Uninteresting story line gives way to lots of monster action. There are plenty of closeups of a miniature drooling Scorpion head. The movie is all done by miniatures and the stop motion is at times very jerky. Willis appears to be stuck in the 1930s. There are a lot of background rear projection effects which are incredibly out of focus and the miniatures look very much like miniatures, toy trains and all. Why these insects make sounds at all is weird but the roaring makes it more interesting I guess. At times, sounds are taken from "Them", the other, better big WB insect film. Some monster sequences look older and may be test footage from King Kong or elsewhere. Most of the monster shots are separate and are not composite shots with people other than rear projection. Perhaps the best shot is one of the smaller creatures chasing after the kid. The WORST shot is when there is a giant scorpion mixed with large crowd scenes. It's basically the scorpion appearing as a transparent black cartoony effect that is very jerky and laid over the crowd shot....one of the worst of that era. Maybe this was a budget issue. The scorpions fighting each other and eating other miniature people are the best shots and must have taken a lot of work...but still, very jerky. Anyway, it's 1950s B Horror, and lots of fun. For some reason, I had never seen this as a kid. I guess the NYC market didn't show it. So, it was nice to see a new (for me) 1950s monster movie from a major studio.
Review of The Black Scorpion
