Considering Edward Ludwig attempts to do nothing outside of mimic Gordon Douglas’s Them!, The Black Scorpion redeems itself on two counts, one intentional, the other not. First, the saving Grace: It is one of the final works by famed stop-motion genius Willis O’Brien (mentor to Ray Harryhausen), the man behind the creature effects for The Lost World, Mighty Joe Young, and King Kong. Second, the heresy: The mishaps that occur along the way propel the work into the category of vintage B-movie badness, courtesy of screenwriters Robert Blees and David Duncan, the masterminds responsible for such monster mayhem as George McCowan’s Frogs and Edward Dein’s The Leech Woman respectively.
Giant scorpions crawl out of a volcano and plague Mexico City. It is up to Hank Scott (Richard Denning), an American geologist, to save the day.
What else needs to be said when it comes to a mutated monster invasion flick?
As far as O’Brien is concerned, he was at the peak of his game as his creature effects continue to fascinate in the wake of CGI glory.
The B-movie calamities contained within this odoriferous celluloid are due to errors in judgment atop continuity oversights. We’ll ignore that the film echoes the structure of Them! almost scene-for-scene, as well as implements some of Douglas’s sound effects for good measure. However, I will grant the production the sound judgment, and this is perhaps to deter from the aforementioned problem of cinematic plagiarism, that the monsters aren’t due to radiation, instead, they are the product of a geological anomaly. Yet, there still remains the trademark B-movie muck ups.
Let’s begin with the climax, where we have the granddaddy of all scorpions attacking Mexico City. Ludwig’s producer, Jack Dietz (we’ll ignore the phonetic coincidence with the surname), didn’t keep track of his numbers very well, resulting in the production going over budget and the filmmakers having to resort to a mere matte outline of the monster during the film’s finale. Let this be a lesson to young horror filmmakers: When in doubt, use your budget for the big finish and the introduction of the monster so that if you run out of cash, all your hard work won’t be lost entirely (at least it won’t be as obvious that your producer can’t count). Next in my list of no-no’s is that once the first titular terror appears, we are greeted with a close-up of the antagonist’s face, however unscorpionlike it may be. Now, this would be forgivable if it weren’t for the fact that every single time a creepy crawly staggers onto the screen, we cut away to the exact same close-up as before (apparently to take up screen time due to the aforementioned financial faux pas). Then we have to contend with the fact that the film loses its horror impetus midway through the production when we descend into the home of our nemesis, as we watch, not anxiety-ridden but with fascination, as scorpions hole up in the walls of the cave, thirty-foot worms battle baby scorpions, and scorpion-on-scorpion violence ensues.
Could the latter be viewed as a prophetic cautionary tale concerning African American gang-on-gang violence thirty years later? Don’t bet on it any more than the worm creature being killed by a pack of infant scorpions could be argued to be a metaphor for homosexual persecution in a pre-Stonewall era. (Don’t try the ol’ “hole-in-the-wall” spiel as a symbol for “in the closet.”) Why not you might ask? Well, for the same reason I will abstain from commenting upon the script having an American save an entire foreign country and his first, futile mind you, attempt at solving the problem via the all-American way, a bomb. Nevermind the “Us verses Them” cautionary Red Scare motif which Douglas’s film housed being completely usurped once Ludwig transported the setting of his production to Mexico.
But then there’s the ever-so-fun B-movie oversights, which make the mind-numbing writing somewhat bearable, in a MST3K sensibility. Such instances of required audience participation include the “Lionel Lines” trademark visible in the train fiasco sequence, Scott and his partner, Artur Ramos (Carlos Rivas), hopping back and forth from driver to passenger while riding in a Jeep, and the Empire State Building, clear as day in the background, when we settle into Mexico City. (And, no, this isn’t a timely precursor to 9-11.)
Overall, Edward Ludwig’s The Black Scorpion isn’t as Earth shaking as the volcano seen in his picture because we’ve seen it all before with Gordon Douglas’s Them!. What separates Ludwig’s production from being a merely cast away is O’Brien’s signature creature effects atop vintage B-movie mishaps, which distracts from the poor, poor writing.
Conversation piece: The trapdoor spider seen in the cave is an original from the famed deleted scene from King Kong.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
