized, but the frantic pace counters the slow burn. The Crawling Eye is similar to Fiend without a Face (1958) – in that when the creatures finally shows up, we get entirely too much of them… but the initial reveal is simple breathtaking. It'll knock your eyes out... and then they'll wander around for awhile.
You remember madballs from the eighties? I used to have so much fun with them and was genuinely distraught when a random dog at my Dads hockey club destroyed my favourite Screamin Meemie. Fast forward 30 years later and I am watching a film from the fifties that felt like an origin story of the madballs as we have huge ball shaped eyes causing havoc and decapitations.
This is fifties craziness at its best. We get insane monsters that scream real screams and a mind reader played by the brilliant and well ahead of her time Janet Munro who predicts destruction. The story strolls along nicely without anything too mundane.
Apparently John Carpenter was influenced by this for THE FOG…
A classic alien invasion monster movie. Whilst clearly a science fiction film, The Crawling Eye or The Trollenberg Terror as it is correctly known in Britain has many Gothic undertones. From the remote, timeless mountain lodge locations to the unknown horrors lurking in the mists, and the desperate bunch of people attempting to survive. The Crawling Eye owes much to classic Hammer sci-fi / horror films of the time such as the Quatermass series, X - The Unknown, and probably because of the mountainous locations and the casting of Forrest Tucker, The Abominable Snowman. In fact the creatures themselves owe a lot to the great Gothic author HP Lovecraft with their tentacled octopus like demeanor.
It would be easy to…
THE TROLLENBERG TERROR and THE CRAWLING EYE are both the same motion picture (although the latter was initially trimmed for its U.S. release before being restored). I much prefer the title of THE TROLLENBERG TERROR because it sounds as if its source material might be an H.P. Lovecraft story (it is not) … while THE CRAWLING EYE might belong as part of a drive-in triple bill of 1950’s teen sci-fi movies from AIP.
THE TROLLENBERG TERROR is a British film from the pen of Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster of Hammer horror fame. Director Quentin Lawrence is primarily known for his television work which is fine for this show as it was adapted from a television mini-series (not unlike the…
Way hyped-up British siege horror about a bunch of ex-pats fighting aliens in the Swiss Alps (recreated on a Middlesex soundstage). Real kitchen sink movie, with zombies, axe murder, mad science, psychics, radioactive decapitation clouds and aliens that look like Grells from the Monster Manuals, basically giant eyeball brains with tentacles.
The lead guy Alan (Forrest Tucker) is kind of a drag (his catchphrase is “Do as you’re told!” which he says to other adults several times) but Janet Munro and Jennifer Jayne are great as psychic sisters Anne and Sarah Pilgrim, supernaturally drawn to the Trollenberg mountain observatory. Stanley Black’s music is a feature, a mix of traditional bombastic orchestration with heavy reverb delay and sci-fi theremin flourishes, as is Henry Richardson’s expressionistic editing.
Enough ideas for ten movies, but never exhausting. The absurd Deus Ex Machina ending is forgivable. Good movie!
“What do we use against these things?”
“High explosives?”
Why was THAT guy’s idea always so quickly dismissed in the 1950’s. Also, why did everyone always have to wait until the last 15 minutes to see what they came to the theater for?
The last 15 minutes of this one plus the last 15 minutes of Fiend Without A Face would make the BEST “disembodied brain with tentacles” featurette from any era!
This is an obscure little classic British horror jam that I think is well worth digging out. Don't be deterred by the appalling poster on Letterboxd (is that really the best TMDB could come up with???), there is a lot to love in The Trollenberg Terror (I much prefer this title to "The Crawling Eye" which, besides sounding silly, is unnecessarily revealing of the plot, believe it or not).
Maybe it's because I am such a keen hiker myself, but horror movies in which hikers or mountaineers stumble into something horrible are hugely appealing to me. And this film creates a cosily exotic atmosphere out of its Alps setting. The set-up is super interesting - we see a couple of…
(Hiker 1) “What’s he doing up there?”
Hiker 2) “Hey, Jimmy!”
(Jimmy) “Hang on a minute. Can’t see. It’s foggy. Gone cold, too.”
(Hiker 2) “What did you say?”
(Jimmy) “I tell you it’s foggy. Cloud or something. Hey, wait a minute. There’s something coming.”
(Hiker) “Who is it Jim? The Abominable Snowman?”
Nope, but Forrest Tucker was in that 1957 movie too. I ended up watching this because I saw that Svengoolie was on MeTv tonight on my Frndly tv. If you’d like to see this I found it also on YouTube. I highly recommend watching this, at least for Svengoolie’s jokes and his “Sis Mix” not hot chocolate commercial (marked at 54:10 on the video).
As for this…
