Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Thanks for the memories!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Shown extensively, on WOR-TV in NYC in the 1960s, the death scenes by radiation were very disturbing to see as a child. It was also rare for a kid to be killed in a horror movie. The movie is very good and fascinating to watch, at least the first half. Unfortunately, seeing the special effects today as an adult is disappointing due to the film's low budget The movie is basically a rework of Harryhausen's Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. That movie had much better effects although made 6 years earlier (the lighthouse scene is a work of art). I was always curious about the pulsating "radioactive"' blob in the beginning of this film that the young guy stupidly touches (more like a pulsating piece of canvas). That scene was left in the picture. It was made at the time when the "behemoth" was written as a blob-like creature and not a dinosaur.

Like many mutant monster flicks of the 1950's, this one starts out with a compilation of atomic bomb blasts and a premonition that the radiation fallout may have a disturbing effect on nature. It takes it a step further though, with Professor Steve Karnes' (Gene Evans) explanation that these blasts may have a biological chain reaction that causes a geometrical progression resulting in radioactive conglomerates. Okay, okay, he explained it in simpler terms too. Little fish eat radioactive plankton, big fish eat little fish and so on and so on, until you get a giant behemoth. Then they make a movie out of it.I actually thought the behemoth here, a giant paleosaurus, was done pretty well. The concept of a four legged dinosaur tearing up London doesn't sound like it would work on paper but this guy could get up on it's hind legs if he had too. The underwater scenes might have been even better, the monster really had a fluid motion cruising the Thames River, almost as good as present day animation. The stop motion photography and lifelike presentation of the behemoth was good enough that you didn't mind it when he stepped on a few toy cars that got in the way.I'll tell you what was really scary though. There were a couple times during the havoc on the London streets when the camera focused in on a vehicle with it's license plate showing, prominently reading 911. With all the mayhem and destruction going on, who would ever have thought that a future American disaster would be called to mind while watching this film today. To be more precise, the actual number on the license plate was 911MMF, but still, it got a reaction out of me just the same.I guess we'll never know if the film makers intended a sequel but you can't fault them for planting a seed at the end of the story. As the picture closes, TV news of dead fish all along the American East Coast are being reported, so that could have been a springboard for a follow up. After all, now they knew how to build those radium tipped atomic warhead torpedoes.

BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER is a British version of the classic GODZILLA story, although it's more closely linked to THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS with whom it shares a director in the Russian-born Frenchman, Eugene Lourie. A youthful Douglas Hickox (THEATRE OF BLOOD) is also credited as co-director in British prints.I always find British monster movies to be a lot of fun and this one is no exception; the cast is full of decent, stiff upper lipped types who instantly band together to tackle whatever great menace is coming their way. And BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER tells a very typical storyline for its era, following a specific template that sees a slow and gradual build-up in the first half lead into some all-out monster action in the second.The film features a likable imported American star in Gene Evans, backed up by some heavyweight British talent in the form of a tough Andre Morell and the likes of Jack MacGowran. Film fans will be delighted to see some brief snippets of stop motion effects contributed by the one and only Willis O'Brien at the tail-end of his career, although a cheesy model also bolsters the action. And I enjoyed the way the action plays out in a particularly grim fashion, with the monster readily offing men, women, and children thanks to that radioactive death ray.

The redundantly titled The Giant Behemoth (originally titled Behemoth, the Sea Monster) is a sub-par sci-fi potboiler from director Eugene Lourie and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien. It's loaded to the gills with padding, padding and more padding, and what stop-motion animation footage was done by O'Brien and his team is looped quite a bit during the Paleosaurus' initial London rampage. That said, for what it is, it isn't bad.Once one accepts that it's a B-movie it can be enjoyed. There's s'more stop-motion goodness to be had after the London walkabout, involving the Paleosaurus destroying some powerlines and then picking up a car with some people inside and tossing it into the Thames.Several scenes in the film pay homage to both Lourie's and O'Brien's earlier films. The Paleosaurus picking the car up is a nod to Beast from 20,000 Fathoms apparently, while the dinosaur causing a bridge to collapse with its weight, dumping itself unintentionally into the Thames, is a throwback to O'Brien's original 1925 special effects masterpiece, The Lost World. I also love that almost all of the screams used in the film are recycled from 1933's King Kong!