“From the point of view of the cinema, there wasn’t that much around in the 1950s.” Written by a 20-something film critic in an English newspaper in August 2012, this young upstart couldn’t have been more wrong if he’d tried. That particular decade was a fabulously fertile spell for the cinema buff and baby-boomer generation as the industry reached a creative high. Classic motion pictures were issued fast and furious, becoming a cornucopia fit for a king. Westerns? Shane, High Noon, The Searchers, Rio Bravo. Musicals? Oklahoma, Carousel, Singin’ in the Rain, South Pacific. War? The Bridge on the River Kwai, Paths of Glory, From Here to Eternity, The Dam Busters. Crime? The Big Heat, Riot in Cell Block 11, The Detective Story, Al Capone. Drama? On the Waterfront, Giant, Rebel Without a Cause, Ace in the Hole. Hitchcock? North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, Rear Window. Comedy? Some Like it Hot, The Ladykillers, Road to Bali, Genevieve. Romance? Three Coins in the Fountain, Roman Holiday, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Raintree County. Epics? Quo Vadis, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, The Robe. Foreign? Seven Samuari, The 400 Blows, Rififi, The Wages of Fear. Disney? Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland…
And then, from cinema’s exciting Atomic Age…Horror: House of Wax, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Fly, Dracula. Science Fiction: The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World. Monsters: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, Tarantula, 20 Million Miles to Earth. Fantasy: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Land Unknown, Journey to a Primeval Age.
For those enraptured by cinema fantastique from its earliest beginnings, the 1950s was an unequivocally the decade that quite literally had it all — in spades. No other 10-year fantasy time span can hold a candle to it. Every type of genre was offered to satiate the appetite and stir the imagination, allowing us, within the confines of a darkened auditorium, to journey into a 70-to-80-minute mainly black-and-white world populated by giant rear-projected insects and humans, mad doctors, huge scorpions, colossal spiders, murderous aliens, flying saucers, vampires, walking trees, Frankenstein Monsters, mummies, dinosaurs, spaceships, zombies, ghouls, blobs, werewolves and garishly rendered planets. Men were clean-cut heroes, women sassy, sexy and intelligent, nothing dragged in the pace department, scripts were literate, pre-CGI effects mind-boggling, direction straight to the point, everything backed by memorable soundtracks — and, in stark contrast to today’s politically correct climate, both sexes chain-smoked like crazy! It was a golden age that has never been repeated or surpassed, a diverse fantasy tapestry woven by a wealth of motion picture studios ranging from the major (Universal-International) to the minor (Howco International). This book presents a potpourri of all things related to the fabulous ’50s, a validation of that decade if you like, incorporating throughout its 33 chapters personal opinions and deliberations. And if any fledgling horror enthusiast wonders if there is fantasy cinematic life before the year 2000, the following pages will set out to prove conclusively that there was. Accept no substitute!