A monster is woken up by a nuclear bomb test and wanders towards New York, attacking small ships and lighthouses with reckless abandon. A young scientist with an indeterminate and variable accent tries to convince other chaps of different professions that the monster exists. Very little happens very slowly until the monster starts rampaging through the city and civilians get knocked off in nasty ways. Can anybody stop this marauding fiend? Most probably.
"Beast" is a typical monster movie, with a clunky script, a rigid plot and a cast of actors you've probably never heard of playing second fiddle to the special effects. Fortunately it's probably one of the better examples of its genre. For once the sexist totty scientist's assistant isn't caught in a situation of dire peril from which she needs to be rescued by a hunky soldier chap - indeed, the female lead does nothing bar peering at a collection of old drawings and only gets patronised once ("A pretty girl like you - a palaeontologist! Ha ha ha!") - and the old bloke professor isn't a nutter but a genuinely nice man who it's impossible not to like. Even the male lead is quite pleasant overall. Of course, the film's main draw is Ray Harryhausen's Rhedosaurus, which, for the time, was a masterpiece of special effects work. I've always adored Harryhausen's creatures from a young age and though his work would get better and more intricate as his films went on - the Rhedosaurus lacks the more empathetic emotional qualities that imbued some of Harryhausen's later creations, like the Ymir and Trog - the "Beast" is certainly not to be sniffed at, even though the effects used to meld it alongside the live action footage could be better.
The film contains some sloppy mistakes, such as a policeman who gets eaten by the monster suddenly being alive and well a few shots later, and the fact that the military actually lose this gigantic monster not once but *twice* in Manhattan, the bloody fools. Still, it's an entertaining load of old tosh that remains a few notches above your average B-movie.
"Beast" is a typical monster movie, with a clunky script, a rigid plot and a cast of actors you've probably never heard of playing second fiddle to the special effects. Fortunately it's probably one of the better examples of its genre. For once the sexist totty scientist's assistant isn't caught in a situation of dire peril from which she needs to be rescued by a hunky soldier chap - indeed, the female lead does nothing bar peering at a collection of old drawings and only gets patronised once ("A pretty girl like you - a palaeontologist! Ha ha ha!") - and the old bloke professor isn't a nutter but a genuinely nice man who it's impossible not to like. Even the male lead is quite pleasant overall. Of course, the film's main draw is Ray Harryhausen's Rhedosaurus, which, for the time, was a masterpiece of special effects work. I've always adored Harryhausen's creatures from a young age and though his work would get better and more intricate as his films went on - the Rhedosaurus lacks the more empathetic emotional qualities that imbued some of Harryhausen's later creations, like the Ymir and Trog - the "Beast" is certainly not to be sniffed at, even though the effects used to meld it alongside the live action footage could be better.
The film contains some sloppy mistakes, such as a policeman who gets eaten by the monster suddenly being alive and well a few shots later, and the fact that the military actually lose this gigantic monster not once but *twice* in Manhattan, the bloody fools. Still, it's an entertaining load of old tosh that remains a few notches above your average B-movie.