"The Crawling Eye" was a thriller whose title I remember very well from childhood. This film was shown under this title on TV in the U.S. in the early '60s and it held me spellbound in horror as a child.
As an adult re-watching this movie, some of my first impressions were that it was remarkably slow and had poor special effects. However, I was also simultaneously impressed by nuances I had not noticed as a child, in particular the Swiss alpine ambiance and the underlying current of fear delivered via the dialog.
There is an appreciable amount of ambiance in this old black-and-white film, which makes it generally pleasant to watch. There are snow-covered mountains, an alpine valley seen from a mountain top, the lowing of cows and the tinkling of cow bells, cable cars, an old wooden staircase with Swiss style decorations, drinks of brandy, a hip pocket metal flask, a wooden mountain hut, mountain climbers on ledges, an old train and train station, travel posters in the background announcing destinations like RIEDERALP and ZERMATT, and so on. It's unfortunate that the main mountain is shown only as a prop painting, but it all works. Put all these little details together and you get a convincing, foreign, Swiss alpine atmosphere that reminds me of the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland and its atmospheric queue area.
In the various dialogs, the locals are obviously eager to cover up the recent gruesome climbing accidents and the rumors from the local villagers. The car driver Mr. Klein stammers and hedges when asked directly about a climbing accident, Hans similarly excuses himself when pressed for details, and Alan the professor keeps downplaying an obviously freakish cloud that hangs over the Trollenberg mountain. All this creates an atmosphere of dread and denial, especially when the dialogs are delivered in German accents with sinister voices, as if the locals have inside knowledge that they don't wish to share with tourists.
As with so many other films of the 1950s, this one has an excessive and unrealistic emphasis on ESP and mind control. Maybe those themes were popular in the 1950s because they didn't require expensive special effects. In this film the telepathic woman Anne Pilgrim is frequently talking in a spaced-out voice as if in a trance, and constantly fainting afterward. She in turn is the target of two dead men whose bodies are reanimated by the crawling eye, who attempt to murder her so that she can't telepathically monitor the alien monster.
Overall, the film seems carefully thought-out in many ways, yet quite negligent in others. Therefore if you can overlook its weak points and savor its strong points, it's still an enjoyable film.
As an adult re-watching this movie, some of my first impressions were that it was remarkably slow and had poor special effects. However, I was also simultaneously impressed by nuances I had not noticed as a child, in particular the Swiss alpine ambiance and the underlying current of fear delivered via the dialog.
There is an appreciable amount of ambiance in this old black-and-white film, which makes it generally pleasant to watch. There are snow-covered mountains, an alpine valley seen from a mountain top, the lowing of cows and the tinkling of cow bells, cable cars, an old wooden staircase with Swiss style decorations, drinks of brandy, a hip pocket metal flask, a wooden mountain hut, mountain climbers on ledges, an old train and train station, travel posters in the background announcing destinations like RIEDERALP and ZERMATT, and so on. It's unfortunate that the main mountain is shown only as a prop painting, but it all works. Put all these little details together and you get a convincing, foreign, Swiss alpine atmosphere that reminds me of the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland and its atmospheric queue area.
In the various dialogs, the locals are obviously eager to cover up the recent gruesome climbing accidents and the rumors from the local villagers. The car driver Mr. Klein stammers and hedges when asked directly about a climbing accident, Hans similarly excuses himself when pressed for details, and Alan the professor keeps downplaying an obviously freakish cloud that hangs over the Trollenberg mountain. All this creates an atmosphere of dread and denial, especially when the dialogs are delivered in German accents with sinister voices, as if the locals have inside knowledge that they don't wish to share with tourists.
As with so many other films of the 1950s, this one has an excessive and unrealistic emphasis on ESP and mind control. Maybe those themes were popular in the 1950s because they didn't require expensive special effects. In this film the telepathic woman Anne Pilgrim is frequently talking in a spaced-out voice as if in a trance, and constantly fainting afterward. She in turn is the target of two dead men whose bodies are reanimated by the crawling eye, who attempt to murder her so that she can't telepathically monitor the alien monster.
Overall, the film seems carefully thought-out in many ways, yet quite negligent in others. Therefore if you can overlook its weak points and savor its strong points, it's still an enjoyable film.