The Black Scorpion

The Black Scorpion (1957)

Every horror you've seen on the screen grows pale beside the horror of...

Volcanic activity frees giant scorpions from the earth who wreak havoc in the rural countryside and eventually threaten Mexico City.

Date of release
1957-10-11
TMDB
5.2 / 10 (68)
Runtime
1h 28m
Genres
Science Fiction, Horror
Director
Edward Ludwig

Casting

Interesting facts

The Black Scorpion is a 1957 black-and-white giant arachnid horror film from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by Jack Dietz and Frank Melford, directed by Edward Ludwig, and starring Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, and Mario Navarro. The film's stop-motion animation special effects were created by Willis O'Brien. In the film, volcanic activity releases giant prehistoric scorpions from the earth. They wreak havoc in the rural countryside and eventually threaten Mexico City. The film was released on October 11, 1957, and was later shown on a double bill in 1958 with the William Castle film Macabre (1958).

Production

Willis O'Brien, creator of the stop-motion animation effects for the original King Kong, was the special-effects supervisor, albeit on a smaller budget. Pete Peterson, who worked with O'Brien on Mighty Joe Young and would again on The Giant Behemoth, did most of the actual hands-on animation. O'Brien borrowed heavily from his previous films for the stop-motion special effects.

The opening sequence uses footage from the eruption of Parícutin, a volcano active in Mexico in 1943 to 1952. Models provided by Lionel were used for the train.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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