I didn't know there'd been a film made about prehistoric sea snails attacking the modern world.
Well, there still hasn't, really. Except for one scene underwater where their shells are visible, they look more arthropod than mollusc (say, fifteen-foot, pissed-off pillbugs with mandibles and white benthic eyes), and they don't challenge the world so much as they vampirize some Army personnel around the Salton Sea. The fact that these creatures are radioactive is surprisingly underplayed, although I suppose it's not as though everyone was going to agree that huge carnivorous non-radioactive sea snails were perfectly all right, then; especially after they get into the All-American Canal. All of this admitted, however, I think it was probably not a bad example of the species Cinema beta americana,* with unexpected dashes of character development thrown in around the scare scenes. It was indicated by TCM that Spielberg took it as the template for Jaws (1975), which I can't verify for myself, having never seen the film despite once glimpsing Roy Scheider in the cafeteria of the American Museum of Natural History. The gender politics were still worse than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, though.
I hope tomorrow's being organised goes well.
Got all my errands run.
* In which I pretend that κίνημα is feminine, okay? According to Lewis and Short, beta is, so I'm running with that.
no subject
Well, there still hasn't, really. Except for one scene underwater where their shells are visible, they look more arthropod than mollusc (say, fifteen-foot, pissed-off pillbugs with mandibles and white benthic eyes), and they don't challenge the world so much as they vampirize some Army personnel around the Salton Sea. The fact that these creatures are radioactive is surprisingly underplayed, although I suppose it's not as though everyone was going to agree that huge carnivorous non-radioactive sea snails were perfectly all right, then; especially after they get into the All-American Canal. All of this admitted, however, I think it was probably not a bad example of the species Cinema beta americana,* with unexpected dashes of character development thrown in around the scare scenes. It was indicated by TCM that Spielberg took it as the template for Jaws (1975), which I can't verify for myself, having never seen the film despite once glimpsing Roy Scheider in the cafeteria of the American Museum of Natural History. The gender politics were still worse than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, though.
I hope tomorrow's being organised goes well.
Got all my errands run.
* In which I pretend that κίνημα is feminine, okay? According to Lewis and Short, beta is, so I'm running with that.