The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: California

The Monster That Challenged the World is a 1957 black-and-white science-fiction monster film from Gramercy Pictures, produced by Arthur Gardner, Jules V. Levy, and Arnold Laven, and starring Tim Holt and Audrey Dalton. The film was distributed by United Artists as the top half of a double feature with The Vampire. The film concerns an army of giant molluscs that emerge from California's Salton Sea.

Production

The story for The Monster That Challenged the World came from David Duncan, who also went on to pen screenplays for The Time Machine (1960) and Fantastic Voyage (1966). During production, Duncan's original work was titled The Jagged Edge, before the screenplay was renamed The Kraken. Prior to the film's release, it was once more retitled, this time to The Monster That Challenged the World.

Filming took place in 16 days on a budget of $200,000. A majority of the underwater scenes in the production were shot at Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. Other primary filming locations included the Salton Sea, as well as Brawley and Barstow, California. The close-ups were later filmed in a tank filled with water and plastic seaweed.

In a 2016 interview, star Audrey Dalton recalled:

I thought it was a very interesting experience – as all my movies were in different ways. The director, Arnold Laven, had formed a production company with Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner. The monster stuff was fun, crouching behind a desk with a monster breaking down the wall. But you had to play it very straight. Once you start seeing the funny side of it, it doesn't work. Tim Holt had come out of retirement to do this movie.

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